Press releases

Russia: Has Reset Succeeded?

The second discussion on the day two of the Rīga Conference 2010 was “Russia: Has Reset Succeeded?” The chairman of the Committee on Foreign Affairs of the Federation Council of the Russian Federation, Mr. Mikhail Margelov, the director of the European Council on Foreign Relations, Mr. Mark Leonard, the Special Advisor to the Assistant Secretary for Europe and Eurasia Affairs at the Department of State, Mr. Jeremy Shapiro, the member of the Advisory Board of ,,Pro et Contra’’ Journal, Mr. Konstantin von Eggert, and the Independent Scholar and Consultant Bobo Lo took part in this discussion moderated by the Director of Foreign Policy and Defense at the Centre for European Reform, Mr. Tomas Valasek.

Mikhail Margelov: Russia has always been an empire, but it does not want to be an empire which is compared as a continuation of the Soviet Union. Democratic parliament does not automatically mean that all problems can be solved by being a democratic country. And the environment of the recent crisis, in according to him, proves it. Mr. Margelov sees the reset of the relations with the USA in a positive and optimistic aspect, stressing that the reset first of all is of vital importance for the USA itself, especially taking into account the fact that the USA is resetting its relations also with other countries. A good ground for a successful reset is the fact, that Medvedev and Obama do not have a cold war experience, therefore if the reset will be institutionalized, then probably it will be successful.

Next speaker to take the floor was Mark Leonard. He pointed out that it is positive that the USA is having a dialogue with Russia about Afghanistan, Iran and North Korea. Having said this he remarked that despite good will there are more disagreements in this dialogue than agreements. Russia understands that its relations with the EU do not depend only on the relations with Brussels – all member states of the EU mater. Mark Leonard also sees Turkey as an important actor building up the relations between the EU and Russia.
Jeremy Shapiro followed the conversation with less optimistic view of the future of the Russia-USA relations, noting that they can`t be any better than now.

The thoughts of Konstantin von Eggert and Bobo Lo were similar when evaluating the practical grounds of cooperation. Konstantin von Eggert in particular pointed out that there aren’t many “business activities” going on between Russia and USA, if we compare with the relations between the EU and Russia. Mr. Eggert was wondering if the USA-Russia “good feeling” relations could be institutionalized to be sure that the reset process is on a steady road further on. Bobo Lo was very direct saying that there is no sense for Russia to reset its foreign policy – Russia is different from USA in it’s approaches to a great extent. Russia does not want to join the west – it wants to redefine the west. The real test of the reset lies ahead and, with the words of Bobo Lo, “it will take years to make a trustful relationship between Russia and the USA”.

The Rīga Conference 2010 is organized by the Latvian Transatlantic Organisation (LATO) in cooperation with the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Latvia and the Ministry of Defence of Latvia as well as supported by the German Marshall Fund of the United States, NATO, Soros Foundation – Latvia, Konrad Adenauer Stiftung, Friedrich Ebert Stiftung, European Commission Representation in Latvia and the Embassy of the United States in Riga, Informative support is ensured by LETA, DELFI un Latvijas Avīze.

Photos of the Conference are available at LATO Photo Album.