The Strategic Quest for
Global Nuclear Dominance
“What amazed me most of all was how one man’s effort could achieve what whole armies could not. One spy could decide the fate of thousands of people.” 1
—Vladimir V. Putin, 2000
When Putin became president, he submitted his “2020 Energy Strategy” for Russian Federation approval. The document outlined two phases to achieve his goals by 2020. The stated goals were to satisfy the demands of Russia’s developing economy and to help Russian energy business “integrate into world energy markets.” This initiative was approved in August 2003.2
The first phase was to reform the legal structures of the domestic energy industry, implement transparency and openness, and realize the “export potential of oil and gas,” among other domestic policies. The second phase would increase Russia’s competitiveness internationally through the “rapid use of the existing odds in nuclear power and hydro energy sectors…the support of a specialized business sector in the field of energy saving,” and significant state investment in new projects, among others.3
Back in 1996, Putin had gotten an advanced degree from the St. Petersburg Mining Institute, which he never actually attended. His dissertation advocated greater state control of Russia’s natural resources (the daughter of Putin’s professor alleges that her father actually wrote Putin’s dissertation with her help). It nonetheless revealed the essence of his mindset: in order to command respect globally, the state must control Russia’s vast domestic resources and wield them as a political tool.4
While post-Soviet Russia’s military and economy remained on life support, Putin dreamed of rebuilding the empire. One of his earliest acts as president was combining Russia’s two largest weapons companies and, on November 4, 2000, Rosoboronexport was born. Putin appointed his ex-KGB comrade Sergey Chemezov to lead the new arms conglomerate. Rosoboronexport soon became the crown jewel of Putin’s military-industrial complex and Russia became the second largest weapons exporter on the planet.5
But energy was the more important thing. As Putin’s own dissertation made clear, Russia’s energy resources were its strongest advantage. Leveraging energy resources as a foreign policy weapon was not a new concept, but Putin knew he needed to wield it more aggressively than his predecessors.
The Soviet Union had subsidized (or inflated) energy prices to dominate their neighbors for decades. The hook was that once a dependency had been established, “any reduction in supply threatened the stability of the regimes.” When manipulating prices failed to produce intended results, the Kremlin would flat out stop shipping fuel (sometimes even in the middle of winter). Joseph Stalin did this to Yugoslavia in 1948. Nikita Khrushchev did the same to Israel in 1956, Finland in 1958, and China in 1959. Gorbachev even tried it against Latvia and Lithuania in 1990.6
Putin borrowed and adapted all this from the Soviet playbook, then mastered it.
Putin’s Playbook: Energy Weaponization
After consolidating energy assets, Putin’s regime went on the offensive. Throughout Putin’s first term, he either halted or reduced the flow, or manipulated the price of energy supplies to Ukraine, Georgia, Moldova, Belarus, and other nations in his sphere of influence. The Baltic states and Finland import up to 100 percent of their natural gas from Russia (in extreme cases), making them particularly vulnerable.7
Gazprom was Russia’s largest gas provider and thus served as the schoolyard bully in the region of former Soviet republics. Within a year of taking power, Putin had cleaned house at Gazprom and installed his St. Petersburg cronies: legal counselor and campaign chief Dmitry Medvedev became Gazprom’s chairman, and advisor Alexey Miller became CEO.8
At one point, Putin described Gazprom as “a powerful political and economic lever of influence over the rest of the world.” Russian experts concur that when Putin’s neighbors “show good will towards the Russian Federation, then the situation with gas deliveries, pricing policy and former debts changes on a far more favorable note to the buyer.”9
For Russia’s international energy strategy to succeed, Ukraine’s compliance had always been critical. More than 80 percent of Gazprom’s gas exports are to Europe—much of which passes through Ukraine. In exchange for transporting Russia’s gas to Europe, Ukraine receives a portion of its own fuel for free. But the arrangements are murky and the Kremlin has a habit of reneging.10
Energy disputes between the two countries sprang up almost immediately after the Soviet Union dissolved, and remained constant and unpredictable. An early example occurred when President Yeltsin used Ukraine’s gas debts as pressure to extract military concessions from Ukraine’s then-President Leonid Kuchma.11
Yeltsin leveraged Ukraine’s $3 billion energy debt in negotiations for control of the Sevastopol naval base in Crimea and ownership of the Black Sea Fleet (nearly six hundred naval vessels). Control over the Crimean Peninsula (located within Ukraine’s boundaries but largely populated by ethnic Russians) and its strategic naval base was of critical interest to both nations.12
After years of contentious negotiations, Yeltsin partially forgave or postponed Ukraine’s billion-dollar debts and Kuchma conceded ownership of nearly 80 percent of the fleet to Russia, along with control of the Crimean naval base via a long-term lease.13
Kuchma’s submissive demeanor continued under Putin. In fact, he was compliant even before Putin took office. Kuchma admitted in private that he had caved and illegally funneled tens of millions into Putin’s campaign.
