From Reset to Restart: The US-Russia Cyclical Relationship in the Post-Cold War Era

ABSTRACT

After a quarter of a century of oscillating relations between Washington and Moscow, Trump’s 2017 National Security Strategy named Russia as one of the main challengers to the US-led order. Power transition theory is used to explain the alternating cooperative and competitive phases during each of the first three post-Cold War US presidencies: first, initial attempts at cooperation are driven by US willingness to integrate its former rival into the liberal order; then, regression into competition follows as Washington’s influence rises in territories that Moscow considers sensitive for its national security.

KEYWORDS:

• United States
• Russia
• reset/restart cycle
• cooperation
• competition

Acknowledgments

The authors wish to thank Giampiero Cama and Marco Clementi for preliminary comments and Sonia Lucarelli, Andrea Locatelli and Alessandro Marrone for their suggestions.

Notes

¹ Alessandro Colombo (2001) defined NATO as an “unequal alliance” due to the leading role of the US in representing the Alliance and determining its strategic posture.

² In 1993, the Foreign Affairs Minister Andrei Kozyrev asked the UN to recognise Russia’s special role in the former Soviet territories (Trenin 2009).

³ Significantly, his speech was entitled “Not whether but when”.

⁴ This request mainly stemmed from James Baker’s informal suggestion that NATO’s jurisdiction would not move “one inch eastward” during his 1990 meetings with Mikhail Gorbachev and Eduard Shevardnadze.

⁵ The Treaty was signed in 1993 and ratified by Russia only in 2000.

⁶ This change was backed by Yevgeny Primakov, when Russia was too financially dependent on the West to challenge the US-led international order.

⁷ Before the air strikes, Moscow had supported UN resolutions against Serbian actions but stressed its opposition to any use of force.

⁸ Both powers exchanged further proof of a renewed cooperative attitude: the Kremlin’s acceptance of US bases in Uzbekistan and Kyrgyzstan for providing logistical support to the war in Afghanistan; cooperation on the non-proliferation of weapons of mass destruction and the North Korean dossier; Putin’s silence on the signature of protocols for NATO’s second enlargement eastwards; Bush’s silence on the Russian army’s conduct in Chechnya (Tsygankov 2013; Lo 2015).

⁹ Elected in 2008.

¹⁰ Obtained in 2012.

¹¹ This amendment (1974) attached diplomatic and economic relations with Moscow to respect for human rights.

¹² Sergei Magnitsky was a tax accountant who accused key Russian officials of tax fraud. He was then held in prison without charge for over a year and subjected to inhuman detention which resulted in his death. The Magnitsky Act prevents those involved in his death from entering the US and using US current accounts.

¹³ Dima Yakovlev was a Russian toddler who was adopted by an American couple in 2008. Less than three months after he arrived in the US, Dima died because he had been left alone for nine hours in his father’s car. The Dima Yakovlev Law prevents US citizens from adopting Russian children.

¹⁴ It joined the Alliance in 2017.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Gabriele Natalizia

Gabriele Natalizia is an Assistant Professor of Political Science and International Relations in the Department of Political Sciences, Sapienza University of Rome, Rome, Italy.

Marco Valigi

Marco Valigi is an EIB Research Fellow at the University of Bologna, Bologna, Italy. Email: [email protected]