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Politics Foreign Affairs Culture Fellows Program

More Thoughts on the “Reset”

Jamie Fly and Robert Zarate have a terrible idea (via Scoblete): The Obama administration should instead take this opportunity to advance a democracy-centered approach to Moscow. “Nature of the regime” arguments aren’t very interesting, because they start from the assumption that regime type, not national interest, dictates a state’s behavior. That may occasionally be true, […]

Jamie Fly and Robert Zarate have a terrible idea (via Scoblete):

The Obama administration should instead take this opportunity to advance a democracy-centered approach to Moscow.

“Nature of the regime” arguments aren’t very interesting, because they start from the assumption that regime type, not national interest, dictates a state’s behavior. That may occasionally be true, but in most cases it isn’t. Therefore, changing the nature of a foreign regime isn’t going to resolve any outstanding international issues, and organizing a “strategy” around trying to bring that change about is usually not going to succeed. If it did eventually succeeed and Russia became a more liberal democratic state, it wouldn’t change Russian policies as much as democratists think it would. Most Russians would still be nationalists, they would still view power projection in their vicinity by other major powers with suspicion, and they would still dislike their “pro-Western” liberals.

Fly and Zarate’s argument maintains that U.S. rhetoric and actions had nothing to do with the deterioration of U.S.-Russian relations before 2009, and then they proposse that the U.S. resume doing all of the things that contributed to the worsening of relations. Hectoring Russia over its internal politics? Check. Selling weapons to Georgia? Check. Tying human rights issues to trade? Check. The only thing missing from the list of hawkish favorites is NATO expansion, which was a policy that greatly contributed to the breakdown in relations.

Fly and Zarate’s conclusion is that the “reset” has failed. One reason they reach this conclusion is that they are opposed to good relations with Russia under its current form of government. As they see it, any “reset” with the current regime is a failure from the ouset, because they regard it as fundamentally misguided. Even if the “reset” has delivered greatly improved U.S.-Russian relations, and it has, they are going to declare it a failure, because they never wanted it to happen and they regard its success as a kind of failure.

What drives them crazy about the “reset” is that the U.S. and Russia can have a constructive relationship in spite of the latter’s illiberal, authoritarian government. According to their “nature of the regime” nonsense, that shouldn’t be possible. This is why they move the goalposts on what the “reset” was supposed to accomplish by pointing to all of the undesirable things in Russia (e.g., corruption, lack of political pluralism, rights violations, etc.) that have not been magically fixed by two and a half years of constructive engagement. The reality is that U.S. policy has been ineffective in aiding the cause of political reform in Russia for over ten years, and to a large extent U.S. efforts in this area in the past have helped to set back the cause of political reform through our association with it.

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