A souvenir seller displays matryoshka dolls with portraits of US President Barack Obama and Russian President Dmitry Medvedev near Red Square.
SPIEGEL ONLINE: The Obama administration promised to press the reset button with Russia. How will they try to do this during the president's visit to Moscow this week?
Gaddy: References to the image of hitting a reset button in US-Russian relations were popular a few months ago, but they have been rare lately. Early on, President Obama's Russia policy team invented the reset idea as a sincere effort to show the Russians that the new US leadership was not encumbered by what they described as the Bush administration's negative attitude towards Russia. The Russians, however, never warmed to the reset idea. The Russian leadership did not believe that the growing tensions between Russia and the US were as much due to a changed US attitude as they were the inevitable reaction to Russia's success in reasserting itself on the global scene.
SPIEGEL ONLINE: So the Russians instead see in Obama's visit an opportunity for them to underscore their standing in the world and to legitimize the status quo in international relations?
Gaddy: Exactly. In fact, the Russians themselves have been engaged in a "reset" project of their own for some eight years. Putin's explicit goal upon assuming power in 2000 was to reverse as much as possible of the geopolitical imbalance imposed upon Russia during the 1990s. He believes that in that decade of Russia's extreme financial weakness, the country effectively lost its sovereignty. The US and its NATO allies, he argued, used the opportunity to re-constitute the world order over Russia's head. They expanded NATO eastward and reshaped other international institutions to serve their agenda. They treated Russia's domestic economic, political and social policies as their own project, engaging in a crusade to shape Russia in their own image for their own interests. Putin's priority during his tenure as president, from 2000-2008, was to reverse the West's leverage over Russia.
SPIEGEL ONLINE: Some experts say there is an "empathy deficit" in the US -- a lack of understanding for the importance of such symbolic politics to the Russians. Has that changed with the new administration and how willing is Obama to accommodate such sentiments?
Gaddy: Empathy is a hallmark of Obama's policy at home and abroad. He has been well-coached by his team about Russian sensitivities, and he will undoubtedly go out of his way to send the right signals to the Russian population.
SPIEGEL ONLINE: The US president needs and wants Russian support on important topics such as Iran or disarmament. But at what price? Could such a price include concrete concessions on missile defense, on NATO enlargement or on criticism of the ongoing problems in Georgia?
Gaddy: Obama already has given signals of a softer stance on those issues, and the words may be followed by some concrete actions. But it would be a mistake to believe that the Russians will view them as something that requires counter-concessions on their part. The Russians will be happy to use US concerns about Iran or arms control to elicit concessions if they can. But they will not consider themselves bound by any "deal." Stationing of a missile defense system in Poland and the Czech Republic, admission of Ukraine and Georgia into NATO and Western involvement in the North Caucasus -- none of these are bargaining chips for the Russians. They oppose them without qualification, and they are non-negotiable.
SPIEGEL ONLINE: Will Obama try to reach out to opposition groups in Russia during his visit? Will he address shortcomings in the Russian democracy?
Gaddy: Obama will likely tread carefully around this issue for the time being. But that may change in time. We have seen in the case of Iran, there is a deep divide in US policy circles as to how much the US can and should do when it comes to interfering in or even commenting on the internal politics of other countries. On the question of Russia's shortcomings, there are two distinct groups in and around the administration that are fighting for Obama's soul. One group -- the more influential one -- thinks the US government must be much more vocal in criticizing the democracy and human rights record of the Russian leadership. A smaller group of pragmatic foreign policy specialists insists we deal with, as they put it, "the Russia that is, not the Russia we would like it to be." Right now, the strong critics of Putin have decided to hold back and let the pragmatic approach be tested, precisely because they think it will fail. They are confident that a deferential approach will produce no gains -- i.e., that the Russians will not change their behavior -- at home or abroad.
SPIEGEL ONLINE: During her recent Washington visit, German Chancellor Angela Merkel highlighted the American interest in Germany's "Russia expertise." How could the Germans assist an American-Russian rapprochement?
Gaddy: What Merkel experienced was a general openness in the Obama administration to listen to and consult with our foreign allies. But it is not specific to Germany or German expertise on Russia. How can Germany help improve US-Russian relations? Continue to debate and develop your own national strategy towards Russia, based on your own national interests. Pursue that policy consistently, and explain it without apology to your American friends as German policy. I personally believe that to be successful, US policy towards Russia will have to converge towards one more similar to Germany's.
Interview conducted by Gregor Peter Schmitz.
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