How will US-Russia relations develop within the next few years? Are we on the verge of a new cold war? What is needed to maintain strategic stability after the New START expires in 2026? What should be the format and aspects of the follow-on treaty? Do we really need depoliticization of negotiations? Is the elimination of all nuclear weapons is a realistic goal today? Can a nuclear-weapons-free world be really achieved? What will be the US policy on China within the next few years?

Pifer addresses these key international security questions.

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This interview with CISAC Affiliate Christopher Painter was originally produced by Jen Kirby. The complete article is available at Vox.

The frequency, scope and scale of ransomware attacks against public and private systems is accelerating. In the latest incident, the ransomware group REvil has demanded $70 million to unlock the systems of the software company Kaseya, an attack that affects not only Kaseya, but simultaneously exploits all of the company’s clients.

The REvil, JBS meatpacking and Colonial Pipeline attacks have abruptly raised the profile of ransomware from a malicious strand of criminality to a national security priority. These are issues that Christopher Painter, an affiliate at the Center for International Security and Cooperation (CISAC), has worked on at length during his tenures as a senior official at the Department of Justice, the FBI, the National Security Council and as the world's first top cyber diplomat at the State Department.

Jen Kirby, a reporter for Vox, interviewed Painter to discuss how cybercrimes are evolving and what governments should do to keep ransomware attacks from escalating geopolitical tensions online and off.

Jen Kirby:
I think a good place to start would be: What are “ransomware attacks”?

Christopher Painter:
It is largely criminal groups who are getting into computers through any number of potential vulnerabilities, and then they essentially lock the systems — they encrypt the data in a way that makes it impossible for you to see your files. And they demand ransom, they demand payment. In exchange for that payment, they will give you — or they claim, they don’t always do it — they claim they’ll give you the decryption keys, or the codes, that allow you to unlock your own files and have access to them again.

That is what traditionally we say is “ransomware.” That’s been going on for some time, but it’s gotten much more acute recently.

There is another half of that, which is that groups don’t just hold your files for ransom, they either leak or threaten to leak or expose your files and your information — your secrets and your emails, whatever you have — publicly, either in an attempt to embarrass you or to extort more money out of you, because you don’t want those things to happen. So it’s split now into two tracks, but they’re a combined method of getting money.

Jen Kirby:
We’ve recently had some high-profile ransomware attacks, including this recent REvil incident. Is it that we’re seeing a lot more of them, or they’re just bigger and bolder? How do you assess that ransomware attacks are becoming more acute?

Christopher Painter:
We’ve seen this going on for some time. I was one of the co-chairs of this Ransomware Task Force that issued a report recently. One of the reasons we did this report was we’re trying to call greater attention to this issue. Although governments and law enforcement were taking it seriously, it wasn’t being given the kind of national-level priority it deserved.

It was being treated as more of an ordinary cybercrime issue. Most governments’ attention is focused on big nation-state activity — like the SolarWinds hack [where suspected Russian government hackers breached US government departments], which are important, and we need to care about those. But we’re very worried about this, too.

It’s especially become more of an issue during the pandemic, when some of the ransomware actors were going after health care systems and health care providers.That combined with these big infrastructure attacks — the Colonial Pipeline clearly was one of them. Another one was the meat processing plants. Another one was hospital systems in Ireland. You also had the DC Police Department being victimized by ransomware. These things are very high-profile. When you’re lining up for gas because of a ransomware attack, and you can’t get your food because of a ransomware attack, that brings it home as a priority. And then, of course, you have what happened this past weekend. So ransomware has not abated, and it continues to get more serious and hit more organizations.

This commentary was first published by The Lowy Institute.

Two recent naval exercises demonstrate the potential for Russia-China cooperation in the Indian Ocean, and how the two present a much greater threat to a continued US role and influence in the region than either would individually.

Last year, South Africa hosted a maritime exercise with Russia and China, the first-ever trilateral exercise among the three countries. Exercise Mosi was designed, according to the South African Navy, to “enhance interoperability and maritime security“ and showed the three countries’ willingness to work together to counter security threats at sea, such as terrorism and piracy. There were the obligatory social and cultural activities, and then military maneuvers that focused on a surface gunnery exercise, helicopter cross-deck landings, boarding operations and disaster control exercises.

