More than any transactional process of concession-based “reset” between the U.S. and Russia, what is most likely to improve Russia’s behavior and relationship with the West is the success of these countries (in part because it would also serve as a powerful and inspiring example to the Russian people). ~Sens, Kyl, Johnson, Sessions, and Crapo

This gets things backward. The “reset” was meant to improve U.S.-Russian relations, and it has largely done that. It was not intended to improve Russian behavior toward its neighbors, but improved relations between Russia and many of its neighbors have been a fortunate result of the reduced tensions between the U.S. and Russia. If we would like to see a return to extremely poor relations and heightened tensions between Russia and many of its neighbors, we should follow the Senators’ recommendations.

If the U.S. keeps trying to use the small states on Russia’s border as front-line states to put pressure on Russia, Russia is likely to treat those states worse than it otherwise would. If the “success of these countries” is seen as an effort to diminish Russian influence on its borders, Russia will probably conclude that it has a reason to sabotage that success. These Senators seem to be suggesting is that the U.S. should use these small states to goad and provoke Russia in the strange hope that this will make Russia more cooperative with those states and with the U.S. This is like so much misguided U.S. policy towards Russia and the former Soviet republics over the last two decades.

In practice for policy towards Georgia, ensuring the “success” of these countries is focused to a much greater degree on military support and cooperation:

Despite the 2008 Russian invasion into South Ossetia and Abkhazia, Georgian prospects are more hopeful. The dynamic leadership of Mikheil Saakashvili is modeled on the economic principles of Ronald Reagan and Milton Friedman. With Russian troops still occupying one-fifth of this country and nearly 1,000 Georgian troops fighting alongside U.S. forces in Afghanistan, Georgia has requested and should be allowed to buy defensive weapons from the United States. Likewise, Georgia, as a future NATO member, is an excellent site to support missile defense of the U.S. and Europe. Economic cooperation in the form of a free-trade agreement with the U.S. and admission into the European Union would also help ensure Georgia’s long-term success.

Part of this is misleading. The main problem most pro-Georgian hawks had with the August 2008 war wasn’t that Russia moved forces into South Ossetia to expel a Georgian attack, though they weren’t happy about that, but that Russian forces then went beyond South Ossetia to attack targets in the rest of Georgia. The authors can’t acknowledge that Saakashvili escalated the conflict in the beginning, and so they invent a story of the Russian “invasion” of South Ossetia and Abkhazia. Georgia is not going to be a member of NATO in the future, and I can imagine few things more likely to irritate Moscow than a missile defense proposal based in Georgia. Aside from the trade proposal, which may or may not be advisable, these are all truly terrible ideas.

On the question of selling any weapons to Georgia, Joshua Kucera had a recent article in The Atlantic on why this would be a mistake:

Even if Georgia were armed to the teeth, however, it’s not clear how much good it would do them. Russia’s military is so much stronger than Georgia’s that additional weapons would be a moot point. Or worse: Though Georgia repeatedly emphasizes that it is only seeking “defensive” weapons, any defensive weapon makes aggression easier by improving defense against a counterattack. Georgia touts the threat of a Russian attack, but it was in fact Georgia which fired the first shots that precipitated the 2008 war with Russia, in an apparent belief that Russia would stand idly by.

In a paper published earlier this year, two scholars of the region, Cory Welt and Samuel Charap, argue that providing Georgia with weapons would perpetuate a “Berlin Wall mentality” of eternal conflict, and block the path that Georgia really needs to take with regard to its lost territories of Abkhazia and South Ossetia. That, Welt and Charap write, is the slow, painstaking process of “conflict transformation that reduces tensions, brings people together across the conflict lines, creates trust, builds trade links, and normalizes contacts among authorities.”

But subtlety is not Saakashvili’s strong suit. While American weapons may not make any difference on the ground, they would be a tangible sign of hard support from the West, which Saakashvili clearly craves.

It’s important to remember that Saakashvili took it for granted that the U.S. would support Georgia in any conflict after Georgia received what he interpreted as a tangible sign of support from the West at the NATO summit in Bucharest. Giving or selling Georgia any weapons would repeat that mistake, and it could contribute to a new crisis. At the very least, as Charap and Welt have explained, it is not going to help settle outstanding disputes with South Ossetia and Abkhazia, and it is definitely going to do nothing to improve relations between Russia and the U.S. or Russia and Georgia.

For the Baltics, the Senators have come up with a new, unusually bad recommendation: have the Baltic states host tactical nuclear weapons that other European states no longer want. Remember that several of the authors of this op-ed complained bitterly that tactical nuclear weapons were not part of a strategic arms reduction treaty that they desperately tried to derail. Reducing or eliminating the threat of tactical nuclear weapons doesn’t seem to be their priority here. Instead, they want to alarm and antagonize Russia by moving these tactical weapons to Russia’s doorstep. Considering how badly missile defense installations in Poland and the Czech Republic went over with Moscow, it is easy to see why this is a disastrous recommendation if the goal is to improve relations between Russia and its neighbors.