Question: There was a great deal of optimism at the outset of this decade that Russia and the Untied States could work as “strategic partners” on numerous internationals security issues. Instead, as this decade comes to an end, the relationship between the two countries has deteriorated to a level of animosity not seen since the end of the Cold War. What happened?

Cohen: This is a very important question, and it is often asked in the United States, especially in recent years. But only one answer is given in the United States; everything was great in the 1990s when President Bill Clinton and President Boris Yeltsin created, according to this point of view, a real partnership and friendship. Then Vladimir Putin came to power in Russia and ruined everything by his domestic and foreign policies. That is the orthodox American answer to your question, - what happened was Putin. It’s the wrong answer and it is part of the problem, which did not begin with Putin or with the second George Bush.

The relationship was seriously undermined in the 1990s because the Clinton administration pretended to treat Russia as an equal and a partner but instead it treated Russia as a defeated power. It took the view that Russia had lost the Cold War and that America had won the Cold War. Therefore Russia was similar to Japan and Germany after World War II. Consequently, Washington believed that it had the right to dictate Russia’s domestic and political and economic policies, and that Russia’s foreign policy and interests abroad should be the same as that of the Untied States. That is where the problem began almost twenty years ago and that is why the problem is so serious.

What made it even worse was that there was a chance to start anew, to break with the flawed U.S. policies of 1990s after September 11. After the attack on the United States on September 11, 2001, the Kremlin led by the Russian President, then Putin, did more to help the Untied States fight the Taliban in Afghanistan than any other country in the world, more than any NATO country. Russia gave the Untied States intelligence. It allowed the Untied States over-flight so it could use military bases in Central Asia. It even gave the Untied States a Russian backed fighting force called the Northern Alliance in Afghanistan, which saved many American lives. Putin reasonably expected in return a real partnership, an equal partnership, but what did the United States do after the Taliban was driven from power? It excluded Russia from the political arrangements inside Afghanistan. It demanded permanent bases in Central Asia when it originally said that these would be only temporary. It unilaterally left the Antiballistic Missile Treaty, which Russia viewed as the cornerstone of its nuclear security. Moreover, following Clinton, the Bush administration further expanded NATO to Russia’s borders. Putin later said that Russia was betrayed and deceived, and that is very important statement. When President Medvedev came to Washington earlier this year for a brief visit, he met with the group at the Council on Foreign Relations, led by Madelyn Albright. Medvedev expressed the same sentiment and said that the United States had lost an opportunity for a partnership with Russia after 9/11.

So we had two crucial moments where there was a chance for a real strategic partnership with post-Soviet Russia. Washington adopted unwise policies in the first case, and in the second case punished Moscow after it gave the United States so much help. Americans don’t understand or know that history, whereas Moscow has never forgotten this and still resents it.

Question: U.S. policy towards Russia since the collapse of the Soviet Union has contributed to very high levels of anti-American sentiment in Russia, especially in the state sponsored Russian media. I have talked to many young Russians who have deep negative conceptions about American people and life in the United States. Assuming that the United States “presses the reset button” in its relations with Russia and begins treating Russia as an equal partner, will Russia be able to “press the reset button” considering the negative image of the United States created by the Russian media over the last 5 years?

Cohen: There are some negative images of America that appear on Russian television, which are being encouraged by the Kremlin and official forces. We also have a lot of negative images of Russia in American media, television and movies, so it’s occurring on both sides. The question we have to ask is: how much does this affect what ordinary citizens think? I can point you to a partial answer. When I lived in Moscow from 1975-1982 during the Brezhnev years and almost up to when Gorbachev came to power, it was a very high point in the Cold War, but I don’t recall ever meeting anybody in Russia who had anti-American views. How do you explain that? One possible explanation is that people in those days believed the opposite of what the Soviet media told them: the media says America is bad, therefore America must be good. There was some of that, but generally speaking people remembered the U.S.-Soviet partnership during the Second World War. That generation was still alive and told its children about it.

In general, young Russians know American culture much better than young Americans know Russian culture. The majority of American youth know nothing about Russian culture. They couldn’t name a single well known living Russian author. Whereas Russians, especially during the Soviet period, always read American authors in translation and admired them. There was also rock music which came to Russia from the west, partly American partly British.

