The current Russia-US confrontation is set to last long because its roots are systemic rather than situational. Moreover, there is a high probability of its aggravation after the US elections regardless of their outcome. Consequently, the priority for the coming years is to manage the confrontational relationship and to prevent it from deteriorating even further.
During the next few decades, the United States will fight to preserve its “global leadership” even though it is less and less in keeping with the world development trends. It is hard and painful to part with the “end of history” illusion, the more so just 25 years after what seemed a great and final victory (1989−1992). Russia, for its part, will not renounce a strategy whereby it seeks to become an independent power center with its own regional projects and an equal role in global decision-making. Russia and the US see each other as increasingly enfeebled players entrenched “on the wrong side of history” and therefore doomed to a historic defeat.
And yet they must work to overcome the new confrontation. Being involved in a confrontation for a long period will weaken both parties and make the world less safe and governable.
This confrontation deepens the divide between the Greater West and the Greater non-West and draws new dividing lines in Europe and the Asia-Pacific Region. It is harmful to the Russian interests in Europe: Instead of a Union of Europe, new European security architecture and a “common economic and human space” we get a new divide and a new front in the military and political confrontation. It is weakening Russia’s positions in the post-Soviet space as it encourages countries in the region to engage in balancing behavior. Its relations with China suffer as well as the latter is aware of Russia’s shrinking room for maneuver.
It stands in the way of efforts to settle the Ukrainian crisis, creates conditions for new conflicts in the post-Soviet space, and, in the long term, weakens Russia economically as it enhances its technological backwardness, impedes structural reforms and makes it develop in a mobilization mode.
In the long term, the confrontation weakens the US positions in Europe, too, because many West European countries do not support its harsher forms and seek to normalize relations with the Russian Federation. It is weakening the US positions in Asia and Eurasia as it serves to consolidate Greater Eurasia and promote an unprecedented Russian-Chinese rapprochement, including on Asian issues (TPP, RCEP, etc.). None of America’s Asian allies supports its sanction policies. It is weakening the US positions in the Middle East as it prods Russia into playing the role of an alternative power center in the region. Finally, it weakens the US positions in the world as a whole as the Russian-American confrontation intensifies the general West–Non-West confrontation and consolidates the Non-West.
In the militarily and political area, the new confrontation will inevitably lead to a new arms race. It should be taken into account that by 2030 Russia and the US are likely to have smaller shares of the global GDP, smaller shares of global military spending and reliably smaller shares of the world population.
The emergence of mega-regional communities, consolidation of NATO and US Asian allies and the unprecedented rapprochement between Russia and China give Moscow and Washington only “temporary relief,” creating an illusion that they are strengthening their positions or are even close to victory. In fact, these communities make it impossible to solve even a single global problem. Nor do they reverse Russia and the United States’ global weakening.
But there are another three important factors working to overcome the Russian-US confrontation.
First, I am referring to America’s West European and Asian allies and China, who, each for its own reasons, do not benefit from a prolonged Russian-US confrontation.
Second, the foreign policy consensus inside the US itself is bound to change as America becomes involved in a difficult and painful process of adaptation to a world that increasingly defeats its ideological clichés and illusions of the 1990s. These transformations are already under way as evidenced by the success of Donald Trump and Bernie Sanders.
The third factor is the internal situation in Russia and the need for modernization.
Despite the expediency of overcoming the confrontation, it is highly unlikely that Russia and the United States will overcome their contradictions related to the philosophy of international relations, the basic rules and standards of international behavior and the nature of international order in Europe and the world as a whole within the next 10 to 15 years. For this, a “new Congress of Vienna” and a new global agreement on the rules of the game are needed. Neither is on the cards.
The long-term challenge, therefore, is to shape a relationship that will create a positive inertia and instill in both Russia and the US a conscious need for cooperation, which would be seconded by the elites in both countries.
This need should be of foreign political and military political nature and have nothing to do with the economy, where the potential for Russian-American cooperation is extremely limited. For example, their joint fight against international terrorism and the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction or their efforts to stabilize the Greater Middle East should be perceived as something necessary and more essential from the point of their interests than rivalry in the post-Soviet space, or over European security issues, or the use of military force, or forced democratization of some countries.
To be sure, this change in the balance of Russian-US relations is only viable if the United States gradually abandons its interventionist policy and its emphasis on democratization of states by force and on “regime change.”
The first step is to reduce the likelihood of an enhanced confrontation after the presidential election in the United States. For this, at least partial progress in implementing the Minsk Agreements and some progress on Syrian settlement should be achieved right away. This will minimize the chance that the new US administration will decide to step up Russia containment policy in Ukraine (by supplying lethal weapons) or revert to the old plan to topple the Assad regime by military force. This will also create a precedent showing that Russia and the US can achieve their goals through cooperation.
Within its first few years, the new administration will need, first, to manage confrontational relations and prevent further escalation of confrontation; second, to build up cooperation with allies in Europe and Asia; and, third, to develop a new agenda for US-Russian relations, aimed at implementing the sides’ interests through cooperation.
Managing confrontation and preventing escalation is primarily about adopting confidence-building measures in the military and political sphere and military cooperation rules. The parties should also come to terms on their acceptable actions in Ukraine, Syria, the Baltic region, and other important regions.
Russia’s increased cooperation with the EU, Japan, South Korea and ASEAN will prompt the United States to relax its confrontation policy.
The new agenda should be focused on cooperation and should, first, address problems of true importance for the parties and the international system as a whole rather than those inherited from the past, kept on the agenda by the force of inertia, or playing a minor security or developmental role in Russia and the US.
Second, it should identify where precisely Russia and the United States have better opportunities and tools than other countries and thus can create the highest “value added product” through cooperation.
Third, it should help the parties develop a stable habit for cooperation, generate the need for continued cooperation and thereby promote a “positive political interdependence” between Russia and the United States.
Fourth, it should be open to other countries, enabling them to join the Russian-US cooperative effort, rather than be restricted to bilateral Russian-US relations.
This agenda should include the following key elements:
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Developing a new strategic stability and arms control philosophy.
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Promoting multilateral cooperation to create a new political and international political order in the Greater Middle East.
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Creating a new cooperation model for Afghanistan, favoring SCO-based multilateral cooperation (after the SCO is joined by India and Pakistan) over bilateral Russia-US and Russia-NATO cooperation.
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Preserving cooperation in the Arctic region.
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Creating an inclusive security system in the APR and an integral economic order in the region through multilateral cooperation; precluding this order’s polarization and disintegration into the “pro-American” TPP and the “pro-Eurasian” RCEP.
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Reaching an agreement that the United States will not hamper a rapprochement between the EU and the EEU and their work on the modalities of relations in the “shared neighborhood” space, including Ukraine.
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Reaching an understanding in Russia and the United States that the parties’ differences over the European security system are less important than their cooperation on the new strategic stability and arms control philosophy, the Greater Middle East, and the APR.
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Reaching an understanding that the further deepening of Eurasian integration, including in a wider format of “comprehensive Eurasian partnership,” does not threaten the US interests and security and is an objective process organizing the “common Eurasian home.”
The last stage in this agenda-making effort is about the great powers developing a new global consensus on the rules of the game. But this is a prospect for the mid-century, at best.
Dmitry Suslov is Programme Director of the Valdai Discussion Club.
