Clinton - to Moscow for talks

Hillary Clinton is going to take on another of America’s biggest foreign policy challenges this week when she heads to Moscow, for what are shaping up to be a tough series of negotiations. Officially, a new nuclear arms control agreement is on the table when she meets with her counterpart Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov, but a number of other aspects to the US-Russian relationship are bound to come up.

Right now relations between the two countries are at one of the lowest points since the end of the Cold War and the Soviet Union. The Week magazine has a nice summary of what's gone wrong in “How the US needlessly alienates Russia,” touching on a number of the key issues clouding the relationship - missile defense, NATO expansion, and a struggle for influence in Central Asia among them.

Things were supposed to be different. In the Bush Administration, Condoleezza Rice’s reputation as an “expert on the Soviet Union” was touted as an asset during her time as National Security Advisor and later Secretary of State. Unfortunately Dr. Rice never grasped the simple truth that Russia today is not the Soviet Union of the 1980’s and the administration never moved past a Cold War mindset that viewed Russia as an adversary rather than a potential ally. Bush committed to expanding the US ballistic missile shield to Europe (even though there was not plea from the Europeans to do so) and pushed NATO to take in the former Soviet republics of Ukraine and Georgia as members, even though the Russians loudly protested, viewing both as threats to their national security.

This puts Obama in a tough spot. In looking to save money, the ABM shield in Europe (missiles that may not work, meant to defend against a threat that doesn’t currently exist) is a good thing for the chopping block; pulling back on NATO membership for Ukraine and Georgia is also another good move - keep in mind, membership in NATO through the 1990s and early 2000s was held out as a reward to the formerly Communist countries in Central and Eastern Europe for good governance reforms: adopting democracy, free markets and a free press. It’s hard to argue now that either increasingly autocratic Georgia or the politically paralyzed Ukraine deserve such a reward. Pulling back on these two commitments would take away two of the biggest irritants in the US-Russian relationship. But, because of the way the previous administration has framed the relationship, it opens Obama up to looking “weak” on Russia - so even if the moves make sense, he’s still unlikely to do them.

And just to show how we haven’t left the Cold War behind, there’s this story from Canada of an incident last week involving a Russian bomber. Canada’s Defense Minister Peter Mackay said that Canadian CF-18s had to order a Russian ‘Bear’ bomber to “back off” before it entered Canadian air space in the Arctic region just ahead of Pres. Obama’s visit on Feb 19. The Prime Minister backed Mackay up, saying that Canada would aggressively defend their airspace. Of course the Russians have a different take on the matter.

According to Russia's RIA Novosti news agency, the bomber never came close to entering Canadian air space during its Arctic training flight, what’s more, the Russians insist that they informed the Canadians about the mission (not to mention the plane in question was a Tu-160 ‘White Swan’, not a Tu-95 ‘Bear’ as Mackay insisted). The Russians for their part can’t understand why the Canadians are making these statements over what was a previously announced flight.

Really, the problem is that the West, by and large, still thinks and acts like the Cold War is still going on. Obama, and Clinton’s, challenge will be to realize that its not.