When the Soviet Union ended in the 1990s, there was a notion in the Untied States that the young people of Russia were our natural allies, that they would be for democracy and free markets, whereas middle age and older Russians were not the natural allies of these ideas because they had the most to lose. It turned out that by the end of the 1990s, anti-American attitudes among young people were roughly equal to anti-American attitudes among older Russians. Why was this? It was because the economic crisis of the 1990s, which was rightly or wrongly associated with American advice, was experienced by everybody, young people and old people alike. Or take the American bombing of Serbia in 1999. Young people reacted angrily just like older people did. In other words, the divide between generations exists in all countries but not on certain fundamental issues involving pride in their nation, nationalism etc.

So bearing all that in mind when answering your question, if America changes its policies would the view of America among the young Russians improve? The answer is yes, to some degree. It would, however, very much depend on three other things. First, the nature of those changes in American policy, and I am not optimistic about the extent of those changes. Second, it would depend on the Kremlin’s media policy. That is very important, and I am talking about television in particular because 85 percent of Russians, like Americans, get their news from television and not from newspapers.

Finally, a third factor is very important. Whenever people live through an economic crisis they often look for people abroad to blame. This is not just in Russia and the United States; this has always been the case in history. So when Prime Minister Putin said that Russia’s economic crisis originated in the Untied States, and he is not the only person who believes that, this was already blaming the Untied States, and Russians reacted to that. But it’s also the case in the United States that as the economic crisis hits people, there is more hostility towards the outside world. So part of the answer to your question is, it will depend on whether or not the economic situation improves. So not only do we need the foreign policy change, we need improvement in the economic quality of people’s lives before they will begin to think differently about the outside world.

Question: What effect will the current economic crisis have on the future balance of power between Russia and the Untied States? How would a possible shift in either direction affect the U.S.-Russian relationship as a whole?

Cohen: I believe that although important, it is a secondary factor in the relationship. There is a widespread belief in the United States at this moment that because of the economic crisis in Russia, Russian foreign policy will become more conciliatory, more accommodating and less assertive. I think that this is a false assumption. Russian foreign policy today is a reaction to what happened in the 1990s and after 9/11. Only a fundamental change in American policy towards Russia will bring about a fundamental change in Russian policy towards the Untied States. I believe that the current Russian political class, and in my opinion Putin and Medvedev don’t operate independently from the Russian political elite, will spend every kopek, every ruble if necessary, to pursue what it believes are its national interests abroad. The price will be paid by the Russian people, as always, but I don’t think that the crisis is going to change Russian foreign policy in itself for better or worse.

One thing that it will do, however, is make it harder to carry out the modernization of the Russian armed forces that President Medvedev has called for. That is very expensive and there is going to be less money unless oil prices go back up significantly. Nevertheless, the Kremlin will continue with this, giving the modernization of its armed forces a priority for two reasons: because of the expansion of NATO to Russia’s borders and because of what happened in Georgia in August 2008. So I think people are exaggerating the impact of the economic crisis.

In fact, it might be that the economic crisis will affect American policy more than Russian policy. The United States is already engaged in two wars, in Iraq and Afghanistan. President Obama said that he is going to withdraw from Iraq, but I am not convinced that this is going to happen, at least not to the degree and on the schedule he has talked about. Also, the United States is getting more and more involved in Afghanistan, and as Russia knows better than any other country, that war cannot be won and will become very expensive. America simply doesn’t have enough troops to send elsewhere, and that I think will influence American diplomacy. When he was a candidate, President Obama called for a new era of American diplomacy, which I interpreted to mean, putting more emphasis on negotiations and less on military power. That is a good thing, and if the economic crisis encourages that diplomacy, it is also a good thing. The hope would be that the Kremlin responds accordingly.

Question: Many analysts believe that today’s Russia exhibits dangerous neo-imperialist ideology, in particular towards the former Soviet republics. What is your opinion on this?

Cohen: This is a very important question and probably the single most important issue in American-Russian relations. It is the question of the former Soviet republics and particularly Ukraine and Georgia. I don’t believe that anything substantially or enduringly good will happen in American-Russian relations, and I don’t believe that a real partnership is possible, until the Kremlin is convinced that Washington will no longer try to make Ukraine and Georgia members of NATO.

