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Talbott’s legacy haunts US-Russia ties
26.05.13 09:24 f.USSR

Which one indeed is the right track leading from the White House to the Kremlin often becomes difficult to distinguish, but then, such predicament must be endemic to any highly complex relationship like the Russian-American one. Consider the following.


On the face of it, it almost looks that the US-Russia ties are on the mend — despite some major differences continuing. Over Syria, at least, a critical mass has developed and a pattern is forming whereby the two foreign ministers sit together, chat up, exchange notes and while agreeing to disagree are also willing to take baby steps. 


Of course, each has his own way of taking that baby step forward, full of ambivalences and even retrogression at times. But then, John Kerry and Sergey Lavrov ultimately make it a point to touch base with each other to find a way of to take the next baby step forward. 


They are having a candle light supper in Paris on Monday to figure out the actual modalities of the Geneva peace meet over Syria, now that they managed to shepherd the opposite sides towards the negotiating table. This is their fourth meeting in some twenty days. Amen.


But then, just when the Moscow-Washignton tango is getting to be noticed — and there are other signs too such as Obama’s meeting with the visiting Russian secretary of the national security council Nikolai Patrushev — the US administration introduces a discordant note by announcing the nomination of Victoria Nuland, former state department spokesperson under Hillary Clinton’s watch, as the new head of European and Eurasian Affairs at Faggy Bottom.


How come? Nuland has many virtues. Married to the well-known neocon thinker Robert Kagan, she would have acceptability among the Republicans (although Kagan has since walked into the Democratic camp.) Two, she is Russian-speaking and an old Moscow hand. Three, she is reputed to be a competent diplomat. So far so good.


But what is jarring in her career graph is also that she was the hand-picked aide to Strobe Talbott, the then all-important point person for Boris Yeltsin’s Russia in the Bill Clinton administration. To cap it all, Nuland is also a former US ambassador to NATO — and, indeed, NATO’s eastward expansion is the legacy of Talbott to the US’s post-cold war diplomatic history, ignoring the prescient warnings by such iconic figures like George Kennan against such a move that would inflict lasting damage to the ties with Russia.

Neither Clinton nor Talbott is particularly liked in Moscow, to put it mildly. Suffice to say, at a time when Moscow is agonising whether Obama in his second term would finally show the audacity of hope to make a clean break with the post-cold war triumphalist Russia policy that successive US administrations through the past two decades more or less pursued with remarkable consistency, Nuland’s appointment would create some angst in the Russian mind.


With an ambassador in Moscow, Michael McFaul, whom the Russians consider to be an expert on “colour revolution” and, now, a confidante of Talbott as the assistant secretary of state in Washington, Moscow faces a formidable challenge on the diplomatic track. 


Having said that, Russians with their sardonic humour insist that in real life it is far easier to deal with the clear-headed hawk than with the self-styled dove who tends to be myopic. 


Which brings us back to the key question: Is the US-Russia working relationship over Syria the real thing? Is the US really discarding the approach of “selective engagement” of Russia? Or, is it a matter of Obama making a virtue out of necessity now that the US’s Syria policy ended up in a cul-de-sac and its retrieval needs Moscow’s cooperation? 


An answer might become available in about 4 weeks from now when the US and Russian presidents meet in Northern Ireland on the sidelines of the G8 summit. For the present, an agreement on missile defence seems elusive, but then, appearances can deceptive in US-Russia relations — and they often are.

 

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