Unintended Consequences: Impact of the U.S. - Russia Détente on the Wider Europe
Unintended Consequences: Impact of the U.S. - Russia Détente on the Wider Europe

Summary/Abstract: Cooperative relations between Washington and Moscow do not necessarily generate security throughout Wider Europe. Much depends on Moscow’s goals and vulnerabilities of Russia’s neighbors. The Barack Obama administration has been criticized for neglecting the national interests of East European, South Caucasian, and Central Asian states in order to obtain Moscow’s collaboration in arms control, Iranian sanctions, and maintaining a supply corridor to NATO troops in Afghanistan. Such an approach emboldens Russia’s leaders to press their former Soviet subordinates into closer dependency relationships that limit their sovereignty. One major shortcoming of Obama’s foreign policy is a failure to clearly articulate U.S. security interests and strategic goals in the Wider European and Central Asian regions. These include preventing regional insecurity, precluding the emergence of a regional hegemony that challenges broader American interests, and involving a diverse array of states to assist Washington in combating common threats stemming from the broader Middle East and South Asia.

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