How to improve Russia-U.S. relationship?

Foreign opinion

Two outstanding American experts on Russia – Ariel Cohen from the Heritage Foundation and Jeffrey Mankoff from the Center for Strategic and International Studies - in their special interviews for the Russian International Affairs Council offer their insightful takes on the U.S.-Russia relationship.

Foreign opinion

The honey moon of the U.S. - Russia “reset” hasn’t lasted for too long, because the two countries are back to their old controversies. Disagreements over Syria and the Magnitsky bill are adding up to that.

Two outstanding American experts on Russia – Ariel Cohen from the Heritage Foundation and Jeffrey Mankoff from the Center for Strategic and International Studies - in their special interviews for the Russian International Affairs Council offer their insightful takes on the U.S.-Russia relationship. They analyze the shortcomings in the relationship of both countries towards each other, trust issues and areas of potential cooperation; and give their prospective on the future of the U.S. –Russia relationship.

Interviewer: Maria Prosviryakova, Russian International Affairs Council.

Ariel Cohen The Heritage Foundation’s Senior Research Fellow. Too much emotion and too little practical discussion between Russia and the US

Jeffrey Mankoff Adjunct fellow at the Center for Strategic and International Studies. The problem is the lack of substance in the U.S. –Russia relationship

Ariel Cohen, The Heritage Foundation’s
Senior Research Fellow.

Ariel Cohen: Too much emotion and too little practical discussion between Russia and the US

This is an interview with Ariel Cohen for the Russian International Affairs Council. Ariel is a Senior Research Fellow for Russian and Eurasian Studies at The Heritage Foundation. His analyses are often incisive. For example, Ariel predicted the Russian financial collapse nine months before the event actually took place in 1998. Ariel Cohen is often called upon to testify on Russian politics before the U.S. Congress. Today Ariel is examining Russia – U.S. relations.

Ariel, what shortcomings do you see in public diplomacies of both countries towards each other? How should the public diplomacy be channeled to improve strained U.S.-Russia relations?

First of all, after the end of the Cold war the public opinion research demonstrates that in both countries the perception of the other side as an enemy decreased, but in the United States it remains pretty stable, the majority of Americans do not perceive Russia as a Cold-war-style adversary. Americans now are convinced that China is catching up or already overtook the United States as the next – in the business we call it– “peer-competitor”, not Russia. Islamist terrorism is also perceived as transnational threat, not Russia. In Russia, on the other hand, the perception of the United States as an adversary fluctuates, it depends on the situation. For example, Kosovo (1999), Iraq (2003) and Georgia (2008) gave peak of anti-American sentiment in Russia. But what worries me is consistent anti-American tenor, tone of propaganda in state-owned channels, especially television, a lot of old Soviet films that hail secret services or new programs - sometimes from the quarters that I didn’t even expect, like Alexander Gordon who brought people to discuss the US roots of 9/11 attack. I was invited to participate - I declined . Programs like Michael Leontiev, Maxim Shevchenko and others that clearly are carrying water for a particular party line. I think, with Russia playing a positive role supporting U.S. mission in Afghanistan in terms of transit, even discussing a transit base for NATO in Ulianovsk, it is high time to put back, to put behind this very nasty language of these images of this adversary when we have common challenges from rising China. In fact, I do believe that rising China is a bigger challenge to Russia because of long land border between Russia and China in Siberia and Far East, because of the uneven levels of population. China has in Heilongjiong Province 3 hundred plus million people, Russia has something between 7 and 8 million people, East of lake Baikal. So, this is a serious long term challenge for Russia and for everybody else. I am not saying it is a military challenge, but it is a security challenge, it is an economic challenge. That issue, as well as the issue of terrorism fueled by religious radicalism, so far as to mention Dubrovka, Beslan and other tragic attacks on civilian population in Russia and compare them to attacks of 9/11 and U.S. involvement in Afghanistan and elsewhere. I do not see the language of the relationship as optimal at all. There is too much emotion and too little practical discussion of important issues between the two countries.

Has Mr. Putin’s rhetoric towards the USA changed now in comparison to his two previous terms as president?

