Why Obama’s reset with Russia has gone so wrong: full interviews

Image via Wikipedia

Below are unpublished quotes from a senior Obama Administration official and a couple of Russian officials on why things are going wrong in their reset policy. I conducted these interviews for my TIME story on this issue ahead of Clinton’s visit to Moscow yesterday and today. As always, only sound bites got into the story, and many brilliant quotes got cut. So I thought this would provide a fuller picture. What’s really striking in these interviews is how the two sides are so completely at cross-purposes in the ex-Soviet Union, and how Obama’s views as expressed by the official begin to look naive or even hopeless when juxtaposed with what the Russian government wants. I should note, these are still selected quotes, not full transcripts.

Senior Obama Administration official, interviewed March 5 on condition of anonymity by phone from Washington:

At the end of 2008, during the transition period, the bilateral relationship had not been so bad and negative and absent of substance since all the way back in the Cold War. Even the late Gorbachev period was better. Obama’s thought was that this was not because of clashing interests. If we just look at what US national security interests are in the world and pursue those, and think about how do they relate to Russian national security interests, there are clearly unrealized common objectives and common things we can pursue together.

A big part of that engagement was that we will not trade relations with other countries for better ties with Russia. We will not throw the Poles under the bus in the name of the reset. We won’t sacrifice
Ukraine or Georgia for the sake of better relations with Russia.

Concretely, in terms of what we have managed to do, the lethal transit agreement is big, and we are up to 50-60 flights this year already. Once we secure an agreement with Kazakhstan, we will do polar flights, which will get more supplies faster into Kyrgyzstan and on to Afghanistan.

We’re not done with the START treaty, but we’re very close. It’s frustrating how slow it has been, but historically this will still be the fastest negotiated nuclear treaty between the US and Russia. We have practiced the dual track [both civil society and inter-governmental engagement] and have criticized the anti-democratic actions that have happened over the year. Has it helped improve the situation in democracy in Russia? I don’t think so. But we’ve managed to practice that. We talked about the elections in October, talked about those as being obviously not up to democratic standards.

Some have said we should stop talking about that to get agreement on Iran.  But we’re not going to do that. We’re not shutting down that track, and the democratic assistance is being maintained. Some also have criticized us for not giving enough attention to these issues compared to Bush, but in the speeches and in terms of the money it’s there.

We had a meeting with Surkov, and were blatantly talking about this ridiculous stuff on Russia Today comparing Obama and Osama bin Laden. [What was Surkov's response?] They were embarrassed by it frankly.

Where we should have been more forthcoming is having more dialogue about our program for missile defense. Once they understand the new plan, that should alleviate the concerns. The radars, the sensors we are now talking about cannot see as deeply into Russian territory as the radar that was planned for the Czech Republic.

On the failures, there are some dogs that didn’t bark. That we have the Manas base in Kyrgyzstan is a great achievement. Russia didn’t want to allow us to have that. They put down $2 billion to get us out. But Obama had very frank discussions with Medvedev. He said if you believe we have a common enemy in Afghanistan, then this is going to help us fight that common enemy. Had we lost that, it would have been a major blow.  It is a major hub for getting our soldiers in and out of there.

But in terms of ending the Russian occupation in Georgia, we did not succeed in that. We categorically do not recognize South Ossetia and Abkhazia as independent countries, and believe Georgia’s territorial
integrity must be respected.  But we’ve had very little progress on that front.

Still, there was no war between Russia and Georgia this past year. We are actively involved in trying to keep the peace there.

Some people in Russia still want to keep framing things as competition with NATO and with the United States. They want to keep that zero-sum thinking. But there is a debate going on inside Russia, and even inside United Russia. There is not a monolithic view. Of course there are the old thinkers, and people are trained to think in certain ways. That doesn’t change overnight and it is not unique to Russia. But there is politics involved. If I were thinking about it as an analyst, about who is served best by the reset, it doesn’t serve everyone equally.

Obama doesn’t believe Russia would ever agree to a policy outcome that would be bad for the  United States.

These talks [on the START treaty on partial nuclear disarmament] cause both governments to start thinking about worst case scenarios. They are simply obligated to do that. And that tends to activate certain kinds of thinking sometimes.

We do not want to turn the relationship back into a unidimensional one where it’s just about arms control. So the civil society track is very important for us. In 2010, we are talking about modernization because of the initiative Russians are taking on that. They have the notion that Russia sees itself having its own Silicon Valley and we heartily agree. We don’t want our business-to-business dialogue to be just between oil companies.

The weakness of what we have done so far is too much in government channels and not enough in private channels.

[Are you worried that civil society engagement may anger the Russians?]  We are cognizant of some not wanting to see that kind of engagement and we are doing it nonetheless. We fundamentally believe that this is a critical component of the reset. There is the idea that we shouldn’t rock the boat, but that is not the administration’s policy.

Sergei Markov, a conservative parliament deputy for Putin’s United Russia party, and a political analyst known for having close links to the Kremlin in the past. Interviewed by phone on March 9.

Over the last several centuries, Russia had all of its main threats coming from the West, so of course it is still afraid of this…[Here Markov provides a 10 minute lecture on Russian history]… This is all built in to generational memory, generational fear. Everyone here has a relative, a grandfather, an uncle, who has been killed by an attack from the West.

