Ups and turns: how Russia and the United States emerged from acute crises
Ahead of the meeting between Vladimir Putin and Donald Trump in Alaska on August 15, relations between Russia and the United States remain tense. Historical experience, however, shows that personal contacts between leaders can resolve even the most acute situations. So, after the Cuban Missile crisis of 1962, when the world was on the verge of nuclear war, the USSR and the USA began to move towards ending the arms race, which eventually led to the end of the Cold War decades later. In the 21st century, relations between the two countries also went through difficult periods, followed by attempts at a reset. About the ups and downs in the dialogue between Moscow and Washington — in the material of Izvestia.
What is the current state of relations between Russia and the United States?
A historic meeting between Vladimir Putin and Donald Trump is scheduled to take place in less than a day. The Alaska summit in Anchorage will be the first Russian-American summit in four years. The central theme will be the settlement of the Ukrainian crisis. The Russian President also admitted that Moscow and Washington may come to an agreement on strategic offensive weapons in the future.
Despite the upcoming meeting of the leaders of Russia and the United States, official Washington continues to call Russia a "threat to national security." Since 2022, the United States has remained Ukraine's largest military donor, providing over $120 billion in weapons to Kiev. The United States also intends to deploy medium-range missiles in Germany in 2026, despite the fact that Washington unilaterally withdrew from the INF Treaty in 2019. Against this background, on August 4, the Russian side announced the abandonment of the moratorium on the deployment of its own intermediate-range and shorter-range missiles.
Relations between the two countries have experienced an "unprecedented deterioration" during Joe Biden's presidency, Russian presidential spokesman Dmitry Peskov said. According to him, a huge number of "irritants" have accumulated during this period. "It takes time for attempts to bring bilateral relations to a normal trajectory to be realized," he said.
Malek Dudakov, an American political scientist, believes that relations between Moscow and Washington are at their lowest point in history. In a commentary for Izvestia, he noted that even during the Cold War there were no such serious crises.
At the same time, there have already been cases in the history of Russia and the United States when meetings between the leaders of the two countries at moments of acute confrontation led to warming and de-escalation.
Meetings of the heads of the USSR and the USA in the 20th century
The first thing that comes to mind is the official visit of US President Richard Nixon to Moscow in May 1972. By this time, according to the memoirs of Soviet Foreign Minister Andrei Gromyko, the two countries had accumulated so many nuclear weapons that they could destroy each other several times. In addition to the arms race, relations between Moscow and Washington were overshadowed by the Vietnam War, where the US army bombed an ally of the USSR.
Nevertheless, on May 25, 1972, Richard Nixon and Leonid Brezhnev watched Swan Lake at the Bolshoi Theater in Moscow. The next day, they signed the treaty on the Limitation of Strategic offensive Arms (SALT) and on the limitation of missile defense systems (ABM). At the same time, if you look more broadly, the meeting was a continuation of the 10-year warming of relations between the two countries, Alexey Fenenko, professor at the Faculty of World Politics at Lomonosov Moscow State University, told Izvestia.
Leonid Brezhnev and Richard Nixon after signing the treaty on the Limitation of Strategic Offensive Arms and on the limitation of missile defense systems
— What we call warming began, in principle, after the Cuban Missile crisis and then after the assassination of Kennedy and the departure of Khrushchev. The Caribbean crisis of 1962 showed that the Soviet Union and the United States cherish the world order that was established after World War II. Despite all the Caribbean and Berlin crises, no one was going to break the UN, which showed that both sides do not want the collapse of the world order," he said.
After the meeting in Moscow, Nixon received a hydrofoil boat as a gift, and during Brezhnev's return visit to Washington a year later, the Soviet leader was presented with a Lincoln Continental car, which he had long dreamed of.
The next acute crisis in relations between the USSR and the United States occurred after the entry of Soviet troops into Afghanistan in 1979. Then Washington refused to ratify the SALT-2 treaty, imposed economic sanctions and announced a boycott of the Olympics-80 in Moscow. Republican Ronald Reagan, who became president in 1981, launched the Star Wars military program two years later and called the USSR the "evil empire."
