Farewell to the “reboot”

On August 7, Washington announced: there will be no Russian-American summit in September, Barack Obama refused to meet with Vladimir Putin

Any nouveau riche who scolds the high society most of all dreams of being invited to it. This desire is the stronger, the clearer the understanding that the invitation is undeserved: the money is not clean, and the cultural level is not the same. And yet I want to! So a rich gangster dreams of becoming a member of a noble club. So the Soviet leaders of the era of "developed socialism" yearned for respect from the hated America.

Vladimir Bukovsky, who served time in 1972 for “anti-Soviet agitation,” recalls a curious episode: that year, US President Richard Nixon made his historic visit to China and met with Mao Zedong, the Kremlin’s sworn enemy. “It was obvious ... that our leaders would make very significant concessions, if only to get Nixon to them as soon as possible and take the same photo with Brezhnev,” writes Bukovsky. “It was that unique case when it was very simple ... you could achieve a lot from the “uncompromising” Soviet government.”

As a result, Nixon flew to Moscow, took a picture with Brezhnev, but did not demand anything in return (for example, the release of political prisoners). “The optimists believed that some secret concessions were obtained after all,” continues Bukovsky. - Americans can't be such idiots as to throw trump cards! As it turns out now, they can.

For Vladimir Putin, for all his anti-Western rhetoric, membership in the club of Western democracies was and remains a matter of prestige and external legitimization, so necessary in the absence of democratic legitimacy at home. That is why the Kremlin reacted so nervously to the resolutions of the US Congress to prevent the Russian leadership from attending the G8 summits - not to mention the "Magnitsky law", which threatens not only the loss of international legitimacy, but also the loss of quite tangible financial resources.

One way or another, Western leaders did not refuse to legitimize Putin. I will never forget (because I was there myself) the royal - in the truest sense of the word - reception given to the President of Russia in the London Guildhall in June 2003, exactly three days after the Kremlin closed the last non-state federal television channel TVS. We can recall George W. Bush, who saw Putin’s soul at the summit in Ljubljana, and the architect of the “reset” Barack Obama himself, who was severely criticized by human rights activists and Congress for ignoring human rights violations in Russia in favor of realpolitik. Despite the fact that OSCE observers recognized the 2012 presidential election as not free, the US State Department warmly congratulated Putin on his "victory." Despite the Bolotnaya case and the adoption of repressive laws, Obama agreed to meet with Putin in Los Cabos. Calls by human rights organizations to end the "reset" with the undemocratic regime went unanswered. Realpolitik, nothing personal… As a result, the Kremlin itself took the decisive step: the defiant spit on the granting of asylum to Edward Snowden could not be ignored even by the most staunch adherents of the “reset” in Washington. The story with Snowden forced the White House to take a step that, in a good way, should have been taken a long time ago. But interests, as always, turned out to be more important than values, and the key factor was not human rights (although they were formally mentioned in the White House's statement about the cancellation of Obama's meeting with Putin), but resentment because of Snowden. So, by the way, it already happened - the campaign for an international boycott of the Moscow Olympics in 1980 because of human rights violations in the USSR went on for several years, but the United States joined it only after the invasion of Soviet troops in Afghanistan.

However, better late than never. The “reset” will not return again, at least not under the current authorities in the Kremlin. Moreover, the most weighty argument of the White House in disputes with opponents of the "reset" on Capitol Hill - transit to Afghanistan - will lose relevance next year, when American troops return home. It so happened that Barack Obama repeats the experience of his predecessors - George W. Bush and Bill Clinton, who noticeably cooled off towards Moscow during the second presidential term.

A new substantive stage in Russian-American relations will come no earlier than the turn of 2016-2017. At this time, a Republican administration will most likely appear in the United States, and parliamentary elections will be held in Russia. It is too early to talk about specific dynamics. But there is no doubt - it will be interesting.