Mutually Assured Destruction may have been a sensible policy during the Cold War. It isn’t now. READ MORE

It has been three years since the start of the August 2008 war between Russia and Georgia. The anniversary of the war’s beginning is a good occasion to reflect on how far U.S.-Russians relations fell during the Bush years, and how much they have been repaired in the last two and a half years. At present, inveterate opponents of the “reset” policy are doing their best to undermine this improved relationship. The “reset” was designed in no small part to undo much of the damage caused by Bush administration policy and the aftermath of the 2008 war, and in many respects it has been such an obvious success that its critics are usually reduced to whining about how it has failed to solve things it was never intended to fix. Russia still has a culture of “legal nihilism,” it is a one-party, illiberal authoritarian state that suppresses and criminalizes dissent, and real political opposition is not permitted. The “reset” has not changed any of this, but it was never supposed to, and there is no way that U.S. policy towards Russia can change this. READ MORE