With US President Barack Obama’s first visit to Moscow this week, the relationship between Russia and the West remains fraught. Last year, it came to the brink once again with the hostilities in Georgia, not to mention winter’s energy crisis. The question of whether Russia and the West can ever put aside their differences and form a strategic partnership is of relevance to our ability to solve many of the problems facing the globe today – including Iran, climate change, energy security and the financial crisis.
In order get the latest opinions on whether this relationship is likely to bloom, Atlantic-Community.org recently canvassed 21 experts on Russian relations from 11 EU and North American think tanks and universities including Janusz Bugajski from the Center for Strategic and International Studies in the US, Dr. Jeffrey Mankoff of Yale University, Dr. Hans-Georg Ehrhart of the Institute for Peace Research and Security Policy at the University of Hamburg and Katinka Barysch from the UK’s Centre for European Reform. Overall, they were largely sceptical of the potential for such a partnership’s chances for development, even though they felt Russia and the West have more common than diverging interests.
Katinka Barysch of the British Center for European Reform told Atlantic Community that many of the issues are interpreted differently by Russia, leading to misunderstandings, while Elzbieta Stadtmuller from the University of Wroclaw in Poland said “Russia is not aware of such common interests because it is attached to the realistic paradigm and sees international politics as 'loser-winner' relation,” while the West has by and large shifted towards a win-win game. While the still-new Obama Administration may change the tone of foreign policy between the US and Russia, the policy experts believe the onus is on Moscow to open up to the concept that there could be common interests with the West in order for any potential strategic partnership to succeed.
Despite the shock waves of the economic crisis being felt around the world and particularly in Russia, dealing with the fall out would provide only a small window of opportunity for enhanced Western-Russian cooperation. Ms Barysch said Russia was dealing with the “triple whammy of collapsing world trade, lack of finance and low oil prices” but the situation was not – yet – severe enough to make Moscow more amenable, even though “Russia needs foreign investment, technology and market access more than before.”
But according to Janusz Bugajski of the Center for Strategic and International Studies Moscow may become more aggressive in order to divert focus from the instability caused by the economic crisis. “Russia's brewing domestic problems precipitated by the global financial crisis will not ensure that its expansionist ambitions are aborted,” Mr Bugajski said. “On the contrary, in order to deflect attention from mounting social and regional disquiet, the Kremlin may further cultivate the sense of besiegement to threaten and destabilize various neighbors in Eastern Europe and the Caucasus and test Western reactions.”
Ivo Samson from the Research Center of the Slovak Foreign Policy Association suggests that Russia may continue to “try to use energy policy as an instrument to divide Europe on various issues.” Experts felt the European Union needs to come up with a cohesive policy towards Russian energy supplies – at the very least – in order to respond effectively to such disagreements in the future.
There remain other issues, like the role of NATO – recently highlighted by the decision to hold war games in Georgia - still acting as a stumbling block in the relationship between Russia and the West. As such, it’s unlikely that this is an issue that is going to be solved in the short term, irrespective of the benefits such a partnership may provide to transatlantic relations.
As President Obama arrives in Moscow this week, it will be the first, small step on the road to a better relationship between Russia and the US. But even though this is undoubtedly a positive development, the experts polled by Atlantic-Community.org remain sceptical about the likelihood of a strategic partnership being formed between the two nations. Perhaps, as Merijn Hartog of the Centre for European Security Studies suggests, Russia may need new leadership before closer ties can be forged.
View the four-part expert survey online here.
Ria Voorhaar is an editor with Atlantic Community, the first online think tank for foreign policy. She is also a strategic communications specialist who is currently working on a global climate change campaign.
