The American edition of The National Interest explained why the United States needs to improve relations with Russia.
The US should try to distance Russia from China and improve relations with it, writes The National Interest.
“You shouldn’t expect Russia to collapse or substantially subordinate itself any time soon. Putin will continue to act wherever he sees opportunities. And even if Putin falls ill or leaves the presidency, there is no reason to hope that a more virtuous regime will come after him. Russia may well disintegrate or end up in the hands of violent nationalists who will behave much less responsibly than its current leader. Putin is our reality”, – the article says.
The publication notes that the West itself created instability in relations with Moscow, having suffered a collapse, comparable to the “defeat of Napoleon”.
“This is due not so much to the fact that the West expanded the borders of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization at the expense of the countries of the former Warsaw Pact, as to the fact that it included in NATO the three Baltic countries, which were previously part of the Soviet Union and whose borders are dangerously close from St. Petersburg and Moscow”, – stresses TNI.
American experts added that the Kremlin perceived this as a historical and geographic provocation that should be relentlessly confronted.
According to TNI, the greatest danger for the United States is Moscow’s alliance with Beijing, whose relations are now closer and more harmonious than ever before.
“The United States can no longer confront China and Russia at all levels – by trying to put them to shame with a carefully crafted strategy resulting from diplomacy and economic pressure – without fueling a Russian-Chinese alliance that has been in existence for many years and itself is capable of dissipate American power”, – the report says.
The authors believe that Washington needs to figure out in which areas Russia and the United States can cooperate to ease tensions and to motivate Russia to withdraw from its unilateral alliance with China.
“Today, we can still achieve a gradual moderate separation of Russia and China. At least in this direction we now need to move. Just blaming Russia is not a strategy. We should analyze Napoleon’s experience”, – TNI summarizes.