Russia-U.S. Relations Do Not Fit the 2+2 Equation

Interview

Russia-U.S. relations are in decline but no one intends to bring them to a complete halt. Dmitry Trenin, Director of the Carnegie Moscow Center and member of the Russian International Affairs Council (RIAC), shared his views on the Snowden case, U.S. President Barak Obama’s refusal to meet with President Vladimir Putin, and of the outcomes of the 2+2 meeting that brought together Russia’s Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov, Defense Minister Sergey Shoigu, US Secretary of State John Kerry, and US Minister of Defense Chuck Hagel.

Interview

Russia-U.S. relations are in decline but no one intends to bring them to a complete halt. Dmitry Trenin, Director of the Carnegie Moscow Center and member of the Russian International Affairs Council (RIAC), shared his views on the Snowden case, U.S. President Barak Obama’s refusal to meet with President Vladimir Putin, and of the outcomes of the 2+2 meeting that brought together Russia’s Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov, Defense Minister Sergey Shoigu, US Secretary of State John Kerry, and US Minister of Defense Chuck Hagel.

Some experts claim that Obama’s refusal to meet with Putin sounds the death knell for the “reset.” Would you agree with this verdict?

I would call this decision “undoing the reset.” The U.S. policy of “resetting” relations with Russia officially lasted from January 2009 through August 2013. However, it had actually expired long before. There were two options: either to upgrade the level of interaction, or turn off this policy and take a break. It is the second option which was chosen.

Could it be that the ‘Snowden case’ was the main reason for the meeting being called off? Or is the rationale more substantial?

Photo: Dmitry Trenin

The ‘Snowden case’ was the last straw. Against the dominant public opinion at home, Obama had to present indisputable arguments proving that relations with Russia were of paramount importance to the United States’ national interests. There was an apparent lack of any such arguments, probably because Russia is not on the U.S. list of absolute, undeniable, priorities.

Did these factors affect in any way the content and the end-results of the 2+2 meeting?

Under the present circumstances, meetings at this level are considered routine and lose the implications they had previously. After Obama refused to hold a summit with Putin, the 2+2 meeting in Washington on August 9 was intended to smooth out the repercussions of this unprecedented move by the White House, and to defuse tensions, at least in part. Moscow has no interest in a drastic deterioration of relations with Washington, and chose not to cancel the meeting as revenge for the Obama’s decision. However, I do not expect the U.S. counterparts of Lavrov and Shoigu to come to Moscow on a reciprocal visit any time soon. We should admit that this is just another false start, as in 2002 when the 2+2 meeting was originally initiated within the format of bilateral relations.

Will the United States benefit from spoiled relations with Russia? Is there a good case for doing this?

No, I do not think this is in their interests. Yet there is the widely held view in the United States that Russia will not offer any substantial assistance to the enactment of U.S. foreign policy. The logic is as follows: Obama’s offer to cut nuclear arms has not taken off the ground; the ousting of Bashar Assad from power in Syria is proving more difficult than, perhaps, expected. There will be no need for transit facilities to reach Afghanistan via the Russian airspace; the U.S. plans to deal with Iran without intermediaries; the U.S. intends to tackle the North Korean issue with China’s help. U.S. economic interests in Russia are minimal. American “shale” is delivering a blow to our oil and gas industry, which is the backbone of the Russian exports. Many in the U.S. believe that Russia’s role in global affairs is overestimated, and that over time it will continue to diminish across the board, from the economy and finance, to science and technology, and education and culture. Consequently, this leads to the conclusion that freezing relations with the country is no big deal.

It should be noted that within the U.S. ruling elites strategic thinking founded on traditional geopolitical modeling, balance of power and correlation of forces considerations has been largely diluted. Today, policy-making is discrete, aligned with corporate and even individual interests while the notion of “national interests” is seen by many as obsolete or, at least, in need of reevaluation. The United States is not as involved in establishing international institutions as it once was, and is more prone to America-centrism. In any case, elite groups’ economic and financial interests now rule supreme.

In your opinion, should the relationship between security services have the impact on inter-government relations that it has today? Can the current situation be rectified?

The security services should not play an independent role in either foreign or internal policies. Otherwise, they replace the state and provoke crises. The security services now face a different set of challenges in ensuring security due to new realities, such as cyberspace, and globalization which has led to greater interdependency in significant processes and has seen non-state actors take on an unprecedentedly high-profile as well as enormous potential and mobility. The security services did not play a prominent role in the current issue within the framework of the Russia-U.S. relationship. Snowden was not recruited by anyone; he acted of his own free will, at his own risk and peril. Russia’s security and intelligence services had no interest in the former CIA contractor per se. This is a rhetorical question as to whether the decision to facilitate his transit to Latin America via Moscow was properly calculated, but broadly it is clear that the “Snowden case” is distinctly different from the secret services’ classic cover wars.

Currently, as revealed by leaked documents in the U.S., Russia, China, Iran, North Korea, Pakistan and Afghanistan are the main focus of U.S. secret intelligence service activities. It would be fair to assume that the U.S. is identified as a key target for intelligence gathering work by Russian agencies. This does not preclude cooperation between the two nations’ security services in areas such as fighting international terrorism and drug trafficking. However, rivalry so far remains the defining feature of relations between the two countries’ security services.

Natalia Evtikhevich, RIAC program manager