American<\/em> Gorbatchev, semble malheureusement de plus en plus compromise, notamment pour le cas pr\u00e9cis de la rencontre de Moscou. Notamment, ce qu’Obama exprime de pens\u00e9e sur les dirigeants russes (sur Poutine) ne semble pas pr\u00e9cis\u00e9ment exprimer une nouvelle pens\u00e9e par rapport aux normes washingtoniennes, ou alors une demi-nouvelle pens\u00e9e (un pied et pas l’autre), ce qui para\u00eet un peu insuffisant pour \u00e9claircir tous les malentendus. <\/p>\n<\/p>\n\tQuestion<\/em><\/strong>: \u00abThere is hope that the Obama administration will get U.S.-Russian relations back on track. What are the major stumbling blocks to improving the U.S.-Russian relationship and how can both sides overcome them?<\/em>\u00bb<\/p>\n<\/p>\n\tCohen<\/em><\/strong>: \u00abThe single most important stumbling block, as I said, is NATO expansion. It directly relates to missile defense and to the promise that President Medvedev and President Obama made when they met, to reinitiate nuclear arms reduction talks. As long as NATO keeps encroaching towards Russia, Moscow is going to be reluctant to reduce its nuclear weapons because its conventional weapons are not in good shape. If the Kremlin is certain that NATO expansion is over, it will be far more willing to make deep cuts in its nuclear arsenals, so in terms of American policy, that’s the major issue. I think that missile defense is secondary. In the Kremlin’s mind, it’s linked to the expansion of NATO and the military encirclement of Russia.<\/em><\/p>\n<\/p>\n\t\u00bbIn the United States, one might ask, what are the major stumbling blocks to changing American policy? I would argue that the major stumbling block is what I would call the old thinking that has formed since the end of the Soviet Union. The notion that Russia is a defeated power, it’s not a legitimate great power with equal rights to the Untied States, that Russia should make concessions while the Untied States doesn’t have to, that the United States can go back on its promises because Russia is imperialistic and evil. That is old thinking: only Moscow is to blame. We need new thinking, which at a minimum would say that both sides are to blame.<\/em><\/p>\n<\/p>\n\t\u00bbWhere is this new thinking going to come from? Probably not from the people President Obama has appointed to his foreign policy team. Every one of them is either a founder of old thinking, or a defender of it. Hillary Clinton and people like Vice President Biden and Michael McFaul who is now on the National Security Council, or General Jones who is the National Security Advisor and was the commander of NATO when NATO expanded. There are only a few people in the United States who share my point of view, but there are some, including people with some influence. The point is to keep talking, try to persuade people.<\/em><\/p>\n<\/p>\n\t\u00bbSo there are no new thinkers in Obama’s foreign policy okruzhenie. There is enormous support in the United States for the old thinking. It’s the majority view. The American media, the political class, the American bureaucracy they all support it. Therefore, all hope rides with Obama himself, who is not tied to these old policies. He has to become a heretic and break with orthodoxy. Now you and I might say that it’s impossible, but there is a precedent. Just over twenty years ago, out of the Soviet orthodoxy, the much more rigid Communist Party nomenklatura, came a heretic, Mikhail Sergeyevich Gorbachev. It’s not a question of whether we like Gorbachev’s leadership or we don’t. The point is that he came forward with something he called new thinking, breaking with the old Soviet thinking, and the result was that he and President Reagan ended the Cold War, or came very close to doing so. So the question is whether Obama can break with the old thinking.<\/em>\u00bb<\/p>\n<\/p>\n\tQuestion<\/em><\/strong>: \u00abWho benefits more from an improved relationship, Russia or the U.S.?<\/em>\u00bb<\/p>\n<\/p>\n\tCohen<\/em><\/strong>: \u00abI have a book coming out in June. It’s called Soviet Fates and Lost Alternatives: From Stalinism to the New Cold War. The second part of the book is about all of the things we have discussed today, the history of American-Soviet and American-Russian relations since Gorbachev and Reagan to Obama and Medvedev. In that book I argue that if you had to make this equation, the United States probably needs Russia somewhat more than Russia needs the United States. But it doesn’t matter, because they both need each other a lot. There is an expression in Russia: oba huzhe. In this case, oba luchshe. America and Russia each need each other for the better and there is no point asking who needs who more, or who would benefit more.<\/em><\/p>\n<\/p>\n\t\u00bbThe trouble is that people who make policy don’t understand that: they think that what’s bad for Russia is good for the United States and vice versa. But it isn’t true: what’s good for Russia in the relationship is good for the United States and what’s good for the United States is good for Russia. There was a moment when we had leaders who understood this Gorbachev and Reagan and the first President Bush. The leaders who came after them, at least in the United States, didn’t understand this, and I am not sure they understand today. We will see. Posmortim.