From Trump to Biden: New Changes in US-Russia Relations

Feng Shaolei

Director, Centre for Co-development with Neighboring Countries;

Director, Center for Russian Studies, East China Normal University

In the transition period of more than two months from when the dust settled for US Presidential Election of 2020 to the inauguration of President Joe Biden, one of the major topics that attracted broad attention was the trend of US-Russia relations. Among the reasons behind, one is that there are old accounts to be settled between the two old adversaries of the Cold War, and another, that evolution of the bilateral relationship remains influential in the transformation of the global order.

Cyclical Development of

US-Russia Relations and

Its Constraining Factors

In observing the contemporary US-Russia relations, there are two dimensions: that of time and that of space.

On dimension of time, there are successively two kinds of cyclical evolution over the past decades to look at as important perspectives for observing the development trend of US-Russia relations. In the past over two decades of Russian President Putins rule over the country, the bilateral relationship between Russia and US has undergone several “resets” that go round and begin again without significant improvement as hoped for. If extended a bit, an observation of US-Soviet and US-Russia relations since the last stage of the Cold War reveals that its cyclical change seems to be nothing but an enlarged edition of the “three ups and three downs” of US-Russia relations on Putins watch. Such cyclical changes attest to the fact that though the United States and Russia have confronted one another over a long period of time, it is always possible to “reset” the bilateral relations. As such, a very practical question now is that will the Biden presidency enable the US and Russia to relive the old dreams?

On dimension of space, an essential precondition for analyzing US-Russia relations is the structural environment they are in. First, looking at the balance of power, though Russia is no longer a superpower like the Soviet Union, its position of strength has never stopped being at the issue. Upon the failure of his “reset” of US-Russia relations as the Ukrainian Crisis broke out, Obama once belittled Russia as a “regional power”. True, Russia has suffered economic slowdown and faced endless domestic and international challenges. However, on US News and World Reports list of the worlds most powerful countries of 2020, Russia surprisingly ranks No.2, second only to the US. In a RAND Corporation report of 2020 that measures global power through the year 2040, Russia ranks behind China, the US, and India as the fourth most powerful country in the world. At the same time, affected by the COVID-19 pandemic and its presidential election, the US is highly polarized, which will seriously constrain the countrys international position. This attests to the fact that assessment of change in national strength of both the US and Russia will evidently restrain the process of the bilateral relationship. Secondly, looking at the structural basis of major power relations, not only do platforms like the UN Security Council, the BRICS, and the Shanghai Cooperation Organization provide Russia with systemic support for its major power position, the various trilateral relationships including Russia-US-EU and Russia-US-China that Russia has operated for long also give rise to opportunities for it to leverage. Third, looking at information and opinion environment and psychological and cognitive structure, on the one hand, the West has the advantage in mass media and has over the years continued to smear Russias image resulting in fast deterioration of public cognition of Russia in the West, and on the other, Russias criticism of the conditions of Europe and the United States is sharp and forceful. At the same time, the Russia peoples self-cognition is both lonesome and full of confidence whereas the US also is self-conscious of deep crisis as it faces internal and external challenges hitherto unseen. The above multiform, multitier, objective and subjective environment indicates potential stretch space and constraining conditions for Russia-US relations.

Tense Game with Limited

Compromise in Strategic Domain

On January 27, 2021, Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Sergei Ryabkov announced that upon the request of the Russian side on the New Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty (New START), the US side has agreed to extend the Treaty for an additional five years with neither precondition nor additional content. A day prior to this, Putin and Biden made a phone conversation confirming the consensus reached by both sides. According to Cable News Network (CNN) of the US, Biden believed that after the extension of the original treaty, it was very important to reach a new agreement on reduction of strategic weapons on the basis of the New START. As the New START has successfully cut back on nuclear warheads possessed by the two countries by a third and conducted at least 328 on-site verifications within the framework of the treaty in both countries over the past decade, the Treaty provides a new common point of departure for a new arms control regime. Russian nuclear arms control expert Alexei Arbatov believes that once negotiations on a new strategic arms reduction treaty begin, the US and Russia will work on what is the size of strategic weaponry to be kept, what are the new strategic systems to be included, and what are the corresponding actions to be taken by both sides to promote the negotiations, which will affect not only US-Russia relations but also the international security situation as a whole.

