The United States should consider Russia's interests without sacrificing Eastern Europe's independence.
Russian President Dmitry Medvedev and his US counterpart Barack Obama met on the sidelines of the international climate conference in Copenhagen.
Both presidents were pleased to note that the talks on limiting strategic offensive arms are successfully nearing completion and expressed hope for an early signing of a new treaty. The new treaty will become a major positive factor in bilateral relations. However, there are issues on which the United States and Russia are seriously divided. The future of the Obama-declared policy of "resetting" relations with Russia largely depends on their ability to resolve these issues. It will become clear whether the policy of resetting pursues a real goal or simply implies a change in the tone of conversations between the two presidents and nuclear arms control agreements. The latter were signed by Soviet leaders and American presidents during the Cold War as well.
First, January is the deadline for the Obama administration's decision on Iran. It will become clear whether Moscow is ready to meet Washington halfway and support tougher sanctions. Second, in January, Ukraine will hold presidential elections, and the sides' conduct during the elections will show whether anything has changed in their approach to problems in post-Soviet Europe. Both Moscow and Washington note their identical positions on several issues, such as Iraq, Afghanistan, Iran, and non-proliferation of nuclear weapons, to name but a few.
The new US administration has expressed its readiness to change its position on the countries of Eastern Europe and post-Soviet territories, laying special emphasis on the fact that it does not consider its policy towards these countries a zero-sum game. It is important to realise that Russia and the United States have different priorities on different issues.
For instance, Afghanistan and Iran are of absolute priority for the United States but not for Russia, which puts post-Soviet nations and relations with Eastern European nations, especially in the field of security, above everything else. This region is not so important for the United States, but it is not clear how its policy in it will change. On the one hand, the Obama administration has emphasised that it is against a zero-sum game and would like to preserve its good relations with post-Soviet and Eastern European countries, but it consistently continues to play the old game. US officials have made many statements to the effect that Russia should give priority to the interests of Poland, the Baltic countries, Ukraine, and Georgia because these countries are trying to present Russia in Washington's eyes as a threat to their security and consider US presence in the region important for deterring it. Obviously, the United States cannot give up its zero-sum game if it accepts this interpretation of its role in the region.
Such policy ignores Russia's legitimate desire to have friendly states with stable political regimes on its borders. Strategically, Russia does not want the post-Soviet countries to harbour foreign military bases and join extraneous military alliances. Attempts by Ukraine, Eastern Europe, and the Baltic countries to involve the United States in the region are aimed at escalating tensions with Russia.
Moreover, sometimes it seems that these countries, for instance Poland, are not quite satisfied with their NATO membership. They do not feel safe enough in the NATO framework and insist on the presence of American military bases on their territory for security purposes. This is bound to cause a negative response in Moscow because such preemptive deterrence signifies an attitude not only in these countries, but also in the United States, that Russia is a real threat rather than a potential ally.
Obviously, such actions conflict with Moscow's interpretation of "resetting relations." Furthermore, this attitude shows that the Baltic and Eastern European countries, for instance Poland, do not have much confidence in NATO and its ability to defend their security. One recalls the situation in the 1990s, before the first wave of NATO's eastward expansion, when Russia suggested that it and the United States should grant cross security guarantees to these countries. In principle, Russia would be ready to grant them today, too; it would only prove the inadequacy of Europe's current security system and NATO's ability to protect its new members.
Ukraine is a very sensitive issue for Russia. To prevent the forthcoming elections from turning into another show of US-Russian rivalry, Moscow and Washington must drastically change their approaches to the country. They must elaborate some common positions on the issue and impart the budding "reset" with new content, making it a factor of their cooperation rather than a mask for tension and disunity. Moscow and Washington should make it clear to the political forces in Ukraine that they will not allow them to set Russia and the United States at loggerheads and use them for resolving their own domestic problems. This threat may become particularly realistic between the two rounds of elections. It is clear that no candidate will win the first round and after the second round, the loser may refuse to accept defeat and may call for civil disobedience as in past elections.
Obviously, the pro-Western forces will try to present Russia as a threat and create tensions in relations with Russia with a view to involving Washington in this potential conflict. Regrettably, there exist all the necessary prerequisites for this turn of events. Once, Prime Minister Vladimir Putin said that Ukraine has not yet become a fully-fledged state. This statement caused uproar in the West and among certain political circles in Ukraine, but now it is obvious that he merely stated a fact. Since the start of the presidential elections in 2004 and up to the present time, Ukraine has been in a permanent political and economic crisis. The state is seriously split along ethnic, religious, geopolitical, cultural, and linguistic axes.
Under the circumstances, certain political forces are trying to shift the burden of problems, such as the consolidation of government power and formation of a political nation in Ukraine onto the shoulders of outside forces. However, their involvement in this process will only aggravate the crisis.
Therefore, the readiness of Russia and the United States to give a clear signal, either together or separately, to the political forces in Ukraine to abstain from using their internal conflicts for fanning up tensions in Russian-US relations could have a very serious influence on these forces. A joint statement on readiness to give cross security guarantees to Ukraine would prevent the radical forces in that country from using national security for polarizing the Ukrainian political space.
At one time, Russia and the United States both gave guarantees of Ukraine's security and territorial integrity during the withdrawal of nuclear weapons from the country. Confirmation of these guarantees could stabilize the domestic political situation in Ukraine by creating an atmosphere of real trust between Moscow and Washington and between Kiev and Moscow. This would confirm the neutral status announced in its Declaration of Independence and accede to Russia's strategic goal - to have a stable, peaceful, and friendly country on its borders that is not a member of any potentially anti-Russian military and political bloc.
However, there are some obstacles for Russia and the United States to overcome. Some Russian politicians believe that there is no need to make joint statements on Ukraine with the United States because Moscow should not use mediation in relations with Kiev. In my view, this opinion is very dubious because it denies the obvious. The United States has long been very active in Ukrainian politics. This is why the Ukrainian factor is very important in Russian-US relations and why Moscow should talk not only with Kiev but also directly with Washington in order to clearly describe its goals and interests regarding Ukraine.
There are many factors that impede the United States from publicly declaring a desire to see Ukraine conform to a neutral and peaceful position in regard to Russia, not least of all certain political forces in America and the lobby of Ukraine and the Eastern European nations. Both parties believe that these countries have the right to decide for themselves what military or economic alliances to join without pressure from any foreign state. I think that if the United States pursues such policy, it will still ignore Russia's interests in the post-Soviet world. Obviously, in this case it will be difficult to reset relations and develop constructive cooperation not only in post-Soviet Europe, but in many other parts of the world where Moscow and Washington retain both common and conflicting interests.
It is encouraging that many European countries have recently changed their attitude to Ukraine as a transit country. Vladimir Putin has just scored two major victories in gas diplomacy. Russia has received the approval of all interested countries for the development of the North Stream and South Stream gas pipelines. Despite its unequivocal assessment in the West, Russia's decision to shut down gas supplies to Europe via Ukraine produced positive results. Europeans realized that Ukraine was an unreliable transit country and chose not to be its hostages. Hopefully, the sensible attitude demonstrated by the European countries in an area as important as energy will prompt the new US administration to assume a similarly pragmatic position, rather than allowing Warsaw, Kiev, or Tbilisi to influence its policy relations with Russia. If so, US policy will really cease to be a zero-sum game and the United States will consider Russia's interests in building its relations with the countries of Eastern Europe and the post-Soviet world without sacrificing their independence. It is this policy that could make the US decision to reset relations with Russia a reality.
By Andranik Migranyan
