Carnegie’s Matthew Rojansky identified the U.S.-Russia relationship as one that chronically suffers from unanswered questions, unresolved statuses, and unsatisfied interests.
- Why Russia Matters: The United States’ relationship with Russia is important because of Moscow’s nuclear arsenal, its ability to swing votes at the UN Security Council, the two countries’ overlapping geopolitical interests and global energy concerns, and Moscow’s potential to help Washington address the novel challenges of the twenty-first century such as terrorism and nuclear-proliferation.
- American Triumphalism: The United States, Rojansky argued, continually fails to recognize Russia’s uniqueness and to treat the relationship accordingly. In dealing with Russia, America displays a combination of triumphalism—claiming the bilateral relationship reflects a U.S. victory in the Cold War—and naïve optimism, imagining an abandonment of the zero-sum game and no conflicts of interest between the two nations.
- A Political Reset: The reset has been a highly personality-driven policy, facilitated by the election of President Barack Obama in the United States and Dmitry Medvedev’s leadership of the Russian Federation. It is bound to suffer setbacks, however, during the upcoming national campaigns in both countries.
- Institutionalizing the Relationship: Rojansky called for institutionalizing the U.S.-Russia relationship with permanent committees and concrete procedures to protect it from changes at the political level and a lack of will at the bureaucratic level. In the short term, he suggested a formalized management of the bilateral relationship that encourages honest communication between political leaders and seeks to ensure that, in a moment of crisis, the relationship does not default to the status quo of the past twenty years.