Obama Must Earn Russia's Trust

‘What kind of future are Russia and America going to have together? What world order will replace the Cold War?’, asked Obama in Moscow. ‘Those questions still don’t have clear answers’.

Today’s New York Times described America”s new style of diplomacy as one in which ‘yesterday’s enemies may become tomorrow’s partners in the benign exercise of power’.

Certainly, Obama’s impressive performance in Moscow added heft to this notion, with all his talk of engaging with a Russia that ‘occupies its rightful place as a great power’.

But what sort of partnership does he have in mind?

Here is what his chief Russia advisor Michael McFaul has recently said:

‘We’re not going to reassure or give or trade anything with the Russians regarding NATO expansion or missile defense.

‘We’re going to define our national interests, and by that I also mean the interests of our allies in Europe with reference to these two particular questions. We’re going to talk about them very frankly as we did in April when we first met with President Medvedev. And then we’re going to see if there are ways that we can have Russia cooperate on those things that we define as our national interests‘.

In other words, America will give up its sabre rattling rhetoric with the hope that persuasion, but pointedly not compromise, will achieve the same old goals of imposing its interests in an undiluted way.

Nowhere is there any mention of tempering these interests, no talk of compromise, no talk of what role if any Russian interests should play in this new framework.

Indeed, Obama’s pronouncement that any country should be free to belong to or reject any military or economic block sounds awfully similar to Clinton’s plausible deniability formula for the first round of Nato expansion: ‘they asked to be let in, it was their sovereign choice’. Of course, America was not obliged to let anyone in whom it doesn’t want.

Typically oblivious to irony, the NY Times continues:

“Regimes that tighten their grip on their people by invoking a threat from beyond their borders cannot survive by embracing that same perceived foe, even if the adversary offers a prospect of dialogue and benefit. The safer response is bluster and threat”.

It was referring to Iran and Russia, but the assessment accurately reflects the US treatment of Russia over the last decade, when Bush let Putin’s post-September 11 outreach go unrequited.

As fmr Russia ambassador Alex Vershbow said in the Economist, ‘Bush folks in the first couple of years had this attitude that Russia did not matter and that America should take advantage of any support they offered in Afghanistan and not give them anything in return. They are doing whatever they are doing for their own interest‘.

So far, as Obama has also offered Russia no concessions, Russians should ask: What Would Reagan Do?

Doveryai no proveriai – trust but verify.