Source: The American Interest
ResetologyWhen Vice President Joe Biden called for hitting the “reset” button in the U.S.-Russia relationship in February 2009, he sparked criticism in certain circles in Washington that the new Administration was trying to wipe the slate clean too soon after Russia’s August 2008 invasion of Georgia. His plea was received with skepticism in Moscow, too, among those who doubted the Obama team’s sincerity. And yet nearly two years into it, the reset appears to have produced notable successes. Barack Obama and Dmitry Medvedev have signed the New START treaty; reached an agreement on cooperation on Afghanistan; bridged positions in addressing the Iranian nuclear program, with Russia supporting the latest UN Security Council sanctions resolution; and created an infrastructure for bilateral cooperation—the Presidential Bilateral Commission, consisting of 16 working groups on issues as diverse as nuclear cooperation, space, health, military-to-military, cultural and sports exchange, and civil society. In addition, neither leader let the summer’s somewhat surreal spy scandal spoil relations. This certainly looks like progress compared to the summer of 2008 when, at the moment of the Russian-Georgian conflict, Russian-U.S. relations came close to a confrontation.
Today, as Obama calls Medvedev his “friend and partner” and Medvedev declares that “Russian-American relations have immense potential”, there is, at the very least, a change in the air. Russian anti-Americanism, for example, is way down: In 2007 only 43 percent of respondents viewed the United States positively, while 47 percent took a negative view; now 60 percent express a positive opinion and only 27 percent have a negative view. This turnabout has suggested to some that, after two failed post-Cold War attempts to build a stable relationship of cooperation (between Bill Clinton and Boris Yeltsin in the 1990s and between Vladimir Putin and George Bush during their first terms, 2000–04), a real breakthrough in U.S.-Russian relations has finally come about. Many Americans and some Europeans, furthermore, believe that the Obama Administration deserves credit for it. ...