Russia as a Real Partner?
Putin and Obama have a fundamental choice to make in their new terms: Continue "their transactional approach to relations" or "put relations in a broader, longer-term strategic framework, which could foster more enduring constructive relations." Thomas E. Graham of Kissinger Associates and Dmitri Trenin of the Carnegie Moscow Center, write in the New York Times "Why the Reset Should Be Reset"
While I would not hold my breath that it will happen in 2013, the authors make some good arguments about common long term interests:
A strategic approach would start with the geopolitical transformation now underway across the globe and ask how each country could become a strategic asset for the other. Russia, if only by virtue of geography, and the United States, because of its global reach, could exercise significant influence over the emergence of a new geopolitical balance in Eurasia. The two countries' strategic interests do not necessarily collide; indeed, there is probably a significant overlap, given common concerns about China, Islamic extremists and competition for Arctic resources by non-Arctic powers.
It's not just Moscow that needs to change its policy:
Having confronted malevolent Soviet power for so long, America resists the idea that Russia could ever have a positive role in American strategic interests.
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