In a few days President of Russia Vladimir Putin will arrive in New York to speak at the UN General Assembly. At the moment, his schedule involves no bilateral meeting with U.S. President Barack Obama. However, according to the President's Press Secretary, Dmitry Peskov, “various options are being developed, including holding separate bilateral meetings and using personal, protocol, and other arrangements within the General Assembly to give the President an opportunity to talk to heads of other countries.”
Academician of the Russian Academy of Social Sciences, President of the American University in Moscow, Eduard Lozansky, considers what the U.S. expects from Vladimir Putin's speech.
According to Lozansky, US foreign policy elites can be divided into roughly three groups: “The first group believes that they should not have any business with Russia, and their goal is a change of regime. Their most prominent representative is John McCain, and others. There is a second group in which I would have ranked President Obama and Secretary of State John Kerry, who believe that Russia should be weakened, but nevertheless, when it is possible, it is necessary to use it to solve any problems that are beneficial primarily for the United States and its allies. The third group are not the people who make the decisions, but representatives of society. They are now grouped around the newly revived Committee for Agreement East-West. One of its prominent representatives is the well-known professor at New York University, Stephen Cohen, and its Chairman is the former Democrat Senator Bill Bradley. This group believes that primarily, in the interests of the United States, it is necessary to maintain normal relations with Russia and solve issues of safety and economic issues, and many others.”
Lozansky sympathizes with the third group and he believes that it would be good if Putin offered some specific programs of cooperation, which would be beneficial to both Russia and the United States.
“One such idea is the creation of an international anti-terrorist coalition. And this is quite a reasonable thing. It has already been voiced by Lavrov and Putin himself. And if during his speech Putin focused more on some specific details, not on common words, but on some specifics, it seems to me that it would be a good message to the American people. It is unlikely that it would change the opinion of the first two groups. But still, America, no matter how much people berate it, is a democratic country. And now we are on the eve of elections. Of course what the public says is very important. First of all, about the establishment of this anti-terrorist coalition. Instead of NATO we should use a new structure called IATO – the International Anti-Terrorist Organization. IATO instead of NATO. If we heard something like that from Putin, we would be satisfied.”
