The international relations between the USA and Russia were at its lowest before the 2024 elections. De facto, the two countries were in two proxy wars within the last three years – the one in Syria and the one in Ukraine. Russia officially blamed the USA to be the major player behind both these conflicts and was one step ahead from declaring the USA an official party in the Ukrainian conflict, which could lead to uncontrolled escalation of the conflict.
In the near past, the two countries were the major rivals on the global political arena during the Cold War. Being ideological opponents (state-organized and communitarist communism vs. individualistic-oriented and competition-based liberalism), they also competed for influence in the Global South, including Africa, South America, Middle East, and East Asia, especially China. Indirectly or directly, they were involved in wars against each other (proxy wars), like the one in Vietnam. In the media sphere, the rivalry was also strong and reached the levels of the UN and UNESCO, where the doctrine of ‘new information order’ (by the USSR) opposed the one of ‘free information flow’ (by the USA).
The fall of the Soviet Union was perceived globally as an ideological loss of the USSR, and Russia as its heir. This has led to the growth of influence by the US to many aspects of political, cultural, and everyday life of Russians. The relations between Russia and the USA warmed nearly to the extent compared to the mid-1940s, the time of the Yalta conference of the World War II winner allies.
However, by 2007, it became clear that NATO, led and mostly sponsored by the USA, has not stopped its expansion to the East, with Georgia and Ukraine being invited to the process of discussion on joining the military alliance. Russia clearly perceived this as a major threat to its national security, which was declared in the Munich speech by Vladimir Putin in 2007. In 2008, Russia undertook a ‘peace enforcement operation’ in Georgia; as a result, two Georgian regions that bordered Russia declared independence which froze the conflict, and Georgia lost the chance to enter NATO due to having an ongoing conflict on its territory (which goes against several clauses of the NATO statute).
Since 2008, the relations between NATO and Russia, as well as between Russia and the USA, have been worsening. This explicated in range of ‘color revolutions’ and coup d’etat attempts in the post-Soviet republics, including the ‘orange revolution’ of 2004 and the Maidan revolt in 2013-2014 in Ukraine. Due to the growing pressure from the West, Russia has been considering the USA a major threat to its security; the positions of the two countries in the UN Security Council have been diverging, reaching open confrontation from time to time. In 2014, Russia conducted a military-supported referendum in the Crimea, followed by referenda in four more Ukrainian regions in the 2020s, for their transfer under Russian rule, which is till today not recognized by most countries in the world.
In the years before February 2022, the USA one-sidedly breached the Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty (START II) on bilateral control of strategic atomic missiles by transferring significant parts of its strategic arsenal to other types of arms (like ‘training-oriented’ or ‘re-equipped/converted’), which Russia openly recognized as a breach of strategic parity for over 100 units of strategic armory, especially given that Russia fulfilled the demands of the Treaty completely. The talks on START III have led to exchange of diplomatic notes on prolongation of START in 2020-2021, however the Trump administration noted that, in the then form, the Treaty did not correspond to American interests. In 2023, after a series of strikes by the Ukrainian army (with the help of the NATO-provided armory and the US satellite support) that aimed at the strategic objects covered by the Treaty, Russia has suspended its participation in it while still fulfilling its demands.
In 2020, the USA has also withdrawn from the so-called ‘Open Sky’ agreement on controllable observation flights signed by 33 countries as for 2025, and a range of other bilateral treaties that used to ensure the (fragile and already much pro-American) balance of power between the two superpowers. These unfriendly moves were fiercely criticized by the Russian President and government, taken as signs of critical preparedness to an open conflict with Russia. In February 2022, after a range of closed-doors talks in 2021-2022 with the USA and moderator countries (Germany, France, and Poland) where the agreement, evidently, was not reached, Russia undertook what it called a ‘special military operation’ in Ukraine, which became a major military conflict on the European territory since the Second World War and was still ongoing in the times of 2024 US elections.
In 2018, the Biden administration underlined the necessity of the US defense doctrine to include the possibility of a preventive strike (see Nuclear Posture Review, 2018) and called Russia a major threat in March 2022. Russia, in 2024, reciprocated with changes of its nuclear doctrine (Presidental Decree, 2024), so that it included the nuclear response to an attack by a non-nuclear state supported by a nuclear one (considered by the West as an anti-NATO move). However, the preventive strike was not included in the Russian doctrine by the time of the 2024 USA elections.
Even in the times of the Cold War, the connections between the two countries were not that much destroyed/cancelled. Mostly during the Biden administration, diplomatic communication practically ceased to be conducted, general consulates of both countries were closed, and the US visas became extremely hardly reachable for Russians (the only official site for application was Warsaw, Poland, but Poland restricted Russians from flying into the country). The ‘ghosts of the Cold War’ revived in the public discourse of the two countries to a large extent, and the media engaged into spin discourses where fact-based reporting was accompanied by biased commentary and fear-evoking claims.
Thus, we consider the relations between the USA and Russia to have the form of confrontation during the research period.
References
[Nuclear Posture Review, 2018] Nuclear Posture Review. Office of The USA Secretary of Defense. February 2018. URL: https://fas.org/initiative/nuclear-information-project/, last assessed April 22, 2025.
[Presidential Decree, 2024] Decree of the President of the Russian Federation No. 991 dated November 19, 2024 ‘On Approval of the Fundamentals of the State Policy of the Russian Federation in the field of nuclear Deterrence.’ November 2024. URL: https://www.garant.ru/products/ipo/prime/doc/410653348/, last assessed April 22, 2025.