Svetlana Babayeva, political commentator

The upcoming Medvedev-Obama summit in Moscow has spurred discussions of ways to stabilize bilateral relations and of whether this is at all possible.

Everyone seems to agree that Russian-U.S. relations need a more reliable foundation. Mutual love is good, for some time, but bilateral relations need a stronger foundation for mutual understanding.
There is hope that they can be improved, above all because both Dmitry Medvedev and Barack Obama are pragmatic politicians who are unlikely to get sentimental during political meetings. This means that they will try to develop bilateral relations not on feelings, but on interests.

The agenda is clear and consists of three blocks of issues.

The first block includes non-proliferation, nuclear arms reductions, and a new agreement to replace the START treaty.

The second block consists of military political, or rather geopolitical, issues. We can expect Russia and the United States to cooperate, to a degree, in Central Asia, Afghanistan and possibly Iran.

The third block comprises economic and global issues, such as a review of the Jackson-Vanik Amendment, the adoption by Congress of the so-called Agreement 123 (which stipulates an agreement on cooperation as a prerequisite for nuclear deals between the U.S. and any other nation), climate change, as well as more active mutual investments and cooperation in energy projects.

Such projects could be especially important during the global economic downturn, because they imply additional investment.

Russia and the U.S. are unlikely to offer fundamentally new forms of cooperation now. Neither country is dreaming of breakthrough innovations; their task is to normalize existing relations, if possible. Therefore, it is important to determine which factors may undermine the sides’ good intentions and provoke another cold spell.
The sides must know which moves they should avoid making to prevent the current political cycle from ending badly, just as the previous one did although the first meeting between President Vladimir Putin and President George W. Bush in Slovenia in 2001 promised a very bright future.

There is a certain hierarchy of spheres where actions can provoke fear and counteraction. One of them is energy cooperation, and a relevant example is the European Union’s plans to build the Nabucco gas pipeline without Russia and bypassing its territory.

If the EU really plans to implement this project, it should probably invite Moscow to join it, because Russia’s contribution to construction and gas supplies will highlight its reputation as a reliable partner. Moscow definitely does not want Western countries to view it as an irresponsible partner.
Another sphere is Iran. If the U.S. fails to attain its goals there with the help of “smart power” within two years, it could resort to tougher measures. Russia will most likely protest making Washington feel frustrated that Moscow did not help it to resolve the problem. This may even encourage the U.S. to consider new ballistic missile defense plans.

On the other hand, the United States may hold bilateral talks with Iran or involve the EU in these negotiations, which would make Moscow feel that it has been excluded from the process.
The third sphere concerns the South Caucasus. Alternative routes to Afghanistan, for example via Georgia, or the construction of south-bound pipelines there, may provoke an exceedingly tough reaction in Moscow by engendering a number of concerns over its waning influence in the Caucasus, loss of energy markets, the strengthening of NATO, and disregard for Russia’s interests.

The fourth, and possibly the most difficult, sphere relates to the lack of respect for Russia’s view, or Western insensitivity to “how the world looks from Moscow,” as Henry Kissinger and George Shultz wrote in The Washington Post last October.

Russia has been trying to build its foreign policy on a par with the United States. When it fails to do so – which happens more often than not, taking into account differences in the two countries’ capabilities and views of the world – Moscow tries to block U.S. moves, at the least.

For its part, the United States sometimes takes actions that are objectively uncalled for, for example in the post-Soviet space.

U.S. approaches and their interpretation in Russia are the main obstacle to their rapprochement and has more than once pushed the two countries to the starting point in their relations. It happened under President Clinton and President Bush. To avoid a repetition, Russia and the U.S. should try to view the world and each other’s actions more objectively.

The United States should learn to respect Russia’s interests, while Russia should learn to say “yes” sometimes. And both should learn not only to reject but also to propose, and to take into account not only its own actions but also their possible consequences for other countries.
Denial is not always a defeat, and the ability to listen is not always a weakness.

The opinions expressed in this article are the author’s and do not necessarily represent those of RIA Novosti.