What former ambassadors discuss

 

Author: VK

 

This year Moscow and Washington celebrate the 80th anniversary of the establishment of diplomatic relations between the USSR and the USA. In 1993, the United States became one of the last states to recognize the Soviet Union. Since then, long inter-state relations have experienced several severe crises, and to this day they remain uneven. One of the formats of normalization is meetings of experienced former ambassadors which have been held for the past ten years.

 

“Ten years ago we had the idea to organize, in conjunction with the 70th anniversary of establishment of diplomatic relations between the USSR and the United States, the meeting of the former ambassadors of the two countries. And in 2003, such a meeting was held for the first time, there were 10 former ambassadors. During this meeting, in addition to those present here, the U.S. side was represented by another former U.S. Ambassador to Russia Alexander Vershbow, he is now the Deputy Secretary General of NATO, and you have probably read about the meetings that he holds now. On our side, there was also former Ambassador Yuri Dubinin. These were two days of meetings and discussions, as it is usual, it is the sixth meeting of the former ambassadors. By the way, there were also current ambassadors - Sergei Kislyak and Michael McFaul. There was a meeting with Foreign Minister Lavrov, at the Ministry of Defence, the Security Council, the round table in the "Carnegie", etc. The meeting of ambassadors are usually ended by a joint statement in which the former ambassadors express their views on the state of Russian-American relations and their development prospects. The statement was prepared”, Sergei Rogov, member of the Russian Academy of Sciences who promoted the idea of the meetings, said.

 

“Among the issues that were discussed - first of all, of course, I would like to point out the general state of relations between our two countries. The point is that our relationship is going through one of those periods, which appeared in our diplomatic life several times”, Alexander Bessmerthykh, president of the Foreign Economic Association, former Russian ambassador to the U. S., said. “Unfortunately, it happens, and maybe for the dynamics this is not bad, when positive periods alternate with periods of several complications in the relationship. At this time, we also have a lot of very serious issues that have arisen between us. Nevertheless, as people who have experienced more complex crises and situations, the current problems for us, the professionals, do not seem terrible, especially since they are quite amenable to further settlement. The questions of another level are, of course, the problems of security and strategic issues related to European security. But now the basis of relationships are not so much strategic alliances as the economy – this is a new phenomenon, and we assess the interstate situation primarily by how good, normal and strong economic ties are between the two countries - we discussed, of course, this question. Unfortunately, our economic ties with the United States are lagging behind some others. But, nevertheless, there is a positive growth, which already quite clearly shows that we are making progress in this regard. But there are a lot of problems, it is natural. The level of our relations with the United States compared to leading European and Asian countries, of course, is lagging behind. But we express the hope that, perhaps, because of the willingness of our business and economic leaders of the two countries we can triple the volume of trade and significantly increase the wave of mutual investment. The relationship between our two countries will improve. The people who attended the talks have a deep understanding of not only the state affairs but also trends. Therefore, our opinion is mainly on the optimistic side of our assessment of the situation between the two countries”.

 

“We all realize that we are now entering the third decade from the end of the Cold War”, James Collins, U.S. diplomat, former U. S. ambassador to Russia, said. “This is the third decade when Russia, Europe, Eurasia are very different from Russia, Europe and Eurasia, with which we had to deal three decades ago during the XX century. Now everything in the world is rapidly changing. The international system, in which today Russia and the United States find themselves, is extremely unpredictable, fluid, it is constantly changing. We discussed this question, because, in my opinion, the main issue on which we agreed when discussing the context of our relationship is that if Russia and the U.S. can find a way to cooperate and work together on the problems that we face today, we will be able to operate effectively and to influence the direction of the development of international relations. However, if we cannot work together, it appears that we have fewer opportunities to shape the future. I believe that in this context, we discussed the issues contained in our joint statement. One of the problems that we are now fully aware of, is that in fact the economic relationship between our two countries, as well as the general economic situation in the international financial system, in many ways defines the way in which the world , influence, power, and potential impact on international relations are distributed around the world. Today we all see the rise of China, we see the rise of countries such as South Africa and Brazil, which come to the world economic stage. Whether we like it or not, the traditional industrialized countries, such as European countries, the USA and Russia, have lost their monopoly on the action in the world economic system. This leads to major changes. So the first thing we decided is that for Russia and the U.S. it is very important to think about our economic relations, to understand that in many ways the future will be determined by whether we can make these economic relations productive and strong. Now they are not strong, they are rather weak. However, the opportunities that we now have are a lot more, since Russia has joined the WTO, as the market is developing much more openly, with all the changes that have taken place in Russia, where it became a world competitive economy. I assume this is the first thing that must be noted. Priority for the future must lie precisely in the economic sphere. We also talked about the more traditional issues, such as strategic defense, missile defense, strategic weapons. We expressed the hope that the changes, which has just been announced concerning the U.S. plans to deploy a missile defense system in Europe, will open up new possibilities for the study of what may happen in the future. Personally, I believe that there are no technological barriers to the establishment of a joint, cooperative missile defense system. We need to work on this issue. There is also scope for further reduction of strategic weapons and wider discussion of all other types of weapons. And finally, we talked about two issues: we talked about regional issues, we have spent a lot of time discussing our concerns causing the issue of Syria. I cannot tell you that we have made some decisions. We also talked about Iran, North Korea and nuclear proliferation. We also expressed the hope that we will continue to work more closely on these issues than in the past. We also talked about the bilateral relations. We noted that the Russian citizens and American citizens often get a visa for three years with the possibility of multiple entries. This makes it easier for people to travel. This is just one of the issues we discussed. At the same time, we have discussed the following question: we are now at the stage when the context of the relations is very complicated. We attack each other, enact various laws trying to exchange accusations on very controversial issues, and, unfortunately, these actions undermine our key achievements over the past 3-4 years. We hope that we will approach these issues more rationally, reasonably. We will find the opportunity to discuss these issues and come to an agreement. We ended on a positive note. There is no fundamental reason that would prevent Russia and the U.S. to find opportunities for collaboration and discussion of the issues facing our countries. We need to overcome our differences and consequences of the Cold War. We need to think of a new century. We will cooperate in this century on a number of issues”.