Even if the United States succeeds in its
last-ditch effort to prevent Russia’s annexation of Crimea, the
Ukrainian crisis will have long-lasting reverberations for U.S. foreign policy.
For the past five years, the Obama administration’s focus has been on limiting
overseas commitments while shifting resources from Europe and the Middle East
to Asia. The current standoff with Moscow will almost certainly make that
harder. In addition to further eroding the U.S.-Russian relationship, it will
force Washington to take European security more seriously, reduce the prospects
for a negotiated outcome in Syria, and limit the scope and ambitions of
Washington’s Asia rebalance.

The most direct impact of the current standoff will be on Washington’s
relationship with Moscow. Although the U.S.-Russia “reset” was a signal
achievement of Obama’s first term, bilateral relations have cooled
significantly in recent years. With tension mounting over Russia’s support for Bashar
al-Assad regime in Syria, crackdown on dissent and gay rights at home, and
decision to grant asylum to NSA leaker Edward Snowden, the Obama administration
made a conscious decision to de-prioritize relations with Moscow, cancelling a
September 2013 summit and refusing to send a high-level government delegation to
the Sochi Olympics.

Nevertheless, Washington attempted to preserve limited cooperation
in order to broker an end to the Syrian civil war and roll back Iran’s nuclear
program. Even before the crisis in Ukraine, it was becoming clear that a second
round of Syria talks in Geneva were going nowhere, and that the fate of an
Iranian nuclear deal would depend on direct contacts between Washington and
Tehran. Coupled with the drawdown of U.S. forces in Afghanistan (a priority
area for U.S.-Russian cooperation during the reset), these developments were
already reducing Washington’s interest in partnership with Moscow. With its
need for Russian cooperation significantly reduced, the invasion of Ukraine sets
the stage for the U.S. to further disengage, and to pursue a harder line toward
Moscow, likely for several years.

But it’s not just relations with the Kremlin that will be
affected. America’s European allies have frequently accused the Obama administration
of taking Europe for granted. To the extent that these criticisms are
justified, they reflected a belief within the administration that European
security — Washington’s principal foreign policy concern for the past century
— had been solved and that it was time for Europe to become a producer, rather
than a consumer, of security. Unfortunately, the Ukrainian crisis has called
that assumption into question.

At least until President Vladimir Putin exits the Kremlin for
good, Washington is going to have to focus more on sustaining its NATO alliance
commitments and providing reassurance to vulnerable states on Europe’s
periphery, even if doing so undermines the Obama administration’s desire to
simultaneously slash defense spending and divert resources from Europe to Asia.
Washington has already taken some short-term, mostly symbolic measures to reassure
its allies, including holding Article
4 consultations within NATO (invoked when a member state believes its security
or independence is threatened) and dispatching additional fighter jets to the
Baltic states and personnel to Poland. In the wake of the current crisis, the United
States may also need to reconsider its 2012 decision to withdraw two full
brigade combat teams from Europe as a cost-saving measure, and possibly
consider the re-deployment of forces from traditional bases in Germany
to NATO’s eastern flank. Similarly, the Ukraine crisis will strengthen
opposition on Capitol Hill to Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel’s plan to impose
cost savings on the Pentagon by slashing the size of U.S. land forces following
their withdrawal from Afghanistan.

Russian aggression against Ukraine will also re-open the perennial
debate about NATO expansion. NATO’s 2008 Bucharest summit, which first promised
Georgia a path into the alliance — and factored into Russia’s decision to
invade South
Ossetia in 2008 — made a similar commitment to Ukraine, then led by the
pro-Western President Viktor Yushchenko. Though Yanukovych withdrew Kyiv’s
application to NATO in 2010, Ukraine’s recent upheaval is sure to put this
issue back on the table.

Depending on the outcome of the scheduled May 25 election,
Ukraine’s new government may well seek a renewed path into NATO — especially
if Russia attempts to annex Crimea, removing more than one million ethnic
Russians from Ukraine’s electorate and further stoking anti-Russian sentiment
elsewhere. Ukrainian NATO membership would likely provoke Moscow into a larger
scale use of force, which in turn could lead to a rupture within NATO if allies
proved reluctant to uphold the alliance’s mutual security commitment. Starting
now, Washington will need to handle this issue with extraordinary strategic
foresight, balancing Ukrainians’ right to choose their own future with recognition
that a precipitous move toward NATO could prove disastrous.

Of course, the implications of the Ukrainian crisis extend beyond
Europe. Though the Geneva talks were already on the road to failure, the
invasion of Crimea likely eliminates the possibility that the international
community will be able to impose a solution on Syria. Assad reportedly
believes the Ukrainian crisis gives him a window to pursue an outright military
victory. Since directly arming Syria’s fractious rebels still risks empowering
a range of extremist, anti-Western groups, Washington’s options are narrowing,
and it may soon have to resign itself to the prospect of Assad continuing to
preside over a brutalized, unstable Syria.

Meanwhile, the administration’s Pacific ambitions may also be
stymied. The corollary to Obama’s belief that European security had been solved
was the decision to rebalance U.S. resources to Asia. The factors driving the
rebalance, including Asia’s economic dynamism and the potential for a rising
China to precipitate conflicts with neighbors, will not change. Nevertheless,
Washington’s ability to give substance to its rebalance strategy will be
limited by the need to take European security more seriously.

Within Asia, Washington’s challenge will be to reassure nervous
allies like Japan and the Philippines that the Ukrainian crisis does not imply
a weakening commitment to the principle of territorial integrity. It will also
have to prevent an increasingly isolated, paranoid Russia from pursuing a
strategic alignment with China. Fortunately, Russia’s disregard for Ukrainian
sovereignty plays poorly in Beijing, and even a Russia increasingly alienated
from the West will be reluctant to become China’s junior partner. Japan,
meanwhile, remains eager to deepen cooperation with Russia, but recognizes that
Moscow’s actions in Ukraine make that prospect more remote. As a result, Asia
may be the only part of the world where U.S. and Russian interests will
continue on largely parallel tracks, even if active cooperation is now
unlikely. At best, Washington can provide quiet support for the efforts of
Japan, South Korea, Vietnam, and others to deepen economic and security ties
with Russia, which remain in the longer term U.S. interest regardless of
developments in Ukraine. At worst, it will struggle to promote a stable,
prosperous Asia as it copes with a wider conflict on the borders of Europe.

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