By Andrei Zolotov, Jr.,Chief Editor of Russia Profile and Deputy Director of the RIA Novosti Foreign Service.

With expectations running high for President Barack Obama’s upcoming visit to Moscow and the “reset” metaphor for U.S.-Russian relations largely overused, it would be worthwhile to remind ourselves what a real “reset” actually does. Pushing this button usually deletes all of the user’s personalized settings, and brings back what was there by default – that is, returns the gadget to some old status quo, before any changes had been made. Do we really want this to happen, and what kind of “default settings” had there been in the first place?

Indeed, the past few years weigh so heavily on these relations that it is tempting to think that erasing the recent settings would troubleshoot the existing problems and give the parties a fresh start. The real issue, however, is that no matter how much you press the “reset” button, you’re still dealing with the exact same hardware and some seriously outdated software.

There are some fundamental flaws in the U.S.-Russian relations “gadget,” rooted much deeper than in the dangerous recent erosion of trust between these two components. One is the negligible role of the business processes in this relationship—the same mechanism that is able to keep U.S.-Chinese and Russian-EU relations in some sort of balance, no matter how big the value gap between the parts. In the absence of mutual economic interests, the entire framework of Russian-American relations is dominated by security and geopolitics, and thus hostage to pride, domineering and obstructionism. Let’s call it a “hardware” problem.

The second bug is that a good Russia-United States relationship (call it a partnership, a strategic partnership, or anything else) drastically lacks stakeholders in both countries. There are far more people in Russia who benefit politically from chest-beating anti-Americanism, and many more of those in America who get political perks from chest-beating Russophobia. Those who would gain anything from normal cooperation, to say nothing of a real partnership, are in the minority. It is a “software” problem, but also a fundamental one.

If the Obama administration is globally juxtaposed with the arrogant and ill-informed George W. Bush rig, thus gaining the huge benefit of goodwill, it doesn’t work the same way in Russia. The long list of Russia’s grievances, which should not simply be dismissed, as many American policymakers like to do, actually dates back to the Bill Clinton administration. Both NATO’s expansion and the bombing of Belgrade undermined something very basic in the Russians’ belief in a new, Western-oriented world order.

So a simple “reset” won’t solve the problem, but that doesn’t mean that the two governments should ignore the present opportunity to improve the relationship. One way or another, the climate has already changed for the better since the first meetings between the diplomacy chiefs and the two presidents in spring, and no major mistakes have been made so far to spoil the prospect of a positive development. For the first time in many years, there appears to be a willingness to hear each other out, and not just to beat one’s chest in front of domestic audiences.

Negotiations on a START II replacement treaty, which have been linked with the American plans to deploy ABM systems in Central Europe, are an important stepping stone and basically serve as an exercise to establish rapport. It is one area where Russia and the United States remain more or less equal partners, and a field in which a win-win compromise appears possible. It won’t be easy, since the Obama administration cannot simply abandon the ABM deployment program. But it is possible.

Demand for cooperation on the newly volatile Iran, the Afghanistan/Pakistan quagmire, and the unpredictable North Korea appears to be growing, not only because these are of significant concern to the United States, but also because the troubling developments in these countries that are within geographic proximity to Russia are taking place faster than expected, and in a manner that is not beneficial to either Russia or the United States.

The global economic crisis has demonstrated that no “islands of stability” exist in the modern, interdependent world. Stabilizing the economy to a certain degree is crucial for the Kremlin at present, and it appears that achieving this in consultations with Washington may be easier than simply gloating over the plague that beset the modern-day Rome.

Perhaps the most complex area of communication between Russia and the United States is the issue of Russia’s claims to a zone of “special interests” in the former Soviet Union – a concept that Washington vehemently opposes. Luckily, the prospect of NATO membership for Georgia and Ukraine has been put on the backburner for reasons not of Russia’s making. But it is hard to imagine that the battle over influence in the former Soviet states will ever be resolved unless major progress is achieved in other areas.

Last but not least, it would not be a bad idea to start a fresh “energy dialogue” between the two countries, because the energy confrontation contributes a great deal to the dangerous tensions in all other areas of the relationship. In an ideal world, energy cooperation could eventually set the stage for mutual economic interests, which would ultimately be able to fix the old, Cold War era “hardware” of the U.S.-Russian relationship.

In the meantime, the goal should not be to “reset,” but to immediately get to work on new “software development.”

Andrei Zolotov, Jr. is Chief Editor of Russia Profile and Deputy Director of the RIA Novosti Foreign Service.