As US-Russian relations scrape the depths of cold-war antagonism, the promise of partnership that beguiled American administrations during the first post-Soviet decades increasingly appears to have been false from the start. Why did American leaders persist in pursuing it? Was there another path that would have produced more constructive relations or better prepared Washington to face the challenge Russia poses today? With a practitioner's eye honed during decades of work on Russian affairs, Thomas Graham deftly traces the evolution of opposing ideas of national purpose that created an inherent tension in relations. Getting Russia Right identifies the blind spots that prevented Washington from seeing Russia as it really is and crafting a policy to advance American interests without provoking an aggressive Russian response. Distilling the Putin factor to reveal the contours of the Russia challenge facing the United States whenever he departs the scene, Graham lays out a compelling way to deal with it so that the United States can continue to advance its interests in a rapidly changing world.

Thomas Graham is a distinguished fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations. He has worked on Soviet and Russian affairs for the past 40 years in and out of government. He served as the senior director for Russia on the National Security Council staff during the George W. Bush administration and as a political officer at the American Embassy in Moscow for eight years just before and after the breakup of the Soviet Union. His writings on Russian domestic politics and foreign policy and US-Russian relations have appeared in Foreign Affairs, Foreign Policy, the New York Times, Financial Times, Washington Post, and Wall Street Journal, as well as in leading Russian news media.