If one can say that for improving US-Russia relations, there is room for compromise in the area of strategic arms reduction, then one hardly sees any signs of loosening over the issue of the Treaty on Open Skies, which came into effect after rectification of several countries in 2002 and became one of the last few arms control treaties in Europe, whose key clause is to provide that airplanes of signatories can fly over the territories of one another for aerial reconnaissance conditioned they are unarmed and take off and land in designated airfields. The treaty displayed East-West political and security mutual trust at the end of the Cold War. However, the Trump administration announced in May 2020 to withdraw for the Treaty on Open Skies, and completed the procedure of withdrawal by November of the year. After the US withdrawal, a fait accompli in face of all signatories to the treaty is that the airplanes of all European member states remain able to conduct aerial reconnaissance over Russian territories whereas US territories are no longer open to Russia. At the horn of dilemma, the European countries take an evasive attitude to the request of reciprocity by the Russian side. On January 15, 2021, the Foreign Ministry of Russia declared to officially start the domestic procedure of withdrawing from the Treaty on Open Skies. On the face of the issue, it will take some time for Russia and concerned parties to go through the domestic procedure before the country can withdraw from the treaty, and there still seems to be room for remedy. However, all concerned parties are pessimistic about this. Once the Treaty on Open Skies ends, not only is it a serious drawback on US-Russia relations, it will also lead to major deterioration of overall international security environment.

The withdrawal of the Trump administration from treaties and international organizations results in retrogression of US-Russia strategic compromise, and in the short period of time since he took office, it is difficult for Biden to remove underlying reasons for the deterioration of US-Russia relations. Therefore, not only is it difficult to rapidly restore the damaged trust between the US and Russia, the strategic standoff and arms race in other areas between the two countries will also tend to heat up.

First of all, during the transition between Trump and Biden, the US military disclosed a series of future deployments spearheading China and Russia, among which emphasis was given to naval development: a “pilot program” prioritizing training and education of sailors, ensuring maintenance and operational readiness of warships, increasing input into network, intelligence, and laser weapons capable of intercepting anti-ship cruise missiles, and developing large size mixed fleets of manned and unmanned warships. At present, although Russian military spending is only a fifteenth of that of the US, since Russia began to implement the plan to strengthen its military in 2010, modernized weapons of the Russian military has increased to account for 70 percent of the total, some of the advanced weapons being unique to Russia. A new round of large-scale arms race between the US and Russia has begun to take shape.

Secondly, competition between the US and Russia in some of the key regions has heated up fast, among which naval confrontation on the warmed Arctic waters calls for special attention. In November 2020, at the sensitive period of the US presidential election, the Russian navy used “crash warning” to drive away US Navy destroyer USS John S. McCain (DDG-56) two kilometers into Russian Arctic territorial waters. The US side announced that it sent the DDG-56 into the concerned waters to challenge the Russian claim of sovereignty over the Peter the Great Bay, aiming to “testify” by action that the concerned waters were not Russian territories. On January 7, 2021, US Secretary of the Navy Braithwaite said in an interview that “you will see the Navy operating again in a more permanent manner above the Arctic Circle”, and that “its sort of the same situation in the South China Sea that when we look at freedom of navigation operations and the ability to operate in international waters, the United States claims the right to be able to do that”. A related event is that Russia has strengthened construction of more than twenty ports on the Arctic coast. At present Russian icebreakers far outnumber that of the US, and Russia plans to build even more of them. In 2020, Russia shipped 32 million tons of cargo on Northern Sea Route between Europe and the Far East, a record high, and Putin plans to increase the cargo volume on this Route to 80 million tons by 2024. In this strategic location both for gaining economic benefit and for direct strike of US homeland over the Arctic, it is self-evident that Russia is fast in strengthening its military deployments. As such, the US and Russia are busy forming battle array in the Arctic and are increasingly at daggers drawn.