“Putin telephoned, the fuck, during the election campaign,” the Ukrainian president told an administration official on a secretly recorded telephone call. “‘Leonid Danylovych [Kuchma], well, at least give us a bit of money,’” Kuchma said, imitating candidate Putin’s patronizing tone.14
Kuchma did as Putin had commanded and ordered the head of Ukraine’s public oil and gas company to scrounge together $56 million for Putin’s campaign coffers. When Putin won in March 2000, he repaid Kuchma’s favor nearly fivefold with a $250 million transfer—allegedly via Gazprom. However, instead of the money going to pay back Ukraine’s gas company, it disappeared into a dizzying structure of shadowy offshore interests.15
After Putin brought Ukraine to heel, the former Soviet Republic of Moldova was the next to feel Putin’s aggression. By the end of his first year in office, Putin had taken effective control of Moldova’s energy and financial sectors. Later, when Moldova thought about signing a free trade deal with the EU, Russia threatened to cut its gas supplies. Putin’s deputy foreign minister even shamelessly threatened the Moldovans, stating, “We hope that you will not freeze.”16
In 2002, Putin signed an agreement with Kazakhstan’s “dictator for life,” Nursultan Nazarbayev. Most of Kazakhstan’s oil would be transported via Russia’s transit network. In addition, Putin proposed a pipeline network creating a “single export channel” for all gas exports from Central Asia. Putin coveted Kazakhstan’s vast oil and uranium reserves, and his strategic energy alliance with Soviet-era despot Nazarbayev had only just begun.17
By 2003, Putin had reached a similar deal with Turkmenistan, giving Russia long-term priority access to the third-largest gas reserves in the world. The plan was quite obvious: Putin was cornering the oil and gas markets in Europe and Central Asia. Combined with Russia’s substantial domestic production, Putin’s effective control of gas from Kazakhstan, Turkmenistan, Moldova, and other countries meant that soon all of Europe could become dependent on Russia for its energy needs.18
Putin’s kleptocratic alliance with Kuchma and the power moves that he was making in the former Soviet republics concerned U.S. energy and diplomatic observers. The foreign policy intelligentsia in Washington had already masterminded (and refined) a counteroffensive: the so-called “color revolutions.”19
The West’s Counteroffensive: Color Revolutions
Western-backed protests had successfully ousted the Russia-allied president of Yugoslavia Slobodan Milosevic in 2000. That playbook was used again in November 2003 to spark the “Rose Revolution” in Georgia. Strategically speaking, the most threatening insurgency to Putin’s energy stranglehold was Ukraine’s first “Orange Revolution,” which began in November 2004.20
Putin blamed the U.S. for fomenting the revolutions, which he considered an “unlawful way” to oust the leadership in Georgia and Ukraine. He warned that the West’s attempt to create a “system of permanent revolutions” was “very dangerous.” Any diplomatic gains that Putin made with the Bush administration in the wake of the September 11 terrorist attacks eroded after the successes of the color revolutions in Georgia and Ukraine.21
Putin and his mafia-linked security services retained significant sway in pockets of Georgia, Moldova, and Ukraine—the regions of South Ossetia, Transnistria, and Crimea, respectively.22
Russian journalist Yulia Latynina described Georgia’s pro-Russian region as a mafia state, saying, “South Ossetia is not a territory, not a country, not a regime. It is a joint venture of Siloviki generals and Ossetian bandits for making money in a conflict with Georgia.”23
In these regions (and in Russia generally), Putin’s Siloviki retaliated against the U.S. by targeting diplomats and allied organizations with constant surveillance, overt harassment, and covert threats. To avoid a color revolution in Russia, Putin eliminated jury trials and redefined “treason” to include protests (peaceful or otherwise).24
In all, Putin created many enemies but demonstrated his commitment to wielding energy for greater power and control. By 2006, the Swedish Defense Research Agency estimated that post-Soviet Russia had leveraged energy policy to pressure or coerce Russia’s neighbors—and by extension most of Europe—at least fifty times. Also, from 2000 to mid-2010, Putin’s regime engaged in thirty-one energy conflicts affecting twenty different countries.25
Putin’s 2020 Energy Strategy document never specifically acknowledged his strategic use of energy as a foreign policy tool. It stated that the document had “originate[d] from the necessity of fulfillment by Russia of its international ecological commitments.” Therefore, it appears that Putin’s calculated efforts to showcase pro-globalization and pro-environmentalism in his 2020 Energy Strategy were a classic case of Russian duplicity.26
Putin’s cooperative language, as compared to his coercive actions, confirms the chasm between his public agenda and his private agenda. In the words of Russian scholar James Sherr, “It would be prudent to conclude that Putin’s talk of ‘globalization’ is boltovnya [empty talk].”27
His successes with controlling the flow of oil and natural gas to his closest neighbors were just the first steps. Looking further at Europe, Putin knew the importance of selling nuclear energy to countries such as Germany, France, and Great Britain.
