2012 - Resetting the Reset
“I’m not ready to say whether this is a new edition of the Cold War or how long this period will last,” Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Sergei Ryabkov, one of the overseers of the country’s America policy, said on 08 December 2014 during parliamentary hearings at the State Duma. Fittingly, the topic of the hearings was “Russia-U.S.: Temporary Flare-Up or a New Cold War?”
“But it will take many years to emerge from the situation with the American sanctions,” Ryabkov continued. According to him, “relations started to seesaw long before Ukraine, and through no fault of Russia’s” because “the desire to tear the CIS countries away from Russia has always been an American foreign policy priority.” Now, the deputy foreign minister said, “the declared goal of forcing us to change our position on Ukraine barely conceals the aim of forming the socio-economic conditions for regime change in Russia.”
Michael McFaul, President Obama's "Russia hand" on the National Security Council from 2009 through 2011, and U.S. Ambassador to Russia from January 2012 to early 2014, later argued [From Cold War to Hot Peace, 2018] that the key to the failure of the Reset was Vladimir Putin' return to the presidency in 2012. The mass demonstrations that broke out after electoral fraud in the December 2011 parliamentary elections, meant that "Putin needed the United States again as an enemy" (pg. 416). He explains: "To be elected a third time as president of Russia in 2012, [Putin] needed a new argument. In the face of growing social mobilization and protest, he revived an old Soviet-era argument as his new source of legitimacy - defense of the motherland against the evil West, and especially the imperial, conniving, threatening United States. Putin, his aides, and his media outlets accused the leaders of Russian demonstrations of being American agents, traitors from the so-called fifth column. We were no longer partners, but revolutionary fomenters, usurpers, enemies of the nation" (pg. 418).
By mid-2013 there was a lack of progress in almost all areas with Russia. It ranged from disarmament to economic and trade relations, to global questions of security and human rights. There was disappointment about Russia's position on Syria and Iran After NSA leaker/defector Edward Snowden got asylum in Russia, several Senators called for a boycott of the Olympic Games in Sochi and to have the G20 summit moved from Saint Petersburg to a different country. US media from New York Times to the Wall Street Journal repeatedly criticized Obama for being too lenient with Russia.
The United States and Russia did not see eye to eye on all issues, but the relationship accommodates frank discussion of disagreements in a spirit of mutual respect with the aim of managing differences. Where the two have differences – on Georgia, Syria, human rights, etc., – they address them openly and honestly, and stand by their principles. Pursuing cooperation where it is in their mutual interest enables a more substantial, less polemical dialogue on the hard issues.
By 2012 Russia-American relations were going through their coldest stretch since the Cold War era. Russia had become an irrelevant second-tier policy issue for the Americans. Ties soured since Vladimir Putin returned to Russia's presidency in May 2012, with Washington and Moscow at odds over issues ranging from Syria to human rights. Promoting nationalism, Vladimir Putin is getting rid of programs he associates with the 1990s, a time when Russia was weak after the collapse of the Soviet Union. Russia’s government finances were among the best in the world. The Kremlin bridled at what it sees as the paternalism and intrusion of foreign aid.
Russia’s state-controlled television has repeated the theme again and again that the West wants to weaken Russia. The Kremlin announced it was ending the activities of the U.S. Agency for International Development [USAID] and the United Nations Children's Fund [UNICEF] in Russia, as well as a joint nuclear cooperation program with the United States. Washington says the Kremlin wants a foreign enemy to build domestic support. But the Obama Administration has put a higher priority on ensuring Russian cooperation in Afghanistan, North Korea and Iran — and a lower priority on building democracy in Russia.
Sergei Magnitsky was a lawyer who died in prison in 2009 after accusing Russian officials of large-scale embezzlement of tax money. Magnitsky, who worked for Hermitage Capital Management, which was the largest Western investment firm operating in Russia, accused Russian law enforcement and tax officials of a scheme by which they fraudulently received refunds for taxes that Hermitage paid in Russia, totaling $230 million. Magnitsky was subsequently arrested on charges of tax evasion. He died in prison at age 37, after being detained for nearly a year and saying he was denied medical attention. In 2011, an investigation by then Russian President Dmitry Medvedev's human rights council found that Magnitsky, who had pancreatitis, had been "completely deprived" of medical care before his death. It added there was "reasonable suspicion" to believe Magnitsky's death was triggered by a beating.
Magnitsky's case became a symbol of alleged prison abuse in modern Russian and led to a fresh dispute between Moscow and Washington. In July 2011 the U.S. State Department imposed a travel ban on dozens of Russian officials suspected of involvement in Magnitsky's death. U.S. law requires that visas be denied to anyone accused of human rights violations, including torture. By the end of 2012 the United States had enacted the Magnitsky Act, imposing a visa ban and financial sanctions on Russian officials accused of human rights violations.
"People who are guilty of these things ought to go to jail,” said Jim McGovern, a Massachusetts Democra who co-authored the bill in the U.S. House of Representatives. “But if they are not going to go to jail in Russia, they ought not to have the privilege to take their kids to Disneyworld in the United States. Or use U.S. banks to hide their money."
Russian President Vladimir Putin then quickly signed a law banning Americans from adopting Russian children. On April 12, 2013 Washington issued a list of 18 officials banned from visiting the United States. The 18 people named are now subject to visa bans and asset freezes. Most of them were Russian officials accused of involvement in the Magnitsky case. The Kremlin was apparently relieved that it contained only mid-level names and less than 10 percent of the number of names that some American congressmen wanted. Nevertheless, the Kremlin retaliated with its own list of 18 mid-level American officials banned from visiting Russia. The same number of people on the Magnitsky list will be put on the so-called "Guantanamo list."
