An interview with former Bush administration official and Russia specialist Thomas Graham
Svetlana Babaeva interviews Thomas Graham of Kissinger Associates, former senior director at the National Security Council for Russia and onetime adviser to President George W. Bush, about the intricacies of a better relationship between Russia and the United States.
SB: You wrote a short while ago about the irony of fate for recent U.S. Presidents where Russia is concerned. Each of them aspired to improve diplomacy but left the White House with things even worse than before. Why this confidence now that a reset is possible?
TG: I'd say that "reset" is an incorrect term. Reset is different. You push a button and the screen first becomes black and then empty, just like it was when you bought it.
It never happens in history or in relations between sovereign states. There is no button to push in order to return, say, 15 years into the past. It follows that we will have to deal with what we already have--including problems…and a lack of mutual understanding.
I suspect that the global financial crisis signifies the end of both the Cold War and the era that followed it. The previous parity is history, and we do not know what the new parity will be...Or when, for that matter.
Strategic challenges to the United States and Russia are different now. That's what makes lack of symmetry considerably less important than it was 10 or 15 years ago.
Before trying to develop new relations, we'd better try and take a look in to the future. What will we see? China on the rise. Lack of stability preceding a new parity in the Middle East. A shift of dynamism from Europe to Asia. While the economic weight of Europe is truly colossal, its common foreign policy is so problematic and full of gaps that Europe's geopolitical clout keeps dwindling. Global warming. Proliferation of weapons of mass destruction...
SB: Several objections. First, about this look into the future. Whenever global systems are established, their participants do not care about what the future will be. They only care about what they want it to be. You say that the lack of symmetry is going to be immaterial, but it is this lack of symmetry that foments so many problems in the relations between Russia and the United States. Strategic interests tally, but the priorities differ.
TG: The system established after World War II in the 20thcentury was based on the decisions made in Moscow and Washington, after 25 to 30 years of wars and ruination. These days, the process is just beginning. What has taken place so far is essentially a continuation of the Cold War--just without the second world power. To a considerable extent, the United States kept seeing the world through this prism: inescapable triumph of liberal democracy and free enterprise is what we defended and promoted during the Cold War and after it, when the Soviet Union as the main obstacle was no more. It is getting clearer and clearer now that the triumph of liberal democracy is not inescapable after all. Even the foundations of free enterprise are questioned. New powers arise – global like China and regional like India, Iran, or Brazil. Where Europe is heading is anybody's guess. There is no way of saying now what awaits Europe when it's finally there--transformation into a single power or the retention of sovereign cultures. The collision of the traditional and modern worlds is observed in the Middle East and this collision radicalizes whole regions. The threat of weapons of mass destruction proliferation becomes more and more pressing, particularly after the North Korean nuclear tests. There is no saying what is going to happen to Iran...Everything is so flimsy. There is no new balance or parity for us to try and preserve.
Georgia Dialogue
The problem of our relations as I see it is that we all insist on trying to cope with all these challenges individually. Consider the Georgian issue, for example. The way I see it, it is impossible to ease tensions within the framework of the issue itself. Instead of concentrating on what each country perceives as its gains in every particular issue, we should try and optimize them from the standpoint of U.S.-Russian relations in general.
Hence the need for the undeniable dialogue over what the United States regards as its interests and priorities and what Russia does. This dialogue will give us a chance to find the way for the United States to aid Russia with its problems without compromising its own strategic objectives. Same goes for Russia, of course. I'm not talking about a banal trade-off – something like Iran in return for ABM. Nothing like that. We need concessions and compromises on minor issues to build up cooperation in major issues of vital importance.
SB: But Russia needs the United States to stop encouraging [President Mikheil] Saakashvili in Georgia and meddling in Ukrainian internal affairs right this very day and not a decade from now. Russia needs guarantees right now that the United States is not going to turn Central Asia into a testing site.
TG: I assume that we will reach a consensus on strategic arms reduction. The new treaty will breed trust. It will become clear then that the United States supports and encourages Georgia and not Saakashvili. The atmosphere of our relations will gradually change. Moscow will see everything in a different light, and we will find the solutions that will satisfy the United States, Russia, and Ukraine itself.
We should understand and agree that there can be no immediate breakthrough in the relations between our countries, but that we are determined to strive for it step by step in the hope to make this breakthrough in three to five years.
President Dmitry Medvedev is [President Barack] Obama's principal counterpart. On the other hand, the United States is supposed to respect the Russian political structure. Everyone knows after all that your prime minister is instrumental in both domestic and foreign politics, so that ousting him from the dialogue will be counter productive. How to ensure his participation in the dialogue is an entirely different matter. Let the president and his prime minister discuss it. That's what I think the summit is for: A discussion of who will discuss what matters with whom.
SB: When would you say the [missile defense] situation can be clarified? The United States is expected to complete reevaluation of the nuclear threat this fall.
TG: Difficult to say. The matter is being pondered, on-site work suspended... By and large, overall reviews of threats are not made inside of a month. Besides, there is also the Czech Republic and Poland with whom the matter should be discussed too.
