U.S. President-Elect Obama to reset strained US-Russian relations
In one of the most direct signs that the new U.S. presidential administration will focus on rebuilding the strained relations with Moscow, President-elect Barack Obama has said that the United States will have to rethink its relationships with Russia, which has become “increasingly assertive” on the global arena, thanks, in part, to its accumulated historically high oil windfall revenues.
“We want to cooperate with them [the Russians], where that is possible. There are lots of spheres, where we can operate with Russia such as on the issues of non-proliferation of nuclear technologies, weapons of mass destruction and terrorism,” the president-elect told NBC’s Tom Brokaw on the famous Meet the Press talkshow in a taped interview aired on December 7, just 44 days to his official inauguration as the 44th U.S. president. “But we also have to send a clear message to Moscow that they have to act in ways that are not bullying their neighbors,” the president-elect said, citing what he called the “invasion of neighboring Georgia” this summer. “I think they have been acting in a way that is contrary to international norms.”
The president-elect’s interview covered a broad spectrum of issues, which spanned both domestic policies — notably, the U.S. economic recovery, and specifically, the ongoing discussions on the Detroit Troika’s financial bailout request and the emergency plans to save/create at least 2.5mln jobs in the U.S. economy in the near future, etc. Obama also spoke on urgent foreign policy issues, which ranged from repairing the tarnished image of the United States across the world, its relationships with allies and the searches for the best strategies to pull out of Iraq and most effective measures to rein in the Taliban’s rising insurgence and opposition to the international antiterrorist coalition forces in Afghanistan.
The president-elect also talked about the global war on terrorism, specifically noting the terroristic attacks on Mumbai, the Indian financial capital, that killed nearly 200 people and wounded hundreds more, and called for the creation of “a strategic partnership with all parties in the region” to stamp out terrorists.
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