Why it’s a bad idea to close US consulates in Russia
Withdrawing diplomats in response to bad behavior is self-defeating, particularly for the United States.
Paul J. Welch Behringer is a postdoctoral fellow at the Center for Presidential History at Southern Methodist University. A historian of U.S.-Russian-Japanese relations, in 2017-18 his archival research in Vladivostok and Moscow was supported by a Fulbright award and American Councils Title VIII funding. He is a former Ernest May Fellow in History and Policy at Harvard Kennedy School’s Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs, and earned his Ph.D. in History from American University (2020). He is writing an international history of the U.S. and Japanese intervention in the Russian Civil War.
Withdrawing diplomats in response to bad behavior is self-defeating, particularly for the United States.