Henry Kissinger, the grand old man of American realpolitik, has stepped into the growing breach in Russian-U.S. relations, holding a closed-door meeting with Prime Minister Vladimir Putin at the White House in Moscow on Friday. The two men, who are "old friends" and have met eight or 10 times since the early 1990s, according to Putin's spokesman Dmitry Peskov, talked over Russian-U.S. relations and "a range of global issues."
Ahead of Friday's 40-minute meeting, Peskov said that Putin was interested in Kissinger's advice about Russian domestic politics, The New York Times reported.
Kissinger's intervention comes in the midst of a tough Russian presidential election campaign and as anti-American rhetoric is rising in the Russian media.
Putin has strongly criticized U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton for "inspiring" the opposition protests in Moscow in December, and last week slammed Ekho Moskvy radio for running sympathetic reports about the U.S. missile defense shield in Europe.
Kissinger, a former Secretary of State and National Security Adviser under U.S. presidents Richard Nixon and Gerald Ford, has acted as a semiofficial go-between between U.S. presidents and world leaders over the decades. He has held talks with every Russian leader since Brezhnev.
A day before the meeting with Putin, Kissinger met with beleaguered U.S. Ambassador Michael McFaul who provoked controversy by meeting with opposition protest leaders on his second working day in the Russian capital.
McFaul wrote on his blog Thursday that Kissinger was "back in Moscow to continue the kind of strategic dialogue with the Russian government that is so important to our partnership."
The American Embassy in Moscow did not respond to e-mailed questions to McFaul about his talks with Kissinger by press time Monday.
Also on Friday, Kissinger spoke to a group of Sberbank's board members and leading customers in Moscow. Kissinger spoke about the need for Russia and the U.S. to cooperate in preventing the proliferation of nuclear weapons particularly in North Korea and Pakistan, Sberbank's website reported.
"Kissinger regularly plays the role of elder statesman to ensure smooth relations between the U.S. and countries with which it is unlikely ever to have a close, friendly relationship but with which it wants to maintain a cooperative relationship," Chris Weafer, chief strategist at investment bank Troika Dialog, told The Moscow News on Monday. "China and Russia are the two most important countries on that list currently."
Weafer said that the reset was "not currently in trouble" as it was based on pragmatism, and that "regular public spats are no more than expected. I do not believe that either side would allow any of these issues to escalate to the point where the underlying relationship may be seriously jeopardized. But, in election year, go-betweens such as Mr. Kissinger may earn a few more air-miles than usual."
Anti-American rhetoric has often proven to be an effective tool for Russian leaders to divert public attention from domestic problems, as in previous elections.
In early December, Putin said that Clinton "sent a certain signal" to Russia's opposition.
"They heard the signal and with the support of the State Department, they began their active work," Putin said at a meeting with his supporters.
U.S. voters not interested
While this may work on Russian voters, Americans pay very little attention to foreign policy issues, said Nikolai Zlobin, a senior analyst at the Washington-based World Security Institute. "Foreign policy plays little role if any in an American's choice except for when America is involved in war, which results in mass casualties and causes the economy to fall," he told The Moscow News.
The issue of Russian politics and bilateral relations could come up the U.S. presidential campaign this year, Zlobin said, as President Barack Obama faces a tough challenge with an economy in crisis and a most probably a hard-line Republican opponent.
"Obama's critics are trying to use every pretext to lambast him," Zlobin said. "They'll push forward with criticisms of his reset policy, arguing that Russia is not a country you should reset relations with and that you can't trust Putin given that his own people appear to have little trust in him."
After McFaul's meeting with Russian opposition leaders last Tuesday, Alexei Pushkov, the new chairman of the State Duma's Committee on International Affairs, described it as "a literal statement that Washington does not like the presidential candidate from the incumbent Russian government and that they will focus on supporting oppositional forces."
The question is whether the anti-American stance will give way to a more rational approach after the presidential elections. Zlobin said that "the main problem to tackle is a fantastically low level of trust between the two countries."
Reset 'ineffective'
Zlobin said the reset announced by Obama and Medvedev had not proved effective.
"Where reset was possible, positive steps were made, but where it was problematic, the reset policy didn't help resolve key problems, such as missile defense, third-party countries, primarily Iran, and the future of post-Soviet republics," Zlobin said.
Nikolai Petrov, an expert with the Carnegie Center Moscow, disagreed: "Reset doesn't suggest making our relations special or privileged, it's just revising our positions and spheres where we can cooperate to our benefit."
Petrov said that Moscow and Washington have implemented their agreements on key international issues, including sanctions against Iran, cargo transit to Afghanistan, and START-2. "Missile defense may be a stumbling block, but it is more of a symbolic value, rather than something that really poses a threat to Russia," Petrov said.
Zlobin said that in fact Putin was a comfortable partner for the Americans."They know all his strengths and weaknesses, his traits, logic... They know who they're dealing with," Zlobin remarked. The current anti-American rhetoric is "mainly targeted at a domestic audience. His foreign policy is not more anti-American than that of many international leaders that speak of America very positively."