The bilateral Agreement Regarding Cooperation in Adoption of Children which was signed in 2011 by Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov provided better safeguards for adoptive children taking into account the interests and obligations of the adoptive parents. On December 28, 2012 the United States said it "deeply" regretted Russia's passage of a law ending inter-country child adoptions between the U.S. and Russia. The State Department made the announcement hours after Russian President Vladimir Putin signed the controversial bill into law. The State Department said American families had adopted more than 60,000 Russian children in the past 20 years. It called the new law "politically motivated" and said it would reduce adoption possibilities for children who are now under institutional care. The Russian adoption law is seen by the U.S. as retaliation for the Magnitsky Act.
In September 2012 the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) was expelled from Russia by the Kremlin, which accused it of meddling in the country’s politics. The agency, which spent about $2.7 billion in Russia since 1992, has supported, among other things, various NGOs that criticized the Kremlin for alleged rigging of the recent presidential and parliamentary elections. The United States ended its efforts to promote democracy and civil society in Russia under the auspices of USAID. Senior Russian officials have portrayed some of these programs - such as those funding election monitoring and human rights groups critical of the Kremlin - as attempts by a foreign nation to undermine Russia’s sovereignty. The agency had funded civic organizations that have rankled Russian officials, including the election watchdog Golos, whose monitors had catalogued violations in local and federal elections in recent years.
In October 2012 Russia’s Foreign Ministry said there would be no extension of the the Nunn-Lugar Cooperative Threat Reduction Program without a major overhaul. Russian officials no longer believed U.S. funding and oversight of weapons disposal were needed or desired. For 20 years, the United States and Russia had a partnership to reduce stockpiles of weapons of mass destruction in the former Soviet Union, and to make sure that remaining weapons do not fall into the wrong hands. American taxpayers paid $7 billion over the last 20 years to cut the threat of loose nukes scattered around the former Soviet Union. The program did things as simple as build secure fences around warehouses that held nuclear materials, and as complicated as evacuating all nuclear weapons from Belarus, Kazakhstan and Ukraine.
Disagreements between the two veto-wielding members of the UN Security Council over the conflict in Syria, where more than 70,000 people had been killed in two years, were a factor frustrating hopes for a solution there. The United States wanted Russia to convince Syrian President Bashar al-Assad to step down, but Russia refused. By openly challenging the US and the EU over Syria, Vladimir Putin has shown that he intended to turn Russia's irrelevance to his regime's advantage and draw the red lines himself.
Another area of disagreement is the Obama administration’s plan to deploy a ballistic missile defense shield in Europe. Washington and its allies say the shield is designed to protect Europe against a possible missile strike by countries like Iran. Moscow says the anti-missile system - when deployed - could neutralize its strategic missile force, leaving Russia vulnerable to the West.
Foreign Minister of Russia S. Lavrov stated on April 29, 2013: "Missile defense is one case in point. We still believe that if the Russian Federation and the United States bring their minds together, we can develop a common system which would be efficient in protecting the Euro-Atlantic region from threats coming outside this region. The situation so far is in a deadlock. The U.S. and NATO, which supported the U.S., believe that the system which is proposed by the United States is flawless and it cannot be changed."
John Bolton, a former U.S. ambassador to the United Nations in the George W. Bush administration, said, “It’s a measure of Putin’s confidence that he can basically act without fear of retaliation from the United States. That has helped embolden him to crack down: crack down on political dissent, crack down in the economic sphere, really trying to establish authority - not in a communist sort of way, but in the traditional fashion of a very, very strong central government.”
James Brooke, VOA Moscow bureau chief, notes "President Putin needs an enemy to rally his blue collar, small city, less educated supporters. The United States is a convenient “enemy” — because, from the Kremlin’s viewpoint, the U.S. ‘threat’ is manageable. Unlike a certain Asian country with 10 times Russia’s population, the United States does not share a long land border with Russia. The U.S.-Russia border is water, ice, and lightly populated by Eskimos. One generation after the collapse of the Soviet Union, trade between Russia and the U.S. is so anemic that the Kremlin feels it can afford to give Washington a few verbal kicks. On the trade side, 40 percent of Russia’s imports come from Europe, 16 percent from China, and only 4.5 percent from faraway USA."
Konstantin von Eggert, a Russian columnist for Ria Novosti and host for radio Kommersant FM, writes of American attitudes: "’Let the Russians do their own thing as long as they do not become too much of a nuisance,’ seems to be the prevailing view in the White House. Once adopted, it is hard to change. As long as the Kremlin makes sure it does not do anything that is spectacularly offensive to America’s sensitivities, this policy is bound to last."
According to a poll conducted by the Levada independent public opinion research center in October 2016, as many as 59 percent of Russians consider Western opinion of their country unimportant, while 30 percent hold that the authorities and the community should pay more heed to such criticism. When asked about the reasons behind this opinion, 43 percent said Western nations simply wanted to weaken Russia in terms of international competition and any reports by them were biased by definition. Thirty-five percent answered that an unfriendly attitude to the Russian Federation in the West was traditional and 25 percent said that Western nations projected their own faults on Russia in bid to evade responsibility.
In addition, 74 percent of the public currently thinks that the main reason behind the Western sanctions is a desire to weaken and humiliate Russia. Twenty-one percent believes foreigners want to "lecture" Russia without really understanding it. Thirteen percent maintains that the sanctions are an attempt to restore the geopolitical balance that shifted due to the Crimea's accession into the Russian Federation in 2014. Only 5 percent believes the real objective behind the sanctions policy is an attempt to stop the armed conflict in the southeast of Ukraine, where pro-Kiev military is fighting with the militias of the self-proclaimed republics of Donetsk and Lugansk.
|
NEWSLETTER
|
| Join the GlobalSecurity.org mailing list |
|
|
|
