'Pariah' No More: Washington Wants Moscow to Be Cooperative Partner

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John Kerry's recent visit to Sochi has clearly indicated that the White House policy towards Russia during the last year has failed, prompting an apparent shift from confrontation to competition and cooperation, Stephen Cohen noted.

US President Obama's policy aimed at isolating Russia and bringing the Kremlin to its knees has obviously failed, stressed Stephen Cohen, a prominent American historian and professor of Russian studies at Princeton University and New York University, adding that US Secretary of State John Kerry's visit to Sochi has become a "turning point" in the saga of the Ukrainian crisis.

"The White House policy towards Russia during the last year has failed. What was that policy? We don't have to guess. President Obama told us on several occasions that the policy was to isolate Russia and bring its leadership and the person of Putin to his knees through economic sanctions and to thereby make the concessions that the United States and NATO wanted in Ukraine," Stephen Cohen emphasized.

Meeting between Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov and Austrian Foreign Minister Sebastian Kurz in Moscow. May 5, 2015. - Sputnik International
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That has not happened, the historian underscored, adding that some would even argue that the opposite has happened and Russia in various ways has become stronger.

Vladimir Putin's decision to meet Kerry after his negotiations with Russia's Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov was a "very big symbolic diplomatic deal" that could be considered as a possible thaw in the new Cold War.

However, the question remains open, what the new American policy towards Russia will be like.

"What's the new American policy? And clearly it involves in fundamental ways Russia's cooperation… Now it appears that we [the United States] don't want [Russia] to be a pariah. We want it to come back and be a cooperative partner with us, certainly in Iran, certainly in regard to Syria, but the pivot now is of course in the Ukrainian crisis," the scholar underscored.

The United States Capitol, the meeting place of the US Congress in Washington, DC The Capitol's foundation stone was laid by George Washington on September 18, 1793 - Sputnik International
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According to the historian there is a certain split over the Ukrainian issue among the US political establishment. Washington has found itself unable to control the Ukrainian government that it has been supporting since the February coup of 2014.

On the other hand Kiev has done many things in recent months that do not improve the White House's position in this crisis, Professor Cohen stressed. Kiev as made a lot of provocative statements about its intentions to retake Crimea and Donbass by the military force, evidently ignoring the Minsk II agreement's provisions.

And it has become clear that Washington's patience is not limitless when John Kerry publicly castigated the Ukrainian government in Sochi, saying that President Petro Poroshenko should act in accordance with the Minsk II accord.

"It was the first time a high American official in public has reproached the behavior of the Kiev government. So I ask myself does this signify that the Obama administration is now diminishing its previously unqualified support for Kiev. If that is so, that is as bigger turning point as Kerry's visit to Sochi," Stephen Cohen emphasized.

The White House in Washington, D.C. - Sputnik International
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However, the historian warned about probable backlash against US-Russia consensus from the US' "party of war" – the American "hawks." Stephen Cohen noted that all these "fabulous tales" about Russia's aggression against Kiev, its intentions to recreate the USSR and invade the Baltic states are strikingly similar to extravagant myths that former Iraqi leader Saddam had weapons of mass destruction (WMD).

Still, it is very important that US Army War College has recently defined the future of US-Russian relations as "not confrontation, but competition and cooperation." Although this formula is echoing the US strategy towards the USSR during the Cold War, it still marks a possible shift in relationship between Washington and Moscow, according to the scholar.

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