Putin’s Nuclear Agenda: The Energy Playbook Goes Global
As Putin consolidated Russia’s vast oil reserves into Gazprom and Rosneft, he began doing the same thing with nuclear fuel. Just as Putin used Gazprom and Rosneft to leverage his neighbors, Putin’s plans for his atomic umbrella corporation Rosatom were to use nuclear energy to leverage the world. Putin’s nuclear agenda began with Tenex and would culminate in the takeover of Uranium One.
Putin knew that Tenex was the back door through which his Siloviki could infiltrate and manipulate the American nuclear industry. He needed full control of the company that made uranium deals with the Americans, but Tenex shares had fallen into the hands of oligarchs during the failed privatization era under Yeltsin.28
Putin’s plan for global nuclear domination began almost immediately after he took over as president. By June 2001, Putin had reclaimed absolute control over Tenex when the board ceded all private shares back to the Kremlin. Less than two weeks later, Putin signed a package of controversial laws designed to vacuum up the world’s spent nuclear fuel (and billions in cash) into Russia and thereby clean up global nuclear waste.29
To some, it was an obvious scam. As one critic at Greenpeace had explained a few months earlier, “the fairy tales about nuclear cleanup…are nothing but public relations for [the Kremlin’s] crude attempt to get Western money for an expansion of the Russian nuclear industry.”30
Putin’s brilliant plan worked: the United States aggressively lobbied the international community to pour at least $10 billion into Russia for the reprocessing of spent nuclear fuel (also known as “radioactive garbage”).31
The plan was to ship twenty thousand tons of “potential bomb-making,” enriched uranium waste under the auspices of nonproliferation (an ironic proposal given that the Kremlin had admitted to nearly two dozen nuclear heist attempts at post-Soviet facilities). The Americans even offered to match the $10 billion, for a combined $20 billion to Russia.32
Putin’s Nuclear Inner Circle
Once the Kremlin had full ownership of Tenex, Putin installed an ex-KGB comrade to lead the nuclear corporation (just as he had with all industries critical to Russian national security). His Ozero neighbor Vladimir Smirnov was a man who could be trusted to execute Putin’s agenda.33 Smirnov’s background in espionage would facilitate Putin’s infiltration of the American nuclear sector.
