The U.S.-Russian reset – one year later

It has been a year since President Obama came into office and six months since the summit in Moscow. The atmospherics in the US-Russian relationship have improved over the last year.

By Angela Stent, professor of Government and Director, Center for Eurasian, Russian and East European Studies, Georgetown University School of Foreign Service; Senior Non-Resident Fellow, Brookings Institution; Vice Chair, World Economic Forum’s Global Agenda Council on the Future of Russia. Member, Council on Foreign Relations.

It has been a year since President Obama came into office and six months since the summit in Moscow. The atmospherics in the US-Russian relationship have improved over the last year, as have the level of engagement and negotiations on a variety of issues.

Yet the concrete results so far are modest and both sides sense mutual ambivalence about what the reset should mean or how far it should go. A brief inventory of where we are highlights the importance of developing realistic expectations for moving the  US-Russian partnership forward.

Afghanistan: there has been concrete progress on US military transportation across the territory of the Russian Federation, although some technical challenges remain. Despite Russian skepticism about whether NATO can ultimately achieve its objectives in Afghanistan, there is agreement that neither Russia nor the United States want to see the Taliban return to power. There is room for more robust cooperation both on counternarcotics and counter-terrorism.

Iran: the U.S., Russia and the EU-3 united in the IAEA on censuring Iran and they agree that Iran’s nuclear program must remain civilian. Yet Russian officials have made contradictory statements about whether they will support tougher sanctions and this issue could further strain the reset in the coming months.

START: the two sides have been close to agreement for some time, but contentious issues remain—telemetry and the relationship between offensive and defensive arms. The new math in the U.S. Senate—where the Obama administration lost its filibuster-proof majority last week after a Republican was elected to fill Senator Edward Kennedy’s Massachusetts seat—puts more pressure from the U.S side to conclude an agreement that will be domestically acceptable. But, in his January 27 State of the Union speech, Obama highlighted conluding a post-START agreement as a foreign policy priority.

Missile Defense: Moscow welcomed the U.S. decision to scrap deployments in Central Europe, but the United States will have a missile defense program, and this could still become a problem for the reset. On the other hand, both sides could work together on a  cooperative BMD program if the will is there.

The Former Soviet Space: the reset seems to be working in Russia’s neighborhood inasmuch as tensions over this issue have abated. So far, the situation in Georgia is relatively quiet and the second round of the Ukrainian elections will produce a president who will navigate carefully between Russia and the West.  The Obama administration has adopted a more low-key approach to the area. Nevertheless, the issue of how great a U.S. and European presence in the post-Soviet space Russia is willing to tolerate in the longer-run remains unresolved.

Euro-Atlantic Security: there are two Russian proposals on the table—President Medevdev’s European Security Treaty and Foreign Minister Lavrov’s proposal for a new NATO-Russia relationship. Both are problematic for the United States and its European partners, who prefer that these issues continue to be discussed within the framework of the OSCE and the NATO-Russia Council as it currently operates.

The Medvedev-Obama Bilateral Commission: the different constituent groups are beginning their work, some at a faster pace than others. But it will take time to get them fully up and running and to develop a new network of stakeholders in the bilateral relationship.

Who Are the Stakeholders? Amidst a flurry of activity on the arms control and other fronts, and looking to 2012—when both Obama and Medvedev face presidential elections—the question of identifying the major stakeholders in pushing the relationship forward remains.  This may become clearer over the course of 2010, as the reset develops more identifiable contours, and building a group of stakeholders is an important prerequisite for sustaining this new engagement beyond where it is today.