The relations between the US and Russia underwent dramatic changes during the last few years. However, ideological and social differences between the two countries were not permitted to stand in the way of cooperation between them. They also reached understanding on various international issues.
The US President Barack Obama and his Russian counterpart Dmitry Medvedev met in London on April 1, 2009 on the sidelines of the G-20 Summit. It was the first meeting between these two Presidents since they took office in their respective countries. This meeting has generated hopes for a reversal in a protracted downslide in the US-Russia relations. The US and Russia, striving to ease strained relations, announced jointly that they will try to put a new nuclear deal in place before the existing treaty expires on December 5, 2009.
Joint Statement
The two Presidents issued a joint statement saying the “era when our countries viewed each other as enemies is long over.” They pledged to work together to limit the world's two largest nuclear arsenals, and the White House also announced that President Obama was accepting President Medvedev's invitation to visit Moscow this summer.
As for nuclear arms control, the two Presidents said that “we are instructing our negotiators to start talks immediately on this new treaty and to report on results achieved in working out the new agreement by July 2009.” Their newly-professed commitment to reinvigorate arms-control initiatives that have lain dormant for years caused a stir at the London site of a G-20 summit that seemed otherwise transfixed on a deepening worldwide recession.
The two Presidents said they would be in a much stronger position to strengthen the nuclear non-proliferation regime if they led the world by example by reducing their own nuclear arsenal.
President Obama trumpeted the new arms undertaking as representing “great progress” between Moscow and Washington on areas where the two have mutual interests, although he also said he would not try to minimise differences.
However, the two countries have not settled on a new cap for nuclear arms. The soon-to-expire Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty (START) of 1991 limits the world's two largest nuclear arsenals to between 1,700 and 2,200 warheads.
The new agreement will mutually enhance the security of the parties and predictability and stability in strategic offensive forces. The two countries are ready to move beyond Cold War mentalities and chart a fresh start in relations between our two countries. The proposed arms deal would go beyond the 2002 Strategic Offensive Reductions Treaty (SORT), which committed both sides to cutting arsenals to between 1,700 and 2,200 warheads by 2012. It would replace the START I, which led to the biggest ever bilateral cuts in nuclear weapons.
Beginning of New Chapter
The present meeting between Obama and Medvedev marked a contrast with the matey style displayed by their predecessors: George W Bush said he looked Vladimir Putin in the eye and "was able to get a sense of his soul" when they met for the first time in 2001. The new strategy is to develop an agenda based on interests, also accentuating where we disagree but not to make the goal of these meetings to establish some buddy-buddy relationship. The planned arms deal gives both sides a chance to "press the reset button" on their relations, a phrase coined by the US Vice-President Joe Biden in February 2009.
President Obama's Administration has reached out to Russia during its first two months in power, trying to repair a rift that emerged over the US plan to build a missile defense system in Eastern Europe that Moscow vehemently opposes.
President Obama promised to reboot ties with Russia and the US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton presented Russia’s Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov with a symbolic reset button at their first meeting in Geneva in February 2009 to emphasise seriousness of the new US Administration plans toward Russia.
Background
Since the Second World War, the US has been the ultimate guarantor of European security against any attack from the East through the National Atlantic Treaty Organisation (NATO) alliance. The crucial factor of Soviet-US relations was the mutual nuclear threat that arose in 1950s. The nuke threat and potential of “mutually assured destruction” was a chilling prospect for the world. The high point in the relation was Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty (ABM Treaty) which resulted from Strategic Arms Limitation Talks (SALT) of 1972. In early 1980s the relations became tense with the Soviet occupation of Afghanistan. The downing of a South Korean civilian airline by Soviet air force, the US invasion of the Caribbean island Grenada to evict Marxist regime and the exit of the Soviet delegation from arms control talks kept the bilateral tensions high. During the mid-1980s, the Soviet leadership underwent a major shift Leonid I. Brezhnev, who died in November 1982 to Mikhail S. Gorbachev who became General-Secretary in March 1985. Regan-Gorbachev meet yielded cultural exchange agreements.
