Our Major Events of the Year: Obama’s historic victory and its meaning for the strained U.S.-Russian ties

Author: Inga Friedelhaus Section: Major Events of the Month

Issue: December 2008, Vol.3, No. 11

Tags: Obama

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Great Expectations

Exasperated by the United States’ increasingly unilateral behavior in all spheres of international diplomacy under incumbent President Bush in the past eight years, Kremlin and Russian diplomats greeted the historic election of Barack Obama, rather than John McCain, the anti-Russia hawk, as a change capable of rerouting the increasingly militaristic U.S. foreign policies back to the generally accepted of norms of international diplomacy based on seeking compromises in areas of differences in an increasingly multi-polar world. Specifically, the Russian president has already expressed his willingness to meet with the new U.S. leader without preliminary conditions.