What Has Moscow Done? Rebuilding U.S.-Russian Relations

"What Has Moscow Done? Rebuilding U.S.-Russian Relations" by Stephen Sestanovich (Foreign Affairs, November/December, 2008).

This article starts out by examining the prototypical "realist" response to the war in Georgia. That prototypical response is, essentially, to re-trench, ignoring many of the soft issues on which the US traditionally drubs Moscow and instead to focus on the key strategic issues which we can actually affect in the short run, such as preventing Iranian progress toward nuclear weapons. The US should stop talking about democracy, worrying about minor trade issues, or promoting human rights causes in the Eastern bloc, for example, and should strike a grand bargain with Russia. As Sestanovich points out, this kind of thinking is a mainstay of amature foreign policy thinking, and is rarely realistic. There are few, if any, grand bargains ever struck, and fewer still that hold.

Sestanovich argues, among other things, that the US genuinely miscalculated Russia's reactions to missile defense systems. No one expected the Russians to happily accept such programs, but perhaps their reaction against the missile defense systems was more than mere rhetoric. Perhaps, we, because we genuinely didn't intend the missile defenses as a tool to use to neutralize Russian power, were too quick to assume that the Russians wouldn't interpret it that way. Perhaps they took the implications, for themselves, of such defensive systems, more seriously than we meant them to.

He also argues that democracy must be "de-Americanized" as a brand. While I don't entirely agree with this, I do think that he alludes to a deeper point. Democracy needs to be better defined. Democracy is not simply "having votes" or "being like America." A real and useful definition of democracy would have to include reference to the rule of law, freedom of expression, enforceability of private agreements, protection of the rights of minorities, and access to the press. It is too easy now for foreign leaders to synonymize "democracy" and "American influence." This plays into their hands.

Finally, it is clear that the advance of Western agendas and the enlargement of the Western sphere of influence to include places such as the Ukraine and Georgia has reached a limit. Russia, weaker than it once was, is still powerful and influential, especially in Central Asia. The success of Western-style reforms and European integration has now run headlong into the still significant influence of Soviet tanks. A new equilibrium is being tested.