China and Russia followed this up in December 2019 with another trilateral maritime exercise with Iran in the Gulf of Oman called Exercise Marine Security Belt. The exercises included live-fire drills and an anti-piracy exercise involving Iranian commandos. According to the Iranian naval commander, the exercises’ message was that “Iran cannot be isolated.” A Chinese spokesman stated: “The naval drills aim to deepen exchange and cooperation among the navies of the three countries, and display their strong will and capability to jointly maintain world peace and maritime security”.

Both China and Russia have gradually been increasing their presence in the Indian Ocean. Russia recently announced it would establish a naval facility in Port Sudan on the Red Sea. China opened its first overseas base in Djibouti in 2017, and China’s navy has increased operations in the Indian Ocean region over the past three decades.

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The Covid-19 crisis may have slowed further moves towards cooperation this year. Moscow just hosted the 12th BRICS summit virtually, which doesn’t lend itself to deep military engagement. But the trilateral exercises are notable because they signal Moscow’s and Beijing’s desire to cooperate in the region. And more importantly, they reveal that regional powers such as South Africa and Iran, as well as other countries, welcome the increased role of China and Russia.

Relations between South Africa and the United States were already strained when Pretoria agreed to the trilateral exercises last year. Under the Trump administration, the United States grew critical of South Africa’s UN voting record. Washington also declined to exempt the country from hikes in tariffs on US imports of steel and aluminum. In contrast, China has pledged the most investments of any country in South Africa. Russia has followed in its footsteps in building political, military and trade ties across sub-Saharan Africa.

Iran has even more reason to build relations with China and Russia. Since the US withdrawal from the Iran nuclear deal in 2018, Iran has strengthened its ties to China and Russia, using multi-billion-dollar loans from the two countries to resist US sanctions and deepening defense cooperation and intelligence sharing.

Smaller countries can also find the Russia-China nexus useful. According to a Chinese-language source, Sudan, a long-standing regional partner of China, first proposed hosting a Russian base in 2017 as a counterbalance “against aggressive acts of the United States”.

In other words, China and Russia together may be better equipped to compete with the United States and its allies in the Indian Ocean region for influence, for several reasons.

Moscow may be more willing than Beijing to play the ringleader role in organizing and directing opposition against the United States, but it doesn’t have the economic heft to make such cooperation a winning proposition for Indian Ocean states.

While China has considerable resources, it is more concerned about provoking the United States and potentially worsening already poor relations. China often argues that it is a different type of great power, one that does not engage in hegemonic behavior such as alliance formation. China is also keen to avoid sparking a countervailing coalition against it.

For these reasons, Beijing often tones down its rhetoric about the nature of its relationship with Russia. China claimed the Indian Ocean exercises do “not target any third party”. For Russia, however, overtly undermining the United States is a key component of its strategy and plays well domestically for Putin.

On the other hand, China has the economic resources to wield influence and invest heavily in Indian Ocean countries. In Pakistan alone, Beijing has pledged an estimated $87 billion in funding and completed roughly $20 billion worth of projects. Recently, Beijing and Tehran reportedly agreed to a 25-year deal to expand China’s investment in Iranian banking, telecommunications, ports and railways in exchange for oil.

While China and Russia are nowhere near dominating the Indian Ocean region militarily, their combined influence may promise trouble for the United States and its partners. The two countries will likely work together to inure their partners to international pressure, including over human rights violations. And those partners will receive security benefits (such as military access) and economic benefits (such as preferential economic ties) in return. Although it seems a bit exaggerated, there is some truth to Iranian Admiral Hossein Khanzadi’s declaration that strategic coordination with Russia and China means “the era of American free action in the region is over”.

China and Russia may be slow in enhancing their strategic coordination in the Indian Ocean slowly, but the intent is there. The United States and its allies may still be dominant militarily. But we should be careful not to fall under the illusion that this guarantees influence. With China and Russia presenting themselves as strong alternative powers, the United States and like-minded countries have to work that much harder to promote sustainable economic development, protect international rules and norms, and ensure peace and security in the region.

