Obama’s Bogus Russian Achievement

On July 3rd, the New York Times ran an article titled, “Russia to Open Airspace to U.S. for Afghan War,” and featured a photo of a gleaming cardboard cutout of President Obama standing in a Russian square, with an American flag fluttering in the background between passing Russian citizens. The article asserts that, “The agreement [to open Russian airspace] represents one of the most concrete achievements…to ease relations with Russia after years of tension.”  It then cursorily notes that, “the two sides failed to make a trade deal or resolve differences over missile defense, and are struggling to draft a preliminary nuclear arms deal.”

This representation of Obama’s foreign policy “achievements” is lopsided.  Shared airspace is a marginal concern, and one that would most likely have been approved for any administration in lieu of an Afghanistan surge.  The Bush administration negotiated much more difficult airspace agreements with both Uzbekistan and Tajikistan during the first phase of the Afghan war.  When the Uzbek airbase was closed in 2005, it was mostly the German NATO supply chain that was affected, not the United States’.

The Obama administration has not yet proven anything in Russia.  They have hitherto failed to achieve any substantive agreement with President Medvedev over the most pressing U.S. Russian issues. The tough issues are exactly those issues that are as yet unresolved, and it does not look likely that they are forth coming.

In fact, an article from the BBC Sunday morning quoted an experienced Russian affairs journalist as saying, “The current Kremlin leadership is deeply anti-American… for the last eight years they have been able to hide that fact by pretending it is really George W. Bush that they did not like.”  This does not bode well for Obama as he visits Moscow today to address such delicate issues as a nuclear-arms-reduction treaty and missile-defense-systems.  It is doubtful that he will be able to make any headway if the Kremlin truly is anti-American, and not just anti-Bush.

It seems that Obama’s popularity has usurped reality in the US mainstream media.  Although it is encouraging that the world views Obama fondly; it is foolhardy to assume that his popularity will translate into hard results.  Let us hope that Medvedev and Putin are so caught up in Obamamania that they forget their anti-Americanism, but let us not be naïve.  A fair assessment of Obama’s foreign policy “achievements” will benefit everyone.