On June 5, Alexander House hosted workshop "Russian-American Relations in the Context of Scheduled Putin-Obama Meetings" devoted to the presidential meetings at G8 in Northern Ireland in June and G20 in St. Petersburg next September. Attended by many young experts on Russia-US relations, the event was opened by RIAC Director General Andrey Kortunov, who underlined the urgency for the bilateral dialog to be extended beyond the current framework based on nuclear containment.
On June 5, Alexander House hosted workshop "Russian-American Relations in the Context of Scheduled Putin-Obama Meetings" devoted to the presidential meetings at G8 in Northern Ireland in June and G20 in St. Petersburg next September. Attended by many young experts on Russia-US relations, the event was opened by RIAC Director General Andrey Kortunov, who underlined the urgency for the bilateral dialog to be extended beyond the current framework based on nuclear containment.
Session One covered the strategic relationship. During the discussion, Dmitry Suslov, Deputy Director of the Center for Integrated European and International Studies at Higher School of Economics, opined that overall progress is quite feasible without solution of problems related to strategic and tactical weapons. He was opposed by Alexei Fenenko, Leading Researcher at RAS Institute for International Security Problems, who pointed out that the nuclear-free world proposed by Barack Obama would not benefit Moscow's interests. In his turn, Mikhail Troitsky, Assistant Professor at Chair of International Relations and Russia's Foreign Policy, noticed that both Russia and the US could abandon the concept of mutual assured destruction, and continue reducing their nuclear arsenals in order to save additional budget funds.
Session Two was devoted to regional security including prospects for Russia-US interaction in Asia Pacific, Central Asia, Middle East and Europe. Gevorg Mirzayan, special correspondent of Expert magazine, noticed that approaches of Russia and the US to the Syrian conundrum have more in common that it seems, since both are interested in restoring and maintaining the regional balance of forces.
Session Three dwelled on Russian-American economic ties, with the analysts arriving at a consensus on the need to step up lobbying Russian national and business interests in the United States.
RIAC Program Director Ivan Timofeev, the workshop moderator, summarized the deliberations pointing out the priorities for bettering the Russian-American relationship, among them, non-escalation in the strategic field, optimization of economic and technological modernization, institutionalized cooperation of the two countries in Central Asia and Asia Pacific, discussion of a new treaty for limitation of precision and tactical weapons in Europe, intensified contacts in education and technology area, and attraction of investments.
RIAC Workshop "Russian-American Relations in the Context of Scheduled Putin-Obama Meetings"