Controversy over Sanctions

Goes On

On December 13, 2020, the US announced that hackers intruded computers of a number of key US government departments and private companies by using shortcomings of SolarWinds software and led to the information exposure involving 17,000 key SolarWinds customers. Later, US National Security Agency pinned the blame on “Russian state-sponsored malicious cyber actors”. Biden issued a statement vowing that addressing the issue of cybersecurity would be an “overwhelming focus for my administration,” and declaring that the hackers “can be assured that we will respond and probably respond in kind”. However, former US ambassador to Russia McFaul believed that the reality is not so simple, and “Russia is way more powerful today than it was 20 years ago, and its way more powerful today than it was four years ago,” any attack on Russia would surely be retaliated. As a former US Marine Corps Intelligence officer Scott Ritter pointed out, in June 2019, the New York Times reported that the US had launched an unprecedented cyber-attack targeting Russias electric power grid, in which malware was covertly inserted which would enable the US to switch off power at will in times of crisis, and the SolarWinds attack was Russias response, to make the point that any effort to put a leash on Moscow may very result in the American hand being badly bitten. Anatol Lieven, a well-known scholar having worked for several international think tanks, thought differently, pointing out that no one would think the SolarWinds hacking aimed to paralyze the national system of the US rather than a pure intelligence gathering activity. He refused to consider the SolarWinds cyberattacks as an aggressive and disruptive act of war other than a spy activity, admonished concerned parties against overreaction, and was inclined to responding in kind for countermeasures as called for by Biden. Lieven regarded it a lesson from the SolarWinds hack that the US and Russia need to accelerate rulemaking on cybersecurity through negotiations.

The deterioration of bilateral relationship caused by US sanctions on Russia goes far beyond exchange of cyberattacks between hackers of the two countries, but also includes the Nord Stream 2 Gas Pipeline Project, on which US sanctions harm not only US-Russia relations but also US-Germany relations. At present, it seems that like Trump, Biden will continue to exert pressure on the Nord Stream 2, including to place all third party companies participating in the project under sanctions. There are last 150 kilometers of pipeline to be installed for the Nord Stream 2 and the two sides of Germany and Russia are actively planning for setting up funds aiming at environmental protection to promote implementation of the project in order to get around US sanctions. For the US, disrupting Germany-Russia energy cooperation is not only to conduce to selling more US oil and gas resources but also to cut off geo economic ties between Russia and Europe. The question is how much it will cost the US itself. Russia Today once commented that the US government has for several time used the method of sanctions, seriously detrimental to the Dollars reliability as saving and payment methods. According to the information released by the Global Provider of Secure Financial Messaging Services (SWIFT), 37.8% of cash transfer in the international payments system in October 2020 was in the Euro whereas 37.6% of that was in the Dollar, the latter representing a drop. After taking office, the Biden administration will begin to repair relations with US allies in Europe. However, the contest centering on the Nord Stream 2 is for the US, the EU and Russia a major test that is difficult to avoid.

Two-Handed Choice for Russia Strategy of the Biden

Administration

First, in the “post-Soviet space”, will the US and Russia continue their contest or gradually transform it? In 2020, developments in the “post-Soviet space” call for particular attention, be it turbulence caused by the Belarussian presidential election, or the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict, or even the changes in the politics of Kyrgyzstan, all pulling at peoples heartstrings. As Bordachev, a celebrated writer and programme director of Russias Valdai Discussion Club, recently remarked, “Even if Moscows military-political influence remains decisive in Central Asia or the South Caucasus, it does not mean Russia is ready to sacrifice its interests and limited resources for the sake of these weak partners.” At the same time, the evolution of Russia “has been facilitated by the weakening of the capabilities of Russias traditional opponents in the West to actively intervene in the affairs of the so-called post-Soviet space”. It indicates that the governance model of the “post-Soviet space” is undergoing significant changes. If Russia will display certain flexibility in places of the “post-Soviet space” other than Belarus and Kazakhstan which are of vital importance to its security interest, can the West also make corresponding readjustment? In fact, for each of the resets of US-Russia relations, two key points can almost always be observed: one being that Europe and the US stop exerting excess pressure in Russias neighborhood, and the other, that they stop criticizing Russias political system for a certain period of time. Will Russias strategic readjustment in the “post-Soviet space” be responded by the Biden administration? This will be an important yardstick for the future trend of US-Russia relations.

