Does Russia need a strategic pause in relations with the United States?

The question of whether Russia needs a strategic pause in relations with the United States, because the time of resets has passed, is largely rhetorical. Firstly, Russia has no pause in relations with the United States, and it is impossible. Unless one of these two countries leaves Earth and goes to Mars.

Secondly, there were no resets and no plans - by this word, the United States understood a new perestroika in Russia, i.e., the policy of its unilateral concessions and the surrender of its strategic national interests to the West. This was the last "reload" button of Clinton.

If anything has passed, it is the time for such hopes for the United States. You can call it a reset, but more precisely - the capitulation of Russia. The US suggested to surrender, but Russia refused. The question is closed.

Now Russia and the United States are in close contact on the entire range of issues on the international global agenda. Some suggest that Russia should stop automatically responding by agreeing to discuss with the United States any issue they raise. They say that this is how we will express our sovereignty.

In fact, Russia cannot and should not refuse such an automatic consent to discussion. To discuss is not to agree. To discuss means to conduct your own policy, to try to influence, to formulate arguments and to voice them to the whole world. The United States is still the most powerful state, and it is able to force a response to its actions. So why abandon such a reaction, only to return to it later under the pressure of circumstances?

No matter how unusual the order may be in the Biden-Harris administration, as they now say in the White House, accustoming the world to the upcoming transfer, it is impossible to evade the agenda imposed by the United States, and it is not necessary.

The US is just a concentrated expression of the problem. If its decision is put on pause, the problem will find a way to get into our lives and poison it. Therefore, there is no pause – neither tactical, nor operational, nor strategic - in the war with the United States.

But a change of tactics is possible. What Russia is doing, in military parlance, is called regrouping forces before new battles. The United States is also engaged in this regrouping. If there is a pause, it is at the level of operations, not in the strategy. The strategy is the same-either we or they. The third is not given.

Now two coalitions are being formed: the US-Japan-Australia-EU-Britain-India and Russia-China. The fact that the United States has more countries in the coalition does not mean anything – Japan and Britain can not be counted – the Americans have shown how two strikes can lead a country out of war. In war, it is not the quantity that matters, but the quality of the divisions ("you will have eight divisions, but unfortunately Italian ones"). The EU needs the US for technical issues, not for military ones.

The United States itself last tried itself in a war with a real enemy in the Ardennes, where, as we know, without the help of the USSR, they would have been defeated by the Wehrmacht. The United States knows perfectly well what will happen to them when they meet with an army stronger than the Vietnamese. Modelling is not reality. And in the United States, therefore, they compensate for war with psychological pressure, trying to isolate opponents.

Russia is pursuing a strategy of revenge for the collapse of the USSR, it is moving to consolidate the lost territories. The same strategy of revenge and consolidation is being pursued by China, Britain and Turkey. This means that the US no longer has a monopoly on domination. Their power is challenged. And so the US strategy is a reaction, a hold at all costs. Neither the US nor Russia can stop the interaction of strategies. Only the forms of communication change.

In the absence of public negotiations, negotiations are not terminated through closed channels, through intermediaries and with the participation of third parties. Bilateral negotiations turn into multilateral ones – coalitions are formed to put pressure on the opponent. This process is continuous, it is impossible to get out of it. The United States never agrees with anyone, and hopes for this are utopian.

The situation will be resolved not by a treaty, but by the disintegration of the world into two worlds, two systems. Only instead of the USSR, there will be an alliance of Russia and China. The US will become the other pole. Between them, in no man's land, there will be other countries seeking to maintain relations with all parties, and it will all end with a new system of blocs, which the United States will try to cement in a new form. Lavrov's proposal to China to create an alternative to the dollar is a blow delivered precisely and on time.

The Russia-China strategy is now more important than the Russia-US strategy. The Russian-Chinese alliance will ultimately determine the fate of the United States and the entire collective West. That is precisely why the United States is so alarmed and does so many stupid things.