Basic opposition between Moscow and Washington is associated with Russia's role in the world energy sphere. The second half of the 2000's was a time of cooling. First of all, the fervor of the world struggle against terrorism, compromised by the war in Iraq, has greatly waned. Peoples and governments more clearly understand the outlines of the terrorist threat, without underestimating or exaggerating it. Terrorists were not able to get access to WMD, and in the matter of opposition to "ordinary terrorism," states have already learned certain things.
Secondly, the "contour of oppositionism" in the world has changed. In the first half of the decade, its most notable element was the opposition of the USA and numerous Islamic countries. In the mid-2000's, our imagination was most impressed by opposition in NATO between the United States, on one hand, and France and Germany on the other. Russia at that moment, cautiously drifting from close (from 2001) partnership with Washington, managed to evoke fewer American reproaches in the dispute between the USA and continental Western Europe, than did Paris and Berlin.
Then, the diplomacy of the second Bush administration performed a re-grouping of resources and, having weakened the forceful onslaught in certain peripheral, albeit important, directions of its policy (DPRK (Democratic People's Republic of Korea) and South Asia), concentrated attention on the central ones. Among these have always been relations with NATO. Now, relations with the region of the Great Near East--which, according to American notions, extends to the north to the Transcaucasus, the Black Sea region and the Caspian--have attained a level on par with them. The European direction of American policy at the level of practical actions has begun to be transformed even more rapidly into the European-Caspian and European-Caucasus direction. The "Asianization" of NATO is continuing. As it was 3-4 years ago, its main stimulus remains the desire of the USA to strengthen its strategic positions in regions of presumed presence of energy resources.
At the same time, the main formal justification of the new "march to the East" is the "nuclear threat of Iran," in whose appraisal Moscow and Washington seriously differ. Thirdly--and this is the most impressive thing--for the first time in a decade-and-a-half, Moscow has begun to emphatically contrapose its own unfamiliar offensive line to the customary forceful "Eastern strategy" of Washington. This new policy presupposes, as far as we can tell, an unconditional rejection not only of solidary actions with Washington (of the times of Yeltsin), but even a firmer course of "selective resistance" to American policy, which Russian diplomacy held to for the duration of most of the Putin administrations. The nerve of the moment lies in the fact of "mutual diplomatic escalation" of Russia and the USA. Such a thing has not happened for a very long time. We do not want to go beyond this unpleasant conclusion, although it presupposes not only the diplomatic aspects of relations.
Various things are cited among the sources of Russian-American friction: Ranging from the disagreement of the Americans with the directionality of political processes in Russia to the non-correspondence of positions on a number of questions of non-proliferation of nuclear weapons and the policy regarding individual countries and situations--which, we might add, are always far from the American borders and close to the Russian ones.
We are irritated by the fact that Washington is trying to explain to us how to build relations with our neighbors, including unpleasant and/or dangerous ones. We are even more annoyed by the fact that, in giving "advice" regarding Russia's relations with its neighbors, the United States itself is risking nothing. For them, the Russian border areas are "foggy distant regions," while for Russia they are a zone of key economic, political and military interests.
The essence of Russian-American mistrust lies not in increasing U.S. military presence at the borders of Russia, although it, of course, cannot be considered as a sign of friendship. And the matter lies not in the exchange of jabs regarding the appraisal of, say, "farcical regimes" in Georgia or Iran. The basic contradiction consists of the opposite opinions about Russia's optimal role in the world energy sphere. Moscow is striving to maximally strengthen it just as consistently as the USA is trying to hinder it from doing so. The "simulation of principle" in debates over conflicts in the "pipeline Transcaucasus" and the situation surrounding Iran are derivatives of Washington's intent to remove competitors from a region that is considered to be a possible alternative to the Near East as a world energy storehouse.
Everything is aggravated by the absence of systematic dialogue between Russia and the USA on global questions, and primarily military-political ones. The re-creation of a mechanism for such dialogue appears to be a pressing necessity, if we proceed from the desire to keep Russian-American relations in the channel of at least a "cool" partnership, but a partnership nonetheless. A complicating circumstance is the elections in both countries, which are coming up in 2008. Politicians and diplomats cannot be bothered with international security. There is a threat of losing the moment.