Putin tapped Smirnov to run Tenex sometime in 2002—the year after their SPAG money-laundering operation was exposed. Smirnov’s mafia-linked SPAG associates were indicted in July 2001, and Newsweek blew the story wide open six weeks later. In 2003, German police raided offices linked to SPAG. They were seeking to bust the St. Petersburg crime syndicate responsible for “numerous crimes, including vehicle smuggling, human trafficking, alcohol smuggling, extortion and confidence trickstering.”34
As it turned out, Smirnov’s experience setting up complex money-laundering and influence operations in St. Petersburg would come in handy at Tenex.35
Russian newspaper Novaya Gazeta reportedly obtained stolen corporate documents that revealed Tenex, under Smirnov, had set up a secretive subsidiary in Germany called Internexco GmbH to “[represent] Tenex interests in selling nuclear fuel and nuclear technology but also for the purpose of continuing to launder money [emphasis added].”36
A former FSB investigator named Alexander Litvinenko spent years documenting Putin’s mafia and criminal underworld connections. He investigated Putin and Smirnov’s SPAG money-laundering operation and worked with international investigators to expose Putin’s “mafia state.” Litvinenko was infamously poisoned by a radioactive isotope called polonium-210. The source? Litvinenko’s widow alleges that the polonium trail leads directly to Smirnov-led Tenex.37
Smirnov was just one of several Putin loyalists entrusted with the Kremlin’s nuclear secrets. At the center of Putin’s nuclear ambitions with Smirnov was Sergei Kiriyenko. Kiriyenko, a brainy and bespectacled man, had been one of Yeltsin’s young technocrat reformers who provided crucial political support to Putin for the 2000 election.38
Putin rewarded Kiriyenko with an appointment to a diplomatic envoy post in the Volga Federal District, which Putin’s 2020 Energy Strategy identified as a “main [consumer] of primary energy resources.” From there, Kiriyenko headed the Kremlin’s State Commission on Chemical Disarmament, eliminating Soviet-era chemical weapon stockpiles.39
In 2004, Putin restructured the entire Russian nuclear industry into a single, vertically integrated nuclear behemoth: the Federal Atomic Energy Agency, or “Rosatom.” By the end of 2005, Putin again rewarded Kiriyenko’s service by placing him in charge of perhaps the most critically important conglomerate in all of Russia, even though Kiriyenko “had been outside nuclear industry circles.”40
Rosatom would play both a military and civilian role in Putin’s nuclear strategy, and Kiriyenko understood that his assignment was “to restore the glory days of Mindredmash, the notorious secret super-industry of Soviet times that had under its purview all things nuclear.”41
Prior to Putin’s presidency, neither the mafia-linked Smirnov nor the “untested neophyte” Kiriyenko had any apparent experience running nuclear companies, let alone a conglomerate as large as Tenex (or Rosatom for that matter). Smirnov’s KGB background, Kiriyenko’s financial background, and their loyalties to Putin appear to be all the credentials they needed.42
In addition to these loyalists, Putin needed operatives with a nuclear background and technical expertise. Longtime nuclear apparatchiks Alexei Grigoriev and Vadim Mikerin had negotiated complex nuclear agreements with the Clinton administration. They were both instrumental in making a deal with Clinton to sell Russian uranium to American utility companies via Tenex and the United States Enrichment Corporation (USEC).43
Megatons to Megawatts
Tenex was formally established by the Soviet Union in 1963 and remains one of Russia’s oldest nuclear companies. Tenex is the international trading arm of Russia’s nuclear industry and sells uranium to virtually anyone willing to pay—including Iran and China.44
Communist East Germany partnered with Tenex’s predecessor (Technoexport) to supply uranium to the Soviet nuclear weapons program throughout the Cold War. But when Tenex partnered with the French in 1971 to enrich uranium, the Russians officially entered the Western market. This marked the beginning of the end of U.S. nuclear dominance. By 1991, the Soviets had amassed an enormous strategic stockpile of uranium—two hundred thousand tons.45
After the Cold War ended, Russia was flush with nuclear weapons but strapped for cash. The fledgling post-Soviet regime found compliant partners in the Clinton administration, who soon began importing Russian corruption while exporting American wealth and nuclear secrets.46
Beginning in February 1993, Clinton’s administration signed a series of deals with the Kremlin under the guise of nuclear disarmament. Commonly known as the “Megatons to Megawatts” program, it was a valiant proposal to turn “swords into ploughshares.”47 The idea had been conceived a year earlier under George H.W. Bush’s administration, but it was Bill Clinton who executed the strategy.
The Clinton team’s Russian counterparts agreed to ship Russian nuclear warhead materials, namely highly enriched uranium (HEU), from St. Petersburg to the U.S. There, it would be converted into low enriched uranium (LEU) for U.S. nuclear reactors. The $12 billion deal (which ballooned to over $20 billion) was hailed as a win-win: the U.S. claimed a post–Cold War victory while securing essential energy resources, while Russia unloaded more than five hundred metric tons of HEU. Thanks to Clinton’s Commerce Department, which changed certain trade regulations, the terms were very favorable to Russia (and profitable to the well-connected American utility companies).48
This HEU-LEU program was a central core in Putin’s long-term strategy to conquer the world nuclear market using dubious international nuclear deals. Grigoriev and Mikerin had negotiated the deal under Yeltsin, and Putin kept these two valuable allies and the agreement in place.49
Grigoriev agrees that the HEU-LEU deal “really helped” the Kremlin during those “very difficult years” when Russia’s economy was in shambles. At a time when most Russian industries were crippled, the civil nuclear industry (i.e., Rosatom and Tenex) was able to “increase its production.” Yeltsin’s and Clinton’s Megatons to Megawatts negotiations paved the way to friendlier relations and represented a post–Cold War diplomatic high point. “I think it has really helped us in our relations with the U.S. utilities as well,” Grigoriev said.50
The relationships that Tenex built with U.S. utility companies under the Megatons to Megawatts deal were mutually beneficial and highly lucrative. This oft-overlooked detail will be a crucial factor to understanding how and why the Obama administration would approve the Uranium One deal a few years later.
