Canceling a summit with Vladimir Putin may not be enough to get back NSA leaker Edward Snowden, and it could jeopardize other global conflicts that matter far more to the United States than they do Russia.
Despite Russia’s relatively weak economy, deteriorating U.S.-Russian relations matter because the world’s most expansive country borders Europe, the Middle East and China, areas where it can be “a huge spoiler and also a major help,” said Ariel Cohen, a Russia expert at the Heritage Foundation.
“We should care (about the relationship) but also not allow Putin to walk all over us, and there should be consequences,” Cohen said. “Russians are trying to benefit from economic relations (with the United States) and at the same time do things that are harmful to the U.S.-Russian relationship.”
Andrew Weiss, a Russia expert in the Clinton White House who now is vice president for studies at Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, said the United States needs to focus on its own interests. Russians are more focused on relations with Europe and China and don’t really care that much about what Americans think and do, Weiss said.
American leaders often don’t understand “how little we matter to the Russian leadership,” Weiss said. “That’s a big part of the reason why there’s so much enthusiasm in Russian political circles for America bashing and being more competitive with the United States. The relationship doesn’t matter that much to them.”
A more confrontational approach was tried under the Bush administration, and “it wasn’t that effective,” Weiss said.
U.S. cooperation with Russia is based on U.S. national interests, which will suffer more if the relationship is scaled back “out of pique and a search for leverage,” he said.
More confrontation risks losing Russian cooperation on other U.S. priorities, such as Iran, he said. U.S. officials hope to negotiate a resolution with Iran’s new president about the country’s disputed nuclear program, which U.S.-ally Israel views as an existential threat.
“The real question is how long this period of recrimination and estrangement might last and what the collateral damage is,” Weiss said.
The White House announced Wednesday that Obama will not meet Putin in Moscow as a side summit to the G-20 economic summit in St. Petersburg, Russia.
White House deputy national security adviser Ben Rhodes said Russia’s decision to grant Snowden temporary asylum despite an extradition request from the U.S. added to recent disputes between the two leaders.
“We’ll still work with Russia on issues where we can find common ground, but it was the unanimous view of the president and his national-security team that a summit did not make sense in the current environment,” Rhodes told the Associated Press.
In Russia, Obama’s cancellation was described as “a price we were not planning to pay,” that will hamper cooperation between the two countries on strategic weapons, nuclear nonproliferation, Iran and Syria, said Alexander Konovalov, president of the Moscow-based Institute of Strategic Studies and Analysis.
“There are a lot of issues that demand bilateral dialog, which is necessary both for the United States and for us,” Konovalov said. “It’s too much of a price for giving Snowden (asylum).”
John Bolton, U.S. ambassador to the United Nations under Bush, said Obama canceling a meeting is an inadequate response to Putin’s multiple snubs.
“It’s a diplomatic equivalent of fluttering your eyelids,” Bolton said. “Russia has caused us real pain with Snowden, and the United States should cause them real pain.”
A more serious response would be not going to Russia at all, or reviving plans to build a robust national missile defense in Poland, which the United States canceled in 2009 because of Russian objections, he said.
Cohen said Obama “went out of his way” to create a global partnership with Russia. He approved Russian membership in the World Trade Organization. He canceled the 1975 Jackson-Vannick Ammendment, which banned most-favored-nation status and trade with the Soviet Union and continued after its collapse with yearly lifting of the ban by the White House.
Obama also signed the strategic-weapons agreement that cut the U.S. nuclear arsenal and canceled a planned anti-missile system in Eastern Europe, while toning down relations with former Soviet states such as Ukraine and the Republic of Georgia.
But now it may be time to give the Russians reason to reconsider their position opposite the United States, Cohen said.
The White House has several points of leverage on Russia:
It could back the expansion of the Magnitsky List, which bans U.S. travel and property ownership for Russian officials involved in human-rights violations, as being considered by Congress.
It could boycott the 2014 Winter Olympics in Sochi, Russia.
It could block U.S. companies from collaborating with Russian development of Arctic energy resources.
Exxon and others are interested in developing those resources together with the Russian state-owned company.
“As a retaliatory measure, someone may want to postpone this cooperation,” Cohen said. “The question is whether it’s in our interest to interfere in energy development like that.”
Weiss said blocking resource development would be self-defeating to the U.S. economy.
U.S. energy security is predicated on the view that more supply is better and U.S. cooperation with Russia on energy advances that goal of increasing the availability and security of supply, Weiss said.
“It’s not a gift,” he said.
Even Cohen said the $40 billion-a-year trade between the U.S. and Russia is “not that much” in the foreign trade arena, but the United States still is the world’s leading economy, and it can cut Russia off.
“If the relationship deteriorates, it may affect trade and investment negatively,” he said.
In Moscow, a Russian opposition leader said Obama’s snub will mean little in terms of domestic politics.
Russian opposition leader Ilya Ponomaryov said U.S. moves on human rights, and even Obama’s skipping a meeting with Putin, has little impact on the plight of politicians and protesters who have been jailed and stifled by their government.
Economic issues won’t suffer much because they’ll be discussed at the G-20 summit, and failure to deal with international issues will have more impact on other countries than inside Russia, said Ponomaryov, a deputy of Russia’s Parliament and member of the Just Russia party who emerged as one of the leaders of the street protests.
U.S. support for the political opposition is self-serving and makes little difference, he said.
“We don’t expect much help from the West because, so far, the West has only used our internal political process in Russia to bargain for its own interests,” he said. “The current elite in the country is very clearly pro-Western, and I think that Western countries understand that quite well.”
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