Российско-американские отношения

Отношения с США - один из приоритетов внешней политики России, важный фактор международной стабильности. Ключевыми задачами являются обеспечение их развития в стабильном, конструктивном и предсказуемом русле, расширение сфер совпадения интересов, сужение зон разногласий на основе поиска компромиссов с учетом национальных интересов друг друга.

Наши страны активно взаимодействуют по широкому кругу вопросов, образуя ядро глобальной антитеррористической коалиции. Принципы двустороннего партнерского диалога закреплены в Московской Декларации о новых стратегических отношениях, подписанной Президентами В.В.Путиным и Дж.Бушем в мае 2002 г., в которой констатируется, что Россия и США будут сотрудничать "ради продвижения стабильности, безопасности, совместного противодействия глобальным вызовам и содействия решению региональных конфликтов".

Практически в постоянном режиме осуществлялись контакты между главами внешнеполитических ведомств двух стран. Военно-политическая проблематика. В центре внимания -формирование новых отношений в стратегической области на принципах партнерства и обоюдного учета интересов безопасности друг друга

Развивается сотрудничество по ключевым международным и региональным проблемам, совместному поиску ответов на новые глобальные угрозы и вызовы. Эффективное взаимодействие в борьбе с международным терроризмом осуществляется в рамках российско-американской Рабочей группы по борьбе с терроризмом, действующей в режиме периодических заседаний.

В числе приоритетных региональных областей сотрудничества - постконфликтное обустройство в Ираке и Афганистане, урегулирование конфликтов на Ближнем Востоке, нормализация обстановки на Корейском полуострове.

Развивается сотрудничество в энергетической области как стратегическое направление взаимодействия на базе договоренностей 1-го и II-го Российско-Американских деловых энергетических саммитов (октябрь 2002 г., Хьюстон; сентябрь 2003 г., Санкт-Петербург). Имеет хорошие перспективы и взаимодействие в таких областях, как высокие технологии (в т.ч. космос и информационные технологии), жилищное строительство и ипотечное кредитование. Расширяется и структурируется диалог по линии бизнес-ассоциаций.

Ex.6 Read the text. Use the words below to complete each sentence:

Russia-usa disagreements in the enlargement of nato

Inherited; vital interest; necessity; considered; reasonable; stable economy;

popular; "leading man"; is situated; assumption; enlargement;

admitted; crisis; a successor; counterbalance ; dominant;

decisively; developed; "a transition state"; statement; external

It is a 1) of the United States to be a strong power in Europe. This continent is the second prominent "pole" of the world: Japan is usually 2)___________ to be the third one. Europe is a highly developed region with 3) ___________and strong democracy. Of course, the USA would like to play a major role - if not be a 4) ___________ - there. But sometimes trade links do not help a country to feel safe. Recent events have shown that the opinions of the United States and Europe can differ and lead to insignificant 5) conflicts - such as the sale of bananas. And though there is 6) no doubt that economic co-operation of these countries is tightly bound and very unlikely to brake, the USA wants to be sure that the economy is not the only thing which 7) connects them with Europe. That is why NATO plays 8) a key role in U.S. relations with Western Europe.

Russia 9) _________ in the eastern part of the European continent. The 10) ________ that the Russian Federation is not yet a democratic state sounds very 11) __________. "The myths" about corruption and increase in crime are quite famous and 12)___________ in the western countries. So the more European allies the United States have, the better it is for them. American authorities regard Russia as 13) __________. And though everyone hopes that it will relatively soon become democratic to the full, there is always a threat which comes from this country. As 14)_________ of the USSR, Russia has 15) _________ all Soviet nuclear weapons. This means that the Russia is still very strong militarily and the United States have think about this threat. It will be a disaster for all the countries if the Russian Federation becomes a failing state, thus leading to an appearance of uncontrolled missiles. It is one of the reasons why NATO should be enlarged.

On the other hand, it is not very pleasant for the Russian government to understand that the military alliance, which used to act against - or probably just to 16) __________ - the Warsaw Pact members, is anti-Russian now. The Russian Prime Minister Yevgeny Primakov made his position clear: "We do not object to the expansion of the European Union. It is a natural process. As for the NATO enlargement, our position remains the same".

