Time for US-Russia Dialogue

ANALYSIS/OPINION:

Now that President Trump has been acquitted after the three-year-long impeachment ordeal, some of us expect him to start this dialogue that he pledged to initiate during the past electoral campaign and kept repeating many times over without following up.

At the quickly-approaching end of the first term, contrary to his impressive achievements in domestic and international trade affairs, the president can hardly mention any serious foreign policy successes. Mr. Trump can blame Congress, the deep state, the swamp or the media for sabotaging his policies, but this is irrelevant. It is he who makes the final decisions, but are we and the world more secure now than during the first Cold War?

U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres has warned of the modern-day versions of the four horsemen in our midst. According to Mr. Guterres, climate change, mistrust, sinister technologies and geopolitical tensions continue to rise, preventing our addressing the existential threats of our time in a much more coordinated manner. Judging from rhetoric in Washington, almost all blame for the current sad state of affairs is accorded to Russia followed by China, Iran and North Korea. But the ultimate evils are Russia and its president, Vladimir Putin. During the impeachment hoax, their names have been mentioned as frequently as the U.S. president’s.

For Mr. Trump’s enemies, he and Mr. Putin are inseparable Siam twins, but in the end this witch hunt did not work. Having been maniacally absorbed with their efforts to remove the president from office, the never-Trumpers did not have time or desire to think about other major issues, including how to meet the looming existential threats facing America and mankind. In addition, if one compares the numbers of victims and level of chaos caused by U.S. actions and those which are attributed to post-communist Russia, the whole picture becomes fundamentally different.

Brown and American University Professors Catherine Lutz and David Vine have quantified the human and budgetary costs of the U.S. military interventions in post 9/11 wars. The numbers are staggering. More than 801,000 people have died due to direct war violence and several times as many lost their lives indirectly; more than 335,000 civilians have been killed as a result of the fighting; 21 million is the number of war refugees and displaced persons.

The U.S. federal price tag for the post-9/11 wars is more than $6.4 trillion. Even if all Western accusations of Russia are true, the results of its misdeeds represent only a tiny fraction of these numbers, and people in the know are well aware of this statistic. In this hateful political atmosphere, it was refreshing to hear the recent statement of National Security Adviser Robert O’Brien that the U.S. and Russia are about to start negotiations on arms control, on the nuclear issue which is “important to the safety of the world.”

Another positive signal came from the new U.S. ambassador in Moscow, John Sullivan, who publicly stated that he got specific instructions from Mr. Trump to improve relations with Russia.