Since Russia’s annexation of Crimea in 2014, the United States has lacked a coherent Russia policy. Until that moment, Washington had pursued two distinct approaches over the previous eight decades. Containment – countering the threat Soviet expansionism posed to the existing world order – defined US Cold War strategy. Integration – ushering Russia into the Euro-Atlantic community of free-market democracies as a strategic partner – was the stated goal from the end of the Cold War until Russia attacked Ukraine in 2014. Containment was a historic success: the Cold War ended largely on US terms. Integration failed badly. Russia grew more authoritarian and increasingly hostile to US interests across the globe.

During the past decade, relations have only continued to deteriorate. Administrations have spoken of relations in different terms, but none has formulated an enduring framework. President Barack Obama abruptly abandoned integration as an immediate goal but offered nothing in its place. President Donald Trump advocated engagement, although his administration actively countered Russian revisionism. President Joe Biden, in response to Russia’s massive invasion of Ukraine in 2022, settled on ‘integrated deterrence’ Trump has now returned to office with hopes of normalising relations with Russia, but he has given no clear indication of what that would entail.

This lack of strategic clarity will not serve US interests in the long run. To be sure, the imperative of dealing urgently with Russia’s brutal invasion of Ukraine discourages long-term thinking. Yet, no matter how the Russia–Ukraine war ends, Russia is not going to disappear as a major challenge. Even if defeated, it will not break up: no country as ethnically homogeneous as Russia – close to 80 per cent ethnically Russian – has disintegrated under internal or external pressure in the modern era. Nor would defeat yield a democratic breakthrough – polls consistently show little elite or popular support for Western-style liberal democracy. Despite the West’s hopes, sanctions are unlikely to cripple the Russian economy, which has proven far more durable than anticipated.

With its vast nuclear arsenal, abundant natural resources, and central location in Eurasia, Russia will remain a major player on the global stage – and the only country capable of destroying the United States as a functioning society in 30 minutes. Putin’s successors, whenever they emerge, will almost certainly insist that Russia be respected as a great power – a core element of Russian national identity – and will pursue a larger role in world affairs than an objective assessment of their power would suggest. Russia will thus remain a formidable rival, as it has been since the United States emerged as a global power at the end of the 19th century. Geopolitical interests will collide, especially in Eurasia, where each country seeks a balance of power that favours its security and prosperity. Russia’s authoritarianism will continue to clash with America’s democratic values.

Given the destructive power of modern weaponry and the United States’ diminished ability to dominate the global stage as it briefly did after the Cold War, Washington will have no choice but to find a way to coexist with Russia. The first task is to manage the inevitable competition while avoiding direct military confrontation. But the United States will also need to keep open the possibility of cooperation on urgent global challenges such as climate change. A wise policy would also seek ways to harness Russian ambition and power to forge regional equilibria along Russia’s periphery in Eurasia – and at the global level – that advance US interests. These goals define a policy of  ‘competitive coexistence’ – to adopt and adapt a term some analysts have advanced as a framework for US-China policy.

This is not the approach at the forefront of strategic thinking in the United States today. To the contrary, policymakers and experts alike are revisiting containment as the appropriate response to the failure of integration and the persistent character of the Russian challenge. Its past success only enhances its present allure.

This is unsurprising. Today’s challenge resembles the one the United States faced – and George F. Kennan answered – nearly 80 years ago: how to counter the threat of Russian expansionism while avoiding a catastrophic war. Containment was the middle way between total war and craven appeasement. If patiently pursued, it promised a ‘mellowing’ of the Soviet system that would create an opening for a negotiated settlement of Cold War antagonisms and Soviet acceptance of a liberal world order fashioned according to US preferences.

Today’s advocates of containment see a similar arc. The task is once again to check Russia until it recognises the futility of its expansionist policies and the need for political reform. That would then create grounds for genuine negotiations and a return to integration. History would repeat itself – not as tragedy or farce, but as the fulfilment of the hopes engendered by the end of the Cold War.

