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“Russia, which the Trump administration had subsumed into the NSC directorate for European affairs, will again be given its own NSC director” under Biden https://www.washingtonpost.com/national-security/biden-nsc-covid-climate-cyber-china/2021/01/08/85a31cba-5158-11eb-83e3-322644d82356_story.html
The new role of senior director for Russia and Central Asia will be filled by former NIC official Andrea Kendall-Taylor.
Kendall-Taylor is currently “Russia policy lead for the Biden-Harris Transition.” https://buildbackbetter.gov/press-releases/president-elect-joe-biden-and-vice-president-elect-kamala-harris-announce-additional-members-of-the-national-security-council/
Here’s Kendall-Taylor speaking on the efficacy of Russia sanctions in 2019 alongside incoming NSC official Peter Harrell and Jim Goldgeier and Andrew Weiss, both of whom served in the NSC Russia role under Clinton. http://loc.gov/item/webcast-8755/
Some excerpts: AKT favors “a more targeted approach to sanctions, given that it’s unlikely, in my view, that the sanctions would have much of an effect on Putin’s calculus and his approach to foreign policy.”
She notes that with targeted sanctions, “if there was some sort of exogenous event, say the Tunisian fruit vendor … you’re weakening [elites’] loyalty bonds to Putin, such that maybe the elite won’t rally behind Putin in that kind of situation.”
With economic sanctions, “one of the costs is that we start alienating Russians. And then the United States is not well positioned for a post Putin Russia.”
AKT also warns of “driving Russia and China closer together”: “If they don’t perceive that there is an off ramp to the sanctions, then the elite and the Kremlin and the Russian people will think that there is not an option in the West.”
AKT stressed “clearly articulat[ing] what the off ramp is”: “What is the behavior that we would need to see to delist people from the sanctions list.”
AKT called fighting malign finance a priority for the U.S., if only because Russia’s regime, as “a highly personalized authoritarian regime,” is “reliant on corruption and the distribution of patronage to maintain … support.”
Fighting malign finance “is a way to really strangle the kind of currency or to limit the currency that the regime relies on.” AKT also points to “do[ing] things in close coordination with our European allies and partners” as “the most effective deterrent” against Russia.
Also clear that AKT was following domestic developments in Russia at the time — not always a given. “[T]here’s a lot of signs of public dissatisfaction, kind of an increasingly vocal minority with the pension protests and … United Russia … los[ing] a couple of seats.”
