17 July 2009: Russia Profile
After the Summit: More Efforts Are Needed to Transform U.S.-Russian Relations
As the hype around the recent summit in Moscow subsides, the true extent of change in U.S. Russian relations and the problems that remain is becoming clear. Those problems are familiar: further tensions over missile defense, Iran, and the future of Georgia and Ukraine, are all but inevitable. Rather, the July summit underscored an understanding on both sides that there can be no revolution in relations, and only a slow evolution will erase the legacy of the Cold War.
U.S. President Barack Obama’s visit to Moscow has been long anticipated both by the proponents and the opponents of the famous ‘reset button’. The results have been mixed. Some saw it as a great success - introducing a completely new atmosphere in U.S.-Russian relations, agreeing cooperation on Afghanistan and achieving significant progress on strategic arms control in a very short period since April meeting in London. Others emphasised its limitations– citing few practical achievements, major gaps even on the least contentious issues such as arms control and criticizing Obama for being too soft on Russian domestic political trends. Russian pessimists were quick to point out that Moscow has again offered practical help on Afghanistan transit and received no concrete concessions in return on the most painful issues, like U.S. missile defence in Europe or NATO enlargement.
It is clear that the summit has not brought a major breakthrough. And it is hard to see how one could have been delivered in the current circumstances. On one hand, the Obama administration does not place its relations with Russia very high on its political agenda and it faces serious domestic political constraints for coming to close to Russia’s view of the world and its neighbourhood. On the other hand, Russians deeply mistrust the U.S. administration and it will take more than one visit by the new U.S. president to help overcome the damage done during the years of the Bush administration. Moreover, unlike the United States, Russia’s presidential power transition was based on continuity, not on change. Opinion polls still show that over 80 percent of Russians view Medvedev’s policy as the extension of Putin’s and only two percent see it as significantly different.
Yet, despite of these real constraints, some important signals have been sent at the summit. Obama has demonstrated that he is prepared to adopt a more pragmatic, realist policy toward Russia, not seeking to change the country, and being ready to listen to its concerns. His statement on the shared responsibility for ending the Cold War was one such sign. His brief meeting with Russia’s opposition was another. But most importantly, the summit and months leading up to it have clearly demonstrated that although Obama is unlikely to commit the United States explicitly to scrapping its missile defence plans in Central Europe, it is putting them on hold, together with another painful issue - NATO membership Ukraine and Georgia.
On the Russian side, the signals were also significant. Moscow has demonstrated that it is ready to cooperate with the United States on the issues of its primary concern – Afghanistan and Iran. Moreover, it is ready to restart the strategic arms control process, but it will seek to drive a tough bargain even if the proposed reduction in nuclear weapons is seen as benefiting Russia more than the United States. The creation of the Obama-Medvedev presidential commission has shown some good will in expanding the circle of interlocutors on both sides to cover a number of areas of mutual interest, and therefore making the relations more normal.
Way Ahead
The second step is often harder to take than the first. The expectations will inevitably be adjusted and the effect of novelty diminished for both sides, and it will be difficult to compensate for this by delivering practical results which could keep the “reset” concept alive.
The most promising area is arms control. It is very likely that the agreement to replace START, which expires in December, could be reached by the end of the year. The overall reduction in warheads will be modest, as agreed in the memorandum of understanding signed during Obama’s visit, and the number of launch vehicles will not be reduced significantly at all. Moreover, it is inconceivable to imagine that the United States will agree to include any explicit reference to non-deployment of missile defences in this new treaty. The conclusion of such a modest treaty will certainly represent a step forward from the 2002 Bush-Putin Moscow Treaty, which deviated from the traditional arms control treaty regime both in form and substance. However, it does not meet Obama’s more ambitious agenda on nuclear arms control.
Thus the United States will seek to move quickly toward a new agreement which could involve more substantial reductions. At this second stage the really difficult questions are bound to arise - from reduction in the number of launch vehicles, to a new system of verification and addressing the missile defence issue. It is clear that the link between offensive and defensive weapons becomes stronger if and when the number of the former is significantly reduced. Moreover, any significant reductions by the two nuclear superpowers raise the issue of multi-lateralising the arms control regime, which is a difficult task in its own right.
The second area of potential challenges involves Iran policy. U.S. officials have already expressed their hope that cooperation on strategic arms control – which they view as primarily benefiting Moscow – should lead to Russia’s more substantial cooperation on the Iranian nuclear issue. Just days after Obama left Moscow, the Russian Foreign Ministry explicitly rejected such a linkage. However, the fact remains that it is very likely that as early as later this year the U.S. will come to Russia asking for its cooperation on a new UN resolution calling for tougher sanctions on Tehran. Moreover, it is conceivable that if nothing is done to curb Iranian nuclear ambitions, it will be under Obama’s administration that the impossible choice between accepting a nuclear Iran and using force to stop it will force its way onto the U.S. agenda. America still sees Russia as the key player in helping it to avoid facing this choice.
There are significant reasons to believe that Washington overestimates the degree of Moscow’s leverage over Tehran. In the past few years, maintaining the image of Russia as an “indispensable” partner for dealing with Iranian nuclear issue has been Moscow’s clear achievement. However, it remains uncertain whether Moscow really fears a nuclear-armed Iran as much as a more pro-Western - and thus more open to exporting its gas to Europe – Iran. Obama’s visit to Moscow has produced a good first step to initiate a joint assessment of the missile threat, including that coming from Iran. It remains unclear, however, what joint policy recommendations could emerge from this study that could significantly alter a pattern of interaction on Iran that, so far, has proved unsatisfactory to both Russia and the United States.
The third area of potential problems concerns post-Soviet Eurasia. Apart from acknowledging differences over Georgia’s territorial integrity, this topic has not figured prominently on the Obama-Medvedev summit agenda. The reasons are probably both deliberate – not to spoil the “reset” moment – and bureaucratic – the slow confirmation process meant that many key officials dealing with Ukraine and the South Caucasus have not had a chance to conduct a proper policy review. When such a review concludes it is likely – if only for reasons of U.S. domestic politics – to recommend that strong U.S. engagement with these states continue. The Ukrainian presidential elections in January, and an impending new energy crisis between Ukraine and Russia, could be the first major test for the newly established realism in U.S.-Russian relations. Continuing geo-political rivalry in Central Asia, reports of a possible new Russian base in Kyrgyzstan – shows that even cooperation on Afghanistan, hailed as the most obvious mutually beneficial topic, could be tricky and full of tensions under the surface. A new agreement on U.S. air transit via Russia is important, but not central for the success of Obama’s Afghanistan policy. At present the only a significant volume of fuel and only a fraction of other supplies comes to Afghanistan from the North. This is not likely to change due to the distances and expense involved. If, however, the northern route starts functioning in a more serious fashion, it is likely to ferment more instability in Central Asia and thus put Russian-led collective security ambitions there to the test.
All these challenges notwithstanding, the July summit has produced a good first step, clearly indicating that there is no “revolutionary” option in US-Russian relations, and that only an evolution – and a slow one at that – could do the trick of ending the legacy of the Cold War. It is anybody’s guess whether this will happen under Obama’s watch or years after he leaves office. It is also difficult to judge whether it will come from governments or from a new generation of people on both sides of the Atlantic. One hope is, however, that it will not come from a major new global crisis, in which the United States and Russia will have no other choice than to cooperate.
Oksana Antonenko is a Senior Fellow and the Programme Director for Russia and Eurasia at the International Institute for Strategic Studies in London.