The advocates are wrong. They ignore the essential differences between the Cold War and the present situation. Most obviously, a bipolar US–Russia contest no longer casts a shadow over global affairs as it did during the Cold War. There are now multiple centres of power, power itself is more diffused, and China has replaced Russia as the other superpower. A struggle between democracy and autocracy no longer drives global affairs. No matter what Washington’s ambitions, the rest of the world – outside of Europe – does not see the urgency of containing Russia. Indeed, many view the competition as expanding their own room for manoeuvre on the global stage.

In addition, the struggle between the United States and Russia is no longer truly existential – or at least it does not feel as fateful as it once did. Beyond the nuclear realm, the United States outclasses Russia in all other dimensions of power by a wide margin. Under these circumstances, it is almost impossible to imagine Washington generating the domestic commitment necessary to sustain a containment policy over the long run.

Finally, the conditions that underpinned containment’s success in the Cold War are no longer present. In the bipolar struggle, US hegemony was clearly preferable to the only alternative, Soviet domination. One had to look no further than the yawning gap in prosperity between Western Europe under US tutelage and Eastern Europe in the Soviet bloc. Washington found it easy to attract and retain partners in Europe, East Asia, and the Western Hemisphere. Soviet inroads were confined to a dozen or so poor countries in Africa, Southeast Asia, and Latin America. Today, there are attractive alternatives – most notably China – for economic growth and political support whenever a country resists US pressure to toe the line against Russia. This is the chief reason why the US effort to isolate Russia diplomatically has failed and why sanctions have not had the anticipated bite. Not only have China and India refused to follow the US lead, but dozens of countries, large and small, across the Global South have declined to do so.

Similarly, the US political and socio-economic model is not as demonstrably successful in meeting the challenges of the modern world as it was during the latter half of the Cold War. Then, US fortunes surged while the Soviet Union floundered as the revolution in information and communications technology redefined power. Today, profound political dysfunction and acute polarisation tarnish America’s image abroad. While Russia has its own pathologies that discourage emulation, China and, to a lesser extent, India offer attractive non-Western paths to modernisation that resonate in the Global South. In any event, the choice between the United States and Russia is not nearly as stark as it once was.

Attractive as it might appear at first glance, containment is thus not the answer to the Russian challenge the United States faces today. It posits a world that no longer exists, and it mischaracterises the challenge. Most importantly, it leaves no room for the United States to creatively manage Russian power and ambitions in ways that advance its own interests in an increasingly complex and diverse geopolitical landscape.

Competitive coexistence offers a middle ground between impossible integration and inadequate containment. It is grounded in five principles.

First, the United States must accept Russia as it is. As the 1990s demonstrated, Washington has little ability to inject new values into Russia’s domestic affairs, reshape its national identity, or change its strategic calculus. In some ways, the effort was counterproductive, encouraging the very authoritarian and nationalistic values the United States sought to defeat. In any event, Washington cannot afford to wait for the emergence of a friendlier, more democratic Russia before engaging on urgent challenges to global order. As a corollary, questioning the legitimacy of Russian rulers serves no useful purpose; the United States has no choice but to engage those who hold the power to manage relations effectively.

Second, the United States must accept that Russia has legitimate national interests, without necessarily endorsing them. Those interests will often clash with US interests, especially over security in the former Soviet space, which Moscow considers its sphere of influence. If reconciling conflicting interests proves impossible, Washington must be prepared to deal with the full consequences of directly challenging Russia, including its use of force.

Third, the United States must understand that Russian weakness can prove as dangerous as Russian strength. Washington needs Russia to be strong enough to maintain secure command and control of its nuclear arsenal, exercise sovereignty over its vast territory, and implement its international obligations. Severely weakening Russia would be counterproductive for long-term US interests, even if the United States must resist its aggression against Ukraine in the coming years.

