The Russian-American Pause: To Harm Nothing

Mitt Romney has formally won the votes necessary to become a U.S. presidential candidate at the Republican Convention this August. It was clear even earlier that he would be nominated, but the Texas primaries made it official. Now preparations begin for the final leap: the actual presidential campaign this fall.

The most important decision at this stage is the choice of a vice president. There is only one criterion: increasing the number of votes come election time. But there exist various approaches to accomplishing this.

On the one hand, there is the “contrary” approach: a tandem partner who “covers” the voters who don’t support the actual candidate. (In Romney’s case, this would be the conservative wing of the Republican party in the South.) On the other hand, a vice president who strengthens and emphasizes the winning qualities of the contender for the White House can also be chosen.

For example, in the previous election, both Obama and McCain took the first approach; Joe Biden and Sarah Palin were intended to expand the electoral base. But then there was Bill Clinton, who went with the second approach by choosing his alter-ego, Albert Gore. Either way, this is a key decision, and the price of error is the Oval Office in the White House.

There is no point in discussing the candidates’ chances at the elections today. A year ago, onlookers maintained that any Republican candidate would easily beat Obama. At the beginning of this year, they said the exact opposite: that Obama could defeat any of the Republicans.

According to the polls, support is currently almost equal, but everything will be decided by the duels of September and October. Both candidates have many weaknesses, so the battle promises to be not only exciting, but also quite dirty, complete with denunciations of the opponents’ vices.

Foreign policy seldom plays a serious role in American campaigns, and this year is no exception. Therefore, drawing conclusions about the future on the basis of the electoral battle is useless. If the likely course of Obama’s politics can be judged based upon the experience of his first administration, then Mitt Romney’s foreign policy preferences are almost completely unknown.

Paradoxically, the clearest of his statements had to do with Russia, which is otherwise distant from the core of the campaign. The candidate’s statement that Russia is the main geopolitical enemy of the U.S. is so absurd today that the reaction it elicited was mostly sarcastic.

Incidentally, it is most likely that Romney does not in fact believe this. This statement was in response to the incident with the microphone that wasn’t turned off, in which Barack Obama’s promise to Dmitri Medvedev, to be flexible about the issue of missile defense after the elections, was made public.

The Republicans, of course, seized upon this, for it would be a sin not to use such a gift, which simultaneously provides a chance to gain a few points in the “swing” states, where a high percentage of people are immigrants from Eastern Europe. Indeed, with regard to missile defense, Romney previously maintained a very tough position. For example, he opposed the ratification of the START Treaty, which the most conservative of Republicans saw as a threat to the future deployment of missile defense.

The biggest problem for Russia in the event of Romney’s victory would most likely not be his especially fervent anti-Russian sentiment; in reality, the topic hardly interests him. Rather, it would be worse for him to return to one or another of the variants of George Bush’s approach, who (along with his colleagues, such as Donald Rumsfeld or Dick Cheney, in particular) simply did not understand why it was necessary to pay any attention to Russia.

Neoconservatives have concluded that with the end of the Cold War, the importance of Moscow has fallen sharply, its opinion has little influence, and it can simply be ignored.

Of course, the events of the late 2000s forced this outlook to be corrected. The financial crisis, which hurts the West, as well as Russia’s willingness to use force in the protection of her interests, shifted emphases.

Nonetheless, the return of indifference and neglect is possible. After all, Mitt Romney’s team includes representatives of Bush’s neoconservative entourage. It is not entirely clear how great a role will be played by ideology, or rather, by a focus on the promotion of democracy as a major political goal.

The results of the previous administration’s reign have somewhat cooled the ardor of the democratizers. Even Romney himself is more reminiscent of a classic conservative-pragmatist than a missionary. But everything will depend upon the vice president (like Cheney and Biden, the V.P. will most likely be fairly active in the international sphere) and upon the composition of his team. For now, the foreign policy wings are undetermined.

The upcoming meeting in June between Vladimir Putin and Barack Obama at the summit of the “big twenty” in Mexico will smooth the doubts that arose from the false start of Russia-U.S. relations after the inauguration of the new Russian leader.

It began, as is known, with the respective cancellation of visits – Obama’s in Vladivostok and Putin’s in Camp David – but it appears that this will have no further effects.

However, the problem is that the upcoming meeting will consider only current issues, such as Syria and Iran, which, while important, are limited in scope. Even discussions of Afghanistan are complicated by the fact that the horizon of the current administration is January 2013. In other words, prospects post-2014 might turn out to be beyond Afghanistan’s planning.

But when it comes to conceptual issues that could well be on the agenda in the future, such as missile defense and positioning in Asia, it makes no sense to get involved before the spring of next year.

So for now, as Yuri Ushakov (the Russian president’s aide for international affairs) noted, the new Russian leadership is hoping not to lose the positive steps accumulated by Medvedev and Obama. It will not be possible to achieve anything new before next year, but what is most important is avoiding a move backwards. And for now, it seems that both sides are interested in precisely that.