The current diplomatic contretemps between Russia and the United States is a crisis for the reset policy in bilateral relations, which are still based on Cold War-era distrust, Russian analysts said.
“Neither side is attempting sincere collaboration. We’re still ruled by mutual suspicion,” Viktor Kremenyuk, deputy director of the Institute of the USA and Canada in Moscow, said on Wednesday.
Moscow and Washington traded mutual snubs in the past weeks, starting with freshly inaugurated Russian President Vladimir Putin announcing last week that he would not be attending the G8 Summit at Camp David on May 18-19 due to being busy forming the new Cabinet. New Prime Minister, Dmitry Medvedev, will go in this stead.
On Monday, U.S. President Barack Obama announced he would not come to the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation summit in Vladivostok in Russia’s Far East in September because he will be busy campaigning for reelection.
Obama, who was set to hold full-scale bilateral talks with Putin at Camp David, will only hold a short meeting with Medvedev, trimming much of the agenda, Kommersant said, citing unnamed officials in the U.S. government.
“It would have been strange for Putin to make his first visit to the United States,” given his dislike of Washington, said Maria Lipman, a foreign policy analyst with Carnegie Moscow Center.
Putin’s first trip as a president will be to Belarus in late May, followed to a visit to China.
Reset Stalled
Analysts dismissed the official explanation for the snubs, saying they were manifestations of the deep-rooted distrust that the leadership of the two countries is feeling toward each other.
“We’ve failed to create a new paradigm [for relations] after the Cold War, becoming allies or something close to that,” said Kremenyuk.
After coming to power in 2008, Obama initiated a “reset” in relations with Russia, supported by then-president Medvedev. But analysts said the reset did not run deep enough to change the foundation of bilateral relations.
“The reset is stalled, or at least bogged down,” Kremenyuk said.
Russia and the United States managed to find common ground on the Afghanistan campaign, but a number of conflict issues remains on the table, including the anti-Russian Jackson-Vanik amendment and the U.S. plans for a missile defense shield in Europe.
Home Fronts
Russia’s recent domestic events and the American reaction to them also contributed heavily to the new cooling in relations, both experts said. The parliamentary elections in December and the Kremlin vote in March came complete with fraud allegations that triggered still-ongoing street protests in Moscow attracting tens of thousands of Putin-bashers.
Putin campaigned on an anti-American platform, accusing the U.S. Department of State of supporting Russian dissenters. The White House and the Congress, especially the Republican lawmakers, have also criticized Russian elections over their irregularities, as well as the authorities cracking down on recent rallies in Moscow.
“Legitimacy of power plays an immense role for the United States, which is why they watch other countries so sharply in this regard,” frowning at vote fraud reports, Kremenyuk said.
Meanwhile, criticism of Washington in Putin’s campaign rhetoric was a consequence of mutual distrust, Lipman said.
The cooling is unlikely to progress in the coming months, with any big decisions likely to be put on the backburner until the U.S. presidential elections in November, in which Obama faces competition from Republicans who oppose his “reset” policy, both pundits said.
“Putin’s snub is a relief for Obama, in some sense,” Lipman said. “The Republicans are criticizing him for not going hard enough on Russia as it is.”
