USA And The Future Of The World

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Medvedev Under Obama’s Charm</b>
13 July 2009By Oleg Reut , Peter RutlandU.S. President Barack Obama’s trip to Moscow was an impressive diplomatic performance. Obama was able to establish what he called a “tone of mutual respect” without yielding any ground on matters of principle. Even though the visit was short on concrete deliverables, it may well prove to be a pivotal event that will define the character of U.S.-Russian relations for the next four to eight years. Especially in the modern media environment, it is often images and impressions more than anything else that fix a particular historical event.

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The commencement speech on Tuesday at the New Economic School was the centerpiece of the visit. Hope is a hard sell in Moscow — as it was in Cairo — but Obama seemed to pull it off. Obama’s goal was to shift the orientation of U.S.-Russia relations from the past to the future and focus on what kind of society — and world —we want to live in. It is unfortunate that the speech was not shown on any major Russian television channels or reported by the U.S. networks. While CNN did carry a clip from an interview with Obama in Moscow on Tuesday morning, it asked him how he felt about Michael Jackson.

Obama won one important concession from President Dmitry Medvedev: agreement to allow up to 4,500 flights a year across Russian territory carrying military supplies and personnel to Afghanistan. The Kremlin even agreed to drop the usual airspace transit fees. But what Medvedev gained most of all was recognition as an equal partner. Obama referred to Russia as a “great country” and a “great power” — something that never goes unappreciated among Russia’s leaders and people. Moreover, Obama described Medvedev as “professional” and said, “President Medvedev and I are committed to leaving behind the suspicion and the rivalry of the past.”

Obama was a gracious guest and showed that he was not interested in scoring points off Russia’s democratic deficiencies, thus avoiding a topic that has always irritated the Kremlin. In his pre-summit interview with Novaya Gazeta, Obama carefully worded his answer to the touchy issue of former Yukos CEO Mikhail Khodorkovsky’s new trial, clarifying that “although the new charges … appear to be a repackaging of the old charges … I think it is improper for outsiders to interfere in the legal processes of Russia.”

It is true that Obama made an uncharacteristic misstep, describing Prime Minister Vladimir Putin in an interview with The Associated Press as someone with “one foot in the old ways of doing business.” But Obama appeared to have made amends for the comment in his friendly breakfast meeting with Putin on Tuesday.

The summit was interesting more for what was not said. Obama made no direct public reference to the Georgia war, and Medvedev did not raise the issue of U.S. military bases in Central Asia. The problem, though, is that reality has a habit of creeping back in. In the months to come, those troublesome topics will surely be making the headlines. Russia continues to believe that foreign military bases in neighboring countries is a threat to its national security, while the United States continues to see Central Asia as a region of “vital interest” for them. (This phrase comes from the 2006 U.S. National Security Strategy.) Important topics such as climate change, energy policy or the global financial system were not part of the public pronouncements.

The most substantive agreement was the pledge to come up with an arms control treaty by the end of this year to replace the expiring START I. Although commentators welcomed the proposal to cut the respective arsenals by one third, the proposed ceiling for warheads (from 1,500 to 1,675) is only slightly below the range that the two sides agreed to in the Strategic Offensive Reductions Treaty of 2002 (from 1,700 to 2,200). Moreover, Washington did not budge on its intention to keep the warheads from dismantled weapons in storage, while Moscow’s position was that they should be destroyed.

Medvedev was not able to persuade Obama to disown the plan to deploy elements of a missile defense system in Poland and the Czech Republic — something the Foreign Ministry had repeatedly insisted was a firm condition that had to be met before Russia would agree to reductions in nuclear weapons. Instead, Medvedev had to accept a milquetoast offer from Obama that both sides would to “continue to discuss the issue.” The one reason behind the spat is something neither side wants to publicly acknowledge. The Poles want the interceptors because they feel a U.S. military presence on their territory would serve as a tripwire against any future Russian aggression. Russian-Polish animosity, which has a 400-year history, is much deeper than the 44 years that Moscow dominated Warsaw during the Cold War.

Russian critics may well criticize Medvedev for caving in to Obama’s charm and not fighting hard enough to secure the demands Moscow placed on Washington before the summit. But as a Gazeta.ru editorial put it, the summit was “a visit of symbols and gestures.” And while in diplomacy, it’s always hard to separate the facade from the substance, sometimes the style is the substance.

Oleg Reut is a lecturer at Petrozavodsk State University. Peter Rutland is a professor at Wesleyan University and an associate of the Davis Center for Russian and Eurasian Studies at Harvard University.