There are several famous theories which help understand international relations and explain the processes that take place on the global stage. Nowadays the most popular of these paradigms is neorealism, which has inherited from realism its main postulates - such as the balance of power (doctrine of international relations maintaining that aggressive tendencies on the part of a state or an alliance of states can be discouraged by the formation of another alliance of equal or greater strength; thus, in a system where one party is more powerful than any other single party, peace may be preserved by an alliance of the weaker parties). One of the innovations made by neorealists was the idea of the balance of terror, which descends from the doctrine of the balance of power. Stephen M. Walt, the author of this theory and the follower of Kenneth Waltz, claimed (1) that the terror comes from one of the neighbors; (2) that the threat is significant only if the enemy has a much bigger war potential; and (3) that the situation becomes tenser when the enemy shows his aggressive intentions. We can observe all these conditions now.

NATO 17) __________ to the east moves alliance's border hundreds of kilometers towards Russia. At the moment the Russian Federation has common frontiers with two NATO members - that is Norway and Poland (it is contiguous with Kaliningrad Oblast, which is a part of Russia). NATO is certainly stronger militarily and it also shows that it can strike 18)__________ (in Yugoslavia, for example). So the neorealistic paradigm explains why Russia is totally against with the enlargement of NATO.

And by accepting Poland, Hungary and the Czech Republic in the alliance, NATO gives bad "fuel" for radical groups in Russia. Now they can try to persuade people that their ideas have turned to be right, which means that their ideology is well-grounded and reasonable. These ultra-right and ultra-left movements have a full right to make a (partly) justifiable 19)__________ whose meaning will be the following: "We warned you against so-called western democracy. Now you can see that we know what's happening in the world and what is going to happen next. Let us have power and we'll do our best to help the country get out of this crisis".

Though I hope that the people of Russia is clever enough to resist this nationalist onslaught, if it is not like that, this situation might knock down all highly developed countries and destabilize their economy, forcing them to spend a large part of the revenue on the defense systems.

So the United States need to understand that they cannot go too far in these questions. To preserve Russian democracy the USA has to show that the economical 20) ________ in Russia is only temporary and help the Russian government to move the country towards the open-market economy. But lack of understanding of how the U.S. can help Russia leads us to another problem, which cannot be easily solved.

Russia is "in the habit of" raising a question of the 21) __________ of the enlargement: there is no confrontation anymore so why do we need to enlarge a military alliance if nobody is going to attack it. The Russian government is not satisfied with one of American explanations - with the statement that one of the purposes of NATO enlargement is to protect the three new members, who have joined this organization, from the 22) __________ aggression. Some Russian officials even argue that the two main goals of this action are to open a new market for American producers of weapons and to diminish Russian influence in Europe - particularly among the former Warsaw Pact members.

The USA usually insists on the truthfulness of the allegation that the only purpose of expanding NATO to the east is to bring up 3 new members of the alliance economically and militarily. That is probably true, though still it is not very clear why these countries are not allowed to join the European Union where they would be sure to develop quickly. The only reason why they are not 23) ________ to the EU is that they are still under-developed and thus cannot join the Common Market, which almost wipes out the boundaries, which means that all the EU countries have to be at least almost equally 24)________. NATO does not bring forward such a demand. So the enlargement will at least help the Czech Republic, Hungary and Poland; though Russia will lose one more market, where the USSR used to sell its weapons. So we can still find an answer to the question "Why do we need to enlarge the military alliance if there is no confrontation and if nobody is going to attack it?"

On the other hand, the USA, which from the point of view of many sovereign states tries to be 25) ___________ in the world, can be described as "the rogue superpower" - the term used by Samuel P. Huntington, a very famous and respected specialist in the sphere of international relations.

We will wait and see what is going to happen with Europe - the continent which has laid the foundation of industry, the part of the world in which countries possessed the territory of almost the whole planet, the place where both World Wars were started, the continent that was divided into two parts and whose history and where most people consider that they can live together in peace.

Ex.7 Give the translation to the missed words from the text and make up your own sentence with each of them.

Ex.8 Write 10 questions to the content of the text.