Here we have a conflict of perception. Moscow sees the expansion of NATO to its borders as American imperialism, while Washington sees Moscow’s resistance to NATO expansion as imperialism. So what does imperialism mean? In the case of Russia, I would argue that every great power, in fact every country, has a right to feel that its borders are secure. It has that right and nobody should have been surprised that when a decision to expand NATO toward Russia’s borders was unwisely made back in the 1990s, the worse decision made in Washington since the end of the Cold War, Russia was going to be outraged.

If it was simply a competition for political influence in Georgia and Ukraine without any talk of NATO membership, it would be a different matter. The expansion of NATO, however, has militarized the competition for Georgia and Ukraine, and that is why there was a war in Georgia in August 2008. This is one of the most dangerous areas in the world today. Yes, the war in Georgia in August 2008 was a Russian-Georgian war, but it was also a Russian-American proxy war. People have to think about that. Russia fought with its own troops, and the Georgian leadership sent its troops into South Ossetia believing that it did so with American support because the Americans had created the Georgian military and trained it. Did Georgia have Washington’s support when it attacked South Ossetia? I don’t know. The point is that we now have a militarized relationship like we had during the Cold War, and it’s even more dangerous because it’s taking place on Russia’s borders.

During the Cold War there were proxy wars between the Soviet Union and the United States in places like Africa, where we would back one African side and Moscow would back another one. This also happened in Afghanistan where the United States backed the Afghanis who were fighting the Soviet occupation. But it never happened on Russia’s borders. Russia is a nuclear country, we are a nuclear country, this is the one thing that everybody during the Cold War said should not be permitted to happen, a direct conflict on either American borders or Russian borders. Now it has happened. There were reports, although I don’t know if they are true, that when the war in South Ossetia began Moscow moved, not nuclear warheads, but missile launchers into South Ossetia because it feared that NATO would intervene in the war. If so, think how dangerous that was. That was approaching the danger of the Cuban Missile Crisis. That’s how bad the relationship is at the moment, and that’s why NATO expansion is the single most important problem for both sides. Let’s look at the reality of how close we came to a catastrophe in Georgia. 

As I said, every state has the right to feel that its borders are secure. That means no unwanted foreign bases on its borders. Especially bases of a foreign power with which it had a historical conflict. When I talk to my American friends and colleagues and to the American media, they ask me why Russia is so upset about the possibility of American or NATO bases in the Baltic republics or Georgia and Ukraine. I tell them, imagine that we wake up tomorrow and there are Russian bases in Canada and Mexico, and a missile defense system in Venezuela or Cuba. The American President would be impeached if he didn’t react proportionally. So put yourself in Moscow’s shoes.

What’s the answer? Personally I believe a solution could be an agreement between Washington and Moscow that would assure Moscow that there would be no NATO or any other Western military bases on Russia’s territorial borders, including the Baltic republics, which are already members of NATO but as of yet have no NATO bases on their territory, although there are plans to build them. Also, Ukraine and Georgia would not become members of NATO. In return, Moscow would recognize the full political sovereignty of Ukraine and Georgia, which means their elections. So if Ukraine elects an anti-Russian president, well that’s bad luck for Moscow, but it isn’t going to mean that Ukraine is going to become a member of NATO, and since Ukraine and Russia are so historically joined and Kiev needs Russian oil, they will work it out. But the moment you militarize this relationship by putting bases on Russia’s borders, everything spins out of control in a dangerous way. So the solution is something like what Finland has enjoyed since the end of World War II. No military bases in Finland, a kind of Finish military neutrality. That would be a step in a right direction and would go a long way.

It’s important to emphasize that the expansion of NATO has actually increased no one’s security. It has made Russia nervous and anxious and therefore more dangerous, which has led to a Russian military buildup. It almost dragged the United States into a war with Russia in Georgia. Finally, all the little counties on Russia’s borders who have been promised NATO membership, instead of negotiating separate and peaceful relations with Russia, whether territorial, ethnic, or energy, they punch Russia in the nose and then hide behind the United States. In other words, neither the Baltic republics, Ukraine, or Georgia have any incentive to conduct meaningful diplomatic relations with Russia because they think that the Untied States and NATO are going to protect them no matter what they do. That is why we ended up with the dangerous war in Georgia, and that’s why this kind of thinking, which is tied to NATO expansion, has to stop.

