Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov, just back from his first meeting with his new American counterpart, John Kerry, sat for a wide-ranging interview in March with Foreign Policy Editor in Chief Susan B. Glasser in Moscow, holding forth on everything from why Americans can no longer adopt Russian babies to how come Russia and China team up so much at the United Nations.
Susan Glasser, Foreign Policy editor in chief: Minister Lavrov, thank you so much for taking the time. It's a pleasure to speak with you. We are doing a special issue of Foreign Policy magazine that will come out in May and dedicated to power in all of its manifestations, so this is a perfect chance to have a conversation with you. And I appreciate you taking the time.
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Sergei Lavrov: Thank you.
FP: Well, first of all, we are interested in Russian and American relations. And I'm wondering if you could give me a sense of what you think comes after the reset. I know it was not your word.…
Lavrov: It wasn't. You know, the Russian Federation and the United States of America, the two biggest nuclear powers in the world, but apart from nuclear-wise, we have a lot in common. We have huge territories, natural resources, technologies, science, education, and of course human capital. And the two countries are basically self-sufficient, but both are not trying to be isolated. Isolationism is not loved in this world, and because the problems we share … the challenges, the threats, they are transnational, transborder, and it is only through collective effort that we can help … reduce these threats. Terrorism, drug trafficking, organized crime, proliferation of weapons of mass destruction, environment, food security, energy security, all these cannot be resolved by any single power alone. Therefore, we value very much our partnership with foreign countries, and the United States is the leading power.
And our relations have, I would say, a lot of positive elements. We've managed to move forward along the way of nuclear disarmament. We agreed on the START treaty. We've managed to sign and ratify the agreement, which is called 123 agreement, the agreement on cooperation in peaceful uses of nuclear energy, which is quite beneficial for both the United States and the Russian Federation and is very important for ensuring nuclear safety and nuclear security in third countries. We've managed to create an unprecedented mechanism for bilateral relations, the presidential commission, which has some 20 working groups embracing all manageable areas of cooperation. We've managed to sign an agreement on facilitating the visa issue for tourists and businessmen from our countries. And I believe this is very much in the interests of our peoples.…
Of course the relationship between such big countries can never be cloudless. And we have some things which still divide us. Missile defense is one case in point. We still believe that if the Russian Federation and the United States bring their minds together, we can develop a common system which would be efficient in protecting the Euro-Atlantic region from threats coming outside this region. The situation so far is in a deadlock. The U.S. and NATO, which supported the U.S., believe that the system which is proposed by the United States is flawless and it cannot be changed an inch. However, the Government Account[ability] Office in the United States Congress recently produced a report which challenges the proposed configuration of this missile defense in Europe. This is not to say that our experts would agree 100 percent with this GAO report, but this indicates that even inside the United States there are different opinions as to how to handle the problem of missile proliferation, so we are reiterating our openness to discussing this issue with the United States, provided we put our brains together and provided our intellectual ability is not questioned. We are convinced that doing it together -- doing it together with the United States and the Europeans -- would not only be the most efficient way to try to find a response to the threat of missile proliferation, but it would bring our relationship with NATO -- the Russia and NATO relationship -- to a qualitatively new level. It will be really a step closer to us becoming allies again like we used to be during World War II.
There are other problems which negatively affect the relationship between Russia and the United States. And the situation which arose after the so-called Magnitsky Act was adopted by the U.S. Congress is a case in point. I have no doubt that the sponsors of that act, who are motivated by the desire to have something instead of the Jackson-Vanik amendment, which became an impediment for the American business after Russia joined the WTO, and just as they wanted to use Jackson-Vanik, which has been kept artificially after all the emigration programs of the Soviet Union have been removed and the Russian Federation did not deserve the continuation of the Jackson-Vanik amendment but they kept it in order to have a leverage -- influence in Russian Federation politics. And when they understood that this amendment was already making damage to the American interests, they tried to invent something to replace it, and that's how the Magnitsky Act appeared, absolutely artificial act which was in fact an attempt to replace an anti-Soviet amendment with anti-Russian legislation. The Americans knew that we would be reacting the way we did. We reacted, you know; we adopted, our parliament adopted, the Dima Yakovlev law. And this is not our choice, but this is the law of the politics. You always reciprocate. Positively, negatively, but this is something which you cannot change. It was not invented by us. It is the law of international relations. Reciprocity is the key.
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