The refusal of Russia to extradite former National Security Agency contractor Edward Snowden has further discredited the naïve “reset” policy, but the lack of understanding that gave birth to it was visible to the end.

U.S. secretary of state John Kerry on Monday urged the Russian authorities to “do the right thing” and return Snowden for trial. He apparently assumed that such considerations motivate them. Russian foreign secretary Sergei Lavrov’s reply was predictably contemptuous. He said any attempt to accuse Russia of violating U.S. laws was “absolutely ungrounded and unacceptable.”

Snowden is now almost certainly being debriefed by Russian intelligence. Since the Kremlin has the power to send Snowden back to the U.S., where he could face life imprisonment, the conversation is likely to be very one-sided. But even without this, Snowden — like Julian Assange, who hosts a program on Russia Today — is probably so deluded that he does not grasp that he is not only endangering the security of millions of Americans but doing so at the behest of a hostile foreign power.

Russia is ruled by a criminal oligarchy, and the purpose of its foreign policy is to assure that that oligarchy remains in power. To this end, it seeks to weaken and frustrate the U.S. at every turn.

The Russian intelligence services will, of course, do whatever they can to get information from Snowden that will allow them to foil U.S. efforts to combat industrial espionage and money laundering. Their true goal, however, is more general: to impose terms on the United States such that American policy serves the interests of Russians rulers in the same way that Russian policy does. Snowden, in this respect, is a useful tool. The information that he revealed has weakened the American intelligence services, but they will be weakened a great deal more if he is not brought to justice. His exploitation at the hands of Russia will make it more difficult for them to fulfill their only real task: protecting American citizens.

The safety of American civilians, however, means little to the Russian leaders. They are indifferent to the lives of their own citizens, let alone ours. As a result, the appearance of Snowden gives the Russians a precious opportunity to show that any attempt to base U.S.-Russian relations on civilized values will come at a cost to the U.S. It is one more example of the way in which a democratic society is vulnerable to the actions of those who betray its trust. But it is not a reason to depart from the effort to bring Snowden to justice or to define U.S.-Russian relations on Russian terms.  

— David Satter is an adviser to the Russian Service of Radio Liberty and is affiliated with the Hudson Institute and Johns Hopkins University. His documentary film, Age of Delirium, about the fall of the Soviet Union, won the 2013 Grand Jury Prize at the Amsterdam Film Festival.