Henry Kissinger, the grand old man of American realpolitik, has stepped into the growing breach in Russian-U.S. relations, holding a closed-door meeting with Prime Minister Vladimir Putin at the White House in Moscow on Friday.
The two men, who are "old friends" and have met eight or 10 times since the early 1990s, according to Putin's spokesman Dmitry Peskov, talked over Russian-U.S. relations and "a range of global issues."
Ahead of Friday's 40-minute meeting, Peskov said that Putin was interested in Kissinger's advice about Russian domestic politics, The New York Times reported.
Kissinger's intervention comes in the midst of a tough Russian presidential election campaign and as anti-American rhetoric is rising in the Russian media.
Putin has strongly criticized U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton for "inspiring" the opposition protests in Moscow in December, and last week slammed Ekho Moskvy radio for running sympathetic reports about the U.S. missile defense shield in Europe.
Kissinger, a former Secretary of State and National Security Adviser under U.S. presidents Richard Nixon and Gerald Ford, has acted as a semiofficial go-between between U.S. presidents and world leaders over the decades. He has held talks with every Russian leader since Brezhnev.
A day before the meeting with Putin, Kissinger met with beleaguered U.S. Ambassador Michael McFaul who provoked controversy by meeting with opposition protest leaders on his second working day in the Russian capital.
McFaul wrote on his blog Thursday that Kissinger was "back in Moscow to continue the kind of strategic dialogue with the Russian government that is so important to our partnership."
The American Embassy in Moscow did not respond to e-mailed questions to McFaul about his talks with Kissinger by press time Monday.
Also on Friday, Kissinger spoke to a group of Sberbank's board members and leading customers in Moscow. Kissinger spoke about the need for Russia and the U.S. to cooperate in preventing the proliferation of nuclear weapons particularly in North Korea and Pakistan, Sberbank's website reported.
"Kissinger regularly plays the role of elder statesman to ensure smooth relations between the U.S. and countries with which it is unlikely ever to have a close, friendly relationship but with which it wants to maintain a cooperative relationship," Chris Weafer, chief strategist at investment bank Troika Dialog, told The Moscow News on Monday. "China and Russia are the two most important countries on that list currently."
Weafer said that the reset was "not currently in trouble" as it was based on pragmatism, and that "regular public spats are no more than expected. I do not believe that either side would allow any of these issues to escalate to the point where the underlying relationship may be seriously jeopardized. But, in election year, go-betweens such as Mr. Kissinger may earn a few more air-miles than usual."
Anti-American rhetoric has often proven to be an effective tool for Russian leaders to divert public attention from domestic problems, as in previous elections.
In early December, Putin said that Clinton "sent a certain signal" to Russia's opposition.
"They heard the signal and with the support of the State Department, they began their active work," Putin said at a meeting with his supporters.
U.S. voters not interested
While this may work on Russian voters, Americans pay very little attention to foreign policy issues, said Nikolai Zlobin, a senior analyst at the Washington-based World Security Institute. "Foreign policy plays little role if any in an American's choice except for when America is involved in war, which results in mass casualties and causes the economy to fall," he told The Moscow News.
The issue of Russian politics and bilateral relations could come up the U.S. presidential campaign this year, Zlobin said, as President Barack Obama faces a tough challenge with an economy in crisis and a most probably a hard-line Republican opponent.
"Obama's critics are trying to use every pretext to lambast him," Zlobin said. "They'll push forward with criticisms of his reset policy, arguing that Russia is not a country you should reset relations with and that you can't trust Putin given that his own people appear to have little trust in him."
After McFaul's meeting with Russian opposition leaders last Tuesday, Alexei Pushkov, the new chairman of the State Duma's Committee on International Affairs, described it as "a literal statement that Washington does not like the presidential candidate from the incumbent Russian government and that they will focus on supporting oppositional forces."
The question is whether the anti-American stance will give way to a more rational approach after the presidential elections. Zlobin said that "the main problem to tackle is a fantastically low level of trust between the two countries."
Reset 'ineffective'
Zlobin said the reset announced by Obama and Medvedev had not proved effective.
"Where reset was possible, positive steps were made, but where it was problematic, the reset policy didn't help resolve key problems, such as missile defense, third-party countries, primarily Iran, and the future of post-Soviet republics," Zlobin said.
Nikolai Petrov, an expert with the Carnegie Center Moscow, disagreed: "Reset doesn't suggest making our relations special or privileged, it's just revising our positions and spheres where we can cooperate to our benefit."
Petrov said that Moscow and Washington have implemented their agreements on key international issues, including sanctions against Iran, cargo transit to Afghanistan, and START-2. "Missile defense may be a stumbling block, but it is more of a symbolic value, rather than something that really poses a threat to Russia," Petrov said.
Zlobin said that in fact Putin was a comfortable partner for the Americans."They know all his strengths and weaknesses, his traits, logic... They know who they're dealing with," Zlobin remarked. The current anti-American rhetoric is "mainly targeted at a domestic audience. His foreign policy is not more anti-American than that of many international leaders that speak of America very positively."