Thread by @andrewmichta

🧵As I watch the Trump administration's efforts to end the war in Ukraine and save lives, it appears that the negotiation is part of a larger US policy redesign to improve US-Russia relations, which stipulates that Moscow can be brought into a larger great power agreement. 1/10

If that's indeed the case. i.e., if beyond the ongoing deal-making there is a larger strategy, we may be witnessing another attempt at a "reset" with Russia, only this time when there is a full-scale war raging in Europe, a war in MENA, and clouds gathering over the Pacific. 2/10

Throughout my career I've asked why our policy community would continue to misread and misunderstand Russia--mirror-imaging and projecting priorities that live Western societies onto Russia's sui-generis non-Western culture. This was behind the early post-Cold War euphoria. 3/10

One could understand early optimism, but since Putin's arrival in power it should've been clear that Russia was reverting to its historically determined imperial DNA, and to pretend otherwise was wishful thinking. Still, both Presidents W. Bush and Obama ignored that fact.4/10

Recently a colleague whose expertise I value argued that "after the Cold War we offered Russia a seat at the table." But it should have been clear from the start that Russia always wanted its own table, and that absent a deep cultural change in that society it'll remain so. 5/10

I'm back in Washington for 1.5yrs, and I'm struck by the overall paucity of genuine Russia expertise across our policy community. We debate Russia policy, the future of transatlantic relations, Europe, etc. and yet we do this largely disconnected from the cultural context. 6/10

FAOs I taught in Garmisch knew more about Russia than some of the policy analysts I talk to in DC. What passes for strategic debates here is akin to a grad school seminar on IR theory, for since the end of the Cold War our universities educate precious few Area Specialists. 7/10

This isn't limited to our lack of Russia expertise. People who gave us GWOT promising to change MENA couldn't put a coherent sentence in Arabic together, but built PPT slides to show how they would remake entire Muslim societies. Have we learned nothing from that experience? 8/10

If Washington can't make up for those gaps fast enough, let's bring in the expertise from the Eastern flank of @NATO-analysts from Finland, Poland, the Baltics, etc. Learn from people who've lived next door to Russia, and who have the existential imperative to understand it. 9/10

I'm not holding my breath for our analytical culture to change overnight. Too many equities/too many egos are invested in the status quo. So, we keep repeating the same mistakes, with predictable results. Only with each turn, our resources are fewer, and the price goes up. 10/10