But these tensions obscure a more troubling general picture. Both the ultimatum and the tough response are about optics: The U.S. wants to be able to say it gave the Russians fair warning, and Russia, in turn, is trying to persuade the world that the U.S. has long since made up its mind to tear up a treaty that constrained it too much. Substantively, however, the dispute is about both sides’ willingness to comply with any mutual constraints at all.
Russia’s president, Vladimir Putin, has shown time and time again that expediency is more important to him than any pre-existing agreements. The land grabs in Ukraine and the obstacles Russia puts up for ships headed to Ukrainian ports on the Sea of Azov are, in Putin’s mind, justified by geopolitical or security considerations. These justifications take priority over pieces of paper signed by his predecessors. Whether Putin will stick to a deal depends on whether he can get away with not complying. That makes it difficult to negotiate anything with him: The Russian leader has argued repeatedly that enforcement mechanisms such as economic sanctions cannot make Russia change its behavior.
U.S. President Donald Trump, for his part, has shown a similar unwillingness to be constrained by bilateral or multilateral agreements. This reticence applies to even “shallow” deals such as the Paris climate pact of 2015, from which Trump exited, or the new United Nations migration pact, which his administration refused to sign. In the case of deeper and more specific agreements, Trump only feels constrained when he deems the U.S. has enough to gain. This logic motivated the renegotiation of Nafta and the repudiation of the 2015 Iran nuclear deal. Trump approaches negotiating partners from a zero-sum position of strength – a more muscular version of the traditional U.S. hegemonic position above any kind of international law.
Any deal between the U.S. and Russia has always been personal, an agreement between two specific leaders that reflects the chemistry of their relationship. The INF treaty was a deal between President Ronald Reagan and the Soviet leader, Mikhail Gorbachev. For all their differences, and regardless of Gorbachev’s growing economic desperation, they shared an agenda of establishing lasting peace. The arms-control treaties they signed, sometimes surprising each other with how much they dared to give up, reflected their intentions; even without strong enforcement mechanisms, they could trust each other because they shared a goal.
There was similar chemistry between Russian President Boris Yeltsin and his U.S. counterparts, George H.W. Bush and Bill Clinton. The connection ensured that old deals worked and new ones were signed. One could argue Russia’s weakness was a more important factor, but Russia is still considerably weaker than the U.S. – and that no longer helps keep deals together.
Personal deals between U.S. and Russian leaders haven’t been possible for years for a variety of reasons, not least a disunity of goals. There is, however, an argument to be made that deals in general don’t work as well as they usually have in recent decades. In October, a group of intellectuals from the Valdai Club, the international relations think tank and discussion club close to the Kremlin, published a report entitled “Life in a Crumbling World.”
“On the whole, international relations are shifting toward less and less binding interactions,” Fyodor Lukyanov and collaborators wrote. “Everyone proceeds from the belief that peace is reliably guaranteed even under the conditions of a political conflict between countries.”
That’s a convenient justification for Putin’s treatment of agreements as, alternately, fig leaves or wasted paper. But there’s also truth in the idea that, in the absence threats as overwhelming as that of a big war, no deal is enforceable.