One factor that has never been overlooked (and certainly did not help Russian-American relations) is Russia’s nuclear alliance with Iran.
The Russia-Iran Nuclear Alliance
Russia and Iran have been strategic nuclear allies for decades—a major point of contention with the U.S. In the mid-1990s, Russia picked up where the Germans had left off in the late 1970s in building the infamous Bushehr nuclear reactor on the coast of the Persian Gulf, approximately 650 miles south of Tehran. Also, the nuclear partnership with Iran steered virtually all aspects of American relations with Russia after 1995. Washington viewed Russia’s cooperation on the Bushehr reactor as a potential facilitation of Iran’s atomic weapons program.51
Moscow did not share Washington’s concerns and viewed Iran’s nuclear ambitions as a potential windfall. After all, the Megatons to Megawatts program had provided much-needed cash in the 1990s, but the program was set to expire in 2013.52 That loss of revenue likely incentivized Rosatom to build nuclear reactors (supplied with Tenex uranium) for American adversaries like Iran.
In addition to the billions generated by the construction of the massive infrastructure, building and operating nuclear power plants (NPP)—like Bushehr—created potential long-term customers that sought Rosatom’s abundant low-cost supply.53
While Megatons to Megawatts greased the skids between Moscow and Washington, the changing administrations—especially Putin’s—brought about renewed friction between the superpowers.
When George W. Bush came to power in 2001, he and Putin initially maintained a cordial rapport. Putin often bragged that he was the first world leader to call Bush after the September 11 terrorist attacks, and Bush famously said that he trusted Putin after catching a glimpse of his soul. But when Bush placed Iran firmly inside what he called the “Axis of Evil” in his 2002 State of the Union speech, Putin no doubt felt the shot across the bow.54
While the two leaders made some diplomatic gains on the issue of nuclear arsenal reduction, the Iran issue was an obvious and immediate impasse. When Bush slapped sanctions on a Russian arms maker for missile sales to Tehran, Russian analysts suggested that the Americans had signaled their intent to “pursue all avenues to halt Russia’s involvement in the [Iran nuclear] project.”55
Indeed, the Bush administration took a hard stance on the “Iran issue.” It demanded that Putin cancel support for Bushehr. But Putin hardly budged. Only when Putin convinced the Iranians to surrender their spent fuel and transport the nuclear materials back to Russia in 2005 did Bush yield—temporarily.56
It was around this time that Bush’s FBI tasked a longtime American intelligence operative named William Douglas Campbell with penetrating Putin’s nuclear complex. In 2005, Campbell began his harrowing journey in Kazakhstan—the heart of Russia’s uranium supply—and soon found himself in Moscow, infiltrating the highest levels of the Kremlin.
