Russia–United States relations

Based on Wikipedia: Russia–United States relations

From Friendship to Frozen Conflict: Two Centuries of Russian-American Relations

In February 2025, the United States voted against a United Nations resolution condemning Russia's invasion of Ukraine. This wasn't just a policy shift—it was a seismic break from decades of American foreign policy, a moment that would have seemed unthinkable to diplomats who spent careers navigating the treacherous waters between Moscow and Washington.

But the relationship between these two nuclear superpowers has never been simple. It has swung between alliance and enmity, cooperation and confrontation, in ways that have shaped the modern world.

The Early Years: An Unlikely Friendship

The story begins in 1776, when the Russian Empire—then ruled by Catherine the Great—took notice of a scrappy colonial rebellion against Britain. Russia remained officially neutral during the American Revolution, but quietly favored the upstart colonists. Why? Because any enemy of Britain was potentially a friend of Russia. The two empires had been rivals for decades, competing for influence from the Baltic Sea to the Black Sea.

Formal diplomatic ties came in 1809, and the relationship warmed considerably during the American Civil War. Russia supported the Union, again largely for strategic reasons rather than ideological ones. Britain and France were flirting with recognizing the Confederacy, and Russia saw a unified United States as a useful counterweight to British power.

In 1863, something remarkable happened. The Russian Navy sent its Baltic and Pacific fleets to winter in American ports—New York and San Francisco. On the surface, it looked like a friendly visit. In reality, Russia was positioning its ships where the British Royal Navy couldn't easily destroy them if tensions over Poland erupted into war. The Americans, who interpreted the visit as a show of solidarity, welcomed the Russian sailors with parades and banquets.

It was a relationship built on mutual convenience rather than shared values. That pattern would repeat.

Alaska: The Deal of the Century

Russia's venture into Alaska had never gone well. The colony was primarily a fur-trading operation, supplemented by Orthodox missionaries converting the native population. But by the 1860s, the enterprise was hemorrhaging money. Worse, it was practically indefensible—the British in Canada could easily seize it in any war, and Russia lacked the naval power to stop them.

The practical impossibility of convincing Russians to actually move to Alaska sealed its fate. By 1867, only a few hundred Russians lived in the entire territory. That year, Russia sold Alaska to the United States for 7.2 million dollars—roughly two cents per acre.

At the time, critics called it "Seward's Folly," after Secretary of State William Seward who negotiated the purchase. They stopped laughing when gold was discovered there in 1896.

Most Russian administrators and military personnel left after the sale, but some Orthodox missionaries stayed behind to minister to the thousands of native Alaskans who had converted. Their descendants still practice the faith today, a living reminder of Russia's brief American chapter.

The Cracks Appear

After 1880, something changed in American public opinion toward Russia. The cause was simple and horrifying: pogroms.

The Russian Empire had long restricted where Jews could live and work. But in the 1880s, organized violence began sweeping through Jewish communities, often with the tacit approval of local authorities. American newspapers covered these atrocities in graphic detail. Elite opinion and public sentiment alike turned sharply against the Tsar's government.

The 1903 Kishinev pogrom became a particular flashpoint. Over two days of violence, mobs killed 47 Jews, injured 400 more, and left 10,000 homeless. American Jewish organizations mobilized relief efforts on an unprecedented scale, while the American press compared Russian authorities to medieval barbarians.

President Theodore Roosevelt navigated this tension carefully. In 1905, he brokered the Treaty of Portsmouth, ending the Russo-Japanese War—a diplomatic triumph that earned him the Nobel Peace Prize. But the underlying goodwill between the two nations had eroded.

Revolution and Intervention

When the United States entered World War One in April 1917, Russia was technically an ally. But the Tsar had abdicated just weeks earlier following the February Revolution, replaced by a provisional government that promised democratic reforms.

This actually made the alliance easier to sell to the American public. President Woodrow Wilson could now frame the war as democracy versus autocracy—the free nations of the West against the old empires of Germany and Austria-Hungary. The awkwardness of fighting alongside a brutal autocrat like Nicholas the Second had conveniently resolved itself.

Then came the October Revolution.

The Bolsheviks, led by Vladimir Lenin, overthrew the provisional government and immediately sued for peace with Germany. For the Western Allies, this was a disaster. It freed up German troops to concentrate on the Western Front and put vast stockpiles of war supplies at risk of falling into German hands.

The United States responded by joining the Allied intervention in the Russian Civil War. American troops landed at Archangel in the far north—the so-called Polar Bear Expedition—and at Vladivostok in the east. The official justification was preventing German access to Allied supplies. The unstated goal was supporting the White movement against the Bolsheviks.

It didn't work. By 1921, the Bolsheviks had won the civil war, executed the Romanov imperial family, repudiated the debts of the previous government, and called for worldwide communist revolution. Russia had become a pariah state.

The Great Migration

Between 1820 and 1917, roughly 3.3 million people immigrated to the United States from the Russian Empire. But here's the surprising part: only about 100,000 of them were actually ethnic Russians.