I think that the first term of Putin was the most cooperative. Let’s remember that this is when the Russian president offered assistance to the U.S and at that time anti-Americanism was not a dominating factor, but as early as 2007 with a Munich speech and then I was in meetings when he blamed the United States for Georgia, when he blamed the United States for the economic crisis. These are not secrets, these are all public statements. I think Vladimir Vladimirovich is being quite harsh in apportioning guilt and blame here. While the United States tends not to respond to such accusations, I am sure that this is not necessarily helpful. Today the continuation of blaming the U.S., the U.S. currency. I did not notice that these statements decrease the amount of U.S. dollars in circulation in Russia or the currency mix of deposits of those Russians who are fortunate enough to have significant foreign currency deposits. Yes, it is euro, it was euro for a while and now euro is, of course, a higher risk currency than U.S. dollar. Every other currency is quite problematic.

How can we build trust between the two countries?

One thing I believe we can do – is reciprocity. If the United States opens its media environment to RT (Russia Today) – and I have it in my house, right next to Al Jazeera and BBC TV and Deutsche Welle and we have now radio Voice of Russia broadcasting in English in the United States – I think the equal time can be presented to the Russian public for U.S.-funded stations, like The Voice of America and Radio Liberty. In FM band or they have it in the Internet clearly, but AM/FM-band is where the radio action is and if we are taking the equivalent of RT. Unfortunately, the United States doesn’t even have a product, it doesn’t have a global TV channel that is funded or sponsored by the U.S. government like RT is sponsored by the Russian government or CCTV is sponsored by the government of China, or Al Jazeera – I hate to say it – it is an excellent news channel in English and is sponsored by the Emir of Qatar. So in that respect there is some lack of equality, but beyond that if you compare the people who receive their education in the U.S., there are tens of thousands over the years, hundreds of thousands of the millions of Chinese, there are very few Russians. The United States is attractive, it offers excellent education, it is expensive, but other governments in Eurasia – Kazakhstan with Bolashak Program, Azerbaijan and others - pay their students to go all over the world to study. And I don’t see why the Russian government should not:
a) invite Americans to come and study in Russia;
b) fund Russian young men and women to come to the United States to study.

That kind of experience, that kind of education is not a panacea, it is not something that will for sure make people Goodwill Ambassadors. We actually know from history that some of the most notorious people in history like Paul Pott who studied in France, that didn’t make him a great democrat, did it? John Lloyd was I think French educated, although I am not sure French or maybe British educated. So, some of these people who received education did not necessarily embrace Western values. Another good example was the guy name Muhammad Qutb. He hated America, he was an exchange as a young official here and in the late 40’s he said: “American women are immoral, American culture is bad”. And this was the time of very conservative America as opposed to what happened in 60’s. So, there is no panacea, but I do believe that people who meet and experience each other’s cultures put to rest some of the stereotypes. I am active on Facebook including in Russia and you always hear how Americans are fat, stupid, etc. And when you point out that American men live 20 years longer than Russian men, that American average citizen has GDP per capita 4 times, even higher, than his Russian counterpart; and that U.S. still is a home for innovation from iPhones and mp3 files to breakthrough drugs that save lives. This somehow doesn’t count towards American intelligence or American health. So, again I am trying to say that visiting each other, what used to be called during Gorbachev years “people to people exchanges” may have a positive role, although clearly this idealized image of the United States - I remember from my childhood - is gone, it is not going to return, But still I think that America is a great country and there is a lot of things people can learn, enjoy and appreciate if they come to America and vice versa – if Americans go to visit Russia. Just the other day I read a horrible account of getting the Russian visa, it was in the Washington Post. In the 21st century I hope that things like that really should be resolved.

Are there any other areas in which Russia and the USA can cooperate? How Russia's accession to the WTO is going to change trade relations between the two countries?

