Obama to reboot relations with Russia and U.S. damaged image in the world
After several positive signals — masked as accidently and/or purposely leaked diplomatic overtures through unofficial channels and private emissaries — the new Barack Obama administration has officially and ambiguously indicated its intent to adopt strategically new foreign policies aimed at thawing the near-frozen U.S.-Russian relations and help repair the U.S. image seriously battered under the previous administration.
“It is time to press the reset button and revisit the many areas where the United States can and should work together with Russia,” U.S. Vice President Joe Biden said in a February keynote address at the 45th Munich Conference on Global Security, a forum that traditionally brings global leaders to discuss key foreign policies and international security issues. “I come to Europe on behalf of a new U.S. administration determined to set a new tone in Washington, and in U.S. relations around the world,” he added. “That new tone – rooted in strong partnerships to meet common challenges – is not a luxury, but a necessity.”
New tone heralds a new dawn
The imminent positive changes in U.S. foreign policies were reinforced by President Obama during his first official press conference, where he also confirmed his readiness to cooperate more with Russia and the rest of the world. “I’ve mentioned in conversations with Russian President [Dmitry] Medvedev and let him know that it is important for us to restart conversation, about how we can cooperate and start reducing our nuclear arsenals in an effective way.”
These new and official foreign policy overtures from the first and second persons in the Democratic White House lend serious credence to the rife speculations on the practicalization of the new U.S. administration’s pre-election pledge to introduce radical changes in U.S. diplomacy, and thus might really herald the dawn of the long-awaited era of constructive cooperation and partnership needed to unwind the deadlocked dialogs on several issues of bi- and multilateral importance between Moscow and Washington in particular, and the United States and the larger global community in general.
Indeed, the U.S. relationships with the rest of the global community in general, including its key traditional European allies, and Russia in particular, hit the lowest ebbs since the Cold War, as former President George Bush isolated and angered both friends and foes with his unprecedentedly unilateralist and egocentric foreign policy doctrines. With this in mind, the new administration is fully aware of the enormous volume of positive PR-efforts it needs to undertake to repair the heavily damaged image of the United States, not only in the traditionally anti-U.S. regions of the world, but also among its core, traditional allies going all the ways back to the WWII and even far beyond.
“It is time to press the reset button and revisit the many areas, where the United States can and should work together with Russia.”
It seems the new administration is on the right tracks, as the tone adopted by the U.S. vice president and the general content of his speech at the Munich conference were directed at laying a solid foundation for the successful realization of this huge image-repair-and-rebuilding aspect of Obama’s foreign policies and its general relationships with the global community. “The threats we face today have no respect for borders. No single country, no matter how powerful, can best meet them alone,” Biden said. “We believe that international alliances and organizations do not diminish the United States’ power. On the contrary, they help advance its collective security, economic interests and values. So we will engage, will listen and consult [with the global community] because the United States needs the world, just as I believe the world needs the United States.”
Calling the new administration the beginning of a new hope for the United States and the countries represented at this year’s Munich forum, Biden called on the summiteers to desist from petty politics and inflexible ideologies so as to achieve more progress and prosperity for their respective citizens. “In this moment, our obligation to our citizens is to put aside the petty and the politics to reject zero-sum mentalities and rigid ideologies, to listen to and learn from one another and to work together for our common prosperity and security. That is what this moment demands. That is what the United States is determined to do.”
Trying times underscore the need for multilateral cooperation
Particularly stressing the urgency in the need for more mutually beneficial cooperation across a broad spectrum of sticky international issues, Biden noted that the current economic crisis, which requires high-level of stronger multilateral cooperation for quicker solutions, has demonstrated that today’s world’s physical safety and economic security are indivisible. “This year, more than ever before, we are all confronting a serious threat to our economic security that could spread instability and erode the progress we’ve made in improving the lives of our citizens,” he said. “The [anti-crisis] remedies being adopted by the United States will have an impact far beyond its shores, just as the measures other nations are taking will be felt beyond their borders,” he added. “Because of that, and to the greatest extent possible, we must cooperate, make sure that our actions are complementary, and do our utmost to combat this global crisis together. The United States is doing its part, and President Obama looks forward to taking this message to the G-20 meeting in London in April.”
Biden said the United States does not believe in a clash of civilizations, but rather sees a shared struggle against extremism and we will do everything in its power to help the forces of tolerance prevail. “In the Muslim world, a small number of violent extremists are beyond the call of reason. We will defeat them. But hundreds of millions of hearts and minds share the values we hold dear. We will reach up to them,” he said. Citing the ideals and values of the U.S. independence, Biden said the United States wants to revert to its conviction that its policies in the world affairs must be informed by a ‘decent respect for the opinions’ of mankind. “Our Founders understood then, and the United States believes now, that the example of its power must be matched by the power of its example.” And, stressing the need for reviving alliances and restoration of partnerships with the global community, frustrated by the Bush administration’s go-alone attitude and unilateralist approaches to various vital issues of global importance, Biden noted that the Obama administration is committed to working with its old allies and talking to those, who do not share Washington’s views on certain issues.
