Since coming to power in 2000, Putin’s foreign policy has increasingly been guided by what might be called the “Putin Doctrine”: prioritizing the recovery for the Russian state of the political, economic, and geostrategic assets lost in the Soviet collapse. Accordingly, Moscow sought to assert Russian dominance in the post-Soviet space; gain control over the country’s politics, economy, courts, and key media; and boost the regime’s legitimacy through a “besieged fortress” propaganda campaign with increasingly anti-American overtones. Although the Putin Doctrine has proven compatible with some of the key priorities of Obama’s first-term foreign policy, the common ground has shrunk, leaving the United States to choose between revisiting the reset policy or taking a strategic pause to rethink the direction of its Russia policy while continuing frank dialogue with the Kremlin and cooperating where possible. Regardless of the specific course, however, the overarching metagoal ought to be helping Russia progress toward genuine democracy.