Campbell apprised his FBI handlers often—via written and oral briefings—to be wary of the Kremlin’s nuclear acquisitions and advances in the United States and abroad. Campbell also warned the FBI of the American lobbyists who furthered those Kremlin advances.57
At the same time, Putin sought to seduce the Bush administration. He visited Camp David, the ranch in Crawford, Texas, and the Bush compound on Walker’s Point in Kennebunkport, Maine. Putin even tried to curry favor with Bush by offering former Secretary of Commerce Don Evans—one of Bush’s closest friends—a lucrative position at oil giant Rosneft. Bush was “flabbergasted,” but kept his cool.58
In 2006, Bush came around to Putin’s requests and briefly relented on the Iran issue. It appeared that Russia would get permission to advance Iran’s nuclear energy program and get the nuclear treaty (called the “123 Agreement”) that they desperately wanted.59
Putin’s charm offensive peaked in April 2008 when he invited Bush to visit the ritzy Russian resort town of Sochi. Bush warily agreed on the condition that Putin would not ambush him in some way. This would be Bush’s twenty-eighth and final official visit with Putin.60
That same month, NATO announced that Georgia and Ukraine “will become members of NATO.” Georgia and Ukraine were not just Putin’s neighbors, they were former Soviet republics and directly on his doorstep. This announcement crossed Putin’s red line.61
As the Georgian government sought to join NATO, the Georgian breakaway regions of Abkhazia and South Ossetia sought independence. Georgia received support from the West while Abkhazia and South Ossetia received support from Russia. Violence broke out and escalated throughout the summer. The proxy war had fully erupted.62
In August 2008, Putin sent troops marching into Georgia. The conflict lasted just twelve days, but thousands were killed or injured (including civilians), and nearly two hundred thousand residents were displaced.63
The invasion of Georgia, combined with new evidence that Iran had a secret nuclear weapons program, would re-chill the thawing U.S.-Russia relationship that Putin had tried to cultivate with the Bush administration. Once Russia invaded Georgia, Bush scrapped the deal and reached a new deal with Russia’s neighbors to install missile defense systems in Poland.64
U.S.-Russia relations plummeted to a post–Cold War low.65
These events put the U.S. on alert regarding Putin’s ambitions and ulterior motives. Putin had shown himself to be a canny and sophisticated authoritarian. The Bush administration had not forgotten Putin’s previous career working for the KGB and setting up its post-Soviet reinvention.66
The Rosatom Expansion Continues
In November 2007, Rosatom was converted from a federal agency to a state-owned corporation. Putin’s state-owned corporations, like Rosatom, were essentially Soviet-style enterprises where the government owns the means of production, but the operations are opaque, outside federal budget restrictions, and more autonomous.67
Rosatom became a sort of hybrid—a cross between a government agency and a for-profit corporation. With this crowning stroke, Putin had successfully consolidated and gained control over virtually every facet of the nuclear fuel cycle—from uranium mining to enrichment and fuel conversion to power plant construction and operation and even to waste disposal. The Kremlin supported all divisions.68
The net result was that the Kremlin bankrolled the unprofitable programs (such as nuclear waste disposal and cleanup of nuclear disasters) and the profitable operations were effectively separated from these costly (and toxic) liabilities.69 What this means economically is that Rosatom is a nuclear monopolist not subject to typical market forces and can subsidize its products to beat any international competitors’ prices. 70
For international utility companies, Tenex was an attractive fuel supplier.
With Kiriyenko at the helm, Rosatom began snapping up uranium assets and planning new projects around the world. Kiriyenko’s strategy was aggressive: the Kremlin planned to spend $60 billion by 2021 building dozens of new reactors in Russia alone (a fivefold increase in new reactors over the previous fifteen-year period).71
Putin’s infiltration of the U.S. nuclear industry through diplomacy would have to await the results of the 2008 election. Russia’s post-Soviet constitution prevents three consecutive presidential terms. This forced Putin to yield the presidency to his hand-picked successor: Dmitry Medvedev.72 And while Putin had relinquished the presidency to his lawyer and confidante, everyone knew who was still really in charge: Prime Minister Putin.73
He needed a president whose ambitions (and weaknesses) would allow Russia to recapture its former position on the global chessboard. Putin dreamed of an administration he could leverage—by any means—and wanted to take America down a peg (or three).74
Meanwhile, Russian spies remained undercover abroad, inching closer to Washington bureaucrats, nuclear officials, and lobbyists who could persuade Bush’s successor, whomever that might be, to normalize relations with Moscow.75
Putin Tests Obama
In November 2008, Senator Barack Obama (D-IL) was elected the forty-fourth president of the United States. A former community organizer steeped in left-wing activism, Obama was the polar opposite of George W. Bush. Instead of an assertive nationalist confident of America’s leadership role in world affairs, Obama believed the U.S. needed to apologize for its past imperialism and was uncomfortable with America’s supposed role as global policeman. Whether knowingly or not, these views aligned closely with Putin’s.76
Yet the Russian president and his circle evinced nothing but disdain for Obama’s Hamlet-like ambivalence and reluctance to act. As reporters David Corn and Michael Isikoff write in their book Russian Roulette:
Putin and his top advisers routinely denigrated Obama and his national security team as “weak” and “indecisive”—and then, contradictorily, blamed him for meddling in Russia’s internal affairs. In Putin’s presence, Obama would be called a “monkey,” and it was not uncommon for the American president to be referred to as the N-word.77
Obama’s apparent weakness and disinterest in American leadership abroad emboldened Putin’s energy weaponization strategy. Putin’s zero-sum mindset—we win, you lose—meant that for Russia to advance, the U.S. and its NATO allies must retreat. After years of escalating tensions under Bush, Putin apparently believed that President-elect Obama would offer no resistance to his strategy.