You need several decades to change this mentality, and that has to be several decades of purely positive relations. And how can you call relations positive now when you look at who was killing Russian peacekeepers in South Ossetia. They were Georgians, but in NATO uniform, with NATO rifles, NATO training, NATO consultants and working with NATO intelligence. In general this was NATO operation.

Why was this war so interesting and fearful for the world. It’s because everyone understands that this was a clash between Russia and the peripheral miltary machine of NATO.

There is one fundamental fact that needs to be resolved before relations can really move forward. That is what what status Washington wants for Russia, what role it accepts for Russia in geopolitics. Russia was once a superpower, and that is a power that takes part in all conflicts around the world, and has influence around the world. Now Russia has moved away from that. Now it wants only to be a great regional power, one that defends regional interests and only sometimes interests in other regions as well. Russia wants this.

But Washnigton is so far denying Russia this status. Washington still holds the thesis that Russia’s influence should be limited to its borders. But of course the influence of a great power is not limited to its borders, by definition. And before Washington and Moscow agree on what status of Russia will have in the world, before they can agree to view Russia as a great regional power, it is impossible to talk about strong relations between them.

If a girl thinks that she is married, and boy thinks they are just dating, there is going to be a problem, because they have conflicting definitions of the boundaries of behavior.

Historical events that define this status will need to happen, they will continue to happen. The war in South Ossetia was very significant. It showed first of all that Russia is ready to use military force, to go to war to defend influence in its neighborhood, and, two, that the United States is only ready to counter that with financial, diplomatic, political support,
but not by sending its own troops into battle, not even for its close allies here.

This gives Russia the freedom to realize its ambition of being a great power in the region.

For this status to be accepted, it must be ready to push.

If before US was filling a power vacuum in the region, now there is no vacuum, Russia has filled out the gaps, and as it continues to expand its influence, there will be standoffs with the powers who filled the vacuum while Russia was weakened. Let’s hope those standoffs stay in the financial and political arenas.

Manas, Uzbek base, Azerbaijan bases, the US has also staked out places here, and it seems to want to continue that. This could pose a problem.

On the other hand, military bases can be viewed as helpful for Russia, and where they have a common interest, they can work together from those bases. This includes what Medvedev has said many times about fighting extremists together in the region. I’ve always said, let the americans build roads in Georgia, they will eventually become ours anyway. Either they will enter some economic alliance with us, or they will simply reintegrate into our state.

I support a large strategic agreeement bewteen the US and Russia, but for that the US needs to take steps toward recognizing Russia as a great power in the region, with the right to have its own bloc, its own sphere of influence.

Just as France has relationships with former colonies in Africa. Russia has special relationships with Belarus, and let’s admit, neither one is a relationship between equals.

[On Iran] Before Russia was saying that it would not support sanctions, now Russia is looking at the possibility of sanctions as a last resort in some cases. That is a huge change in policy. It has cost Russia contracts worth many billions of dollars with Iran. That is a serious move.

I think on balance the people are stronger [inside Russia] who want to improve relations, including first of all the president. But the Prime Minister has also said that Russia has no penchant for conflicts with the United States.

The core of the Medvedev ideology is that we should be open to cooperation, while Putin has a tendency to say that whatever conflicts remain, the US is at fault. But by doing that Putin takes responsibility for not initiating any new conflicts with the United States, and that is likely to move things forward. Then again, Putin’s statements in Vladivostok were quite tough.

Dmitry Rogozin, Russia’s envoy to NATO, interviewed by phone on March 11:

The positive signals have been created, first of all, a high level of personal trust has been created between the two presidents. Our president does sincerely believe that Obama can be trusted. But that doesn’t mean this opinion is shared at every level, especially the levels where the implementation of their agreements and discussions is borne out.

What disturbs us without question is the expansion of military infrastructure on our western border and on our border in the Caucasus. Missile defense  is also a very criticial issue for us.

[On START treaty] The idea of dismantling our nuclear arsenal can undermine our very sovereignty, because for us, the preservation of our nuclear capacity is a matter of life and death. It is an essential element of our defense capability.

The one who is stronger has to make the first move. So we are waiting for offers from the USA.

We hear these statements from people… who say we should accept Russia into NATO, and we welcome this as positive signal, a true show of trust, and we and don’t see this as a trap. But still we would like to see real changes in actions. We got burned during Gorbachev. Instead of flirting, what we need is for NATO to stop taking us as a threat, that has to change.

In my logic, the Americans have to make the first step, the ball is in their court, the changes have to come from Washington. What we would like to see, what would amaze me, is a clear public declaration, fixed in the law, that refuses the view that Russia is a threat.

This would be punch in the gut, a final knock out, for the cold war thinking on both sides. But so far it seems we are only seeing sweet words wash over our ears while the foreign seeds [alternative translation: worms, maggots] are still being laid at our doorstep.

The divisions between Russia and West is not a natural state, the challenge now is ambitious. It is not distrust or hurt feelings, it is getting rid of the history of conflict between our countries. Whoever really takes up this challenge, whether Obama or someone else, will enter history as a truly historical reformer, and not just someone with ambitious plans.