Clinton hits the wrong ‘reset’ button on US-Russia relations

By now you’ve probably heard about the little gag gift goof this weekend between US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and her Russian counterpart Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov. To recap just in case: as a sign of the Obama administration’s desire to repair the relationship between our two countries, Clinton presented Lavrov with an actual button labeled “reset” in English and Russian – at least that was the plan, except the Russian really read “overcharge” (peregruzka) instead of “reset”, something Lavrov pointed out to Clinton.


Two things bugged me about this whole story. When I saw the picture of the button (before learning about the mis-translation) I wondered why the Russian wasn’t written in Cyrillic (the Russian alphabet)? Then there was the translation error. I looked in my Pocket Oxford Russian-English Dictionary and didn’t find a translation for reset, so I checked “peregruzka” (take it from someone who has worked on translated documents, it is always a good idea to back-check the translation in the native language) and easily found the root word “peregruzhat”, which was defined as overloaded or overworked – “reset” was nowhere to be found. Clinton said to Lavrov that the State Dept. “worked hard” on the translation, all of which makes me think that there aren’t many Russian-speakers working at State. Frankly that’s pretty disturbing given the global importance of Russia and the importance of the US-Russian relationship.

Of course after 9/11 we discovered that the US government and military had a severe lack of Arab-speakers, again troubling since the United States is deeply involved in the Middle East; so maybe it’s no surprise to discover that the government also seems to have a lack of Russian speakers as well. It is something we had better address, quickly, since the world is becoming far more, not less, interconnected, and sometimes it helps to be able to talk to folks in their native tongue, or at least give them properly-labeled gag gifts.
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As for the meeting itself, it was underwhelming, though really the purpose of the get-together was little more than a meet-and-greet for Clinton and Lavrov. The big issues all still remain – NATO expansion, anti-missile defense, Iran, and Georgia. On that last point, Clinton again expressed the United States support for the “territorial integrity” of Georgia, which to the US includes the quasi-independent regions of Abkhazia and South Ossetia – though the government in Abkhazia at roughly the same time signed a 49-year deal with Moscow to allow the Russians to establish a military base within Abkhazia and the two sides are negotiating a possible port for some of Russia’s Black Sea naval fleet. The two also differed over Kosovo, Clinton congratulating them on one year of independence, while Lavrov said that Kosovo is in violation of international law and sets a precedent that could destabilize other parts of Europe and the world.

But in signs of a thaw, NATO just resumed contacts with Russia, something they suspended in the wake of last summer’s Russia-Georgia conflict, and outside observers say that despite the tensions, the US needs Russia’s help in dealing with problems like Iran and Afghanistan, so the two sides will have to learn to work together.