Question: So one of the greatest obstacles to improving the U.S.-Russian relationship seems to be the American desire to play a democratizing role in “Russia’s backyard,” which Russia views with suspicion and considers the post-Soviet space its sphere of influence. Why is Russia suspicious of the U.S. desire to have good bilateral relations with the former Soviet republics?

Cohen: Again, starting with the Clinton administration, American bilateral relations with the former Soviet Republics has meant a military relationship, thus the relationship has been equated with NATO. So the United States says to the Baltic republics, if you want to have good relations with us you should become a member of NATO, and then Washington said the same to Georgia and Ukraine. Once a country becomes a member of NATO, it acquires a NATO military base. Not surprisingly, Russia has opposed that.

If there must be competition between the United States and Russia in these former Soviet territories, let it not be military. Let them compete economically because these countries would benefit like the third world used to. Georgia can get money from Russia and money from the United States, and so can Ukraine. The winners will be the Georgian and Ukrainian people.

Question: But U.S. policymakers argue that the United States is not forcing anyone to join NATO and that the expansion of NATO is occurring because many of the former Soviet republics see NATO membership as beneficial to their security and that they should have the right to choose whether or not to join NATO. What is your opinion on this?

Cohen: It is often said that a country has a right to be friends with or seek a political alliance with any country it wants. I agree with that. However, it does not have the right to invite a foreign power to build a military base on its territory which threatens one of its neighbors. NATO expansion has militarized the relationship between the Untied States and Russia, between the United States and the former Soviet republics, and between Russia and the former Soviet republics. Remove NATO expansion, remove the military aspect, and let them compete otherwise. If Moscow wants to give Ukraine subsidized oil and natural gas and if the United States wants to give money to Ukraine, again, the winners are the Ukrainian people, who will live better. The same thing is true of the Georgian people. However, as long as the military competition continues, those people pay the price. 

The main point that we have to consider is that NATO has made everybody less safe, less secure. George F. Kennan once said, when he saw NATO expansion coming with the Clinton administration, he thought it was the worst foreign policy mistake the Untied States had made since the end of the Cold War. He was absolutely right. It has made all the sides turn their back on diplomacy and rely instead on militarized thinking and military bases. As a result, the world is becoming more dangerous than it was during the last Cold War.

Question: There is hope that the Obama administration will get U.S.-Russian relations back on track. What are the major stumbling blocks to improving the U.S.-Russian relationship and how can both sides overcome them?

Cohen: The single most important stumbling block, as I said, is NATO expansion. It directly relates to missile defense and to the promise that President Medvedev and President Obama made when they met, to reinitiate nuclear arms reduction talks. As long as NATO keeps encroaching towards Russia, Moscow is going to be reluctant to reduce its nuclear weapons because its conventional weapons are not in good shape. If the Kremlin is certain that NATO expansion is over, it will be far more willing to make deep cuts in its nuclear arsenals, so in terms of American policy, that’s the major issue. I think that missile defense is secondary. In the Kremlin’s mind, it’s linked to the expansion of NATO and the military encirclement of Russia.

In the United States, one might ask, what are the major stumbling blocks to changing American policy? I would argue that the major stumbling block is what I would call the “old thinking” that has formed since the end of the Soviet Union. The notion that Russia is a defeated power, it’s not a legitimate great power with equal rights to the Untied States, that Russia should make concessions while the Untied States doesn’t have to, that the Untied States can go back on its promises because Russia is imperialistic and evil. That is old thinking: only Moscow is to blame. We need new thinking, which at a minimum would say that both sides are to blame.

Where is this new thinking going to come from? Probably not from the people President Obama has appointed to his foreign policy team. Every one of them is either a founder of old thinking, or a defender of it. Hillary Clinton and people like Vice President Biden and Michael McFaul who is now on the National Security Council, or General Jones who is the National Security Advisor and was the commander of NATO when NATO expanded. There are only a few people in the United States who share my point of view, but there are some, including people with some influence. The point is to keep talking, try to persuade people.

