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Russia Aims To Be High On Obama's
Agenda: Moscow vs. Obamaland |
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November 12, 2008 To the extent that he
focused on Russia at all, Barack Obama's
attention was concentrated primarily on the
need to keep Soviet nuclear weapons stockpiles
out of the hands of terrorists.
But now, President Dmitri A. Medvedev of
Russia has thrown down a gauntlet intended to
demonstrate to the American president-elect
that the post-cold war era may not be so post
after all.
On Wednesday, while leaders around the world
were falling over themselves to hail Mr.
Obama's election, Mr. Medvedev delivered a
harsh welcome-to-the-new-cold-war speech in
Moscow.
He never mentioned Mr. Obama by name, but Mr.
Medvedev said he would deploy short-range
missiles near Poland capable of striking NATO
territory if the United States pressed ahead
with plans to build a missile defense shield
in Europe, something that Mr. Obama has said
he supports.
Mr. Medvedev put Mr. Obama on notice on the
Georgia crisis as well, vowing that "we shall
not retreat in the Caucasus."
Even his one-paragraph congratulatory telegram
to Mr. Obama was brusque. "I hope for a
constructive dialogue with you, based on trust
and consideration of each other's interests,"
Mr. Medvedev wrote.
"It was a giant, ‘Hey, welcome to the game,' "
said George Friedman, chief executive at
Stratfor, a geopolitical risk analysis
company. "While Obama would like to deal
sequentially with Iraq, Afghanistan and, when
he gets to it, the Russians, the Russians
themselves want to be a burning issue at the
top of his list."
Mr. Obama, for his part, has yet to respond to
the Russian chest-thumping, and he probably
will not do so until after his inauguration,
his advisers said.
"We only have one president at a time," Mr.
Obama said during a news conference on Friday,
responding to a question about whether he
would soon meet with foes of the United
States. "I want to make sure that we are
sending the world one message."
Since winning the election, the Obama team has
taken pains not to say anything publicly that
could signal Mr. Obama's thinking on the many
major foreign policy issues lined up before
him.
The reasons are twofold.
Many of those advisers are privately hoping
for positions in his administration, and they
do not want to jeopardize their chances by
talking freely with reporters.
More significantly, Mr. Obama himself is still
making the transition from campaign oratory -
and in the case of Russia, very strong
campaign oratory - to the more nuanced
approach that many advisers say will be
necessary for him to navigate what are bound
to be contentious relationships.
But some of his comments during the campaign
may already have boxed him in.
When Russia invaded Georgia in August, Mr.
Obama's initial response, drafted just before
he left for vacation in Hawaii, was nuanced,
urging both nations to exercise restraint. His
statement was similar to the State
Department's initial, equally nuanced
response, which also did not immediately blame
Russia.
The Republicans' presumptive nominee, Senator
John McCain, responded with a hard-line
approach, saying that Russia had crossed "an
internationally recognized border into the
sovereign territory of Georgia" and should
"unconditionally cease its military operations
and withdraw all forces."
When the McCain camp criticized Mr. Obama's
response as too measured, Mr. Obama hardened
his position. His next statement accused
Russia of encroaching on Georgia's
sovereignty. The next day, he said that Russia
bore responsibility for the escalation.
By the time of the presidential debates in the
fall, Mr. Obama had moved even closer to Mr.
McCain on Russia and Georgia, voicing support
for Georgia's entry into NATO, a line in the
sand that Russia had dared the West to cross.
Stephen Sestanovich, who was President
Clinton's ambassador at large for the former
Soviet Union from 1997 to 2001, said that Mr.
Obama's election may have caused some disquiet
in Russia.
"This is a leadership that is not
super-comfortable with grass-roots politics,"
Mr. Sestanovich, a senior fellow with the
Council on Foreign Relations who advised the
Obama campaign, said of the Russians. "I had a
Russian friend e-mail me right afterwards, a
short e-mail, and one of the one-word
sentences used was ‘envy.' So that's how a
real democracy works."
Mr. Obama has options to distance himself from
his hawkish remarks on Russia during the
campaign, foreign policy experts said. For one
thing, while he can continue to support the
idea of Georgia becoming part of NATO, the
reality is that for now the Europeans will not
go along.
Beyond that, Mr. Obama could try to strike
more benign agreements that Russians might
find soothing, like pushing again for Russia's
entry into the World Trade Organization and
working with Moscow toward a way out of the
missile defense morass. One possibility would
be to offer to delay deployment of a missile
shield in Poland until an Iranian nuclear
threat - which Washington says is its reason
for existing - has actually materialized,
instead of doing so immediately.
The Bush administration might even lend a
hand; it offered several new proposals to the
Russians on Friday, including an offer for
Russian military officials to inspect the new
installations planned in Poland and the Czech
Republic for the new missile defense system.
What Mr. Obama will not be able to do, foreign
policy experts said, is cede the former Soviet
republics and satellites in Eastern Europe
back into the orbit of what the Russians like
to call their near abroad.
It is a full plate, and all a long way from
Mr. Obama's first dip into Russia policy, when
he joined the Senate's Foreign Relations
Committee and traveled to Russia, Ukraine and
Azerbaijan on a 2005 summer tour with Senator
Richard Lugar of Indiana, the Republican
foreign policy statesman.
At the Council of Foreign Relations later, the
men described their trip, during which they
hiked through nuclear weapons storage sites,
picked through piles of mortar rounds and land
mines, and toured missile elimination
facilities.
Mr. Obama deferred to Mr. Lugar often,
according to people who attended the session;
it was clear, they said, who was the old
foreign policy hand, and who was the junior
senator. Shortly after, Mr. Obama joined Mr.
Lugar in introducing legislation designed to
keep stockpiles of weapons in the former
Soviet Union from getting into the hands of
terrorists.
Mr. Obama's focus on "loose nukes," foreign
policy experts say, seems almost quaint today. |
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