Obama tries to reset relations with Russia

What happened

President Obama and Russian President Dmitri Medvedev this week hammered out the first new nuclear-arms reduction agreement since 1991, but on several volatile issues, the two leaders agreed to disagree. Obama and his Russian counterpart announced a preliminary deal to reduce their respective nuclear arsenals by as much as 25 percent and to cut their supplies of missile launchers and long-range bombers. A final agreement is due in December, when an earlier pact expires. “President Medvedev and I are committed to leaving behind the suspicion and rivalry of the past,” Obama declared. Medvedev called nonproliferation “most important for our states.”

But Obama and Medvedev failed to reach agreement on U.S. anti-missile defenses in Eastern Europe, which Russia views as a threat, or to take joint steps to rein in Iran’s nuclear ambitions. Obama also had a tense, two-hour breakfast meeting with Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin, widely seen as the country’s most powerful leader. The atmosphere was chilled by Obama’s statement, made shortly before his flight to Moscow, that Putin still had “one foot in the old ways” of the Cold War. True to form, Putin began the meeting by delivering a 30-minute lecture on Russian’s view of the world. Obama said later that “on areas where we disagree, like Georgia, I don’t anticipate a meeting of the minds anytime soon.”

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After two days in Moscow, Obama flew to Italy for a meeting of the leaders of the world’s eight most developed economies, as well as representatives of fast-growing economies such as China, India, and Brazil. But Obama’s efforts to reach agreement on reducing global-warming emissions failed when developing nations objected to the limits, saying they would impose unfair burdens on their economies.

What the editorials said

Obama got off to “a good start” with his campaign to “reset” relations with Russia, said The Boston Globe. The preliminary agreement on nukes “suggests both sides are ready for a fruitful give-and-take.” But Obama should defuse the dispute over missile defenses in Europe by dismantling them—not to reward Russian “paranoia,” but because they simply won’t work. The president could trade them away at no loss in return for cooperation on Iran.

Obama wasn’t shrewd, he was naïve, said The Wall Street Journal. Russia already has fewer nukes and “delivery vehicles”—bombers, submarines, and the like—than the U.S., and this agreement simply helps Putin “cut the U.S. down to his size.” That’s not making the world safer, it’s making the U.S. weaker.

What the columnists said

The arms cuts aren’t a giveaway by the U.S., but they’re not much of a reduction, either, said Paul Richter in the Los Angeles Times. The new deal will reduce the number of each side’s nuclear warheads to somewhere between 1,500 and 1,675. “That’s only slightly less than the 1,700 to 2,200 allowed under the current treaty.” Some breakthrough.

The feel-good symbolism of the deal pales next to the concrete reality of Iran’s nuclear threat, said Trudy Rubin in The Philadelphia Inquirer. Obama had hoped to convince Russia’s leaders that they “should be worried about a nuclear Iran on its border” and “should support tougher U.N. sanctions against Tehran.” But Putin and Medvedev “still seem more interested in poking Washington in the eye than in curbing the proliferation threat.”

“Not knowing with certainty who is in charge in Russia,” said Marshall Goldman in The Boston Globe, Obama couldn’t afford to press the Russians too hard—lest he offend either Putin or Medvedev. But he managed to walk the tightrope, while still “engaging in a little mischief” with his earlier suggestion that Medvedev, but not Putin, could move past Cold War–era suspicions. Obama’s ultimate goal may be to engineer a split between Putin and Medvedev—a feat that even the deft Obama is unlikely to pull off.

What next?

The U.S. and Russia have a long history of failing to follow through on highly touted agreements, said Peter Baker in The New York Times. Bill Clinton and Boris Yeltsin, for instance, agreed to build a joint early-warning center to monitor missile launches. That agreement was later renewed by both Clinton and George W. Bush with then-President Putin, and this week, Obama renewed it with Medvedev. The center remains unbuilt.