I.A. Safranchuk, tr. Zhang Jianrong

(№.1,2017)

Abstract: Among the discussions of America's foreign policy towards Russia, there are two contrary standpoints. One standpoint regards America's foreign policy as a grand strategy, with large-scale and long-term planning and horizon, to be implemented by specialist team composed of militaries, intelligence agents and diplomats; the other standpoint is that the formulation of US diplomacy derives from short-term domestic interests, related to elections and political games of these interests. It requires the decisions to be makeshift, not for the implementation of grand strategy. Currently, the view systems of US specialists circle studying Russia issues fall into four categories: skeptics, alarmists, realists, and advocates of cooperation without preconditions. The birth, history, evolution process and interactive debates of above schools of thoughts reveal the structure of the systems of basic strategic views of US government’s think tank towards Russia and the standpoints of different schools of thoughts; it also displays US foreign policies towards Russia in different periods and the future trends. At present, the two dominant views of US specialists towards Russia are skeptics and alarmists. The influence of the realists is limited and the actual influence of the advocates of unconditional cooperation is almost null. The new administration will take over soon, there is a likelihood that despite the influence of realists may start to grow, the alarmists and skeptics will continue to shape US policy towards Russia through yet another political cycle.

Keywords: Russia-US relations; rivalry; cooperation; skeptical