The vast majority were Jews fleeing persecution, along with Poles and Lithuanians seeking better lives. The Russian Empire was a sprawling, multiethnic realm, and its subjects had very different relationships with the Tsar's government. Those who suffered most under it were the most likely to leave.

This wave of immigration shaped American attitudes toward Russia in complex ways. The immigrants brought stories of oppression and violence, but also rich cultural traditions. They built communities that maintained connections to the old country while embracing their new one. Their descendants would play significant roles in American politics, culture, and business for generations to come.

Recognition and Alliance

The United States was the last major power to recognize the Soviet government, holding out until November 1933. The reasons for American reluctance were numerous: the Bolsheviks had repudiated debts owed to American investors, nationalized American-owned businesses, and openly called for the overthrow of capitalist governments everywhere.

But practical considerations eventually won out. The Great Depression had devastated the American economy, and Soviet Russia represented a potentially enormous market. President Franklin Roosevelt extended diplomatic recognition, hoping to boost trade.

The truly transformative moment came with World War Two. The United States and the Soviet Union, along with Britain, formed the core of the Allied powers fighting Nazi Germany and Imperial Japan. American factories shipped vast quantities of supplies to the Soviet Union through the Lend-Lease program—trucks, planes, food, and raw materials that helped keep the Eastern Front supplied.

The wartime alliance was never comfortable. Joseph Stalin was a brutal dictator who had killed millions of his own people. But defeating Hitler required cooperation, and cooperation there was. American and Soviet soldiers met at the Elbe River in April 1945, shaking hands amid the ruins of Nazi Germany.

The alliance lasted exactly long enough to win the war.

Cold War: The Long Freeze

By 1947, the wartime partnership had collapsed into what became known as the Cold War—a global struggle between American-led capitalism and Soviet-led communism that would define world politics for four decades.

In 1949, the United States, Canada, and several Western European nations signed the North Atlantic Treaty, creating the North Atlantic Treaty Organization—NATO for short. The alliance was designed explicitly to provide collective security against the Soviet Union. An attack on one member would be considered an attack on all.

What followed was an arms race of terrifying proportions. Both nations developed hydrogen bombs thousands of times more powerful than those dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. They built intercontinental ballistic missiles capable of delivering nuclear warheads to any point on Earth in thirty minutes. They accumulated enough weapons to destroy human civilization several times over.

Paradoxically, this mutual capacity for annihilation may have prevented direct conflict. The doctrine of "mutually assured destruction"—appropriately abbreviated as MAD—meant that any nuclear war would be suicidal for both sides. The superpowers competed fiercely, but they competed through proxy wars, espionage, propaganda, and economic pressure rather than direct military confrontation.

Arms Control: Managing the Apocalypse

As the nuclear arsenals grew, so did the recognition that some limits were necessary. The first major bilateral treaty between the United States and Soviet Russia wasn't about weapons at all—it was a consular convention signed in 1964, establishing rules for diplomatic staff.

The real breakthroughs came in the 1970s. The Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty of 1972 limited defensive systems, based on the counterintuitive logic that if either side could defend itself from nuclear attack, the other side would have incentive to strike first. The Strategic Arms Limitation Talks produced two treaties, known as SALT I and SALT II, capping the growth of nuclear arsenals.

The 1975 Helsinki Final Act was something different—not a binding treaty, but a broad agreement among dozens of nations including both superpowers. In practice, it amounted to American acceptance of Soviet dominance in Eastern Europe, including the annexation of the Baltic states of Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania that had occurred in 1940. In exchange, the Soviet Union committed to respecting human rights and allowing freer movement of people and ideas.

That human rights provision seemed like empty words at the time. It would prove to be a Trojan horse.

The Thaw and the Fall

In the late 1980s, something unexpected happened. Mikhail Gorbachev became General Secretary of the Communist Party and began implementing reforms—glasnost, meaning openness, and perestroika, meaning restructuring. He loosened the Soviet grip on Eastern Europe, allowed more open discussion of the country's problems, and pursued genuine arms reduction agreements with the United States.

The Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty of 1987 eliminated an entire class of nuclear weapons. The Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty, signed in July 1991, committed both sides to dramatic cuts in their strategic arsenals.

Eastern European nations, sensing the relaxation of Soviet control, began breaking away from communist rule. Poland, Hungary, Czechoslovakia, East Germany—one by one, the dominoes fell, but in the opposite direction from what Cold War strategists had once feared.

On December 3, 1989, Gorbachev and President George H.W. Bush met at the Malta Summit and declared the Cold War over.

Less than two years later, the Soviet Union itself would cease to exist.

A New Beginning?

The August 1991 coup attempt against Gorbachev by hardline Communists was a desperate attempt to preserve the old order. It failed within days, but it shattered what remained of central Soviet authority. Russian President Boris Yeltsin emerged as the dominant figure, ordering the seizure of Soviet property and effectively marginalizing Gorbachev.