In the early 1990s, Gorbachev and George H.W. Bush declared a US-Soviet strategic partnership at summit of July 1991 marking the end of Cold War, Bush said that the cooperation during the Persian Gulf crisis of 1990-91 laid ground for such a partnership. During this period both voted jointly in the UN Security Council on sanction and operation against Iraq before and after Iraqi invasion of Kuwait, on the North Korean nuclear issue on the UN observers in the conflict ridden Georgia and Tajikistan and in economic sanctions against Siberia.
In strategic arms control, Russia declared that it was the successor of the Soviet Union, in assuming the obligation of START signed in July 1991. The Supreme Soviet ratified this treaty in 1992. Presidents Bush and Yeltsin signed the second Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty (START II) in Jan. 1993. In Sept. 1993, Russia acceded to the Missile Technology Control Regime, reaffirming an earlier decision not to transfer sensitive missile technology to India. But throughout this period, Soviet and Russian Parliaments often opposed policies that they deemed helpful to the US. The Supreme Soviet, which was less supportive than the Gorbachev Government on action against Iraq, condemned the US air strikes in 1993. Supreme Soviet approved START I in November 1992 with some conditions and after delay, successive Parliaments conducted hearing and debates on START II without ratifying the treaty from 1993 to mid-1996.
In 1993, statements of Russian Foreign Ministry critical to the US action and policy were interpreted by some US observers as part of a more assertive Russian Foreign Policy that insisted on protecting Russian vital interests. Other observers saw them as rhetoric designed to modify hardliners in the Russian Parliament and elsewhere. Events corroborated the former interpretation including Russia’s opposition to NATO membership for Baltic and Central European States.
Russian military moves in Georgia raised questions of its intentions and its insistence on selling nuclear reactor technology to Iran developed doubts about Russia’s adherence to chemical and biological weapons bans, the Conventional Forces in Europe Treaty (CFE Treaty), and other arms control pacts. Another blow to the US-Russian relations came in 1994 when US arrested Aldrich Ames, a long time Soviet and Russian spy.
All these events led to some doubts in the US about Russia’s commitment to bilateral cooperation and logic for continuing the aid for Russia. Nevertheless, bilateral cooperation including the US and programme continued, though the amount declined to less than US $ 600 million in 1996 from US $ 2.5 billion in 1993. The year 1995 saw the US Congress placing several conditions for aid to Russia, such as reduction in Russian assistance to Cuba. US also censured Russian assistance on nuclear energy agreement with Iran.
In the subsequent years the leaders of the two countries held summit meetings where they agreed to speed up destruction of nuclear warheads and expand economic ties. Despite this differences cropped up between the two on the question of Chechnya, Iran and NATO. However, these issues were resolved at a meeting the former US President Bill Clinton and Yeltsin in May 1995 where Russia agreed to delay the sale of two nuclear reactors and scrap plans to sell gas centrifuge to Iran.
Russia, as successor State of the erstwhile USSR is not as strong both economically and politically as the US. It is also dependent on the US economic aid and politically the country is unstable. Thus, it cannot stand on the will of the US foreign policy makers and has no other alternative but to give the US practically a free-hand in international politics.
It is hard to dispute the pessimistic assessments of the Russian-American relationship that prevailed at the end of 2008. Unfortunately, relations soured because of the Bush Administration’s plans—specifically, deployment of the US global Missile Defence System in Eastern Europe, efforts to push NATO’s borders eastward and refusal to ratify the Treaty on Conventional Armed Forces in Europe. All of these positions undermined Russia’s interests and, if implemented, would inevitably require a response on our part.
It is believed that removing such obstacles to good relations would be beneficial to our countries — essentially removing “toxic assets” to make good a negative balance sheet — and beneficial to the world.
The US and Russia have shown mutual readiness to build mature bilateral relations in a pragmatic and businesslike manner. For that the two countries have a “road map” — the Strategic Framework Declaration they signed in Sochi in 2008. It is essential that the positive ideas in that declaration be brought to life.
Conclusion
To conclude, it can be said that the relations between the US and Russia have always been of the deepest concern to India. Its own relations with each of them have been among the foremost priorities of India’s foreign policy, and its purposes are best served when the bilateral relations between the two are so good that India can pursue its own ends with each of them without causing any offence to the other.
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