Mikhail Gorbachev delivers a speech at the White House in Washington
Despite this, the new Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev immediately after coming to power in 1985 declared his desire to establish relations with Washington. At the same time, Gorbachev's line on revising foreign policy was predetermined by his successor Konstantin Chernenko, Alexey Fenenko notes. As a result, the first summit with Reagan on nuclear disarmament was held in Geneva in November of the same year.
They did not sign any agreements, but this meeting laid the foundation for future negotiations that eventually led to the end of the cold war. At the same time, after Geneva, the parties teetered on the brink of a tough military confrontation several more times, Fenenko recalls.
— Let us recall here the famous espionage scandal between the USSR and the USA in August 1986, the USSR's refusal of the moratorium on nuclear tests in February 1987, and the supply of air defense systems to the Afghan Mujahideen, which began in mid-1986. That is, in fact, the Cold war after this meeting was still going on until at least 1988," the expert says.
Meetings of the Heads of the Russian Federation and the United States in the 21st century
The new century opened with the meeting of Vladimir Putin and George W. Bush in Slovenia in the summer of 2001. At that time, relations between Russia and the United States, although they were not in the conflict phase, were very difficult, Malek Dudakov believes.
President Bush and Russian President Vladimir Putin shake hands at the end of a day of diplomatic talks in Ljubljana, Slovenia. June 16, 2001
— Everyone remembers 1999, the bombing of Yugoslavia, the demarche of Yevgeny Primakov, who turned his plane over the Atlantic. The relationship was definitely not friendly. At this meeting, as you know, Bush noted the phrase that he looked into Putin's eyes and "saw the soul in those eyes." Then the events of September 11 happened, when our president, in general, was the first to call the American leader with words of condolence," the political scientist noted.
In the same 2001, Putin came to visit the US president at a ranch in Texas. Their dinner together was held in a relaxed atmosphere without discussing politics. Later, the leader of the Russian Federation recalled: "I spent the night at his [Bush Jr.'s] house, on a ranch in Texas. I have met his parents several times. Both at their homes, and they came to see me."
However, the dialogue between Russia and the United States deteriorated sharply after the events in the Caucasus in 2008, as well as the US decision to support the expansion of NATO at the expense of Ukraine and Georgia. The arrival of Barack Obama in the White House and the "reset" of relations made it possible to change the situation. In 2010, footage of an informal breakfast between Dmitry Medvedev and Barack Obama was distributed in the world media. After the official talks at the White House, the politicians went to an American diner, where they ate burgers in front of surprised visitors. The two leaders were then able to sign a new strategic offensive arms limitation treaty, START-3.
Dmitry Medvedev and Barack Obama shake hands in honor of the signing of the new Strategic Offensive Arms Limitation treaty — START-3
All the cases considered cannot be directly compared with the current crisis in relations between the Russian Federation and the United States, which can be called unprecedented, Alexey Fenenko believes. This is probably why it will be difficult to achieve a significant "thaw" at the expense of one summit in Alaska, says Malek Dudakov.
— If we see some important step in the right direction, in eliminating all the "irritants" in Russian-American relations, we can say that the summit was not in vain, and it allows us to hope that in the future these "irritants" will be resolved. Moreover, a lot depends on Russia and the United States in world politics," the expert concluded.
During his first term, Trump held six meetings with Putin. In 2018, following the results of the summit of the Russian Federation and the United States in Helsinki, the Russian president gave his colleague a gift — a ball from the fields of the World Cup, which was taking place in Russia at that time. "Now the ball is on his side," Putin said, commenting on the US role in the Syrian crisis. After the Republican's return to the White House, the politicians continued an active dialogue, repeatedly speaking positively about each other. Over the past six months, they have held six telephone conversations, and it seems that the personal ties between Putin and Trump actually determine the level of dialogue between Moscow and Washington.
Переведено сервисом «Яндекс Переводчик»
