Below the Radar

MOSCOW — Shortly before Edward Snowden landed in Moscow, two officials from the United States and Russia took a tour around the Northern Caucasus city of Sochi, the site of the 2014 Winter Olympics games. Gil Kerlikowske, President Obama’s "czar" for the war on drugs, and Viktor Ivanov, his Russian counterpart, spared no effort in demonstrating their mutual affinity. The program for their trip included a traditional greeting ceremony with Russian beauties serving bread and salt, a visit to a successful rehab center for drug addicts, cruising around the Black Sea in a yacht, and ample portions of red caviar, freshly caught fish, and good wine.

Following the symbolic March 2009 U.S.-Russia reset, Kerlikowske and  Ivanov met dozens of times in all parts of the globe in collaboration on a counternarcotics working group. With their shared passion for fighting the global war on drugs, Kerlikowske and Ivanov operate in a style that stands in sharp contrast to most of the other bilateral projects initiated by their two governments — and that’s not just because they’re known to make each other coffee.

Of the 16 working groups created by the Obama and Medvedev administrations, they are one of the few that actually work. The rest are stuck in the pre-reset era. And now, with only a month left before President Obama’s visit to Russia for the G-20 summit, people are wondering about Moscow’s agenda for its relationship with Washington.

A pro-Kremlin analyst of geopolitical processes, Yuri Krupnov, says that, at a moment when most of Russia’s industry is in decline (with the exception of oil and gas), it would be "pathetic" for Russia to be aggressive in making a show of will and power. Soft power, he stressed, is very valuable, but should only be applied if there is hard power to back it up. "Putin is thinking hard of what [mutual] points of interest Russia should have on its agenda with United States, but at the moment the relations are all about mockery — they mock us with [the] Magnitsky Act and we use Snowden to demonstrate that we also respect human rights."

Even if Obama’s visit takes place as scheduled, it’s questionable why the countries are even bothering when diplomacy has clearly taken a backseat. The Kremlin gave a firm "net" to extraditing American whistleblower Snowden following Obama’s recent proposal to make major reductions in nuclear stockpiles and Washington’s sharply articulated concerns about human rights issues in Russia.

In fact, nobody in the Kremlin seems to be seriously worried about inciting America’s wrath over Snowden. The daily tweets from Aleksei Pushkov, the head of the Duma foreign affairs committee, offer a good example of what Krupnov refers to as "mockery": "If the U.S. places trade sanctions on Russia because of Snowden, they will be shooting themselves in the foot!"

But he’s not alone. Government officials and the Russian media routinely accuse Washington of "hypocrisy," "double standards," and treating Russia poorly — especially when it comes to extradition requests. Channel One Russia conscientiously reminded the country that the U.S. State Department granted political asylum to the most wanted Russian terrorist, Ilyas Akhmadov. And Komsomolskaya Pravda, a daily tabloid, pointed out that American authorities have ignored all of Russia’s requests for the extradition of kidnaper Tamaz Nalbandov. "We can currently see a campaign in the Russian media that interprets the Kremlin’s intentions [to keep] Snowden in Moscow," says pro-Kremlin analyst Sergei Markov.

In the weeks following the crackdown on Russian NGOs last autumn, U.S. diplomats grumbled that the country was losing hope for a better future with Moscow. With a clear sense of resignation, their message comes across as little more than the following: "Do you like locking up your critics in jail, condemning them as spies or foreign agents? Okay, go ahead and live  your third world life. We’re giving up on you."

At this point, Russian officials admit that even proposed U.S. assistance for modernizing Russian industry, a project launched by former president Dmitry Medvedev, has disappeared from President Putin’s immediate agenda — together with all of Medvedev’s other pro-partnership plans.

It’s true that Afghanistan is still important both for the United States and Russia today, but that will change in less than a year. Igor Bunin, the president of the Mocow think-tank Center for Political Technologies described the basic picture to me: "America is not on the list of Putin’s priorities today; his priority [and] agenda is all about how to stay in power in 2018, and here America is acting as his enemy." 

While politicians wonder what the two countries should do about their diplomatic relations, conservative Russian intellectuals, like award-winning novelist Zakhar Prilepin, believe that the Snowden factor gives Russia an opportunity to win the argument over values. Just on Friday, the Kremlin forced senior Obama administration officials to offer assurances on human rights, a rare occurrence — including a promise not to torture or execute a prisoner. Prilepin believes there may be more to this than just another show of mockery. "The Kremlin is all about materialistic values. But Snowden actually gives us a chance to perform as a proud and strong country and genuinely help one man."