Broadening the “Reset”

U.S. Vice President Joe Biden began his visit to Russia by visiting Skolkovo, meeting with Russian business leaders and later meeting with Russian President Dmitry Medvedev. It appears that economic issues and reactions to international crises will be on the new agenda for the Russian-American resetting of relations, following on the heels of the successful ratification of the Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty, or START.

“We want to widen the span of activities that we have with Russia. This cannot be a relationship just about arms control and nonproliferation. It has to be about investment. It has to be about innovation,” the White House’s Senior Director for Russian and Eurasian Affairs, Mike McFaul, said last week.

In February 2009, when the Vice President of the United States first stated at the Munich Security Conference that he wanted to “reset ties” with Moscow, he named the ratification of START as the number one priority. Less than two years later in the same city, this goal was successfully achieved, primarily by the efforts of Barack Obama and Dimtry Medvedev.

Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov and U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton exchanged ratification documents by the end of 2010. Now Moscow and Washington have to figure out what the next step in resetting ties should be. Judging from the first day of Vice President Biden’s visit to Russia, the main focus on the agenda will be Michael McFaul’s named goals of “investment” and “innovation.”

Innovation had already become the primary focus of work for the Kremlin during Medvedev’s first term in office, and judging from his speech in Davos, the president’s administration will start active work on investments this year. Now it looks like the U.S. is counting on becoming a key partner to Moscow in both the areas that appear to be so important to Dimtry Medvedev.

Wednesday morning, after placing a wreath at the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier, Biden headed to Skolkovo, just outside Moscow. He assured business leaders at the Moscow School of Management that “the United States strongly supports Russia’s accession to the WTO.” He added, “And we are working with Russian negotiators in Geneva to move this process forward,” making it clear that Washington can help resolve the bilateral issues with Georgia that are blocking the way for Russia’s accession to the organization.

“And our administration also strongly supports — I want to make this clear — strongly supports the lifting of Jackson-Vanik. And we are aware of the benefits that will flow to U.S. companies from a freer and more open trade regime between the United States and Russia and quite frankly worldwide,” Biden stated, obviously pleasing his Skolkovo host, First Deputy Prime Minister Igor Shuvalov.

That evening Joe Biden met with Dimtry Medvedev to speak about more problematic issues, aside from the modernization agenda, such as the possibility of creating a European National Missile Defense, NMD, and the situation in Libya. Even though Russia’s and NATO’s positions on a European NMD may still differ, the two just might find some common ground on the issue of Libya, as they did with Iran.

The latter issue used to be a contentious one as well. However, Moscow’s and Washington’s combined efforts in the United Nations Security Council with regard to Iran showed it to be one of the successful examples of resetting ties.