This interview by Melissa De Witte originally appeared in Stanford News.

The upcoming summit between President Joe Biden and President Vladimir Putin is not rewarding the Russian leader for his bad behavior: It’s opening negotiations and delivering a warning to him instead, says Stanford scholar Kathryn Stoner.

Here, Stoner is joined by Stanford political scientist and former U.S. Ambassador to Russia Michael McFaul, Payne Distinguished Lecturer at CISAC and former Deputy Secretary General of NATO Rose Gottemoeller and Russia historian Norman Naimark to discuss what to expect at the summit in Geneva on Wednesday.

The meeting, the scholars say, could reset U.S.-Russia relations, signal deterrence on certain issues – including cybersecurity in light of attacks like the SolarWinds breach that the U.S. has blamed on the Russian Foreign Intelligence Service – and launch strategic stability talks related to nuclear weapons.

Interviews have been edited for length and clarity. For more information on what to expect about the Biden-Putin summit from FSI scholars, visit the FSI website.

Where does diplomacy now stand between the U.S. and Russia?

Naimark: Russian-American relations are at their lowest point since the fall of the Soviet Union in 1991, perhaps even since the last years of Gorbachev’s rule. When relations are fraying between the world’s two most powerful nuclear powers, the coming of the summit on June 16 between President Biden and President Putin should be welcomed. It’s worth recalling the heightened military tensions just three months ago between Moscow and Washington, when Moscow moved tens of thousands of troops to the Ukrainian border and mobilized its air and sea power in the region. Both leaders have emphasized that they seek stability, reliability and predictability in their bilateral relations; at the same time, their respective administrations have warned that expectations should be kept at the minimum for any kind of serious breakthrough at the summit.

Stoner: We’ve lost a lot of leverage because of the withdrawal from global politics that started under the latter part of the Obama administration and continued with Trump with his America First platform, which meant America alone. There is some leverage, it’s just how much. We don’t necessarily want to destabilize Russia because it’s a big, complicated country with nuclear weapons, but all signs point to Putin staying in office until 2036. He’s not going away. I think we have to try to signal deterrence on certain issues, like trying to move into another former Soviet republic as he is doing with Ukraine, Georgia and potentially Belarus, but then cooperate in other areas where it is productive to do so.

What do you think about some of the criticisms toward Biden meeting with Putin? For example, that Biden meeting with Putin is only rewarding him for his bad behavior.

Stoner: There is a reasonable question about why Biden and Putin are meeting and if it is somehow rewarding Putin for bad behavior by having a summit with the President of the United States. Rather than rewarding Putin, however, I think this meeting could be Biden’s warning to him that if hacking and other cyberattacks continue, we have a menu of things we could do as well.

Naimark: There is no reason that the American president cannot talk about difficult subjects like cybersecurity, ransomware attacks, human rights, the release of Alexei Navalny, the protection of Ukrainian sovereignty and other important items on the American agenda while focusing on issues of mutual interest: the future of arms control, global warming and the regulation of the Arctic, and outer space. One can always hope that, like the last summit on Lake Geneva between Russian and American leaders [Mikhail Gorbachev and Ronald Reagan] in November 1985, this one can lay the groundwork for serious improvements in relations in the near future.

Is this meeting a reset of diplomatic relations between the two nations?

Stoner: I know in Washington it is popular to say that Biden is not having a reset of relations with Russia when past presidents all have tried that. I think that’s wrong. I do think it is a reset in the relationship in that there should be more clarity and stability, but that doesn’t mean it’s going to be friendly and universally cooperative, given that we still see many differences in perspectives and some antagonism too. Still, Russia and the U.S. need to talk because there are a lot of issues in common where it would be helpful to coordinate with Russia. After all, even in the depths of the Cold War, the leaders of both countries still talked. Russia has reestablished itself as the most formidable power in Europe and it looks like Biden is acknowledging that and the fact that the U.S. can no longer afford to ignore Russia.

Is there anything the two leaders will be able to agree upon?

