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RUSSIA-U.S. RELATIONS: WHAT NEXT?
DMITRY TRENIN, ALEXEI ARBATOV,
The Carnegie Moscow Center, Russia
Dmitry TRENIN, deputy director, leading fellow of the Carnegie Moscow Center
According to Russia’s President Dmitry Medvedev, the armed conflict between Georgia and Russia has changed the world. This may be an exaggeration, but in fact the war has changed the Russian foreign policy, it deeply influences Russia’s economy and Moscow's relations with the West and the New Independent States.
The point is Moscow does not want to follow the current rules of the world order and wants to develop the new rules of the play.
I believe that the twenty-year period of formally friendly relations between Russia and the USA can come to an end and the cooperation between the two countries can give place to rivalry. The 08/08/08 Caucasian events should be considered in the context of change of Russia’s relations with the Western countries, in particular with the USA.
Let's start from Mikhail Gorbachev’s speech to the UN in December 1988 when he announced that the Soviet Union had made a decision on reducing its armed forces on a unilateral basis and, as a matter of fact, that the Soviet foreign policy would change dramatically. That speech was followed by the Strasbourg speech where Gorbachev spoke about the universal values and the “common European home”, and to confirm his words, he, in fact, sanctioned the overthrow of the pro-Soviet regimes in Eastern Europe and Germany’s unification.
In the 1990s the President of Russia Boris Yeltsin worked towards country’s integration into the Western community even more actively but, in my opinion, the West stopped regarding the relations with Russia as the priority of its foreign policy pretty soon. Russia was a really weak country; it seemed that there was no sense in dealing with it.
In the wake of the 9/11 events Russian President Vladimir Putin sought to move toward a strategic partnership with the USA. But shortly after that Washington more and more focused on the Middle East, in particular Iraq issues. The U.S. authorities cooled off the idea of partnership with Moscow. After the war in Iraq and the ‘Yukos case’ Moscow actually ceased the cooperation with the USA.
Moscow wanted the USA and the EU to treat it as their equal partner. The USA and its allies found those claims excessive and groundless, so they were not honored. The Munich speech delivered by Vladimir Putin in 2007 was the Kremlin’s desperate attempts to make the West its partner.
Georgia’s attack on South Ossetia as well as Russia’s bold response resulted in the establishing of quite a new situation. In many respects, Moscow’s actions in Georgia resembled those of the war in the Balkans in 1999. Moscow adopted those peculiarities of the American foreign policy that it had criticized sharply at one time.
The situation in the former Soviet Union is a stumbling block in the relations between Moscow and Washington. As far back as 2002 this complicated building a strategic partnership. Now Washington believes that it was inadmissible for Moscow to wage the war in Georgia, while Russia thinks that it was inadmissible for the USA to allow the Georgian authorities to assault South Ossetia.
Evidently, the both parties see a tendency in the Georgian events. The USA is worried about Russia’s plans concerning Ukraine while Moscow is worried about the U.S. support for some political forces in Ukraine and calls for this country to join NATO. The both sides have firm intentions. The Kremlin stated that the CIS is the sphere of Russia’s influence and that neither the U.S. bases nor NATO member states should be there.
Washington refuses to recognize what it calls the Kremlin’s ‘Monroe Doctrine’. Here the U.S. hegemonism clashes with Russia's imperialism. This situation cannot be called the Cold War since there is neither ideological confrontation (at least, on the part of Russia), nor military and political clashes (at least, now). At present, the Russo-American relations are not the basis of the international relations system. Russia has no allies; while the U.S. allies have no concord. But this does not mean that the current situation is better than it was during the Cold War, in some respect it is even worse.
Currently, there are much less restrictive factors. For example, there is no comparative military and political parity that was typical of the Cold War period. The USA does not consider Moscow to be its competitor. Today some people look upon Russia as a “large Iran” rather than a “small Soviet Union”. There are no rules of the game recognized by both parties, which is quite alarming.
I am concerned about the fact that because of the confrontation between Russia and the USA the modernization agenda may not be implemented in Russia. I think that modernization’s giving way to mobilization would be a catastrophe for Russia. On the other hand, if the Russian political leaders come to realize that in order to compete with the West, Russia itself will have to become a modern and a ‘Western’ country, this competition may give impetus to Russia's modernization.
Of course, Russia is interested in easing the confrontation with the USA and working out the rules of the game that would regard the interests of both Moscow and Washington. Russia should develop the relations with Europe and other countries, and domestically, step up its efforts to build a law-based state, to fight corruption and to create an independent judicial system.
So, the situation is very dangerous and complicated, but at the same time it is possible to find new approaches to solve the long-standing problems. Those include the security issues in Europe, the relations between the CIS member states and the relations between Russia and the USA that should not use the improbable slogan of the strategic partnership as a cover any more.
Alexei ARBATOV, head of the International Security Center at the Institute of World Economy and International Relations of the Russian Academy of Sciences, member of the Academic Council of the Carnegie Moscow Center
Moscow and Washington cannot be put on an equal footing now. But Russia seeks to prove that it cannot be treated like in the 1990s any longer. The USA tries to show that it still keeps its head above water and can respond to all the challenges.
At the present time there are no common rules of the play as well as stipulated or, at least, unofficial "spheres of influence". The former Soviet Union, which Russia declared its "sphere of influence", is not recognized by the USA. And, for example, Latin America is no longer recognized by Russia to be the U.S. “backyard”. Moscow is intensifying its cooperation with Latin America to demonstrate its influence in the region.
The Russian-Georgian crisis indicated that the multipolar system, which I consider to be more stable than any other, really exists. The crisis favored the system development in a large measure. For the first time Moscow’s hostilities did not consolidate the NATO member states; Europe acted as a mediator between Russia and the USA.
Such countries as China, India, Belarus, Kazakhstan and Armenia were in no hurry to support Russia, but, instead, played coy, which once more emphasizes the development of the multipolar system. Over the long term, this fact will prove its positivity.
As regards the development of the Russo-American relations, I can make three recommendations. Firstly, it is necessary to put up with the fact that Kosovo, Abkhazia and South Ossetia became independent. This is a precedent, but is not a common tendency. One should not make those events a bone of contention.
Secondly, there is a need to solve the issue of Ukraine, where the situation is the most dangerous today. We should drop all talks of nations’ having the right to join any blocs on the one hand, and of right of nations to self-determination in the case of the Crimea and East Ukraine on the other hand. Russia and the USA must come to terms about the rules helping them to avoid a crisis: there is no need to make Ukraine join NATO, and Russia should guarantee Ukraine’s territorial integrity.
Thirdly, it is necessary to develop the Russo-American cooperation in other spheres, such as fight against terrorism, disarmament and non-proliferation of nuclear weapons. There is a need to make headway taking into account the lessons of modern history.
The material is based on the experts’ addresses to the roundtable “Russia-U.S. relations: What next?” held on September 19 by the Carnegie Moscow Center as part of the program “Foreign policy and security”.
October 6, 2008
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