Similar to how and what he said during his visits to Turkey in April and Egypt in June, US President Barack Obama once again made one of his elegant and well-crafted speeches in Moscow last week in which he urged for help creating an international system based on more cooperation, dialogue, understanding, multilateralism and interdependence.
For Obama, it is obvious and being discussed all along how rocky and diverse the Middle Eastern road is. What about the case of a resurgent Russia? Could they now really reset their relationship after the war in Georgia and, more or less, see the world through the same lens? Taking a look at a few issues may give us some idea.
1. Reducing nuclear arms and existing risks
The US and Russia have agreed on a preliminary accord to replace the Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty (START) by the end of this year. Basically, they will work on a framework of cutting down their nuclear warheads and their carriers to the levels of 1,500-1,675 and 500-1,100, respectively. This deal, even if still a preliminary one, is a positive development for resetting the relationship between the two states. Obviously it may, to some degree, help restore the broken trust between Washington and Moscow. Even so, one cannot expect much from this internationally.
In their meetings, Obama and Russian President Dmitry Medvedev shared the view that the US and Russia will be, as before and after the Cold War, the forerunners of a global reduction of nuclear weapons. They expressed their common aim of convincing other states to not try to obtain or develop nuclear arms and that there exists more room for peaceful cooperation. They simply implied that they, as the two leading nuclear states, could be an example to persuade and, if necessary, to force together other states to do the same and prevent them from obtaining or developing nuclear weapons.
Two main problems that arise from such thinking are: First, the prevention of the spread of nuclear weapons does not mean that the US and Russia will destroy their entire nuclear capacity, including their means of delivery. Neither do they consider wiping out all nuclear knowledge and technology. Quite the contrary, they have even used and further tried to develop different forms of small conventional nuclear weapons, a kind of system that is already being used much more effectively in conventional wars. Even if the leaders of the two states want to get rid of all nuclear knowledge and capacity, this would be impossible to monitor or realize.
Second, US and Russian nuclear disarmament does not mean much for other states -- especially those in sensitive regions -- because the geopolitics of the day and the relevant security worries of states are no longer similar to those of the past (a bipolar Cold War system). Each region now has its own geopolitical peculiarities and security concerns that are no longer ruled and controlled by the Cold War alliance system based on security guarantees of the two blocs for their allies. How will Iran be stopped from obtaining nuclear arms while continually feeling a threat from the US and Israel? Or, how will it be possible to convince Israel to get rid of its nuclear arms while surrounded by hostile Arab states and Iran? In another region, is it likely that India and Pakistan can relinquish their nuclear arsenal just because the two great powers, the US and Russia, signed a nuclear arms reduction agreement? None of those states in these different geographies will likely give up their aspirations to develop their nuclear capacities and will maintain or even further increase their nuclear power unless their security problems are alleviated.
2. Missile defense shields
They agreed to hold further discussions on this matter, but no compromise was made by either side at the summit. Obama tried to seek more Russian support to stop Iran from building its nuclear capacity and imposing sanctions on Tehran via the UN Security Council. Obama has said the US could give up plans to deploy a missile defense shield (MDS) in Poland and the Czech Republic only if Iran stopped seeking to develop its own nuclear capacity, and thereby nuclear weapons, and applied the nuclear inspection regime of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) in an open and much more satisfactory manner. Thus the US has expected more from Russia in pressuring Iran to give up its nuclear ambition while Washington itself has been in search of ways to communicate directly with Tehran.
Washington and Moscow can accomplish some success on this issue in the coming months since Russia has long argued that the best way to deal with Iran is not to threaten or use force but to communicate with it directly. While Obama has all along tried to open up a dialogue with the Iranian leadership to discuss a number of issues, including the nuclear problem, Russia may not at the end oppose the deployment of MDSs in Eastern Europe if Tehran does not show equal willingness for dialogue with Washington. The shape of their positions on the issue of MDSs may get clearer in the coming weeks after domestic tension around the post-presidential election dies down.
3. Afghanistan
Perhaps an agreement reached at the summit in which Russia said it is now ready to allow the US to transport lethal weapons to Afghanistan via Russian territory is another positive development in the process of boosting confidence between Washington and Moscow. By allowing US military equipment and personnel to travel via its territory, Russia has finally come to the conclusion that it would benefit from this policy change at no cost. Meaning Russia, which has always seen the Taliban and drug production in Afghanistan as important security threats, does not need to exert much effort, but just allow the US military and NATO to do the job for Moscow.