Secondly, what will be the co-relations between climate change and US-Russia relations? On the one hand, it has been widely reported by the media recently that large scale permafrost warming in the Siberian region of Russian Far East, especially approaching the Arctic Circle is likely to provide the country with a huge amount of farmland. The melting of Arctic ice and the opening of the Northern Sea Route will bring Russia great economic benefit. And on the other hand, it equally calls for attention that permafrost warming in Siberia, Far East can also create big problems to the place in infrastructure, pipeline traffic, and city buildings, causing huge damage at the value of hundreds of billions of US dollars. According to the observation and report by a Norwegian scholar, 2020 was the hottest year for Russia in 130 years, temperature change being the greatest in territories within the Arctic Circle. The anomalous weather in 2020 captured the great attention of people of various circles in Russia. Against this background, it is worth focused observation if Russia is inclined to accelerating its response to the challenge of climate change or if it will lean towards keeping the traditional economic model of the day led by fossil energy consumption. Moreover, on how to deal with the issue of climate change is directly pending if US-Russia relations come closer or deteriorate even further.

Third, Biden will maintain the US-led global order by enhancing ideology and repairing alliance system, which means to increase pressure on Russia. However, on issues of preserving global strategic stability, handling the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action or the Iran Nuclear Deal, and fighting terrorism, the US still needs Russian cooperation. The serious domestic antagonism in the US over the pandemic and the presidential election, and especially the Storming of US Capitol of 2021 fully exposed the underlying defects of American-style democracy for the whole world to see, which also attests to the fact that Russian criticism of the US over the years is not all that unreasonable. It is not necessarily impossible for Biden, while being tough to Russia, to seek opportunities to conduct bilateral dialogue with it.

Fourth, several US experts on Russian affairs holding high positions in Bidens governing team will be influential for Russia policymaking of the Biden administration in the future. It is worth noting that Biden is going to appoint hard-nosed Nuland as US under secretary of state in charge of Russian affairs. She took a hard stand to Russia during the Ukrainian Crisis and spoke to the EU in an excessive way, for which she apologized to international attention. At the same time, Biden has appointed old-timer Burns, who served as US deputy secretary of state and US ambassador to Russia, as director of Central Intelligence Agency. Burns stands for coordination with Russia and China to meet global challenge. His tour of duty as ambassador to Russia happened to be the peak stage of Obama resetting US-Russia relations. He made it clear to oppose to the overdependence of diplomacy on the military and advocated that arms control negotiations with Russia should be based on the principle of “mutual benefit”. Burns made the point that enlargement of NATO was a grave error that would derail US-Russia relations. Bidens governing team includes a combination of experts on Russian affairs of varying positions, which reflects the future Russia policy of the Biden administration which combines two sides of taking tough stand and seeking opportunity for dialogue.

In general, Bidens position toward Russia has always tended to be negative, making it impossible to “reset” US-Russia relations in Obamas style. But neither will he exert maximum pressure like Trump. It will be the basic thinking of the Biden administrations Russia strategy to uphold US geopolitical interest by enhancing relations with allies, explore a way out of the all-time low of bilateral relations, and concentrate energy on resolving the most important domestic and international issues facing the US. On the Russian side, Deputy Chairman of the Security Council of Russia Medvedev and Foreign Minister Lavrov have recently taken a hardline position to the US, which is not only the spontaneous overflow of disappointment over the long-term repetition of reversals in Russia-US relations but also the necessary bounce back to the profound differences between the two sides on strategic interest, system orientation, and ideology, and particularly to US long-held scorning and humiliating attitude toward Russia, which is a great power. However, Russia will likewise take seriously every important opportunity for improving Russia-US bilateral relationship. Upon the Biden administration assuming office, the curtains will be drawn slowly for the big drama of Russia-US relations, and when all goes to all, it will take an even long time to watch and appreciate.