Although the U.S. and Russia currently have a number of conflicting interests including spheres of influence, worries about the balance of power, role of the national interest relative to commercial interests, etc., it is an overstatement to describe Russia as the United States' leading geopolitical foe. Russia (then the USSR) has not been in such a position since the end of the Cold War. There are also significant shared interests in areas of national security and economics.
Historically, Russia has been restless and insecure. Its quest for stability via enlargement long preceded its period as an ideological crusader under Soviet totalitarianism. Today, with a shrinking population, falling life expectancy, eroding conventional military capacity, and restive populations along its frontiers, Russia's sense of insecurity is particularly elevated. Through that prism, it sees today's limited missile defense systems, as somewhat stealthy building blocks of a far more robust future system that will render its strategic nuclear arms, its ultimate security guarantor, completely irrelevant. If it believes today's planned missile defense systems are an overreaction to a much smaller threat than what the U.S. calculates--and that is not an entirely unreasonable argument--it sees their planned installation in Russia's "Near Abroad" as proof that the U.S. now believes it can ignore Russia's critical interests. In turn, that further feeds its sense of insecurity given its very real domestic challenges. Finally, even if some of Russia's political leaders harbored faint hopes of one day being integrated into the European Union, the current fiscal problems in the EU make such a prospect even less likely. Therefore, Russia finds itself in a psychological position of seeing itself weakening on account of difficult domestic challenges and confronted by an unstable periphery, all the while options for integration in a larger community are dissipating.
In the meantime, the U.S., which is facing its own challenges. It is still coming to grips with the reality that the hypothesis of preeminence was illusion. The U.S. was the world's greatest power, but its power fell short of preeminence, meaning that there were limits. It's having difficulty acknowledging the emerging competitiveness gaps in various economic sectors. It sees the global balance of power shifting, currently mainly in the economic arena, though eventually where economic power emerges, military power often has followed. Its own confidence has been dented by a financial crisis and recession that reaffirmed market limitations. Its policy makers remain unwilling and unable to even begin to lay out a cohesive and effective fiscal consolidation plan, even as fiscal crises singe parts of Europe. Its horizons, ranging from energy to space, have begun to narrow.
Ironically, little of what is plaguing Russia has to do with the U.S. At the same time, little that challenges the U.S. has to do with Russia. A convergence of shared interests in numeorus economic and security spheres and skillful diplomacy should make it possible for both countries to avoid a collision course. Such an outcome is far from inevitable. Both would actually benefit from deeper cooperation. Yet, it appears that skillful diplomacy is lacking. In Russia, psychological fears haunt the foreign policy landscape, masking opportunities for its diplomats. In the U.S., assumptions of preeminence that, if they truly existed, would diminish the need for diplomacy, have stunted the foreign policy outlook and led the nation to continue to relegate diplomacy to a lesser role than is warranted. Both nations' challenges have drained their diplomacy of creativity.
Much more could and should have been done prior to this point to sustain and strengthen bilateral relations. The much vaunted "Reset" was rich in rhetoric, but lacking in concreteness when it came to addressing core differences. The alternative modeled after Cold War-era Soviet-U.S. rivalry will only exacerbate current tensions and deprive both countries of mutually beneficial cooperation in areas of overlapping interest.