by Olga Tarasova, editor-in-chief

In 1979, Senator Joe Biden led a delegation of U.S. Senators to the Soviet Union to talk about arms control with Kosygin. What does the Biden presidency hold in store for U.S.-Russian relations?  

Joe Biden’s victory has led to a heated debate as to how the new U.S. president will handle U.S.-Russian relations. President-elect Biden is no stranger to conducting relations with Russia. Joe Biden made his first trip to the Soviet Union in 1979, when he visited Leningrad.

Pravda newspaper for August 27, 1979 talks about that visit. A short article captioned Acquaintance with Leningrad says that the 36-year-old Senator Biden arrived in the U.S.S.R. as the leader of a group of U.S. senators. The politicians laid a wreath at the Mother Motherland monument at the Piskarevskoye Memorial Cemetery in Leningrad, and Biden is purported to have said, “Humanity is grateful to the Leningraders for their great feat. The peace that they won should become the goal of our life.” In addition, American senators visited the Hermitage and Peterhof.

In March 2011, Biden recalled that trip to the Soviet Union during a visit to Moscow as the U.S. Vice President. “I brought a group of senators to agree on the limitation of strategic arms. [Leonid] Brezhnev was very sick and left immediately. And [Chairman of the U.S.S.R. Council of Ministers Alexei] Kosygin then told us, ‘We do not trust you, and you do not trust us. And everyone has good reasons for that.’” In 2011, Mr. Biden presented a lecture at Moscow State University.

Some experts believe that with Biden, Russia and the U.S. will have a clash of positions and interests in the post-Soviet space, such as in Ukraine and other countries. Others suggest that one can expect that the Biden administration will exert pressure on Russia on issues of democracy and domestic politics. On the other hand, Russia and the U.S. are more likely to find common ground on arms control. Mr. Biden has had a consistent position on this issue, which he adhered to over the years of his political career. For example, when President George W. Bush withdrew from the ABM Treaty, Senator Biden sharply criticized the decision, saying it was a huge mistake and that a compromise should be sought and negotiated with the Russians.

When it comes to the extension of the New START treaty on the elimination of intermediate and shorter-range missiles, the Trump administration did everything possible not to extend it for five more years without any additional conditions. The Trump administration put pressure on Russia, tried to introduce new conditions that were not provided for in the treaty, and tried to include China to tie the issue of tactical nuclear weapons to the treaty concerning strategic offensive systems. During his campaign, Mr. Biden, despite his hard line on Russia, openly spoke about the fact that he was in favor of extending the New START agreement for five years without preconditions.

In a recent interview, the U.S. Ambassador to Russia John Sullivan spoke about the civil society ties that connect the Russian and the American people. According to the top diplomat, while there is tension in the relationship between the U.S. government and the Russian government, whether in the military-strategic or the political realm, there are much broader relations between the United States and Russia, between our peoples, including in the field of cultural and educational exchanges, in the field of business, in space, and in the Arctic.

As Ambassador Sullivan said, he would try to improve relations between Moscow and Washington, but so far there are many challenges.

It seems that people-to-people diplomacy is the right approach to take. The better we understand each other, the easier we can overcome the differences that now divide us. This would hold true despite the problems Russia and the U.S. may have in the political sphere.