Fourth, the United States must recognise that Russian power and ambition can be harnessed to American purposes, especially in forging regional and global equilibria that advance US interests. This will require deft diplomacy, but it is not an impossible task. Indeed, the United States once did this with another rival power. In the 1970s, President Richard Nixon and his national security adviser Henry Kissinger bolstered their communist rival China to persuade the Soviet Union to agree to a major arms control agreement and press their North Vietnamese allies to settle their war with the United States on terms acceptable to Washington.

Fifth, the United States must recognise that, in an increasingly multipolar world, Russia and the United States cannot dominate, there are few issues that are strictly bilateral. Effectively managing relations will require engaging third parties, especially in regions where Russia and the United States are not the dominant powers. As a corollary, the United States must accept the limits of its ability to reshape the global environment, even if it remains the pre-eminent world power in the years ahead.

While competitive coexistence has roots in the realist school of international relations, it is not simply realism in a different guise. In the realist world of anarchy, where states survive by maximising their power, competition is a zero-sum game and alignments are only temporary for limited purposes. By contrast, competitive coexistence is a pragmatic approach that leaves room for extended cooperation on a limited range of critical issues, goes beyond simple containment of a rival power to channel its ambitions to advance US goals, and aims to turn permanent rivalry into a source of enduring stability. It does not merely describe the geopolitical world; it offers a practical way for the United States to achieve its goals.

On the basis of these principles, what would competitive coexistence look like in practice?

The management of great-power rivalry on the Eurasian supercontinent provides a good starting point. It underscores the importance of not oversimplifying Russia’s conduct. While the same basic drives may inform Russia’s strategic outlook across the region, they manifest themselves in different subregions – Europe, Indo-Pacific, the Arctic, and the Middle East – in a variety of ways, some harmful, some beneficial to US interests. The task is to forge equilibria in these regions that, taken together, maximise the advantages for the United States across Eurasia.

The regional approaches also illustrate the promise of a policy of competitive coexistence with its nuanced appreciation of Russian power. It helps identify points where Russian power should be blocked (Europe); where a strong, or even a stronger Russia could help advance US interests (the Indo-Pacific and Arctic); and where it poses little threat (the Middle East). To be sure, relations remain fundamentally competitive, but the balance tilts in favour of US interests.

Nowhere are the conflicting interests starker than in Europe. Russia sees the gravest threat to its security as emanating from Europe, as it has for the past three or four centuries. The United States sees Europe as a critical trade and security partner (even Trump seems more inclined to rebalancing relations than abandoning Europe). Moscow wants to restore the strategic depth it lost at the end of the Cold War with the dissolution of the Soviet bloc and the disintegration of the Soviet Union; Washington sees an Eastern Europe anchored in the Euro-Atlantic community as a formidable hedge against the reemergence of a threat of Soviet dimensions in Eurasia. Russia wants to halt,  if not reverse, the consolidation of Europe as a geopolitical actor, which would dwarf Russia in population, wealth, and power potential, much as the United States does today; the United States is pressing for the consolidation of Europe so that it can redirect its diplomatic and military attention to East Asia. Russia invaded Ukraine and unleashed a hybrid war against Europe to regain its position in and vis-a-vis Europe. The US response has underscored its aim to counter Russia without incurring undue risks of direct military confrontation.

In these circumstances, the United States has three tasks: bringing the Russia-Ukraine war to a satisfactory conclusion; countering Russia’s hybrid-war tactics; and stabilising the long West-Russia frontier, which stretches from the Barents Sea to the Black Sea, with the final segment through Ukraine dependent on the war’s outcome. Sustained military and financial support for Ukraine – to demonstrate that Russia cannot achieve its goals on the battlefield – plus intense diplomacy with Russia are essential to ending the war. Meanwhile, the United States should monitor Kremlin politics and Russian military capabilities to manage the risk of escalation, especially as Ukraine, with Western support, develops the capability to strike deeper into Russian territory.