Well, hopefully it will, because we have very weak economic relationship in terms of sheer numbers. The trade between the US and Russia is 40 billion dollars a year, it is less than our trade with Belgium or the Netherlands, it is smaller than our trade with South Africa. While Russia exports twice as much to the United States as the United States sells to Russia, the balance is interesting too, because Russia primarily is selling raw materials and is buying machinery, hi-tech, entertainment products, films, software, etc. So, there is a huge opportunity here, but at the same time U.S. business is accustomed to invest in the environment that is secure that they know that people will knock on the door and try to seize assets like it sometimes happened to American companies or it happens to the Russian companies in the phenomenon known as the raiding, which is a specific way of doing business with corrupt courts and judges and corrupt law enforcement. That is, of course, what is bothering American business people and American law makers.The latest example is the Magnitsky legislation which I am sure you are going to ask me about. And the Magnitsky legislation - I just came back from the Capitol Hill where I was talking about that - it is not about Sergey Magnitsky, it is not even about Russia, it is about people who violate human rights, but at the same time benefit from this violation, personally benefit in terms of money. That is why the Magnitsky legislation is suggesting that the ill-gained assets by gross human right violators will be subject to seizure around the world, and it is not just the United States, it is other countries like Canada and a number of European countries that are moving in that direction. But the Magnitsky legislation is also about how business is done, because Sergey Magnitsky was working for Western investment fund and the way that fund clashed with some corrupt officials, people that two Russian presidents Mr. Putin and Mr. Medvedev called “the werewolves in epaulettes”. This is where American business, Western business is extremely uncomfortable and is facing possibilities of losing money, and, of course, that is something that this legislation is trying to address in the environment in which both the Russian lawmakers and the Russian law enforcement failed to address it.

Well, Russian officials obviously don’t see the Magnitsky bill the same way. How is the USA actually going to strike a balance between defending human rights in Russia – and continuing the “reset” policy towards Russia, the policy that is so cherished by the Obama administration?

First of all, let’s start with the piece of legislation that people of older generation remember and a lot of younger people never heard about and it is called the Jackson-Vanik amendment. The Jackson-Vanik amendment was passed in 1974 by senator Scoop Jackson and congressman Vanik to address problems with emigration from the Soviet Union. Well, the Soviet Union is no longer with us, the emigration is free, the problem for people who want to emigrate is to get the entry visa or if they want to emigrate forever to get a home elsewhere, that is a different problem. So, time has come to finish the Jackson-Vanik, to lift its application against trade with Russia. Year after year American presidents lifted application of Jackson-Vanik, so the real business with Russia didn’t suffer very much. But now we are addressing the prestige issues by granting Russia permanent normal trade relations status (PNTR). At the same time I view the Magnitsky legislation as a positive development and I say only in half- chest that the Russian government should give senator Cardin (Democrat) and senator McCain a medal for attracting attention to the real issue of corruption in law enforcement, tax authorities, etc. Everybody agrees that there is a big problem there. I heard presentations and speeches by Mr. Putin (his first term, his second term), Mr. Medvedev and now Mr. Putin again and I read his articles before being elected stressing that corruption is a big-big issue. So, this is one of the ways to address it, as well as the whole issue of abuse of state power, of law enforcement power. It is of great concern for law makers and once the practice is seized, once you have Russian business behaving like Western European business, or Australian, or Canadian business, or American businness, I think we will be able to talk about lifting the Magnitsky legislation. But in the meantime, when people who abused Magnitsky were promoted and given awards after the Presidential Human Rights Commission published reports about the Magnitsky case. The Russian Presidential Human Rights Commission (!) said that Magnitsky was tortured or suspected that he was tortured and in any other country there would be an impartial investigation. Nothing like that happened. These people were promoted, people were awarded medals. So, I think this is the real issue and I think it is actually better not to sweep these issues under the rug.

Ariel, thank you so much for your time. Have a great day.

Jeffrey Mankoff, adjunct fellow at the Center for
Strategic and International Studies.

Jeffrey Mankoff: The problem is the lack of substance in the U.S. –Russia relationship

This is a special interview for the Russian International Affairs Council with Jeffrey Mankoff. Doctor Mankoff is an adjunct fellow for Russia and Eurasia Program at the Center for Strategic and International Studies.

The U.S. - Russian relationship are quite strained now particularly because of tensions over Syria. The Magnitsky bill adds to this as well. How did we get here? What shortcomings do you see in policies of both countries towards each other?