McFaul: I used to organize these kinds of meetings when I worked in the government and back when President Medvedev was there. We would have these meetings as a way to force our governments to produce what is called in State Department-speak “deliverables.” We didn’t have meetings to have them, we wanted to get things done. In the first Obama-Medvedev meeting we had a long list of deliverables when they met in July of 2009.

But there is no way that will happen with Putin today because he doesn’t really want to cooperate, he doesn’t really want deliverables. That’s challenging for President Biden, I think, because he has said that he wants a stable, predictable relationship with Putin. I think that’s fine to aspire to, but I don’t think Putin is that interested in that kind of relationship, so that creates a challenge of substance for summits like this.

Gottemoeller: With such different threat perceptions, the two presidents are not going to agree in Geneva about what should go into the next nuclear treaty. They can agree, though, to put their experts together to hammer it out. They can also agree to put the two sides together to tackle the different threat perceptions and the question of what stability means. Finally, they can agree to a deadline, so the talks don’t stall. It won’t be a headline-grabbing outcome, but at least Moscow and Washington will get moving again on the nuclear agenda.

Where can Biden make progress?

McFaul: I think the most likely place to make progress is to launch strategic stability talks, which is an abstract phrase for beginning the process of negotiations about nuclear weapons and their delivery vehicles that would be a follow-on to the New START treaty. Biden and Putin rightfully extended the New START treaty early in his term for five years, and I think that was very smart. I personally worked on that treaty, so I think it’s a good treaty and deserves to be extended. But it’s going to run out really fast because the next set of negotiations are going to be much more complicated. I hope they would start some process to begin those negotiations now.

Gottemoeller: Maybe the only place where President Biden can make progress with Vladimir Putin in Geneva is the nuclear agenda with Russia. Since the two men agreed, in February, to extend the New START treaty by five years, they have put out a clear public message that they intend to pursue a deal to replace New START and to launch strategic stability talks. They are not going to have identical ideas, however, about what those two goals mean.

Biden wants a new arms control deal that will control all nuclear warheads, whether launched on intercontinental strategic-range missiles or on shorter-range systems. He also wants to get a handle on some of the new types of nuclear weapons that the Russians have been developing. One new system, for example, uses nuclear propulsion to ensure that it can fly for many hours at great speed over long distances, earning it the moniker “weapon of vengeance.” These exotic weapons did not exist when New START was negotiated; now, they need to be controlled.

Putin, by contrast, focuses on U.S. long-range conventional missiles that he worries are capable of the accuracy and destructive power of nuclear weapons. The United States, in his view, could use these conventional weapons to destroy hard targets such as the Moscow nuclear command center. He also worries that the United States is producing ever more capable ways to intercept his nuclear missiles and destroy them before they reach their targets. In his worst nightmare, the United States undermines his nuclear deterrent forces without ever resorting to nuclear weapons.

What advice do you have for Biden?

McFaul: One, do not have a one-on-one meeting – just have a normal meeting. Two, I would recommend not having a joint press conference that just gives Putin a podium for the world to say his “whataboutism” stuff; it’s better to have separate press conferences because most of the world will be more interested in what Biden says compared to what Putin says.

Third, I think it’s important to cooperate when you can but also be clear about your differences and don’t pull punches on that. In particular, I want Biden to talk about Alexei Navalny, the Americans who are wrongly detained in Russia today, Crimea still being occupied, Russian proxies in eastern Ukraine, and parts of Georgia that are under occupation. They have been attacking us relentlessly with these cyberattacks, these Russian criminals who in my view have to have some association with the Russian government.

That’s a tough list, but I think it’s really important for President Biden to say those things directly to Putin. I have confidence that he can. I was at their last meeting. I traveled with the vice president in 2011 when he met with then Prime Minister Putin. Biden is capable of delivering tough messages and I hope he uses this occasion to do so again.

What would be a sign that their meeting was productive?

Stoner: One sign the meeting was productive would be if Biden and Putin could agree to establish a joint committee or council on some rules surrounding cybersecurity. Another would be if they make plans to talk again about either replacing or reviving the Minsk-2 agreement [that sought to bring an end to Russia’s war on Ukraine]. And three, a positive sign would be if they plan to do some negotiation on further reducing tactical nuclear weapons or strategic nuclear weapons. An agreement to disagree on some issues, but to continue talking on others would be indicative of at least some small progress.

