US-Russia relations: between dialogue and sanctions
There is a shadow hanging over foreign policy strategies, particularly in bilateral relations with Russia, announced in recent weeks by US President-elect Joe Biden and his entourage. To report this, from the columns of "The New York Times" in a long article also dedicated to the always difficult relations with Iran, was David E. Sanger, one of the most respected analysts in America and also winner of the Pulitzer Prize. Taking a cue from the words spoken in an interview by the National Security Advisor in pectore, Jake Sullivan, Sanger notes that the White House is willing, in the new democratic course, to "renew the last nuclear weapons treaty with Russia", blocked, in the face of the tightening of relations between Washington and Moscow, by Donald Trump.
But the road is not all downhill: in fact, there is also the question of sanctions against President Vladimir Putin due to the repeated and increasingly frequent cyber attacks against US systems. According to Sullivan, who at 44 will become the youngest presidential adviser in half a century, "the security policy of the United States will have to achieve within a few months the goal of a resumption of dialogue to obtain the limitation of the proliferation of nuclear weapons. ". And yet, Sanger wonders, "how can such a result be achieved in the face of Biden's promise to make Russia pay for hacker raids on more than 250 American government and private networks, an intrusion that now appears much more extensive than was initially believed? ".
Formulated in this way, the question does not appear at all strange and outlines much more complex scenarios than those which, in the face of Sullivan's words, would seem to find a favorable response in the wishes expressed by Putin in the letter of wishes addressed to Biden a few days ago. Sanger notes that the president-elect has assured, when the government has determined who was responsible for the attacks, "ready and concrete answers". That is to say, punish Russia not only through diplomatic warnings. The stakes are high: on the one hand, there is the American decision not to let cyber attacks go unpunished; on the other hand, the need to keep the New Start alive by preventing the triggering of a new arms race. It is true that, in this context, special attention will also be reserved for Iran, another "hot front" after the stiffening of Trump who totally disavowed Obama's previous line. It is with Russia, however, that the game appears very delicate.
Sanger notes: "So far, there have been no discussions between Biden's representatives and the Russians over the treaty, transitional officials said, due to what Sullivan called the one president tradition at a time.". But from the afternoon of January 20, the day of Biden's official inauguration in Washington, the issue will become of thorny urgency. And then the knots of the risks of a foreign policy with Russia based on a sort of "double track" - the carrot of the tables for the nuclear treaty expiring on February 5 and the stick of sanctions - will come to a head. And the promise to the Americans to "launch a new security policy" could clash, not only on the Russian side, with the intransigence to punish those responsible for violations of US computer systems. The die has not yet been cast, however time is running out: a few more weeks and it will be possible to better understand how the barometer, today on the ugly stable, of the Washington-Moscow dialogue will settle.