Putin and Obama: Three Contentious Issues

It is no secret that U.S.-Russian relations are currently going through a difficult stage due to three key controversial issues: the crisis in Syria, human rights in Russia and the U.S. missile shield. Sensing this tension, U.S. President Barack Obama sent a private message to his Russian counterpart Vladimir Putin, delivered by his National Security Advisor, Tom Donilon, on July 15. Even though neither the American nor Russian factions revealed the content of the message, Russian officials hinted that it dealt with the mentioned controversial issues, in addition to the matter of the Korean peninsula and economic cooperation between the two nations. As for the Syrian crisis, we can suppose that the national security advisor was not successful in altering Russia’s stance. This can be construed from Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov’s statement in Istanbul only two days after Donilon’s Moscow visit, in which Lavrov renewed his country’s stance on refusing military intervention in Syria.

It is noteworthy that Moscow does not stop at issuing statements or using its veto power in the U.N. Security Council, but is also mobilizing its fleets in the region of the Syrian crisis. The Kremlin has decided to permanently station Russian navy ships in the Mediterranean, and has formed a military leadership council especially for this purpose. This strategic mobilization of the Russian navy carries a political message that represents, according to certain Russian observers, a way to deter foreign military intervention in Syria, muscle flexing and a reclaiming of its international “majesty,” which so greatly deteriorated in the 1990s. The decision is not connected only with the evacuation of Russian nationals from Syria, as some assume. Rather, this strategic navy move must be interpreted in the context of Russia’s desire to confront the U.S. fleet, for such an option was not originally proposed on the Russian agenda. This is for well-known reasons, among which are the inequality and fundamental difference in naval priorities between the two nations. The U.S. is a “continental” nation that is compelled to bear the cost of around 11 aircraft carriers to establish its presence, knowing full well what lies across the seas. Meanwhile, Russia is at the center of the world (from a geopolitical point of view), and is not compelled to make such costly decisions. However, it is clear that Russia has lately begun to construct a “doctrine” for naval proliferation that necessitates naval expansion into a wider territory. Here it would appear that Peter the Great’s dream to reach warm waters has come back to haunt the current “Czar of Russia.” Russia’s naval maneuver can also be read within the framework of a future shift in its international role. A permanent Russian presence in the Mediterranean, just like its current foreign policy, could possibly work as a hindrance to the interests of other nations who do not take those of Russia into consideration.

With regards to the missile shield, it would appear that Obama’s message to Putin did not achieve a major breakthrough. Moscow is still demanding written guarantees from the U.S. that this missile system is not directed toward Russian national security and denies having come to a shared missile defense agreement with the U.S. It is also well-known that Russia proposed to the U.S. and NATO cooperation in establishing a missile defense network that would protect Europe from hypothetical missile attacks. However, NATO refused this proposal, just as Washington refused to grant the written guarantees that Moscow had requested.

Donilon’s cursory visit to Moscow, and his meetings with Putin and other Russian officials, occurred within an atmosphere that was highly charged toward Washington, due to the third contentious issue of human rights in Russia and the associated “blacklisting war” between the two nations. Last week the U.S. Department of the Treasury announced what it called the “Magnitsky List,” which consists of 18 persons from the Russian government who are barred from entering the U.S. and whose funds in U.S. banks are to be frozen, due to their involvement in Russian legal expert Sergei Magnitsky’s 2009 death in a Russian prison.* Moscow did not wait too long to react, and two days later announced its own list of 18 U.S. citizens who are barred from entering Russian territories due to their participation in torture practices on Guantanamo detainees, as well as their human rights violations on Russian citizens (including Russian children adopted by American families) abroad. And at the end of last year, the U.S. Congress instituted what is known as the “Magnitsky Bill” to penalize the aforementioned Russian government officials. In response, the Russian parliament issued the “Dima Yakovlev” law (Dmitri Yakovlev is a Russian child who perished at the hands of an adoptive American family several years ago), to punish certain Americans.

It can be said that Donilon’s talks in Moscow were unsuccessful in reconciling the two country’s viewpoints on these problematic issues, particularly since Donilon brought along the aforementioned list of Russian persons who are punishable per the Magnitsky Bill. This is in spite of Russia’s repeated requests to Obama to halt this law due to its potential to increase tension between the two nations. Russia had high hopes riding on Obama for improving bilateral relations, particularly in light of the tension between the nations during Bush the younger’s presidency. Nowadays the Kremlin considers Obama to be incapable of challenging a certain political stream within the U.S. Congress that wishes to raise the level of tension with Russia. At the same time, one cannot ignore that Putin’s re-election did not sit well in Washington, where there were hopes for Dmitry Medvedev to be elected to a second term. This is because Washington considers Medvedev to have “liberal” tendencies that would make mutual agreements between the two nations easier, in comparison to Putin. However, the return of the “strong man” to the Kremlin has done away with Congress and the White House’s hopes in the U.S.

*Editor’s Note: This list was actually introduced in December 2012. Moscow responded with the Dmitri Yakovlev bill in December, and released its own list of barred U.S. citizens in April. In the past weeks there have been efforts by the U.S. to enlarge the original list.