One may, on the other hand, ask the question of why Moscow then did not accept such a deal beforehand, considering how the threat has been there for years. Two reasons can be given for this: First, Russia wanted to get as much of a compromise as possible from the US on other issues, such as NATO expansion to Georgia and Ukraine and MDSs in Eastern Europe. Second, since Russia did not want to be seen as a sole actor, it now felt obliged to contribute to Obama’s calls for a new type of international relations that encompasses multilateralism, cooperation and interdependence rather than unipolarism, global dominance and Western supremacy. Thus, for Russia, helping the US in Afghanistan is something like shooting two birds with one stone.
4. Impact on the ‘near abroad’
A more cordial relationship between the US and Russia can also help provide a certain level of relief for former Soviet states neighboring Afghanistan as they have struggled to develop concrete foreign and security policies without offending American and Russian interests in the region. This was vividly seen in the recent case of the closure and then re-establishment of the Manas air base in Kyrgyzstan used by the US for the war in Afghanistan.
On the other hand, however, whether rapprochement between the US and Russia will help reduce Russia’s impact on Georgia and Ukraine and their endeavors for NATO membership still remains to be seen. Obama is likely to continue to refrain from taking Ukraine and Georgia into NATO as full members while he further focuses on his calls for the respect of the freewill of the Ukrainian and Georgian peoples. So, from now on, for both the US and Russia, a major struggle over these two countries can intensify on turning and maintaining the public opinions of those countries toward themselves. The first test of this is to be seen in the presidential elections in Ukraine, to be held in January of next year.
The summit is unlikely to bring any more change to ongoing energy pipeline issues in the Caspian and Black Sea regions. Obama asked for more cooperation, fair competition and for all players to move away from the thinking of “Great Game” politics. The same suggestion was indeed made by former US President Bill Clinton during the second half of the 1990s with his multiple energy pipeline policy in and around those regions. So, even fair competitions as such are likely to escape from particular Russian aspiration to see Russia as a great power. For instance, for Russia, the Nabucco project, which is in no way near to reducing European gas dependence on Moscow with its about 30 billion cubic meters of gas, meant nothing, but stands as a mental challenge to the current Russian ruling elite against its desire to be great. Hence, in the energy pipeline “game,” no policy change from either side will likely come out.
5. Russian democracy deficit
Obama was clear about what he was saying regarding his understanding of democracy. In order to obviously not antagonize Russia, he said the US was not perfect and not willing to tell Russia how to govern itself. On the other hand, after having explicitly stated that the main obligation of a democratic government was to protect the rights of the people, he gave the main elements of such a duty as freedom of speech, the rule of law, justice, an independent media and competitive elections. No one who is really democratically minded, apart from those who believe in the rhetoric of Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin’s own definition of “sovereign democracy,” can suggest that Russia under Medvedev and Putin has any of these democratic merits. Obama is well aware of this and so avoided direct criticism of Russian leadership. That is why when he met with various political opposition groups and NGOs in Moscow, he, though understood as letting down some opposition figures, took the situation of Russian democracy as is and just advised them be patient, continue their efforts to make small changes by pushing the leadership to understand the long-term goodness and benefits of greater change.
This is an area where the relationships between the US and Russia may face a constant troubling discourse. Though Obama said otherwise, the US has to press harder on Russia to become more open and democratic because of the lack of the rule of law, injustice, human rights abuses, hostility toward private businesses, the media and NGOs and corruption in the latter. Also, Russia has long seen democratic developments in other states in the “near abroad” as an important threat against itself and has so far shown no sign of backing down from influencing their domestic political processes in one way or another. Thus, unless more advanced democracy is established in Russia, it seems less likely that US-Russian relations can ever be based on a clear and more cooperative basis. There seems to always be a fragile and suspicious atmosphere in their relationships so long as the Russian state and people remain “hostage” to Putin and his protégé, Medvedev.
So, of course, the apparent outcome of Obama’s two-day visit to Moscow tells some successes: a preliminary agreement on removing some of their nuclear destructive capacity aimed at each other and Russia allowing the US to use its territory for logistical needs in Afghanistan. But, even these achievements still appear to remain too short to remove the very essential obstacle that separates the two sides widely: the way they see themselves and the outside world, over which they are often in conflict vis-à-vis how democracy should be understood and implemented and how the “near abroad” is to be treated. Whether the achieved successes will help resolve their ever-continuing disagreements on these issues seems to be the subjects of upcoming discussions in the US-Russia relationship.
Note: This article was previously published in Today’s Zaman on 13/07/2009.
