Translated material
Shadow of Detente
The discussion about the state of Russian-American (and more broadly with the West in general) relations in connection with US President Obama's visit to Moscow suggests some certainty about the central question - whether the conflictual nature of these relations in recent years is an expression of the ongoing Cold War.
To find out the answer to this question, we should turn to the most significant problems of the confrontation between the USSR and the West in the second half of the 20th century.
With victory in World War II, the United States and its Western European allies were able to unite into a political and military bloc. Partly the result of these efforts was the further unification of Europe into a confederation. The outbreak of the Cold War with the USSR was inevitable, since it was not a willful decision of the governments in Washington and Moscow, but became a natural development of international relations (otherwise it would not have continued for decades). Without being announced (Churchill's speech at Fulton does not count - this is just a private episode in the chronicle), it did not have a formal completion.
The goal of the Cold War, won by NATO and the West as a whole, was not only to defeat communism, but also to join the countries of Eastern Europe and the republics of the former USSR and, ultimately, Russia itself to its political-military bloc. Perhaps even in parts.
It should also be said that in those countries of Eastern Europe where Soviet power was perceived as occupying, the process of returning to non-communist orders coincided with the natural desire of peoples to liberate themselves from foreign domination.
The West, which gained control over the countries of the former socialist camp with the victory in the Cold War, was not interested in informing the population of these countries that it was automatically moving from one zone of influence to another (especially since the political democracy that was incorporated into the affiliated states implied incomparably freer rules relationships between leading countries and their satellites). It is pointless to blame the West for such an immoral approach, since if the USSR had won the Cold War, would it have treated the vanquished better than the United States and its NATO allies did?
It is obvious that the goal of the West is not the annexation of new Eastern European territories and their plunder (as was assumed by any victory in the war in the 19th and 20th centuries), but in political and economic expansion, voluntarily accepted by the vanquished, and ultimately in unification all European countries.
The West is looking for new consumers, not new territories, strengthening the stability, first of all, of its own socio-economic system, since the vulnerable component of such a system is the consumer society. The most significant threat to the dynamic West is not wars and terrorism, but consumption and employment levels. These priorities inevitably lead to market expansion.
Thus, the tactic of this expansion is to “process” the Eastern European countries (new members of the community) in order to make them full members of the civilizational commonwealth as market democracies and full-fledged consumers of a higher order. The strategy is the unification of all countries belonging to a single Christian civilization to strengthen long-term hegemony on the planet. It must be admitted that 20 centuries of Christianity give reason to talk about the success of this hegemony.
But what about Russia? As a result of the arms race (and, as a consequence of it, complete economic collapse), the disappeared USSR, it would seem, took with it into oblivion all the ideological prerequisites for the confrontation with the West. However, the Cold War, which was supposed to end with the fall of communism, only temporarily gave way to the deep detente of the 90s. When it became finally clear that the revived Russia, and even with authoritarian regression, did not want to move towards unification with the West, integrating into its political and military blocs (EU, NATO, etc.), it was decided in Washington and Europe to continue confrontation. While the tactical goal of the West (stated above) may well be achieved without Russia, the strategic goal, of course, cannot be achieved.
Until Russia becomes an ally and agrees to enter the world created by highly developed countries of a single civilizational area, the Cold War will continue. This vector is inexorable, and the West has time and opportunities to “convince” Russia. That is why the “Obama reset” is only a fleeting breeze of détente. He will change yet.
One should be soberly aware that authoritarian Russia does not, in general, pose a serious threat to the West (in achieving its immediate goals). Russia remains an underdeveloped third world country focused on raw material exports. The income received from these exports is also absorbed by the West, since it is “thrown out” of Russia in the form of payments for imported goods and in the form of capital investments, thereby providing highly developed countries with an additional source of growth. Even the export of Russian weapons to Asian and Latin American countries is beneficial to the West, since importing countries do not thus increase the level of their combat capability. There is no need to talk about the unusable state of Russian weapons and military equipment, since the technological gap in this area turned out to be completely insurmountable. The Russian authorities, although they keep quiet about this, understand everything perfectly well. Her loud statements about the achievements of the domestic (apparently still Soviet) military-industrial complex can only cause laughter in the corridors of the Pentagon and the State Department. However, publicly, American military officials and officials will continue to exploit the myth of the notorious “military threat from Moscow.” The logic is obvious: the truth about the low combat capability of the Russian Armed Forces and the backward state of weapons can lead to a sharp reduction in defense appropriations.
The conclusions from all that has been said are disappointing. Russia has nowhere in particular to go. China, unlike the United States and its allies, is not averse to tearing off a piece of territory from Russia, since, if we compare it with its depopulated neighbor, it experiences a shortage of free space. Any alliance with the Celestial Empire is possible only in the “metropolis-colony” scheme, where Russia is destined for a dependent function. An independent policy that ensures independent existence somehow does not work out. Perhaps, not least because of the dilapidated inertial development program, of which the Russian establishment is a hostage. An attempt to modernize the Russian economic model must inevitably lead to political renewal, for which the ruling class is apparently not ready. The loss of the political and economic monopoly by the current government is not yet part of their plans (presumably until final agreements are reached with the West on their personal and collective future). As has often happened in history, authoritarian power is secretly trading on its own guarantees, and the very near future will show how successful it will be.