The coronavirus pandemic is another opportunity that Moscow is using to engage Washington in an attempt to break through the logjams in their relationship.
The much-publicized “reset” was shorthand for the Barack Obama administration’s effort to push through the logjams that had built up in U.S.-Russia relations in the George W. Bush years, and harness that relationship to achieve Washington’s new objectives, mostly in Afghanistan and Iran. A reset, however, has also been a long-standing objective in Moscow’s own policy toward the United States.
When a major crisis occurs that affects both countries and indeed the world as a whole, the Kremlin seeks to reach out to the White House with the idea of joining forces to fight a common threat.
This is what occurred immediately after the 9/11 attacks in 2001, when President Vladimir Putin not only expressed sympathy and solidarity with the American people, but also offered material support to the U.S. anti-terrorist operation in Afghanistan. It happened again in 2015, at a time when ISIS had overrun large chunks of Iraq and Syria and was threatening Baghdad and Damascus. Back then, Putin called for a broad anti-ISIS coalition. Even after that call was spurned by the United States, which already had put together an international posse of its own, Putin persevered and tried hard to turn Syria — where Russia was staging a military intervention— into a playground for Russia-U.S. diplomatic cooperation. The new coronavirus pandemic is just another opportunity that Moscow is using to engage Washington.
The roots of this approach can be traced back to World War II. Hitler’s invasion of the Soviet Union in 1941 turned the adversarial relations between Moscow and Washington (and London) into an alliance virtually overnight.
The anti-Hitler coalition, which brought the communist Soviet Union together with the capitalist United States and Great Britain, elevated Moscow to the summit of world politics, as demonstrated by the Big Three conferences in Tehran, Yalta, and Potsdam.
That alliance did not outlive the war effort, but it left many Russians with the idea that if a new Hitler threatened the world, Moscow and Washington would once again put their differences to one side and stand shoulder to shoulder against a common enemy. In the early 2000s, Moscow’s ideas of Russia and the United States leading a global anti-terrorist coalition were directly inspired by the experience of the 1940s.
The main reason for Moscow to reach out to Washington with an offer of cooperation in a non-existential crisis is that a coalition would allow it — just as the Obama administration had hoped in 2009-2010 — to break through the logjams blocking the relationship. In 2001, the obstacle was the war in Chechnya, which to Russia was an anti-terrorist campaign, but for the United States and much of Europe, was a brutal suppression of ethnic separatism. In 2015, it was the crisis over Ukraine, which led the West to impose sanctions on Russia.
In 2020, it is a long list of U.S. accusations against Russia, ranging from its intervention in Ukraine’s Donbas region and election interference in the United States to the war in Syria and the global disinformation campaign. Successful engagement would put those accusations on the back burner and permit Russia to cooperate with the United States without making any major concessions.
Hardly anyone in Russia today is hopeful for an end to U.S. sanctions. Guided by the memories of the Jackson-Vanik amendment limiting trade relations with countries that restricted human rights, which survived the end of the Soviet Union by just over two decades, Russians believe that the current sanctions are “forever,” meaning that the current generation of politicians will never see the end of them.
Given that virtually the entire U.S. political class has a highly negative view of Russia, Moscow’s gestures and overtures are addressed to President Donald Trump personally. The aim is to get him to accept a last-minute dialogue with Russia on extending the New START Treaty on reducing nuclear arms, which is due to expire in February 2021. Putin certainly has a broader agenda, which probably includes the Middle East and Ukraine.
Will this work? Historically, this approach has not yielded much for Russia. Even while, on Putin’s orders, the Russian General Staff was generously sharing information on Afghanistan with the U.S. military, President George W. Bush announced the U.S. withdrawal from the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty, which Moscow had always regarded as a cornerstone of strategic stability. The 2013 Russian initiative to eliminate Syrian chemical weapons to prevent U.S. strikes against Damascus — which Moscow hailed as the first example of U.S.-Russian security cooperation as equals since the end of the Cold War — led to accusations in the United States that President Obama was creating a power vacuum in the Middle East for Russia to exploit. Since 2017, Putin’s outreach to Trump has been viewed with immense suspicion by the U.S. president’s political opponents, and has usually resulted in far more backlash than payoff.
Yet one aspect of the coronavirus crisis — the collapse of oil prices — has prompted Trump to engage with Putin and the Saudi King Salman to help them stop the price war and agree on major cuts in output. For Russia, this intervention has had a dual positive effect: preventing an even steeper plunge in the price of oil and establishing Russia — alongside the United States and Saudi Arabia — as one of the three powers deciding on global energy issues. Herein lies an important lesson.
Russia’s efforts to engage the United States in coalitions using the World War II model are doomed to fail. Washington never joins others. The United States can be relied upon, however, to reach out to Russia out of its own self-interest. Just as it did, incidentally, when Hitler attacked the Soviet Union in 1941.
This article was originally published by the Carnegie Russia Center.