So there are no new thinkers in Obama’s foreign policy okruzhenie. There is enormous support in the United States for the old thinking. It’s the majority view. The American media, the political class, the American bureaucracy - they all support it. Therefore, all hope rides with Obama himself, who is not tied to these old policies. He has to become a heretic and break with orthodoxy. Now you and I might say that it’s impossible, but there is a precedent. Just over twenty years ago, out of the Soviet orthodoxy, the much more rigid Communist Party nomenklatura, came a heretic, Mikhail Sergeyevich Gorbachev. It’s not a question of whether we like Gorbachev’s leadership or we don’t. The point is that he came forward with something he called “new thinking,” breaking with the old Soviet thinking, and the result was that he and President Reagan ended the Cold War, or came very close to doing so. So the question is whether Obama can break with the old thinking.

With regard to the claim that the Untied States and Russia have divergent interests when it comes to different parts of the world, I can only think of one, that is truly essential, and that is NATO expansion, otherwise I don’t see any area where we should be in conflict. We have overwhelming common interests in stopping nuclear proliferation, nuclear terrorism, resolving the economic crisis, and we certainly share an interest in a stable Afghanistan. The number of common interests by far exceeds the number of conflicts, but the conflict over NATO expansion is so great that we would need a complete break with the old thinking in America to change American policy, and only President Obama can do that.

Question: Who benefits more from an improved relationship, Russia or the U.S.?

Cohen: I have a book coming out in June. It’s called Soviet Fates and Lost Alternatives: From Stalinism to the New Cold War. The second part of the book is about all of the things we have discussed today, the history of American-Soviet and American-Russian relations since Gorbachev and Reagan to Obama and Medvedev. In that book I argue that if you had to make this equation, the United States probably needs Russia somewhat more than Russia needs the United States. But it doesn’t matter, because they both need each other a lot. There is an expression in Russia: oba huzhe. In this case, oba luchshe. America and Russia each need each other for the better and there is no point asking who needs who more, or who would benefit more.

The trouble is that people who make policy don’t understand that: they think that what’s bad for Russia is good for the United States and vice versa. But it isn’t true: what’s good for Russia in the relationship is good for the United States and what’s good for the United States is good for Russia. There was a moment when we had leaders who understood this - Gorbachev and Reagan and the first President Bush. The leaders who came after them, at least in the United States, didn’t understand this, and I am not sure they understand today. We will see. Posmotrim.

In the end, it’s political. In Russia, the people and the Russian elite have to struggle for a wise policy towards America. In the Untied States, we have to struggle for a wise policy towards Russia. The problem is that what one side does influences the struggle on the other side, as often happened during the Cold War. When the hardliners in Moscow say or do something, they strengthen the hardliners in Washington, and when the hardliners in Washington do or say something, it strengthens the hardliners in Moscow. It’s an unholy axis, and those of us who are the opponents of this dangerous axis have to resist, have fight it. It’s difficult, but people have to fight in Russia and my colleagues and I have to fight in the Untied States. The problem is that in the United States we are very much in a minority, and anti-Americanism has been growing in the Russian political class, and that is far more important than anti-American attitudes among Russian young people because the political class has the power.

We need Obama to provide new leadership and Russia needs President Medvedev and Prime Minister Putin together to be responsive to this leadership in a very significant way. It’s very important that if Obama makes a departure from the old thinking or some other major concession, that Moscow respond big time in a positive way, because that will help Obama in this country. Obama will then be able to say to the American opposition: look, I am getting positive results. That’s exactly what happened to Gorbachev. When Gorbachev came to power, the enemies of Gorbachev’s foreign policy said that the Untied States will take advantage of the Soviet Union, but when Reagan extended his hand to Gorbachev, met with Gorbachev and they began to do major anti-Cold War policy together, Gorbachev was able to say to his political class: you are wrong; the Untied States is responding to my anti-Cold War policies.

In effect, we are in a new Cold War today and we need anti-Cold War presidents. When Medvedev and Obama met in London they gave a joint statement that said, “We no longer live in an era when we view each other as enemies.” That is how they began their joint statement, but it is factually untrue. I wish it was true, but there is no doubt that the American political class, and I am excluding President Obama, views Russia as an enemy. Also, there is no doubt that the Russian political class, and I am not talking about Putin or Medvedev but policy elites, view the United States as an enemy mainly because of NATO expansion. So we are back where we were during the Cold War. The two sides view each other as enemies. What we have to hope for is that the leadership on both sides has the wisdom, the vision and the power to change that, because in foreign policy, more than in domestic policy, leaders matters most. If they don’t, we are in deep trouble.