Just hours after reports that Malaysian Airlines flight 17 had been shot down over eastern Ukraine, the stark reality that 298 civilians from nearly a dozen nations had just become the latest victims in a Russian-backed separatist movement came as somewhat of a jolt.
All were dead. Locals reported bodies falling from the sky into a field dotted with sunflowers.
It happened in a part of the world where Russian President Vladimir Putin’s annexation of Crimea and the eruption of fighting in the east had already severely strained U.S.-Russia relations.
Now the downing of MH17 and the possibility that Russia could have armed and trained Ukrainian rebels to use surface-to-air weaponry needed to shoot the jet out of the sky brought new diplomatic challenges.
For the Obama administration, it was yet another test of its policy towards the Kremlin, which, along with the European Union, has relied on ramping up targeted sanctions to deter Putin.
“The developments are starting [to] unfold very quickly,” said Yuri Felshtinsky, a Russian author and historian who has close ties to some of Putin’s most vocal critics. “I think President Obama could, of course, use this opportunity to change his position drastically.”
Six years ago, the American vision of what of U.S.-Russian relations might be was more hopeful.
Early in President Obama’s first term, the president announced he was hitting the button to , with the goal of reversing what he called a “dangerous drift in an important bilateral relationship.”
"I think the reset was a useful idea,” said Simon Saradzhyan, a research fellow at Harvard University’s Belfer Center and assistant director of the U.S.-Russia Initiative to Prevent Nuclear Terrorism. “It generated tangible benefits for the U.S. and for Russia.
“Things like [a] new START [Treaty], 123 Agreement or transit to Afghanistan or [a] new round of sanctions on Iran,” he said. “These things advanced U.S. interests and Russian interests.”
From the American perspective, the point of reset was that it was better to have Russia cooperating with the United States on important national security issues than not. The thinking was that success of tricky negotations for such initiatives was far more likely.
Michael McFaul, a key architect of the reset policy who served as the American ambassador to Russia from 2012 until February of this year, was quoted as saying one of the away was because “Putin decided it wasn’t in the interest of Russia the way he defines it.”
Putin calculated demonizing the United States instead of cooperating would get him what he wanted: an economically and militarily strong Russia that would take its rightful place on the world stage, according to McFaul’s published comments.
For Saradzhyan, the fizzling of the Russia reset had more to do with a dearth of common ground.
“They had picked all the low hanging fruit, and they were left with things they couldn’t agree on for years, such as missile defense,” he said.
In March, the Crimea land grab rippled like a tectonic shift. How to respond to what, in essence, is a redrawing of the map of Europe?
Obama and the European Union immediately denounced Putin and slapped sanctions on members of his inner circle. Those bans have been tightened by both the U.S. and the EU, but critics say Europe’s reluctance to impose the kind of sanctions that would bite Russia’s energy sector shows the West has been weak in confronting Putin.
While there is widespread agreement among experts that Putin most likely had not planned on annexing the region, some say the Obama administration should have at least entertained the possibility once Ukrainian President Victor Yanukovych fled Kiev after his refusal to sign a deal with the European Union unleashed a fury of street protests.
“Just looking at the record, it strikes me that the administration really failed at that point,” said Thomas Graham, a Russia expert who served on the National Security Council in the Bush White House and is now a managing director at Kissinger Associates, Inc.
To be caught so “flat-footed” raises some important questions about exactly where the administration was on its Russian foreign policy, Graham added.
"To what extent did the [Obama] administration, as it was dealing with Ukraine over the past year, actually think through how this would impact on Russia, what the possible Russian responses would be, and how effective those responses would be?” he asked.
Saradzhyan agrees there was a lack of foresight on the part of the Obama administration that the key moment was the end of Yanukovych’s reign.