I would step back from it a little bit and argue that we have a difference of opinion over Syria, but this can’t be seen through outside of the bigger context to the relationship. It is elsewhere, where a lot of the shortcomings are. First of all, we are in the political campaign season in the United States, so there is an intensity of rhetoric about many issues, including about the relationship with Russia. As you know president Obama has identified the “reset” policy as one of the big successes of his administration. So, precisely for that reason the Romney campaign has set to undermine that claim by saying that actually the United States has been too differential towards Russia, it has thrown U.S. partners such as the Georgians, the Ukrainians and whoever else is under that proverbial bus. So, that is sort of the background within which all of this is happening. More broadly, I would say that a big part of the problem is the lack of substance in the relationship. So, what is it that we talk about when U.S. and Russian diplomats get together, it is arms control, it is missile defense, now it is Syria. All of them are hard security issues, a lot of which are legacies of the old days. And it is much more difficult for them to talk about an agenda for moving forward, about where the future lies, because I think they do not have necessarily similar views on European security, on obviously the Arab spring. Moreover, there is not the depth of ties at the economic and societal level between the United States and Russia that we have, for example, between the United States and China. So, the U.S. and China obviously have different views on a number of issues as well. South China Sea, for example. But I would argue that they have done a better job of managing this issue because there is more interest at stake, the value of the trade relationship between the U.S. and China is about 20 times the value of the trade relationship between the U.S. and Russia, that means that a lot of people stand to lose out if there is a crisis in US-Chinese relations. I would argue that there is nothing comparable in the U.S. – Russia relationship.

You mentioned Magnitsky bill and that is a really good example. Part of the reason that there is this interest on Capitol Hill in the Magnitsky bill, specifically addressed towards Russia, is because not very many American companies would be hurt by it. If you were to propose something similar for China, because, say, the wife of Bo Xilai was implicated in the death of a foreign businessman (he was British, but just to keep the example) the same way that certain individuals in the Russian government were accused in the death of Sergey Magnitsky. There would be a huge outcry in the United States simply because there are so many stakeholders in the U.S.-Chinese relationship. And in the U.S.-Russia relationship those stakeholders just do not exist.

And at the working level I think there was a very good push to expand those stakeholders. We have seen it in the talks on Russia’s WTO accession. At the end of the day, when we actually get to permanent normal trade relations this argument will be made more and more, but for now that issue is out there.

Then, there is one other big issue which is coming into play particularly over the crisis in Syria. And it has to with different philosophical understandings of the world, or different views about how history is developing. If you ask most Americans, including political leaders in both parties, what the Arab spring is about, they would say that it is part of this wave of democratization, it is analogue to what happened in Eastern Europe in 1989 and in, perhaps, the former Soviet Union after 1991. It may be messy, it is certainly messy right now and it may continue to be messy. But, eventually, these are the positive transformations that are empowering the societies to demand accountable governments. And you are going to have better governance, more democratic states that are more willing to play a constructive international role, including, for example, in the Israeli-Palestinian question. Then, these military dictatorships that we have gotten used to dealing with. So, we need to accommodate ourselves to that change as it is happening and we can’t prevent it, and we want to shape it as best as we can so that we get to these positive outcomes.

My reading of how most Russians look at this Arab spring was different. They see it as this uncontrolled process of change with a very uncertain outcome. They look at some of the countries where political change has been already taking place, such as Tunisia, Egypt, Libya. They look at the people who have been the main beneficiaries, and in a lot of cases it have been Islamist groups. Certainly, Egypt has now Islamist president and even harder core Islamist groups are now becoming a problem in the Sinai Peninsula. Even Tunisia - which is probably the most progressive European-style modernized urban country in that part of the world - has Islamist government. And Russia is really worried about the prospects for radical Islamism to be a destabilizing force not only in the Middle East but in much of the former Soviet Union as well in Central Asia, in the North Caucasus. As we saw a week or so ago even in core parts of Russia itself - in Kazan - the mufti was attacked. I think there is much greater sense in Russia that whatever political change happens in the Middle East - it could have very dangerous outcomes not only for the region itself, but for Russia as well.

Let’s return to the Magnitsky bill. What implications might it have for the U.S.-Russia relationship if adopted?

I think it will be negative in the short run to be sure, I think it will be some kind of a response on the part of the Russian government. We have heard them talking about some asymmetrical response, I am not entirely sure what that means. May be it will be travel bans against U.S. officials, but to be perfectly honest, I think more Russian officials want to travel to the United States than American officials want to travel to Russia. I do not think that impact will be particularly significant. But I think it will change further the controversy of the relationship. And I think those controversies have been changing already over the last 6-9 months. And it will just further that negative dynamic. The Magnitsky bill itself is not the issue, I think the issue is what it does to a broader relationship in areas where the U.S. and Russia should have an interest in figuring out how to cooperate. I think missile defense remains one of those areas, I think security in the post-Soviet regions surrounding the withdraw from Afghanistan is probably the biggest of issues in the short to medium term. But if it gets overshadowed by this counterproductive argument about the Magnitsky bill - which I don’t think at the end of the day is going to have a significant impact in terms of bringing about the change that its sponsors want to bring about - then we are going to end up in the worse position than we already are.