The New START Treaty

The New START Treaty, which was formalized in 2010, and builds on prior agreements put in place through the 1970s and 80s to actively reduce and limit the number of strategic nuclear weapons. The first START treaty in 1994 reduced the number of deployed nuclear warheads in the United States and Russia from 12,000 to 6,000 each. In 2002, that number was reduced further to around 2,200 weapons each through agreements in the Moscow Treaty. The New START Treaty Gottemoeller negotiated dropped that number again to 1,550 deployed strategic nuclear warheads.

This 30 percent overall reduction in nuclear armaments has brought deployed Russian and U.S. warheads to their smallest numbers since the nuclear age began.

“It’s really a challenge to actually do things in government,” emphasizes McFaul. “It’s easy to be something or someone, but to do anything, you have to be able to engage with another partner somewhere in the world. In Rose’s case, she had to engage with one of the toughest partners in the world: the Russian Federation.”

Doing vs. Being

How was Gottemoeller able to accomplish what she and her team did? Coming as an outsider to the Obama campaign and government, the initial months of contacting relevant people in the Department of State and working through the confirmation process were grueling, particularly with the added pressure of the looming deadline for the end of the first START treaty.

“That early pressure was absolutely vital for the ultimate success of the New START treaty,” says Gottemoeller. “These kinds of treaties usually take years to negotiate, but we only had from April to December of that year.”

With such a tight schedule, focus and drive were vital for moving the negotiations forward on time. Based on a clear directive from Presidents Obama and Medvedev, Gottemoeller knew the negotiations were to focus only on reducing strategic offensive armaments. The drive came from the perseverance and professionalism between her team and their Russian counterparts.

“When any negotiation starts, there’s a dance that goes on as the chief negotiators and the heads of the working groups establish their rhythm and get to know each others’ style. There were definitely rough patches, but overall we were able to establish good working relationships with everyone we needed to.”

In establishing this rapport, Gottemoeller’s prior affiliations with the Russian head negotiator, Anatoly Antonov, and her ability to speak directly with him in the Russian language were invaluable, particularly given Gottemoeller’s unique position as the first woman ever to negotiate a nuclear arms deal with the Russian Federation.    

“By the time [Antonov] and I got to the endgame negotiations, we’d developed this motto of ‘мы исправим это,’ or, ‘We’ll fix it.’ By having that mindset, we were able to figure it out, even with our personal differences,” Gottemoeller explains.

Ultimately, she and her team delivered a crucial piece of diplomacy in record time despite the setbacks. “I handed over the final papers on my birthday,” she remembers. “So, it was a personal day of celebration as well as a professional one.”

Advice for Future Negotiators

For upcoming graduates and young people looking to Gottemoeller and her incredible diplomatic career as an inspiration, she gives this encouragement:

“Negotiating about nuclear weapons is not rocket science. You become a good negotiator through your everyday living. It’s part of our natural life and natural living. Don’t let it overwhelm you just because you happen to be dealing with nuclear weapons. It’s still just about meeting interests and crafting compromises in order to achieve your goals.”

It’s a sentiment Director Michael McFaul quickly echoed as he reaffirmed the invaluable work Rose Gottemoeller has contributed both diplomatically and to the future of foreign policy.

“In academia, the literature is thin on the actual practice of diplomacy,” admits McFaul. “But Rose has done a great service to educating future diplomats and future negotiators. We need to be able to learn from case studies like this from the past so we can continue to achieve these kinds of things in the future.”

President Joe Biden is the first president since the Cold War to begin his term not seeking closer relations with Russia; there will be no “reset.” He has indicated instead that he will push back against Russian misbehavior while seeking to cooperate where doing so advances U.S. interests. In his first 100 days Mr. Biden has sought to distinguish his policy from that of Donald Trump, who seemed incapable of criticizing Vladimir Putin or Russian transgressions.