At the same time, the United States should work with its European allies to understand and counter Russia’s hybrid warfare tactics. More attention must be devoted to defending critical infrastructure, including communications cables and pipelines, and securing cyberspace. The parties should also discuss ways to counter Russia’s disinformation campaigns while safeguarding fundamental freedoms. The end of the acute phase of the war might also present an opportunity for Washington to propose negotiating a code of conduct in cyberspace with Moscow. Any agreement might be honoured in the breach, but it would nevertheless provide additional grounds for the West to push back against any malign Russian conduct.

The United States and its allies have already taken the first steps in stabilising the frontier by enhancing NATO’s deterrence posture in the region. That effort should continue postwar and extend to the ceasefire line in Ukraine, even if that country remains outside NATO, as it almost certainly will. In time, both Europe and Russia will want to ease tensions and reduce the costs of maintaining stability. That could be done through arms control agreements akin to those negotiated during the Cold War, coupled with reciprocal pledges by the West and Russia not to seek to extend their security zones across the frontier. A final step might be the renegotiation of the Helsinki Accords, using a trilateral US-Europe-Russia format, which could also launch a new trilateral consultative mechanism for permanent discussion of security matters on the European continent, effectively supplanting the now moribund Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE).

In the Indo-Pacific region, China naturally dominates Russian and US strategic thinking. Moscow has good reasons for seeking closer strategic alignment with Beijing. Such alignment advances their shared goal of eroding US global hegemony in favour of a multipolar world order. It also provides a ready market for Russian exports, the importance of which has only grown since the rupture of relations with the West in the wake of Russia’s aggression against Ukraine. This alignment also enables Moscow to devote ever more resources to the struggle in Europe, by lessening concerns over possible tension along the long border with China, where the two countries skirmished militarily within living memory.

Nevertheless, despite talk of a ‘no-limits’ partnership, Moscow has to be concerned about the yawning asymmetry in power – China’s economy is nine times the size of Russia’s; it has surpassed it in modern technologies, such as artificial intelligence, quantum computing, and robotics. That gap will only widen in China’s favour in the decades ahead. In these circumstances, closer strategic alignment will eventually endanger Russia’s strategic autonomy and standing as a great power. Russia needs a strategic counterweight to rebalance its relations.

Only the United States can provide that counterweight. To be sure, Washington has an immediate interest in diminishing China’s support for Russia’s military campaign in Europe. China’s export of dual-use items and microchips needed for the production of modern weaponry is of primary concern. Washington will consider sanctions and other economic tools to alter Beijing’s behaviour, as part of larger trade negotiations, though the outcome remains uncertain.

But Russia’s predicament offers the United States an opportunity to engage Moscow in constraining China as a peer competitor. Russia will not be at the top of the list in this effort. Washington will turn first to its East Asian allies, especially Japan and South Korea, Australia, and India. Russia’s material contribution to China’s rise is not insignificant, however – cheap, reliable energy sources and other natural resources, as well as advanced military technologies China is not yet capable of producing on its own. The United States has an interest in limiting that contribution.

It can do so only by strengthening Russia. Two steps are promising. First, normalising relations, as soon as progress in resolving the Russia-Ukraine war permits. That would create an option for Moscow to ensure that any deals it cuts with China do not tilt so heavily in Beijing’s favour as they now do. Second, the United States, along with its partners and allies in the Indo-Pacific, could invest in the socio-economic development of Siberia and the Russian Far East. That would reduce the risk of these regions becoming captive to China’s markets. Significant investment in the first years after a settlement of the Russia-Ukraine war is unlikely – there will not be sufficient trust or certainty about Russia’s longer-term trajectory. The longer-term outlook would hold more promise, especially as concerns about China’s ambitions and capabilities mount.

The United States, along with its allies and partners, could also work with Russia in Central Asia, economically and politically. In particular, Washington could exploit the still good working relations between Russia and India to complete the construction of a North-South trade corridor through the region to compete with the East-West corridor China is building as part of its Belt and Road Initiative.