Do you see any changes in Russia’s rhetoric towards the United States since Putin assumed his third presidential term? If so, how does this affect the relationship?

A little bit. I think it was worse during the electoral campaign, where Putin said that the protestors in Moscow were paid by Hillary Clinton and there were some negative things about Ambassador McFaul. I think they have tried to walk that back a little bit. Though at the same time the rhetoric in general is not necessarily hostile, but it is less positive than it was, certainly, before the election. After the “reset” in 2009 there was a lot of (and this was on both sides) emphasis on finding things where we could cooperate. There was U.S.-Russia Bilateral Presidential Commission, there was the Northern Distribution Network and Afghanistan, there was the whole range of things. And I think both Russia and the United States went out of their way to make the point that they had an interest in cooperation. The rhetoric that we have seen on both sides - particularly on the Russian side as in the United States they were quite reticent about discussing Russia at all (apart from the issue over Syria) because of the presidential campaign - has been much more defensive. We are trying to prevent things from getting worse, rather than we are trying to figure out how to move forward. And that again I think is a negative development.

Is the “reset” still possible? What areas should Russia and the U.S. focus on to improve strained relationship?

Well, in the short to medium term the biggest area is security in the post-Soviet region specifically Central Asia countries surrounding Afghanistan. So, I think it needs more discussions of how the U.S. is thinking about its basing posture in the region; about what both sides are prepared to do to bolster the stability in those states after there is no longer the military presence, after there is no longer the large-scale financial flows that are going in; to work on counterterrorism, counternarcotics; and on upholding some kind of stability inside Afghanistan. That is medium term for next couple of years. Over the longer term, I would say there are two big things. One of them is economic. I have already touched on this, but figuring out how to expand the economic relationship, and expand the number of stake-holders between the two countries. And I guess it is not just economic, but also cultural, visa liberalization, making it easier for people to travel in both directions, expanding the number of people who have contacts, who have interests on both sides. I think that is where you lay the foundation for better relationship in the future. And then the second one and, probably, the hardest one is European Security, which I still think is the area where the relationship has the most problems. Missile defense is the piece of it, it is part of the broader debate about the nature of European security. What model of European security should be adopted, what Russia’s role in it should be, how Russia can be a contributor to European security, rather than - as it is in the perception of a lot of the European states – a threat to it. Another issue is Asia and the Pacific. As the U.S. is pivoting to Asia and the Pacific. Russia has started talking about its own pivot towards the Pacific and the importance of developing the Far East. And what that means? How to manage the U.S.-Russia relations in the Pacific? How to ensure that whatever cooperation develops it doesn’t get either country crosswise with China? How to deal with territorial issue with Japan? How to deal with the nuclear Korea? There is a whole complex of issues that fit into this question of what does it mean for the United States and Russia to pivot to Asia.

If Romney gets elected, is the U.S. policy towards Russia going to change? And if so, how?

I think it will change to a certain degree. I think a lot of the rhetoric that came out of Romney’s camp is being overblown. First of all, because it has been made in the heat of the political campaign. Second, because Romney is not somebody who spent a lot of time thinking about foreign policy, whether it is Russia or anything else. He has just made his first big foreign trip a week or so ago, it didn’t go so well. He was a governor of the state, he was a businessman. I do not think he is the person who has a lot of experience in foreign policy. So, he says things he probably shouldn’t say. If he actually gets elected and then he has to deal with these issues, he would probably prove to be more cautious and pragmatic person than some of the rhetoric makes out. But that indicates that there is still an element within the Republican party including people who are working with and for Romney who still see Russia as a problem, see Russia as a threat to U.S. interests. And that augers more conflicts over the post-Soviet region, over the European security. I think it is less likely that there is going to be more forward leaning ideas on cooperation that we saw came out at least at the early stages of the Obama-Medvedev “reset”.

Do you have any recipe on how we can build trust between the two countries?

That is a hard question, because trust is a cause of the problem, but it is also a result of the problem. I think the way that you build trust is that you actually start cooperating. You figure out areas where the cooperation is possible, you work together, you do what you say you are going to do and you do this over time. So, you sort of build up a track record and that makes it easier for people to believe that the next time you will do what you say you are going to do.