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Resetting U.S.-Russia ties

With his landmark visit to Moscow this week, President Barack Obama has acted on his six-month-old pledge to press the “reset button” on relations with Russia that hit a post-Cold War low under his predecessor, George W. Bush. The first full-fledged Russia-United States summit in eight years achieved its main purpose — it has broken the ice between the two biggest nuclear powers, which less than a year ago headed for confrontation over the former Soviet s tate of Georgia. President Dmitry Medvedev and his American counterpart agreed to cooperate in areas where their interests converged and to keep talking on issues where they still differed. The U.S. and Russia have revived the nuclear arms reductions process stalled by Mr. Bush’s refusal to negotiate a follow-up to the 1991 Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty (START-1), which expires in five months. Presidents Obama and Medvedev signed a framework for further nuclear weapons cuts and instructed their negotiating teams to try and get the new treaty ready before the December deadline. Given the limited time left for the talks, the proposed reductions appear modest. But the new pact will help enhance trust and maintain strategic parity between the two countries, which between them account for 95 per cent of the world’s nuclear weapons. In another breakthrough, Russia agreed to allow massive air transit of military supplies and troops to U.S. forces in Afghanistan in addition to land transit opened in March. This would enable the Pentagon to cut time and costs and reduce its dependence on the increasingly hazardous land routes through Pakistan.

Mr. Medvedev and Mr. Obama made it clear that the agreements they reached in Moscow are but the first steps towards turning Russia-U.S. relations from confrontation to cooperation. They re-established an inter-governmental commission disbanded under the previous U.S. administration and have taken personal charge of its work to seek across-the-board improvement in bilateral relations. They also demonstrated a readiness to address issues where profound differences persist, such as the proposed U.S. missile shield. In a joint statement on missile defences, they pledged to step up the “search for optimum ways of strengthening strategic relations on the basis of mutual respect and interests” and discuss “the establishment of cooperation in responding to the challenge of ballistic missile proliferation.” It will take the two countries a good deal of hard work to finally bury the legacy of the Cold War. But the Moscow meeting of the two youthful Presidents — the first truly post-Cold War leaders of Russia and America — has generated strong momentum for change.

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