On December 25, 1991, Gorbachev resigned as the last leader of the Soviet Union. The hammer and sickle flag came down from the Kremlin. Fifteen independent nations emerged from the wreckage, with Russia—the largest and most populous—taking responsibility for the Soviet Union's seat on the United Nations Security Council, its nuclear arsenal, and its international obligations.

Bush and Yeltsin met in February 1992 and declared a new era of "friendship and partnership." The following year, they agreed to START II, providing for further nuclear reductions. Russia even floated the idea of eventually joining NATO.

The optimism was real. Strobe Talbott, who served as Washington's chief Russia expert, noted that President Clinton and Yeltsin developed a genuine personal rapport. American advisors flooded into Russia to help with the transition to a market economy. The Cold War enemies were becoming partners.

Or so it seemed.

The Seeds of Resentment

The 1990s were catastrophic for ordinary Russians. The rapid transition to capitalism—"shock therapy," as economists called it—wiped out savings, destroyed social safety nets, and created a small class of oligarchs who acquired state assets for pennies on the dollar. Life expectancy dropped. Birth rates plummeted. The economy contracted by nearly half.

Americans may remember the 1990s as a triumphant decade. Russians remember it as a humiliation.

The relationship began fraying. Clinton encouraged rapid privatization and liberalization, but provided relatively modest financial support—less than three billion dollars, much of it paid to American contractors rather than going directly to Russians. Those who remembered the Marshall Plan's transformation of Western Europe after World War Two had expected far more.

Then came NATO expansion.

A 1995 NATO study laid out plans for enlarging the alliance eastward. In 1999, the Czech Republic, Hungary, and Poland joined. From the Russian perspective, this was a betrayal. The Cold War was over—what was NATO's purpose now, if not containment of Russia? And why was it moving closer to Russian borders?

The 1999 NATO intervention in Kosovo was the breaking point for Yeltsin. Serbia was historically a Russian ally, and Russia saw the bombing campaign as an infringement on its sphere of influence. Yeltsin protested vehemently. It made no difference.

When Vladimir Putin became President in 2000, the relationship was already strained. But there was still hope for improvement.

Putin's Early Years

Putin initially sought warmer relations with the West. After the September 11 attacks, he was the first foreign leader to call President George W. Bush. Russia provided intelligence, opened its airspace, and supported the American intervention in Afghanistan. The two presidents developed what Bush famously described as a connection—he claimed to have looked into Putin's eyes and gotten "a sense of his soul."

The cooperation was real but limited. Russia and the United States worked together on counterterrorism and continued arms control negotiations. But the underlying tensions never disappeared. NATO continued expanding, admitting the Baltic states in 2004—former Soviet republics, now members of an alliance created to oppose Russian power.

From Putin's perspective, the West was exploiting Russian weakness to advance its strategic position. From the Western perspective, the newly independent nations of Eastern Europe had every right to choose their own alliances, and they overwhelmingly chose NATO.

Neither side was entirely wrong. Both were talking past each other.

The Downward Spiral

After Putin's return to the presidency in 2012, the relationship deteriorated rapidly. Russia annexed Crimea in 2014, following the ouster of Ukraine's pro-Russian president. Russian-backed separatists launched a war in eastern Ukraine. The United States and its allies responded with economic sanctions.

The Syrian Civil War added another layer of conflict. Russia intervened militarily to support the Assad regime, which the United States opposed. American and Russian forces operated in the same small country, sometimes in uncomfortable proximity.

Allegations of Russian interference in the 2016 American presidential election poisoned the atmosphere further. Whatever the full truth of those allegations, they made it politically toxic for any American leader to be seen as soft on Russia.

Then came February 2022.

Russia's full-scale invasion of Ukraine was the most dramatic act of military aggression in Europe since World War Two. The United States and its allies responded with unprecedented sanctions, targeting major Russian banks, freezing the assets of oligarchs, and attempting to isolate Russia from the global financial system. Arms and aid flowed to Ukraine. The Biden administration made clear that it viewed Russia as an adversary.

An Uncertain Future

The dramatic shift in American policy under the second Trump administration represents the latest chapter in this long and troubled history. The vote against the UN resolution condemning Russia's invasion, the suspension of offensive cyber operations against Russia, the pursuit of "normalization"—these mark a sharp departure from the bipartisan consensus that had governed American policy since 2014.

Whether this represents a strategic recalibration, a personal preference of the president, or something else entirely remains to be seen. What is certain is that the relationship between these two nuclear powers will continue to shape world events.

From Catherine the Great's quiet support for American independence to the tensions of today, the relationship has always been defined by competing interests, mutual suspicion, and occasional cooperation when circumstances demanded it. The friendship has never been deep. The enmity has never been total. The stakes have never been higher.

Two centuries of history offer one consistent lesson: the relationship between Russia and the United States is never stable for long. It shifts with leaders, with circumstances, with the broader currents of world politics. Those who predict either lasting partnership or permanent confrontation have usually been wrong.

The only certainty is that whatever comes next will matter enormously—for both nations, and for the world.