The Reset & Reality: US-Russia, & the Future

Reset in Context

When the Obama Administration canceled a planned East European missile shield in favor of a sea-launched ABM system, Russia announced that it was canceling plans to deploy responsive missiles in Western Russia. Honored mutually, that's a reset even though the latter days of the Cold War saw pithier accords.

Reality

Russia is nowhere near entering a new era of rapid mutual constitutional democratization with the US in the lead, however, increased cooperation may be closer than we think because of startling changes in the world that make the two former Cold War empires vulnerable to new players vying for WMD, superpower and great power status. In some quarters, prospective natural disasters could also force the world's traditional competitors together in unprecedented ways.

The Putin government has unleashed forces that should sober US policy makers against expecting sea change in US-Russian cooperation in the short to midterm: indoctrination of future leaders (youth) with Neo-Soviet Russian nationalism; capitulation to crime bosses with monetary interests in the status quo; and military-economic agreements with co-authoritarian China that has expressly pursued a model of imperial economic resource dominance.

Regional and Immediate Issues Tied to Missile Decisions

Other reasons for missile shield changes: Notwithstanding denials (Secretary of Defense Gates in the NY Times for example), Admiral Mullen and Secretary Gates had long sought to build regional support for a successful completion of the NATO mission in Afghanistan. To shore up Russian support to this end, they have repeatedly called on US voices in and outside government to eliminate Cold War rhetoric and clearly show Russia that the Cold War was over. Russia's permission for NATO's resupply to its Afghan forces over and above Russia remains important because of Pakistan's instability.

Realistic Optimism: Mutual Benefits

A stable Afghanistan is also in Russia's and China's best interests. However, the latest on Afghanistan is that the US Commander Gen. Stanley McChrystal predicts a failure there without larger NATO troop commitments. (See our earlier analysis on enlisting regional powers' assistance with security operations in their interest).

Failed border states become security and immigration nightmares for their neighbors, including Russia and China. Such failed states become breeding grounds for militants from disaffected populations, i.e. Chechens, Dagestanis, Uighers, Taliban and so forth. 

Regarding Russia, intelligence estimates and RAND reports put its problems in grave terms, especially its ethnic Russian de-population and its burgeoning Islamic population in the South and in Moscow. Such trends, despite Russia's energy wealth acquired through nationalization, could render her indefensible without counterproductive crisis-defense contingencies. Neither is it in US interests that Russia should become a nuclear and fossil resource power subject to Islamic theocracy that has shown itself vulnerable to radicalization and coalition with radical, like-minded regimes.

Conclusion

Long overdue: a mutual US-Russian quest for the better national project each could have become if not for the Cold War. The US anticipation of a "peace dividend" implied such a priority. Will the Putin and the American neoconservative era become a dated interlude in the history of US-Russian relations followed by breakthroughs in unprecedented cooperation? Such cooperation would benefit world stability and balance of power.