A Hotline for a Cold War

Russian-American dialogue has nearly gone silent. If any can be heard, it’s in the spirit of the Cold War. Economic ties have been broken. Political cooperation is at a minimum. The world picture is becoming almost diametrical, which makes formulating a new joint agenda a nearly impossible task.

How this happened could be discussed for hours. But even the harshest opponents on both sides of the Atlantic admit that it’s unusual. Much in the world depends on both the U.S. and Russia, and they can’t simply head off in opposite directions. They intersect at many points, although the relationship is undoubtedly asymmetrical and nonlinear.

If it’s unrealistic to expect full cooperation these days, mutual consideration and minimalizing risks isn’t simply possible but of the utmost necessity. The skills of the Cold War, when Moscow and Washington clearly knew where the line that shouldn’t be crossed was, haven’t completely faded, but the sparring partners are obviously out of shape — and it’s worth at least starting to get this ability back.

Valdai International Discussion Club launched an initiative to start a public Russian-American dialogue on current issues. Two newspapers responded to the invitation: Russia’s Kommersant and America’s The Washington Times. Starting with this issue, we’ll begin publishing two points of view on important international problems simultaneously in both newspapers every month. Our hope is that the authors won’t simply argue with one another, but that they will be able to find common ground. If they can’t, an intelligible exposition of each side’s logic is more useful than the mythical presentations of one’s counterpart which frequently take the place of genuine understanding these days.

Naturally, the first exchange of opinions is about the upcoming 70th anniversary of the end of World War II. Even in the harshest periods of ideological confrontation during the second half of the past century this topic remained outside the political battles and was considered one of the few that unified. Already that’s no longer the case; interpretations of what happened in 1945 are beginning to diverge, and the next generations will soon think we’re talking about different wars and different victories. All the more so since the 2015 anniversary will most likely be the final round-number date when a relatively significant number of participants and witnesses participate in celebrations.

Chairman of the Duma Committee on International Affairs Konstantin Kosachev and Republican Rep. Dana Rohrabacher have written about the festivities. They hadn’t seen what the other wrote when they penned their statements, which makes their coinciding evaluations all the more impressive.

There’s no doubt that in both the Federal Assembly and the U.S. Congress there are completely different views on the two countries’ cooperation and history. However, the thread has not yet snapped, and the goal of our joint venture is to try to turn it into the fabric of a new relationship.