Foreign Affairs - 03.2020 - 04.2020

March/April 2020 163

contains multitudes. Perhaps in another

book, Ya    a will bring his ample journal-

istic talent to bear in eshing it out. I

so, he would be doing a great service to

his non-Russian readers.

BIRTH OF A NATION

American assessments, journalistic and

otherwise, must do more to address

Russian nationhood. It is one o Putin’s

crucial sources o legitimacy. His gov-

ernment is corrupt and ine­cient. It does

not grant Russian citizens real rights,

and there is no freedom in Russia that the

Kremlin does not have the power to

curtail. Russians know these downsides

o the Putin system. They tolerate them

not only because they are wily and

capable o pro…ting from the status quo.

They tolerate the authoritarianism and the

corruption because in some crucial sense

the Russian government is theirs. It is

the product o the state-citizen dialogue

Ya  a identi…es as inaudible to non-

Russian ears. And in no domain is the

Russian government so much the posses-

sion o Russians as in foreign policy.

Russia’s actions in Ukraine and in Syria

since 2014 may bring few tangible

bene…ts to the country’s citizens, and they

certainly incur costs, but they are the

visible proo o Russian autonomy.

Achieving autonomy is the goal o Russian

foreign policy far more than an abstrac-

tion such as regaining great-power status,

which is what Western policymakers

usually de…ne as the desired end state

o Russian strategy.

The Russian hunger for national

autonomy presents a conundrum for U.S.

policy. For Moscow, the easiest way to

demonstrate Russia’s autonomy is to defy

the United States, whatever the United

States is doing. Washington and Moscow

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