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How the “Reset” Favors the U.S. and Neglects Russian Concerns

Dan McGroarty is terribly worried about Russia: Rather than reciprocate with a Russian ‘Reset,’ Moscow seems to have chosen to play the spoiler’s role. The playbook is fairly predictable: Keep the Middle East on the boil, fuel a little anti-Yanqui sentiment in the Western Hemisphere, sow a little discord in the Trans-Atlantic Alliance – the […]

Dan McGroarty is terribly worried about Russia:

Rather than reciprocate with a Russian ‘Reset,’ Moscow seems to have chosen to play the spoiler’s role. The playbook is fairly predictable: Keep the Middle East on the boil, fuel a little anti-Yanqui sentiment in the Western Hemisphere, sow a little discord in the Trans-Atlantic Alliance – the better to keep the U.S. distracted and give Russia a free hand as it reshapes its ‘Near Abroad’ into some semblance of its empire of old.

This is a bizarre reading of what has been happening in recent years. Russia doesn’t need to sow discord in the alliance. The alliance was genuinely split over the misguided decision to bring NATO into the Libyan war, just as it was previously divided over continued eastward expansion. There is no real discord over Syria because none of the allies is interested in a Syrian intervention. Russia has not noticeably been stoking anti-American sentiment in Latin America. In any case, there are several Latin American governments doing that already. Moscow didn’t compel the U.S. and its allies to distract themselves with the Libyan war, and it’s not as if the U.S. would be able to counter Russian influence among its neighbors anyway. To take one example, the openly pro-Russian candidate won the more or less legitimate election in Kyrgyzstan, and Kyrgyzstan’s interests are closely tied to those of Russia. What could the U.S. have done to prevent that, and why should it try? Proposals for integrating neighboring countries economically do not suggest much of an imperial revival. Moscow isn’t interested in keeping the Near East “boiling.” It would clearly prefer that the protests and unrest in Syria cease as soon as possible.

Something that most Americans don’t appreciate is how one-sided in our favor the “reset” has been so far. Andranik Migranyan explained the Russian view last week:

Russians aren’t inclined to underestimate the improvements, but they also don’t want to overestimate them. If anything, Russia considers the reset to have fostered significant concessions to the United States. These include the compromise on Libya, the help in Afghanistan and the pressure on Iran. The reset, as seen by the Russian side, is an attempt at normal dialogue and a framework within which to hear both sides.

The danger here is if the U.S. believes that it can extract these concessions from Russia and then expect that the U.S. never has to provide anything in return other than a lack of hostility.

Dan Trombly recently made some sensible suggestions for what U.S. policy towards Russia should look like:

A cold-eyed assessment of US policy towards Russia would recognize the value of keeping Russia relatively pliant, not just for bilateral arms reductions or securing the European Union, but because Russia is a potential counterweight to China and a more tolerable regional security partner in Central Asia than, say, Pakistan, Iran, or China, as far as US interests are concerned. Yet America continues insisting on policies which do remarkably little to concretely advance US interests, but do very much to heighten tensions with a great power, and the US does so essentially voluntarily [bold mine-DL].

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