The one policy Washington should not consider is a so-called ‘reverse Kissinger’ to turn Russia against China. Such a policy misunderstands the circumstances in which Kissinger operated, as well as the character of China-Russia relations today – Russia has good strategic reasons to maintain constructive relations with China, not the least of which is maintaining calm along their long common border. It would also be misguided. The United States would not benefit from heightened China-Russia tension or the risk of conflict that would bring. Rather, its interest lies in a more balanced relationship as part of a broader Indo-Pacific equilibrium, which would advance its diplomatic, security, and economic interests.

This equilibrium would also serve the national purposes of all the other major Indo-Pacific powers. It would foster a stable environment in which China could advance its interests by exploiting its comparative advantages in commerce and technology. It would ease the concerns in New Delhi, Seoul, and Tokyo over unrestrained Chinese power and ambitions. And it would safeguard Russia’s status as a great power. Creating this stability will, however, prove to be a much more uncertain task without the active participation of a strong Russia. Despite the underlying rivalry, the United States thus gains by helping to strengthen Russia as an actor it can use in creating and sustaining the desired equilibrium.

The melting icecap has turned the Arctic from a region of abundant natural resources into a zone of strategic interest in its own right, while the opening of maritime routes linking East Asia and Europe, which can be exploited by merchant fleets and navies alike, ensures that developments there resonate at both ends of the Eurasian supercontinent. Russia will remain a major player: It has the longest Arctic coastline by far and its exclusive economic zone covers a third of the ocean. Moscow believes that the economic and commercial development of its Arctic regions is critical to the country’s future security and prosperity. The United States cannot ignore a region of growing strategic importance, even though its own presence pales in comparison to Russia’s.

Meanwhile, China insists that it is a ‘near-Arctic’ power that must be included in decisions about the region’s management, and many European states already do through their participation in the Arctic Council. Once largely a region of cooperation in developing resources while protecting a fragile ecosystem, geopolitical competition has accelerated as climate change makes the region more accessible.

China is now Russia’s primary partner in the region because of the West’s anti-Russian sanctions. In the long term, however, the United States has an interest in balancing against China’s role in the region. Washington has the means to do that – including, in particular, the management skills and technology that Russia lacks, and China cannot provide, to exploit oil and gas deposits on the seabed. Washington, along with its Western partners, could also assist in building seaports along Russia’s Arctic coast to facilitate trade between Europe and East Asia. The ports could also be used as well for the export of natural resources from Siberia and the Russian Far East – the major Siberian rivers, the Ob, Yenesei, and Lena, all drain into the Arctic. That would decrease the risk of Siberia and the Russian Far East becoming captive to Chinese markets.

While the United States could assist Russia in reinforcing its economic and commercial presence in the Arctic, it also cannot overlook Russia’s military buildup. Some of it is non-threatening: Russia requires a greater military presence than previously because the Arctic’s harsh climate makes it difficult to reliably secure a northern border – the United States also requires a greater military presence there for a similar reason. The United States could manage concerns about a buildup that clearly extends beyond territorial defence through the negotiation of arms-control agreements with Russia and other Arctic powers, which are all NATO members. Such an agreement would be part of the broader effort to stabilise the Russia-West frontier in Europe. Issues related to Russia’s Northern Fleet, which is based near Murmansk and forms a critical part of Russia’s strategic deterrent, would be dealt with through arrangements to build and maintain strategic stability.

The Arctic is not only, or even primarily, a region of competition, however. In the initial post-Cold War decades it was a model of cooperation, as the members of the Arctic Council focused on protecting the region’s fragile environment while they developed the Arctic’s resources. Those efforts need to continue, even as the competition heats up. In addition, climate change is proceeding more rapidly in this region than elsewhere in the world, and its global impact will be enormous. That situation opens up one of those rare opportunities for fruitful cooperation between the United States and Russia, which could include China and other Arctic powers as well.

