What does Putin’s return mean to Washington?
For four years, the main Russian interlocutor of Washington was the young and accommodating Dmitry Medvedev. However, the elections last week confirmed that American diplomats will soon again have to deal directly with Vladimir Putin. What does Putin’s return to Russian foreign policy mean and how should Washington change its approach now that, instead, Medvedev and Putin will not be sitting at the opposite?
Despite the stinging anti-American rhetoric of Putin’s election campaign and the tensions that arose in US-Russian relations at the end of Putin’s previous period in the Kremlin, Washington has the opportunity to maintain good and mutually beneficial relations with Russia during the second Putin act. To do this, it is necessary to develop a platform that will focus on the mutual interests of the parties and will help bring the relationship out of the impasse related to issues such as missile defense and domestic policy of Russia. Since the United States is accelerating the withdrawal of its troops from Afghanistan on the eve of 2014, for a start, America and Russia should focus on regional security in Afghanistan and Central Asia.
From the point of view of Putin
Despite the fierce anti-American rhetoric of his election campaign, Putin remains a man with whom Washington can deal. Although in the past four years Putin has avoided daily intervention in foreign policy issues, he remained a senior partner in the Russian "ruling tandem", and this meant that Medvedev could rarely make decisions that ran counter to his position. For example, the “reset” of relations between Russia and America announced by Presidents Medvedev and Obama at the beginning of 2009 could not be realized without Putin’s consent. Other key decisions also, of course, required approval by the Prime Minister. Including he had to approve the tightening of UN sanctions against Iran in June 2010, and the decision to allow the transit of American goods through Russian territory within the Northern Distribution Network - a system of routes for delivering goods to Afghanistan bypassing Pakistan.
The harshness of Putin’s election rhetoric should not overshadow the fact that he has long recognized the importance of good relations with the United States and believes that supporting them is in Russia's national interests if Washington is ready to treat Moscow as an equal partner (which, according to Putin often does not). In his long article, published 27 February in the newspaper "Moscow news", Putin stressed:" In relations with the United States, we would be ready to go really far, to make a qualitative breakthrough, however, provided that the Americans actually follow the principles of equal and mutually respectful partnership. "
Analyzing Putin’s article in Moscow News, Western experts focused on his criticism of the United States, which Putin accuses of their military intervention in Libya and the threat of similar operations in Syria and Iran undermining Russian security and world stability. Putin has long expressed dissatisfaction with the fact that, as he believes, the West does not show enough respect for the interests of Russia and for its status as a major power. In his view, Moscow has made significant concessions in the last twenty years: it agreed with the US withdrawal from the Treaty on the Limitation of Anti-Ballistic Missile Defense Systems and with the accession of the Baltic countries to NATO, resigned to the US military presence in Central Asia, sacrificed its financial and strategic interests. Iran in order to stand united against America to oppose Tehran’s nuclear program. However, Washington continues to make new demands, without taking into account Russian interests, which require respect for the supremacy of the UN Security Council in matters of war and peace, maintain strategic stability in the nuclear sphere and - most importantly - respect the leading role of Russia in the post-Soviet space.
Putin’s article and his campaign statements offer the United States a choice: cooperation based on mutual respect, or zero-sum rivalry. Against the background of growing instability in the Middle East, the weakening of the European Union and the difficulties of strategic reorientation to the Asian direction, the United States needs productive - in a broad sense - relations with Russia - which in turn means exactly the kind of cooperation Putin is proposing.
New platform
One of the main problems is the lack of a positive platform for cooperation. The main goals set in recent years - the new treaty on strategic offensive arms, the tightening of UN sanctions against Iran, Russia's accession to the WTO, the reduction of rivalry in the post-Soviet space - have been largely achieved. The expansion of economic cooperation, of course, would be in the interests of both countries. However, even if we leave aside the need to convince Congress to establish a regime of “permanent normal trade relations” with Russia, building economic ties will still remain a long process. Attempts to increase transparency and initiate direct cooperation in the field of missile defense, which the Obama administration has undertaken in seeking to improve relations in the field of security, seem to have stalled.
Meanwhile, in the shorter term, Washington and Moscow seriously need to cooperate in Afghanistan and its neighboring countries in Central Asia. Although Moscow has long been troubled by Washington’s flirting with Central Asian governments in light of the US military presence in Afghanistan, Putin and other Russian leaders understand that the fight against the Taliban, in which US initiatives in Central Asia play a role, helps protect Russia from the spread of radicalism and crime. Russia, like some of its neighbors, is among the key partners of the United States in the Northern Distribution Network. Now Moscow, which has long opposed the American presence in the region, urges the United States to reconsider the deadlines for leaving Afghanistan and remain in the country after the 2014 year.
The Obama administration is unlikely to reconsider, but it should begin an intensive dialogue with the Russians about regional security during and after leaving. Russia has already agreed to create a transit point on its territory (in Ulyanovsk), which will be used during the withdrawal of troops. In the future, the main tasks of Russia in the region will be to limit the influx of Afghan drugs across its border and ensure the security of secular regimes in Central Asia. The United States is also interested in Central Asia not becoming a source of radicalism and instability, but after leaving Afghanistan, they will have less opportunity to influence events. That is why Washington, together with Moscow, needs to develop a regional security concept after 2014. This concept will have to pay special attention to the problems of border security, training and supplying security forces, combating drugs and the economic development of the region, and Russia should play a serious role in all this. Against the background of the lack of a real positive platform for Russian-American cooperation, the ability to focus on the security problems of Central Asia may allow the parties to move away from counterproductive conflicts over missile defense or Middle East problems that have occupied a key place in relations between Russia and the USA for too long.
The American leadership should have no illusions about cooperation with Putin’s Russia. Interaction with it will not be based on common values, but on the pursuit of common interests in the areas in which they exist, combined with open disagreements in other areas - including those relating to internal Russian affairs. Putin’s re-election was clearly not without fraud, however, despite this, it seems that the majority of Russians still support him - even if in fact he received fewer votes than the official 63,6%. The relatively small scale of the protests after the elections only emphasizes that, contrary to many forecasts in the West, Putin is still firmly holding power - at least for now. Of course, the situation may change, and in an unpredictable way. Therefore, Washington needs to concentrate separately on such areas as security in Central Asia, in which cooperation with America will be in the interests of Moscow in any event that develops in Russia itself.
American officials should continue to maintain contact with the opposition and openly acknowledge the shortcomings of the Russian electoral process. However, the United States will have to work with the Russian government, which is, and not with the one that would have liked America. That is why US-Russian relations require a platform for cooperation shared by both parties, regardless of who will sit at the negotiating table.
Jeffrey Mankoff is a freelancer in the Russia and Eurasia program at the Center for Strategic and International Studies and a visiting researcher at Columbia University in New York. In 2010 – 2011, he was an expert on international issues at the Council on Foreign Relations and worked in the Bureau of Russian and Eurasian Affairs of the US Department of State.
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