The first full day of his administration illustrated Mr. Biden’s approach. The White House said he would extend the New Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty (New START) for five years, essentially accepting an offer Mr. Putin had made more than a year earlier—but something that was very much in the interest of U.S. national security. White House officials also announced that Mr. Biden had asked for assessments of Russian actions such as interference in the 2020 presidential election and the Solar Winds cyber hack, promising that the administration would “hold Russia to account for its reckless and adversarial actions.”

Mr. Biden described his policy directly to Mr. Putin in a January 26 phone call. He discussed New START and strategic stability but also raised issues of concern, including Ukraine, election interference and Kremlin-opponent Alexey Navalny’s poisoning. The White House read-out of the call (there were several important Trump-Putin calls with no read-outs) noted that the president had also said that the United States would “act firmly in defense of its national interests in response to actions by Russia” that caused harm to America or its allies.

Anticipating relations with the Kremlin that will have major adversarial elements, the Biden administration has moved to shore up the trans-Atlantic relationship and repair the damage done during his predecessor’s four years. In a February 19 virtual appearance at the Munich Security Conference, the president reaffirmed the U.S. commitment to NATO and Article 5 (an attack against one shall be considered an attack against all), stressed the importance of collective efforts to meet the “threat from Russia,” and reached out to German Chancellor Angela Merkel, who often found herself the target of Mr. Trump’s ire. (The Biden administration also halted, and then reversed, Mr. Trump’s order to withdraw some 10,000 troops from Germany.)

As the intelligence community completed its assessment of election interference and other Russian actions, and with tensions rising due to the Russian military build-up around Ukraine, the Biden administration calibrated its response. It sanctioned a number of Russian entities and individuals on April 15. As a warning of what could come, the president issued an executive order authorizing sanctions for a broad range of potential Russian misdeeds, and the Treasury Department placed limits on purchasing Russian sovereign debt, though in a restrained manner that could later be ratcheted up and made considerably more painful.

The president foreshadowed the coming sanctions to Mr. Putin in an April 13 call in which he also reiterated the U.S. commitment to support Ukraine, a commitment that the administration has stressed publicly (if Mr. Putin was bothered by Mr. Biden’s “killer” comment in a mid-March press interview, he apparently said nothing during the call). In remarks to the press two days later, Mr. Biden noted that Washington could have imposed harsher penalties, but he had chosen proportionate measures. He added that he did not want an escalatory cycle with Moscow but sought “a stable, predictable relationship.”

Stable and predictable may be as good as it can get in the near term. In both of his calls with his Russian counterpart, Mr. Biden has raised areas—such as arms control and strategic stability—where U.S. and Russian interests should coincide. Secretary of State Tony Blinken and National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan have echoed these points. While virtually all Trump political appointees were let go when Mr. Biden took office, one notable exception was John Sullivan, the ambassador in Moscow. And the president proposed that he and Putin meet this summer.

The Biden administration believes that, even with U.S.-Russian relations at a post-Cold War nadir, the two countries can do business on certain questions where they have mutual interests. In addition to using arms control to manage their nuclear competition, the sides presumably share an interest in blunting the nuclear ambitions of Iran and North Korea. As U.S. and NATO military forces prepare to leave Afghanistan, neither Washington nor Moscow has anything to gain from chaos or a return of the Taliban to power.

The president thus has correctly laid out the possibility of some positive engagement along with measures holding Russia to account for misbehavior. His ability to pursue both of those tracks, however, will depend in part on Kremlin actions.

Arrested immediately on his return to Moscow in January, Mr. Navalny now is in dire health in a Russian prison. His death would spark an uproar in the West. More critically, while the menacing Russian military movements around Ukraine likely aim just to unnerve Kyiv and, at the same time, test Mr. Biden’s reaction (as well as that of the West more broadly), a Russian military incursion remains a distinct possibility.

Such an attack would provoke a deep crisis in relations between the West and Russia. Washington and its European partners almost certainly would respond with new and more punishing sanctions. And should that happen, a summer summit, as well as real effort to work together on selected issues where the countries’ interests converge, could get booted a long way down the road.

Originally for Brookings