Moments after he greeted Americans newly released from Russian prisons last month, President Joe Biden was asked if he had any message for Vladimir Putin. “Stop,” he replied.
But whether Biden meant jailing innocent foreigners, persecuting Russian dissidents, invading Ukraine, violating international law or challenging the U.S.-led global order, Putin has shown no sign of backing down.
And that means one of the most deeply vexing questions facing Western leaders — including Biden and whoever succeeds him next year — is what to do about it.
On each side of the Atlantic, there is uncertainty about how to counter Putin’s aggression without stoking a direct conflict with the man who controls the world’s largest nuclear arsenal.
That fear — and the inability, even of Western diplomats with decades of experience dealing with the Kremlin, to see a viable path forward — has revived calls for Cold War-style containment: restricting contacts with Moscow to essential issues and bracing for conflict by boosting Europe and Ukraine’s military capacity.
Current U.S. policy is “more of a reaction and an outgrowth to events,” said Fiona Hill, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution who has advised multiple administrations on Russia policy and was President Donald Trump’s top Russia adviser at the National Security Council. “We haven’t had a holistic approach,” Hill said.