Survival: Global Politics and Strategy, vol. 51, no. 5, October–November 2009, pp. 227–231
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I
US President Barack Obama’s visit to Moscow in July 2009 had been anticipated with both hope and anxiety. With his unique personal style and popularity, Obama was arguably the one who could put to rest once and for all the Cold War legacy in US–Russian relations by reducing nuclear-weapon stockpiles and replacing geopolitical rivalry in post-Soviet Central Asia with cooperation to stabilise Afghanistan. In Russia, optimists hoped that America’s economic problems and its preoccupation with Iraq, Iran and Afghanistan could make it possible for Obama to offer real concessions on NATO enlargement and ballistic-missile defence.
Sceptics were no less vocal in expressing opposition, even hostility, to the notion of ‘resetting’ US–Russian relations. In the United States many called Obama naive to seek rapprochement with a Russia that had adopted a nineteenth-century ‘spheres of influence’ paradigm and had been less than helpful in addressing new security challenges such as nuclear non-proliferation or energy security. In Europe many wondered whether US relations with Russia would be reset at their expense. In Russia, too, sceptics were quick to argue against trusting Obama’s rhetoric.
The summit changed few minds. Western critics saw few practical achievements and major gaps between positions even on the least contentious issues such as arms control, and they attacked Obama for being too soft on Russia’s drift towards authoritarianism. Russian pessimists pointed out that Moscow had again offered practical help on transit of supplies to Afghanistan but received nothing concrete on its issues of greatest concern, such as missile defence or NATO enlargement.
The real problem in US–Russian relations is not, however, whether the two countries are allies or enemies, but their difficulty building what can be called ‘normal’ relations. Washington and Moscow share no clear understanding of important common interests, and have shown no recent capacity to interact on issues of common concern or clear disagreement in a manner that builds trust. Relations are stuck on an emotional rollercoaster in which expectations, misunderstandings, memories and insecurities are translated into the language of geopolitics, suspicions and threats. Such relations are unstable and vulnerable to sudden mood swings. It is particularly worrying that the new generation of experts and officials in both Russia and the United States is just as invested emotionally as the last, with an even cloudier vision of what it means to solve problems jointly.
II
Obama’s expressed intent to reset relations was a fantastic public-relations move. The media has translated the term into foreign languages and supplemented it with a new techno-strategic vocabulary. Russians have learned to say ‘reset’ just as Americans once grasped the Russian word ‘perestroika’. (It is interesting that the two words refer to similar concepts.)
But the ‘reset’ metaphor is both vague and misleading. It creates a false impression that could haunt relations for years to come. First of all, it presupposes that a one-off gesture can fix things, and secondly, it implies that there is a point in history to which relations should return to be more productive...
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Oksana Antonenko is IISS Senior Fellow (Russia and Eurasia) and a Contributing Editor to Survival.
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