{"id":1055,"date":"2020-02-24T10:08:21","date_gmt":"2020-02-24T14:08:21","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/sites.miamioh.edu\/havighurst\/?p=1055"},"modified":"2022-01-19T08:27:50","modified_gmt":"2022-01-19T12:27:50","slug":"learning-to-trust-the-untrustworthy-dr-yoshiko-herrera-on-u-s-russian-relations","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/sites.miamioh.edu\/havighurst\/2020\/02\/24\/learning-to-trust-the-untrustworthy-dr-yoshiko-herrera-on-u-s-russian-relations\/","title":{"rendered":"Learning to Trust the Untrustworthy: Dr. Yoshiko Herrera on U.S.-Russian Relations"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
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By Megan Burtis<\/p>\n\n\n\n

On Monday, February 17th<\/sup>, the Havighurst\nCenter for Russian and Post-Soviet Studies kicked off its Spring Colloquia Series\non \u201cRussia and the World\u201d with a lecture by Dr. Yoshiko Herrera of the\nUniversity of Wisconsin-Madison. Her lecture, titled \u201cU.S.-Russian Relations:\nChallenges and Opportunities\u201d, delivered a comprehensive overview of the complex\nstate of relations between the two countries, all the while maintaining a sense\nof optimism for the future.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

It should be no surprise to anyone that recent cooperation\nbetween the U.S. and Russia has been difficult. To understand why this remains\nthe case, Dr. Herrera began by discussing the seemingly simple notion of trust.\nAccording to her, trust makes cooperation possible, and trust cannot be built\nwithout the willingness to take risks. Unfortunately for both sides, a history\nof disagreements<\/a> has made the notion of risk-taking a\nnon-starter for both the U.S. and Russia. Issues such as NATO expansion, the\nU.S.\u2019s use of force in Kosovo and Iraq, and the recent conflict in Ukraine have\nkept cooperation locked behind disagreement over everything from what is right\nin the eyes of international law to basic situational narrative facts. These\ndisagreements in turn have made both countries view the other as unworthy of\ntheir trust.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

A historical failure to trust, though important,\ncannot fully explain the current state of U.S.-Russian relations. Herrera\noutlined several other challenges that discourage the advancement of even basic\ncooperation between the two countries. These include a fundamental disagreement\non international goals and the strategies to achieve them. While the U.S.\u2019s\nstance includes the need for humanitarian intervention and support for human\nrights and democracy, Russia opposes both intervention and democratic regime\nchanges. Herrera also noted the lack of stable channels for communication\nthroughout the bureaucratic and diplomatic establishments, stopping cooperation\nbefore it can even start. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

The final challenge described by Herrera concerns not\nthe relationship between the U.S. and Russia per say, but instead focused on each\ncountry\u2019s own domestic politics and leadership. President Vladimir Putin has\nfaced a number of domestic issues and decisions that have left his support and\nlegitimacy weak. In the United States, the Trump administration\u2019s foreign\npolicy as a whole consists of uncertainty and contradictions. Though President\nTrump personally maintains a pro-Russian stance, the administration has not\nlessened its sanctions against the country. The outcome of the 2020\nPresidential election could also potentially yield yet another policy shift\nthat would continue to leave the status of the U.S.-Russia relationship up in\nthe air.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

All this is to say, as Herrera clarified, that there is\nstill hope. Though it may seem that the challenges identified by Herrera are\nnumerous and insurmountable, she maintained that opportunities for cooperation do\nexist and should be a cause for optimism. The two countries\u2019 domestic\nchallenges and differences have not and will not go away, but there still\nremains a number of shared interests that could potentially form the basis of\nrenewed cooperation. The conflict in Syria may have begun as yet another divide\nbetween the U.S. and Russia, but Herrera asserted that they now both have an\ninterest in ending the conflict and therefore are incentivized to cooperate, a notion\nshared by the Council\non Foreign Relations<\/a>. Whether it be Syria, nuclear\nproliferation, terrorism, or environmental issues, Dr. Herrera believes in a\nstate of optimism for the future of U.S.-Russian cooperation. These issues will\nnot go away, but together these countries have the power to address them.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Though trust between our two countries may seem impossible, perhaps we can learn-perhaps we must.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Megan Burtis is a Political Science major at Miami.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

By Megan Burtis On Monday, February 17th, the Havighurst Center for Russian and Post-Soviet Studies kicked off its Spring Colloquia Series on \u201cRussia and the World\u201d with a lecture by Dr. Yoshiko Herrera of the University of Wisconsin-Madison. Her lecture, … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":781,"featured_media":1056,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"gallery","meta":{"_bbp_topic_count":0,"_bbp_reply_count":0,"_bbp_total_topic_count":0,"_bbp_total_reply_count":0,"_bbp_voice_count":0,"_bbp_anonymous_reply_count":0,"_bbp_topic_count_hidden":0,"_bbp_reply_count_hidden":0,"_bbp_forum_subforum_count":0,"_s2mail":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[18,6],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1055","post","type-post","status-publish","format-gallery","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-colloquium-talks","category-lecture_reviews","post_format-post-format-gallery"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.miamioh.edu\/havighurst\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1055","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.miamioh.edu\/havighurst\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.miamioh.edu\/havighurst\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.miamioh.edu\/havighurst\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/781"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.miamioh.edu\/havighurst\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1055"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/sites.miamioh.edu\/havighurst\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1055\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.miamioh.edu\/havighurst\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1056"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.miamioh.edu\/havighurst\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1055"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.miamioh.edu\/havighurst\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1055"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.miamioh.edu\/havighurst\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1055"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}