“The United States rejects the notion that NATO’s gain is Russia’s loss, or that Russia’s strength is NATO’s weakness.”
Russia hails U.S. olive-oil initiative as positive
The changing tone of U.S. foreign policies, and specifically, the need for more constructive cooperation and partnership with Moscow was well received by top Russian political officials, who have also expressed their willingness to work with the new U.S. administration, but on an equal partnership footing. Thus, Russian Deputy Prime Minister Sergei Ivanov — who headed the official Russian delegation to this year’s Munich Conference, and also had several official and unofficial meetings with Biden in and outside the forum — hailed the U.S. vice president’s speech in general, and particularly the part that indicated Washington’s readiness ‘to press the restart button’ in the strained bilateral relations with Moscow as positive. “The new U.S. administration under President Obama has sent a ‘very strong signal’ for the restoration of dialog with Russia,” he said. “At the conference, Biden offered to ‘reset’ Washington’s foreign policy, and it could proceed with its missile defense shield project.”
In his speech, titled, Non-Proliferation of WMD: The Case for Joint Efforts, also delivered at the Munich conference, Ivanov called the threat of nuclear terrorism one of the biggest challenges to both the international non-proliferation regime and the global security as a whole. “Therefore, we regard the Russian-U.S. Global Initiative to Combat Acts of Nuclear Terrorism launched by both countries’ presidents in 2006 as a major contribution to the global security,” he said. “We consider this to be a good example of cooperation.”
Areas of disagreement with Moscow still remain
Biden, however, noted that these new cooperation overtures to Moscow do not mean that the United States will agree with Russia on every issue, but at the same time, specifically stressed that such disagreements are not expected to jeopardize cooperation in more mutually beneficial areas. As examples of such potential issues of irreconcilable differences, Biden stated, as a matter of record, that the United States will not recognize Abkhazia and South Ossetia as independent states, and neither will it recognize certain areas in the world ‘as Moscow’s ‘zones of special spheres’ of influence. “It will remain our view that sovereign states have the right to make their own decisions and choose their alliances. But the United States and Russia can disagree and still work together, where their interests coincide.”
“The threats we face today have no respect for borders. No single country, no matter how powerful, can best meet them alone.”
Another area of possible contention is the U.S. plans to install a missile defense shield — a project purportedly aimed at deflecting hypothetically potential attacks from ‘rogue states’ such as Iran and North Korea — in Eastern Europe, a few kilometers from the Russian borders. These highly controversial plans from the previous administration were not rejected by Biden, who, on the contrary, promised that the United States plans to continue to work on the project, but in deeper consultations with all interested parties. “We will continue to develop the missile defense shield to counter the growing Iranian capability, provided the technology is proven and is cost-effective,” he said. “But we shall do so in consultations with our NATO allies and Russia.”
However, Russia has repeatedly said it will never accommodate such systems near its borders, and even promised to target them with ballistic missiles, if and when eventually deployed. “This shield is not just a dozen of antiballistic missiles and radar, but a part of a larger U.S. strategic military infrastructure aimed at deterring Russia’s nuclear missile potential,” Ivanov said. “Our principal attitude to this issue remains the same. We are confident that the deployment of missile defense shields directly affects regional and international security, and if one does it unilaterally without due respect for the interests of other parties’ strategic stability, then the resulting situation cannot but only result in increased tension in those regions.”
In conclusion, Ivanov also stressed the necessity for strengthening cooperation with the United States in particular, and the West in general, but noted that such cooperation must be directed at meeting each partner’s needs and be based on mutual respect for each other’s interests, rather than at one another’s expenses. “We are prepared to continue to intensify dialogs,” he said, while also calling on Russia’s western partners to be more sincere and transparent in their dealings with Moscow. “Until now, our partners’ starting point of negotiations [on almost all subjects] has been that Russia could be persuaded now to make key concessions on strategic issues in exchange for verbal promises to consider its justified ‘anxieties’ over such issues at a later date and unspecified stage and time,” he noted. Condemning such approaches as totally ineffective and highly counterproductive to finding realistic solutions to strategic issues between Russia and the West, Ivanov paraphrased President Medvedev, who recently noted that “a country’s ‘national security issues cannot be built just on promises’ alone.”
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