The Middle East has long been an arena of US-Russian competition, in which the United States has held the upper hand. In the last half of the Cold War, Washington managed the Arab-Israeli conflict in ways that marginalised the Soviet Union. Moscow played no role in the negotiation of the Camp David accords, which led to the 1979 Egyptian-Israeli peace treaty. After the breakup of the Soviet Union, Moscow basically lacked the capacity for active engagement in the Middle East.

Russia returned slowly under Putin, as its economy recovered. It worked closely with the United States in containing Iran’s nuclear ambitions; built strong relations with Israel, particularly in counterterrorism; began to work with Saudi Arabia in managing the global oil market; and stepped up military sales to the region. Its incursion in Syria in 2015 raised its military profile in the Eastern Mediterranean. More often than not, there was at least an undertone of competition with the United States in these policies.

More recently, Israeli actions have undermined the foundations of Russian influence in the region. Moscow’s relations with Jerusalem soured, as Israel humbled its major regional partner, Iran, severely weakened Iran’s regional proxies (Hezbollah and Hamas), and at least indirectly facilitated the overthrow of its Syrian ally.  Russia’s poor military performance in Ukraine has eroded the value of Russian armaments in the eyes of potential Middle Eastern buyers.

Moscow will almost certainly seek to restore its presence in a region that remains of great strategic importance in its eyes. Washington should monitor developments closely, but there is no need to overreact or to devote major resources to blocking Moscow directly. More productive will be building up relations with the regional powers, especially Egypt, Israel, Saudi Arabia, and Turkey, which will see little need to improve relations with Moscow as long as they derive substantial benefit from the United States. Stability will result more from regional dynamics than from careful management of Russia’s presence, which is unlikely to rise to the level of a strategic threat to the United States.

While the United States seeks to create a network of relations with Russia across Eurasia that establishes and sustains regional equilibria, it must also maintain an overarching global structure that advances US goals. Strategic stability will be critical to this effort.

The days are long past when strategic stability was primarily a matter of bilateral agreements between the United States and Russia. The strategic landscape has been transformed in the decades since the end of the Cold War by technological advances and the ambitions of major powers. China is rapidly closing the gap in the size and quality of its nuclear arsenal with Russia and the United States. Hypersonic weapons, advanced guidance systems, cyber weapons, and other advanced technologies enable conventional forces to perform military tasks once reserved for nuclear weapons, such as destroying hardened command and control centres. The spread of missile technology and cyber tools has permitted second- and third-tier industrial powers to play strategic roles once beyond their reach. More and more countries now have access to space, which is increasingly critical for economic and military purposes.

In this landscape, strategic stability will rest on a set of interlocking bilateral and multilateral arms control agreements, codes of conduct, and unilateral measures. Given their capabilities and long experience in conceptualising strategic stability, the United States and Russia will have to play a central role in shaping the strategic environment. But producing and maintaining strategic stability will be an increasingly complex and multilateral undertaking.

Competitive coexistence aims to manage conflict while avoiding war. With respect to Russia, it does that in large part by forging equilibria and stability in strategic regions of shared interest. The result is not stasis, however. These equilibria will shift as the interests and power of key players evolve, and as great-power rivalry alters ambitions and possibilities. They will require constant tending.

To succeed and prosper in the years ahead, the United States will have to look at the world through an unfamiliar lens. Conditioned by the hot and cold wars of the 20th century, Americans tend to believe competition should culminate in a victory that vindicates their values and advances their country’s interests. Today, however, the prevailing geopolitical conditions no longer permit final victory in any meaningful sense. Rivalry, especially between the United States and Russia, is open-ended, a defining feature of renewed great-power competition in a multipolar world. Success is now defined by responsible conflict management and the steady accumulation of incremental advantages that enhance American security and prosperity. This need not come at Russia’s expense. It, too, can benefit from equilibrium and stability, even as it continues to compete against the United States.

Victory, in truth, is a chimera, but a better position in an ongoing competition is both possible and desirable – and, ultimately, sufficient for American purposes. Competitive coexistence provides the mindset and framework for a secure and prosperous country in a world the United States can no longer dominate, facing a rival it can no longer vanquish.