StCapps wrote:The most likely scenario that brings about a US-Russian alliance though is the Russian establishment is overthrown by a regime that doesn't require an American boogeyman to justify their existence. That's best case scenario for America and would allow for a more long lasting alliance than any of the other scenarios presented. As long as both countries are major nuclear powers, I don't see any theoretical alliance within that framework lasting very long.
First and foremost, far better strategy would be to put normal relations and normalizing the relations to be the first objective. That would be a major accomplishment itself. Would be something that I would want to happen, really.
Even that would happen only after some time, yet only after that could one start talking about an alliance. Most important starting point: The US should acknowledge the Russia is one of the Great Powers and hence not just your average Georgia lying between Europe and Asia. To start talking about an alliance NOW is just daydreaming, which raises questions of how much does the person purposing it understand the current situation and what is his or her judgement. Perhaps start that alliance-building starting from different sectors: cooperation in fighting terrorism, the US to get it's allies and the EU to engage with Russia also step-by-step. A serious effort to change views and perceptions. Heck, a joint manned mission to Mars could be a start.
And of course, the new Russian leadership should see the engagement with the West as something important, something better than just going it's own way and hugging China.
Yet there are two Basic structural problems here:
The first problem I see is that we (the West in general) are just too arrogant easily get distracted. If Putin would be ousted, many would just sigh in relief, but simply not care about Russia anymore. They would simply forget the country. And there simply wouldn't trust the new leadership to be there allways. They would fear the "Putinists" taking over again. It would be a slow process, but something possible.
Something equivalent of someone purposing an US-Iranian alliance...which indeed was the case earlier.
Think about it how difficult it would be to normalize relations with Iran. As the US follows in it's Mid-East policy obiediently Israel, the only way for that to happen would be that Israel and Iran would want to normalize their relations. The above example shows the other difficulty: The US usually doesn't give a fuck about what objectives and agenda of other countries are. It just looks at issues from it's own viewpoint and basically just assumes that what is important for itself has to be important for other countries too.
