Obama, Russia, and The Godfather

last updated 8 January 2015

Proponents of a U.S.-Russia “grand bargain” got “a double drenching of cold water yesterday,” said The Washington Post in an editorial. Russian President Dmitry Medvedev, reacting to a secret letter from President Obama, said Moscow would not help douse Iran’s nuclear ambitions in exchange for concessions on a Russia-opposed U.S. missile shield in Poland and the Czech Republic. And Obama clarified that Iran’s actions, not Russia’s, will determine U.S. decisions on missile defense.

Obama “urgently needs to do a couple of things: learn to play chess; and watch the DVD of the Godfather saga,” said Pepe Escobar in Hong Kong’s Asia Times. Medvedev needn’t be even a “good chess player” to see that Obama’s opening gambit—help us quash “non-existent Iranian nuclear weapons” and we’ll stop our possibly useless missile shield—is hardly an “offer he can’t refuse.”