<\/em><\/p>\n<\/p>\n\t\u00bbIn the end, it’s political. In Russia, the people and the Russian elite have to struggle for a wise policy towards America. In the Untied States, we have to struggle for a wise policy towards Russia. The problem is that what one side does influences the struggle on the other side, as often happened during the Cold War. When the hardliners in Moscow say or do something, they strengthen the hardliners in Washington, and when the hardliners in Washington do or say something, it strengthens the hardliners in Moscow. It’s an unholy axis, and those of us who are the opponents of this dangerous axis have to resist, have fight it. It’s difficult, but people have to fight in Russia and my colleagues and I have to fight in the Untied States. The problem is that in the United States we are very much in a minority, and anti-Americanism has been growing in the Russian political class, and that is far more important than anti-American attitudes among Russian young people because the political class has the power.<\/em><\/p>\n<\/p>\n\t\u00bbWe need Obama to provide new leadership and Russia needs President Medvedev and Prime Minister Putin together to be responsive to this leadership in a very significant way. It’s very important that if Obama makes a departure from the old thinking or some other major concession, that Moscow respond big time in a positive way, because that will help Obama in this country. Obama will then be able to say to the American opposition: look, I am getting positive results. That’s exactly what happened to Gorbachev. When Gorbachev came to power, the enemies of Gorbachev’s foreign policy said that the Untied States will take advantage of the Soviet Union, but when Reagan extended his hand to Gorbachev, met with Gorbachev and they began to do major anti-Cold War policy together, Gorbachev was able to say to his political class: you are wrong; the Untied States is responding to my anti-Cold War policies.<\/em><\/p>\n<\/p>\n\t\u00bbIn effect, we are in a new Cold War today and we need anti-Cold War presidents. When Medvedev and Obama met in London they gave a joint statement that said, We no longer live in an era when we view each other as enemies. That is how they began their joint statement, but it is factually untrue. I wish it was true, but there is no doubt that the American political class, and I am excluding President Obama, views Russia as an enemy. Also, there is no doubt that the Russian political class, and I am not talking about Putin or Medvedev but policy elites, view the United States as an enemy mainly because of NATO expansion. So we are back where we were during the Cold War. The two sides view each other as enemies. What we have to hope for is that the leadership on both sides has the wisdom, the vision and the power to change that, because in foreign policy, more than in domestic policy, leaders matters most. If they don’t, we are in deep trouble.<\/em>\u00bb<\/p>\n<\/p>\n<\/p>\n
\tMis en ligne le 4 juillet 2009 \u00e0 11H36<\/p><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Il n’est pas assur\u00e9 que le brillant Obama se soit montr\u00e9 particuli\u00e8rement habile, c’est-\u00e0-dire brillant, dans ses appr\u00e9ciations sur Poutine, d’ailleurs contrastant avec celles qu’il a port\u00e9es sur Medvedev. Est-ce un avis sinc\u00e8re, lui qui n’a jamais rencontr\u00e9 Poutine, et que vaut-il dans ce cas, ou une fine tactique sugg\u00e9r\u00e9e par ses conseillers en psychologie… <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"neve_meta_sidebar":"","neve_meta_container":"","neve_meta_enable_content_width":"","neve_meta_content_width":0,"neve_meta_title_alignment":"","neve_meta_author_avatar":"","neve_post_elements_order":"","neve_meta_disable_header":"","neve_meta_disable_footer":"","neve_meta_disable_title":"","_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[8002,3089,464,3483,2642,2964,916,8166,3804],"class_list":["post-70884","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-bloc-notes","tag-bho","tag-cohen","tag-f","tag-gorbatchev","tag-nouvelle","tag-pensee","tag-poutine","tag-stephen","tag-vieille"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/new.dedefensa.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/70884","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/new.dedefensa.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/new.dedefensa.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.dedefensa.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.dedefensa.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=70884"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/new.dedefensa.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/70884\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/new.dedefensa.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=70884"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.dedefensa.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=70884"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.dedefensa.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=70884"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}