Just days before Obama was sworn in as president, Putin tested his theory. He turned off the flow of natural gas to Ukraine, and by extension much of Europe, and millions were suddenly unable to heat their homes amid subzero temperatures. Nearly a dozen people, mostly in Poland, froze to death when temperatures reached -13 degrees Fahrenheit.78
Yet again, this was Putin’s way of extracting concessions from his neighbors while flexing his muscles for the world to see.
How would the president-elect react? Putin’s theory was correct: instead of condemning Russia’s cruelty, Obama said nothing. Nevertheless, Russia opened the pipelines the same day Obama was inaugurated and, in the months that followed, crickets chirped in Obama’s White House despite the January 2009 Eastern European “humanitarian emergency.”79
Less than three months later, in April 2009, Russia tested the Obama administration again. President Medvedev gave a press conference with the pro-Russian Georgian leaders in the breakaway regions of Abkhazia and South Ossetia. They announced a military agreement authorizing Russia, which had committed more than $300 million in military support in 2009, to dispatch more troops to the Georgian borders. This was a major escalation in the Georgian crisis that had so outraged the lame-duck Bush administration.80
When Obama visited Moscow three months later in July, he would barely allude to Russia’s recent cruelty in Eastern Europe, let alone condemn it. Instead he voiced high-flown sentiments projecting an idealized vision of a world moving away from great power confrontation toward interdependency and cooperation.
“In 2009, a great power does not show strength by dominating or demonizing other countries. The days when empires could treat sovereign states as pieces on a chess board are over,” Obama preached. “The pursuit of power is no longer a zero-sum game—progress must be shared. That’s why I have called for a ‘reset’ in relations between the United States and Russia.’’81
This was Putin’s first in-person encounter with Obama. He must have been overjoyed when Obama repeatedly praised Russia’s post-Soviet reforms and lauded Russia’s influence on America. “We’ve been enriched by Russian culture, and enhanced by Russian cooperation. And as a resident of Washington, D.C., I continue to benefit from the contributions of Russians,” Obama joked, referring to Washington Capitals all-star hockey player Alexander Ovechkin.82
Meanwhile, his silence on Russia’s weaponization of energy and the military aggression in Georgia and throughout the region was deafening. In hindsight, these benign comments are more than a little ironic in light of the harsh criticism later directed at Donald Trump for his similar praise of Vladimir Putin.
Obama did hint at Ukraine and Georgia’s prospective NATO membership, but he actually downplayed U.S. support, saying, “America will never impose a security arrangement on another country.” Obama ultimately concluded, “And let me be clear: NATO should be seeking collaboration with Russia, not confrontation.”83
McCain Institute senior fellow David J. Kramer, among others, glowingly praised Obama’s “reset” and said Obama “deserved credit” for the strategy. But even Kramer would concede that “provocative visits to Abkhazia and South Ossetia by Medvedev and Putin respectively, Medvedev’s renewed threats to target Iskander missiles against the Czech Republic and Poland if U.S. missile defense plans move forward in those two countries, and the murders of human rights activists and charity heads in Chechnya have cast a shadow over the relationship.”84
After eight years of the confrontational cowboy George W. Bush, the Washington foreign policy establishment was ready for a change and was fully on board with Obama’s America-second agenda. Their muted reservations would remain buried in the margins of think tank white papers. Indeed, Obama and the intelligentsia in Washington had big plans to collaborate with Russia. Russia’s cooperation on Obama’s Iran nuclear deal would be essential. The “reset” of Russian relations was only just beginning.85
For Putin, this was a dream come true. Iran’s fledgling nuclear program was a potential cash cow for Russia and a central component of Putin’s nuclear strategy. Obama’s naïveté, his general apologetic tone, and his strong desire to advance Iran’s nuclear ambitions blinded him to Putin’s schemes.86
When Bush stepped down and Obama stepped up, Putin’s nuclear strategy went into full swing.