U.S. President Barack Obama's Moscow visit offers a historic opportunity to avert a new Cold War by establishing a more stable and cooperative relationship between the West and Russia.
Obama has reiterated his "commitment to a more substantive relationship with Russia." This needs to translate into policy moves symbolizing new, broad engagement.
Three important facts about Russia stand out. One, Russia has gradually become a more assertive power after stemming its precipitous decline and drift of the 1990s. Two, it now plays the Great Game on energy. Competition over control of hydrocarbon resources was a defining feature of the Cold War and remains an important driver of contemporary geopolitics, as manifest from the American occupation of Iraq and U.S. military bases or strategic tie-ups stretching across the oil-rich Persian Gulf, Caspian Sea basin and Central Asia.