(c) The Moscow Times
“When a major crisis occurs that affects both countries and indeed the world as a whole, the Kremlin seeks to reach out to the White House with the idea of joining forces to fight a common threat.”
Most of these major crisis are caused by Russia to begin with. It’s the standard Kremlin playbook, cause a problem, then help fix it. We have seen this scenario enacted on a regular basis, since Russia invaded Moldova, then Georgia, Ukraine. The list goes on, and will increase in size until the West stop appeasing the short assed runt.
The U.S. can be relied upon? Ask the Kurds.
Oh, here come the America haters….Bert and Knut…you two miserable snot balls need some history lessons.
The blood of the slaughtered Kurds is still fresh. It is not in the history books yet.
Go an take some hydroxychloroquine on prescription from Dr.Trump 😉
“More deaths, no benefit from malaria drug in VA virus study”
https://apnews.com/a5077c7227b8eb8b0dc23423c0bbe2b2
Maybe a reason why Trump has stopped talking about it?
Why should I hate the country where parts of my family is living? I don’t hate Trump, I just don’t see how anyone can stand behind a psychopath without any empathy for the more than 42,000 people that has died in the US, or the 800,000 cases!
The majority of deaths happened in places with Democ-rat mayors, in particular New York City…
And where do most tourists from Europe arrive?
L.A.
Top ports of entry 2019
1 Miami, FL 952,050
2 New York, NY 933,994
3 Los Angeles, CA 689,647
It should be 1Q 2020 🙂
https://travel.trade.gov/view/m-2017-I-001/documents/Final%20COR%20Port%20of%20Entry.xlsx
Me too, if I hated the U.S., why would I want the U.S. military in Northern Syria to protect the Kurds? That is because I trust the military, but not the government.
I don’t hate the U.S., but I think the government became dysfunctional over the past years and has no clue what it is doing.
It’s the same with me, and what I don’t understand is why so many people still are supporting Trump? He will go down in history as the most unqualified president ever. But if we dare to criticize Trump, then we hate America? It doesn’t make any sense to me!
People support Trump because of the other choice. If the Dims had someone with a brain, which hasn’t been the case my entire adult life, they might have a chance against Trump. But, they don’t, so the Dims will be crushed because of the stupidity they have demonstrated over the last 4 years.
You love a pro-muslim anti-white self-mutilating US, not the Real America. Good luck with that, Bert. Before Hitler being white was an honor, today it’s a roll of toilet paper. This shame will end once and for all! Allah knows it’s true.
Since the US partially pulled out of Syria now the Moskali are pitted against the Turks I would think people with logic would see the benefit from that. Besides where are all the stories about atrocities on the Kurds? There aren’t any….
Haters just hate and it appears Trump called it right…again. Knut and Bert might be speaking German right now if not for the US
And they regret it…
You are making up your own logic. We are talking about different areas. The North-West is the area where the Turkish and the Russians are fighting. The area in the West of it is where the Americans pulled out. Trump isn’t right, and your story doesn’t add up at all. And there are stories about atrocities: haven’t you seen the Kurdish woman in the car that was blown in pieces?
Yeah, no clue what they’re doing but are now energy independent, record unemployment and record stock market. Obviously you have a LONG way to go with your economy degree. Or you’ll end up as misguided and clueless as AOC who says she studied economics too LMAO!
No idea what you are talking about.
It was for Bert, Bro
Oh. Since i’m not a Bert… Sorry! LMFAO!
lol, no you’re not a Bert…..
Indeed records are broken in the stock markets. Oil now has a negative price, and the stock markets crashed as hard as in 2008. Well done.
The ‘anti-hitler coalition’ led to 45 years of occupation of Eastern Europe and caused Ukraine, already devasted by Russian genocide and nazi genocide, to be under the Russian jackboot for another 45 years, followed by only notional freedom in 1991, and then a new defacto occupation in 2010 that was achieved by Trump’s man Manafort; who managed to use sophisticated electoral gerrymandering to get a cheap thug: Yanukovich into power.
The article does not even bother to mention the theft of 20% of Georgia in 2008, which Bush 2 allowed by effectively ignoring it. Obama did his fatuous ‘reset’ and putler asset Sarkozy effectively consolidated the theft of Georgian land by declaring ‘peace’.
Georgia was a rehearsal for Ukraine in 2014. Sanctions imposed since then have achieved less than zero in terms of curbing Russia’s criminal activities.
The kremlin still has a major asset; Gospodin Trumpkov.
The last and probably only president of the past century since JFK to stand up to Russian savagery and deception was Ronnie Reagan.
“What does the Russia want from the United States?”
Let’s see, there is Alaska, then Washington, Oregon…
“…to break through the logjams blocking the relationship…”
A good way to accomplish this is for mafia land to get rid of the criminal dwarf thug Putin, return stolen territories in Ukraine, Moldova, and Georgia and to stop the war in Donbas.