Despite all the tensions between Russia and the United States, the Russian side has never closed the door to dialogue, and it will go for it as soon as its partner gets ready. This was announced by Sergey Kislyak, First Deputy Chairperson of the Committee on Foreign Affairs of the Federation Council; Ambassador of the Russian Federation to the United States (2008-2017), at the expert discussion the Valdai Club held on February 11.
According to him, today’s US foreign policy is seriously affected by the presidential race and the confrontation between Trump and the Democrats. “The current polarization is the strongest in modern history, changes the entire culture and tools of political debate,” he said. To improve the dialogue between Russia and the United States, American domestic situation has to become more stable.
Dimitri Simes, General Director of The National Interest magazine, said that such stabilization cannot be expected soon. One of the reasons is that Trump has no clear adversary from the Democratic camp: Michael Bloomberg, Joe Biden, Barney Sanders, Pete Buttigieg and many other candidates with their own advantages are struggling to win this role. The failed impeachment, which even played into the hands of the current president, and the coronavirus outbreak, which called into question the US-China economic relations, contributed to the chaos we observe now.
Ultimately, as Fyodor Lukyanov, Research Director of the Valdai Discussion Club concluded, US-Russian relations have some kind of stability to them, which means that despite all the tensions, they were never able to escalate into a violent clash. We can consider them to have stood the test of time and hope for constructive developments.