“Reset” fizzles

The face-off between Washington and Moscow is gaining momentum. While, earlier, the White House expressed disappointment over the Russian authorities’ decision to grant temporary asylum to former CIA contractor Edward Snowden and Barack Obama complained that the Russian authorities sometimes “slip back into Cold War thinking,” now the Kremlin is saying it is disappointed with the US decision to cancel a scheduled meeting between Pres. Obama and Vladimir Putin.

US State Department Spokesperson Jen Psaki said that the US National Security Council had unanimously approved Obama’s decision not to hold a US-Russian summit in Moscow.

As the ex-US ambassador to Ukraine, Steven Pifer, told The Day, there was no special sitting of the National Security Council. “As far as I can see, this news means that the president’s National Security Adviser Susan Rice, Secretary of State John Kerry, and Secretary of Defense Chuck Hagel agreed that there was no use of going to Moscow, taking into account that there were no chances to achieve progress in any serious problem,” Pifer noted. He says that, under the constitution, the National Security Council can only offer recommendations at the sessions that discuss important questions of national security, but it is the president who personally makes a decision.

Russian officials and pro-Kremlin analysts took a critical view of Obama’s decision. The Russian president’s assistant Yury Ushakov thinks this decision is connected with the story of the former US spy agency contractor Snowden – “the situation we are in no way responsible for.” The very problem underlines that the US is still unprepared to build relations with Russia on an equal basis, Ushakov pointed out.

Meanwhile, Leonid Kalashnikov, First Deputy Chairman of the Duma’s International Committee, believes that Obama did so to satisfy the interests of some circles that made a mountain out of the molehill named Snowden. “The Americans are losing much more than the Russians in this situation,” the Duma member maintains.

On the other hand, the Russian opposition, human rights activists, and liberal intellectuals think it is a right decision. Moreover, they have been pressing to cancel the Moscow summit because of a deteriorating human and civil rights situation in Russia. Mikhail Kasyanov, co-chairman of the RPR-PARNAS party, has publicly responded to US experts’ call to cancel this summit. “The year-long aggressive pressure of the authorities on civil society, politically-motivated persecution of active citizens, prominent experts, and ordinary people bring us to the conclusion that such form of interaction between the West and the Russian regime as summits should be put off until better times,” he says in a letter.

Incidentally, not all in the US itself agree that this summit should be canceled. Rand Paul, a Kentucky senator and a likely Republican presidential candidate, believes that Obama’s decision to cancel the visit is a matter of no great consequence. At the same time, Paul said that during the Cold War President John Kennedy and Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev had negotiated.

The Day asked Lilia SHEVTSOVA, senior research associate at the Moscow Carnegie Center, to comment on Obama’s decision and its consequences for Putin’s human rights policy.

“From the viewpoint of Russian civil society, from the viewpoint of the Russian political opposition, I think Mikhail Kasyanov and other oppositionists are right to say that Obama was right to cancel a bilateral summit with Putin. For, doing so, he at least showed that the US is  not going to continue the policy of embracing and conniving at a government that is not only running roughshod over Russian society but also using anti-Americanism in its policy, and this summit would rather be a snub for Obama. Speaking of America and those who share American interests, I think Obama had to make a very difficult choice between two options.

“The first option is to continue simulating the ‘reset,’ which Washington has been doing in the past few years. But since Putin came back to the Kremlin, the ‘reset’ has seen no changes, and the very fact of ‘resetting,’ which the US administration considered as its greatest success during Obama’s first term, has been in fact reduced to tactical matters. In the past 18 months, relations between Washington and Moscow have undoubtedly and clearly taken a dramatic downturn. And Putin has been repeatedly saying that he is not in principle interested in the ‘reset.’ Russian officials and pro-government experts, such as Pushkov, have been saying: ‘And is the ‘reset’ of any benefit to us? It only serves Obama’s interests. He is weak and needs some success. He has nothing. This ‘reset’ is his brainchild, and in fact it is not exactly benefiting us. We need more deliverables. And if Obama wants to go on ‘resetting,’ he should do this on Russian conditions.’ So Obama could have come to Moscow, seen Putin, and imitated a second ‘reset’ on Putin’s conditions.

“The second option was to show restraint and a non-confrontational approach. This means to go to Petersburg, not to Moscow, display restraint rather than coldness, and at least show that he is no longer going to abase himself. The US Congress, the Washington public, public opinion, and the media community demanded that he exercise this second option. Look, The Washington Post and all the other influential US newspapers are publishing the same editorial comment: Obama must not meet Putin and, moreover, the Americans should boycott the Olympic Games. So Obama chose the second option, which does not mean that he intends to finally bury the ‘reset’ and his previous course during the first presidential term. He chose a course that leads not to a confrontation but to greater restraint. If the US president came to Moscow, he would, firstly, have to hear Putin lecturing him (which he was doing during Obama’s previous visit to Moscow) and to discuss some trivia. For no serious agreements were reached during that visit. Obama would have left for America with a still longer face.”

But Leon Aron, director of Russian studies at the American Enterprise Institute, says in a Politico article that Obama is making a mistake by canceling the Putin summit. In his opinion, it would be better not go to Russia at all or go and let the Russians and the world hear from Obama, rather than Jay Carney, what America thinks, denying Putin the political boost he so avidly seeks. Or, maybe, Obama is afraid to play on Putin’s field?

“As a politician and a leader that plays Realpolitik, Obama has never cared about civil rights. If he suddenly wished to change his cool image of a president-realist who takes no interest in rights, he could meet representatives of the Russian opposition and civil society during the G20 summit in Petersburg. This might be a gesture. This would in no way change the state of political freedoms in Russia and would raise a storm of accusations from the Kremlin. But Omana could at least improve his political image inthe world and in the US itself. I do not know whether or not he will do so.”

Can the cancellation of this visit have any impact on Putin’s policies or his attitude to human rights?

“I must also say about two more things. There is so much talk here that the Snowden affair is the factor that prompted Obama to cancel the visit. Apparently, the US can also take a similar position because the US administration is unlikely to admit that there have been no prominent results, no breakthroughs, in the relations in the whole period of the ‘reset.’ The Americans may find it easier to catch at Snowden and say over and over again that he is the cause of the cancellation. I think the Americans will finally benefit from the Snowden factor because this factor became the excuse for Obama not to visit Moscow.

“As for Putin and his reaction to the failed visit, I think he will continue the current tactic because the Kremlin is in principle aware that nothing essential or fundamental is occurring in US-Russian relations. First and foremost, there is no strong economic foundation that could be, one way or another, a soft mat that cushions differences and conflicts in other fields. There is no  economic foundation. There is nothing special to speak about. Therefore, I think Putin will try to use this factor, first of all, tactically. He will continue to play the anti-American flute. But, at the same time, it is not in his interests to aggravate relations on the eve of the Olympic Games. He has only one domestic political goal – to achieve success at the Olympics. He needs no confrontation or aggravation of relations with the West. He wants to see Western leaders in Sochi. He does not want to be in the role of Yanukovych who expected to see Western politicians and leaders at Euro-2012 nut saw nobody. So I think that Putin, a pragmatic and well-balanced person who knows how to keep emotions in check, will not strive for an abrupt aggravation or collapse of relations with Washington.”