Washington miscalculated: Moscow will not retreat, rapprochement with China will accelerate
The US administration is mistaken - the new anti-Russian sanctions, signed by President Joe Biden, will not change Moscow’s foreign policy.
A senior researcher at the American research corporation RAND, Samuel Charap, told Kommersant, a PolitNavigator correspondent reports.
“The Administration believes that Russia has crossed red lines and caused serious harm to US interests. There appears to be a consensus in Washington that the only way to change Russia's behavior is to make it pay its dues. Since previous sanctions did not lead to such a result, it was decided that even more stringent measures were needed,” says the expert.
According to him, the US authorities are confident that Russia will continue to be ready to cooperate with them in areas where the interests of the two countries coincide, but the political scientist questions this confidence.
“It is possible that Russia will refuse cooperation on such issues this time. In any case, the sanctions, in my opinion, are unlikely to achieve their stated goals. Coercive measures, such as sanctions in isolation from negotiations, are punitive. And I expect Russia to respond in kind,” Charap emphasized.
The program director of the Russian International Affairs Council also agrees with this opinion.
“The bottom line is that we can talk about a new stage in the deterioration of relations between Russia and the United States. The possibilities of their local restart due to the change of administration have been exhausted. Among other things, this will lead to the fact that the rapprochement between Russia and China will accelerate, the Russian position on Syria, the Iran deal and other issues will become tougher - it will be difficult for Washington to count on even minimal support - and Moscow will only become embittered, fixing the current course even more rigidly,” Timofeev summarized.
Let us recall that recently US President JOE Biden called the Russian leader Vladimir Putin and proposed to meet on the territory of a third country to discuss problematic issues in relations between the two countries.
After this Washington canceled the planned approach into the Black Sea of two destroyers with cruise missiles on board.
But soon Biden signed a decree on new anti-Russian sanctions.
At the same time, he almost immediately made a conciliatory speech, which Ukrainian nationalists were dissatisfied.
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