Lavrov Warns U.S. Policy Towards Russia Is a Standoff, Not Strategic Stabilization

May 20, 2020 (EIRNS)—The U.S. administration is replacing the stabilization of international relations by strategic rivalry among great powers, thus forming a standoff concept, Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov told TASS yesterday when asked about the development of a “super-duper” missile in the United States.

“The current U.S. administration is phasing out the term ‘strategic stability’ from its vocabulary. Instead of strategic stability as a goal to be sought in relations between our countries and relations among all leading powers of the world a new notion, a new term has begun to be used: strategic great power rivalry. In other words, it is standoff, and not stabilization of the situation that is used as the conceptual basis,”

he said.

Lavrov believes that for understanding the reasons behind such transformation of fundamental terms “there must be a direct dialogue, which regrettably does not exist yet.”

He said that he and Secretary of State Mike Pompeo agreed to establishing a stability dialogue to include direct contact between U.S. arms control envoy Marshall Billingslea and Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Sergei Ryabkov, but that Moscow is waiting for the U.S. side to propose a date for it.

“They held a telephone conversation on May 8,” Lavrov said. “A rather preliminary one. The Americans promised that as soon as they are ready, they will propose specific dates for holding the videoconference to discuss strategic stability issues—all those ‘supers’ and ‘dupers’ and everything else that concerns nuclear arms control, with officials from the ministries of defense and security services taking part. We are now waiting for such a proposal regarding the date of our video consultations.”