President Obama has made a ground breaking visit to Russia to discuss nuclear disarmament and other issues with President Medvedev. They agreed to reduce the nuclear arsenals of both states and that should be welcomed. However, the thorny issue of the missile sites in Poland and the Czech Republic, which are bitterly opposed by most Czechs and is judged to be one of the main reasons which brought down the last Czech government, has still not been addressed. Last night on 'Newsnight' a Democrat policy advisor to the administration was saying that he personally felt that the Star Wars missile sites in Central Europe should be shut down as they were neither cost effective or proven to be militarily effective. His Republican counterpart from one of the hawkish defence institutes argued that Obama was selling the pass and leaving the US naked and unprotected against its enemies. For this hawk, there was simply no sense in the Russians objecting to these sites and if they did, then they should be ignored. But this is a big issue for Russia and the continuing expansion of NATO, including possibly Georgia and Ukraine causes a great deal of resentment in Moscow.
Today Obama gave a speech to the New Economic School in Moscow where he outlined his thinking on a new international order. Details here http://www.youtube.com/user/EUXTV#play/uploads/3/qpGr69m-vZ4
Several points immediately come to the fore from this speech. It is clear that Russia has given permission for NATO forces to convey war materials for the Afghan war across Russian territory. Obama also spoke about the "20th century theory of the balance of forces and the 19th century theory of spheres of influence" as being both outdated. He emphasised this last point by stressing his views about democratic governments and the rule of law and saying that although the President of Honduras was not pro-US that he should be restored to office as he was the democratically elected president and admittted that the US had often got it wrong in the past. He also, of course, spoke about the nuclear weapons threat from North Korea and Iran and the need to have an international system for weapons control.
His views on spheres of influence clearly address Russian concerns about Georgia and Ukraine and the prospect of NATO enlargement. But one must ask if the US would feel comfortable about a Russian led alliance having members up against the US borders? Obama tried to address this by stating that NATO should be collaborating with Russia rather than confronting it. However, there is a deeper question here. What is the purpose of NATO? Russia has offered a completely new defence architecture for Eurasia, which would stretch from the Atlantic to the Pacific and this was rejected by the US and NATO. And there are several NATO member states in Europe which still have a hostile position towards Russia.
Furthermore, the EU report on last summer's war in the Caucasus is widely expected to point the finger of blame at Georgia, a fact which is deeply concerning to Georgia's increasingly dictatorial president Sakashvili and there are indications that there could be another conflict this summer in the region, mainly, according to the growing opposition movement within Georgia, to deflect attention away from last year's events and attempt to focus attention on the common enemy - Russia.
So while Obama's speech and the words to the Russian students do contain many points which should be welcomed and indicate an increased willingness to treat Russia as an equal and to accept the fact that the US must live in a multipolar world, there is still a need for the US to demonstrate more willingness to recognise Russia's concerns and those of many people in the European peace movements - including the majority of Czechs. A first demonstrable step in this direction would be an agreement from Washington not to build the Star Wars missile sites in Central Europe. This would start a real process of trust between the two former Cold War adversaries and a signal that the US is prepared to listen to Russian concerns.
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