Obama Promises Moscow a Reset

The new U.S. administration will work on stimulating the economy at home, while abroad it will try to reset relations with Russia. U.S. President-elect Barack Obama promised to cooperate “where we can” with Moscow, particularly with respect to the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction and combating terrorism. At the same time, he accused Moscow of violating international norms against Georgia. Experts believe that Obama’s agenda in relations between Moscow and Washington is extremely insufficient, and does not take into account the interests of our country.

On an NBC show this past Sunday, Obama stated that he does not expect a rapid improvement in the economic situation in the U.S. The President-elect said, “It’s going to get worse before it gets better.” According to Obama, it’s necessary to make an urgent “blood infusion” into the U.S. economy to stabilize it. He reiterated his plan for a large-scale construction of schools, roads and other infrastructure projects – the largest since the establishment of federal highway system in the 1950’s and 60’s.

Obama did not directly respond to the question of how much the plan will cost (some U.S. experts estimate the price to be in the $700 billion – $1 trillion range), but he informed viewers that spending will be kept under strict control, and that he will not allow a waste of resources.

With regard to foreign affairs, his first task will be ending the war in Iraq. We know that during the election campaign he promised to withdraw the majority of troops from Iraq within 16 months. But now he no longer gives any figures, and does not specify how many soldiers would remain there. In any case, Obama said, “we are going to maintain a large enough force in the region to assure that our civilian troops–or … our civilian personnel and our, our embassies are protected, to make sure that we can ferret out any remaining terrorist activity in the region.” In addition, he said that Americans will continue to train Iraqi troops.

Tom Brokaw, the TV host, asked Obama, “How soon after you take office do you want to meet with the leaders of Russia?” The future President responded, “This is something that we’re going to make a determination on. I think that it’s going to be important for us to reset U.S.-Russian relations.” He didn’t specify how he was going to do it. “Russia is a country that has made great progress economically over the last several years. Obviously, high oil prices have helped them. They are increasingly assertive. And when it comes to Georgia and their threats against their neighboring countries, I think they’ve been acting in a way that’s contrary to international norms,” continued Obama. “We want to cooperate with them where we can, and there are a whole host of areas, particularly around nonproliferation of weapons and terrorism, where we can cooperate. But we also have to send a clear message that they have to act in ways that are not bullying their neighbors,” emphasized the future president.

Alexei Bogaturov (deputy rector of the Moscow-based State Institute of International Relations), a well-known Russian expert on international security and Russian-American relations, considers it symptomatic that Obama used the term “reset,” as in restarting your computer and thereby getting rid of impediments that interfere with work. The expert thinks it would be good to forget the tensions of recent years, especially the recent months, but it’s just not feasible. After all, these events even suggested that America is seriously considering the possibility of a war with the Russian Federation. As a result, it will be difficult to implement Obama’s ideas.

According to Bogaturov, the proposed agenda for the negotiations smells of mothballs [i.e. it’s old news]. The agenda mentions issues that Russia has already tried to negotiate with America for the past eight years. In general, with regard to these issues relations will continue to deteriorate the same way they have been deteriorating over the previous six months. To create a sound agenda, you’d have to remember what we were talking about at the time of Gorbachev’s perestroika. Back then, the main issues were global security and relations with other countries. The latter include relations with those countries that are now trying to escalate the tension between Russia and the United States.

According to the expert, this has to be the starting point on the agenda. If this issue can be resolved, we can talk about terrorism and the non-proliferation of WMD. And a number of other issues, including a topic that’s important to Obama – global warming.