Outside View: Russia's new start -- Part 3

BRUSSELS, Nov. 20 (UPI) -- President-elect Barack Obama has promised a new comprehensive, vigorous and integrated Russia strategy that encompasses the entire region, and there may be quick common ground to be found with Moscow on a pause to the deployment of ballistic missile defense assets in Europe.

But there are several factors that could prove to be obstacles to a positive shift within six months or so.

It will take time for the new Obama Russia team to get in place and start working out new policies -- policies that are likely to encounter opposition from officials with entrenched views linked to current policies.

It also will be hard for them to lift U.S.-Russia relations and European security into the priority position they need to be in -- ahead of administration priorities like Iraq, Iran, Afghanistan and Pakistan. Few in the Pentagon or State Department see European and Russian security as a high priority relative to these other issues.

Finally, public opinion in both states will play against early concessions -- bolstered by the fact that the relationship is characterized by mistrust among security elites.

So the path to easing tensions must be a route that gives primary attention to counteracting these factors within the coming six months. There must be creative and practical ideas that provide new directions and lay out the incentives for change.

The Obama camp and the European Union must give a clear signal that the current drift in relations with Russia is unacceptable and agree to an early meeting between key high-level security advisers on all sides.

NATO is not the right mechanism for such a dialogue. It lacks credibility with the Russian government and is unable to take a comprehensive view of the overarching political trends, not least the need to subsume any narrow institutional interest in continued tension with Russia to the demands of higher-priority security issues like overcoming the current financial crisis or rising pressures on global energy security.

The European Union (spurred on by smaller concerned EU members with a track record of promoting effective arms control or nuclear disarmament measures, such as Sweden, Denmark and Finland, among others) must serve as the bridge instead.

We need a temporary coalition of small EU states to push for a new European consensus on Russia. This will be very difficult. EU newcomers who feel they are on the front line of the new Russia are particularly sensitive. A unified EU agenda cannot be simply a Western European one.

All parties should intensify their participation in available Track II mechanisms or create new ones to foster the mood for change. This has to be both bilateral (Russia and the United States) and trilateral (to include Europe). The Track II work needs to be problem-oriented. Joint working groups on several high-value issues should be set up now with a four- to six-month reporting schedule. Political leaders need to go outside and beyond official channels for new perspectives on breakthrough measures that might yield early results.

Five promising areas for such collaborative solutions-driven work by standing working groups at Track II or Track I.5 level could be:

-- Small military-to-military task forces on security threats in Asia (such as missiles, Afghanistan and Persian Gulf security).

-- Natural gas, Europe and global energy security.

-- New European security arrangements.

-- Political reform and open economies.

-- International humanitarian law.

This short article is not the place to explain the rationale for these proposals in full. All of them are connected to serious misperceptions on one or both sides, and in each area there is a current set of pressing problems begging not just for more common understanding but also for new and early changes in policy.

All of them also can be seen as part of the comprehensive security reform that both Medvedev and Obama say they favor.

As Obama and Medvedev both make plain, we have important global challenges to meet before we can allow ourselves the indulgence of a new ideological cold war.

--

(Greg Austin has a 30-year career in international affairs, including senior posts in academia and government, and is the author of several highly reviewed books on international security. He is vice president for policy innovation at the EastWest Institute, which first published a version of this article.)

--

(United Press International's "Outside View" commentaries are written by outside contributors who specialize in a variety of important issues. The views expressed do not necessarily reflect those of United Press International. In the interests of creating an open forum, original submissions are invited.)