Russia - US Relations - Obama
Over the eight years of Obama’s administration, Russia and America clashed repeatedly over NATO’s missile defense system in Europe, US policy in the Middle East, and most notably, Ukraine. The awkward handshakes and stilted poses during international summits were endlessly analyzed by media observers. Over 2016 the two countries made a public effort to put an end to the bloody struggle in Syria, despite Moscow endorsing the leadership of President Bashar Assad, and Washington insisting that he must be replaced if the country is to transition to peace.
The White House's new national security strategy unveiled on 06 February 2015 portrayed Russia exclusively as a regional bully and a threat to international stability, a sharp reversal from the collaborative US approach to Moscow spelled out in the previous version of the policy document released in 2010. The 29-page document contains a total of 16 direct references to Russia, 12 of which use the words "aggression," "coercion," or "belligerence" to describe Moscow's actions in Ukraine and relations with other neighboring countries.
President Vladimir Putin said 07 February 2015 Russia was facing Cold War-style containment efforts at the hands of the West and will oppose world domination by a single country. Putin said that the world order that emerged after the Soviet collapse was dominated by "one undisputed leader who wants to remain such -- one who assumes that everything is allowed to him, but that others only need what he allows them and what meets his own interests."
Former US ambassador to Russia Michael McFaul told VOA April 09, 2015 that, unlike Mikhail Gorbachev, Putin wants the US as an enemy. When asked about what Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov and other officials in Moscow have described as the United States' “overt anti-Russian propaganda,” McFaul said the United States has not been involved in activities directly challenging Putin's government, which he said would be counterproductive. "I think it is in Putin's interest to describe us as the enemy. So, no amount of diplomacy will ever change that," said McFaul.
In August 2013 President Obama cancelled a planned one-on-one meeting with Russia's Vladimir Putin scheduled for early September 2013. The White House said that it cancelled the summit because there has been insufficient "recent progress" on issues dividing the two countries. In a television interview, Obama specifically cited Edward Snowden. Observers warn of a new Cold War between the two countries - Edward Snowden was by no means the only area where the two sides are at loggerheads. Obama said in a TV interview there have been times when Russia slipped back into "Cold War thinking and a Cold War mentality."
Yuri Ushakov, foreign affairs adviser to Putin, said that Obama’s refusal to meet with the Russian leader showed that America wasn’t ready to develop relations with Russia on an equal basis. Senator Chuck Schumer told CNN that Putin was trying to "make Russia a big power again," and that it made no sense to pay respect to that in bilateral talks. The irritation ran deep in the White House. For a US president who made the "reset" of relations with Russia a major foreign-policy priority, the sharp diplomatic rebuke to Putin marked a pivotal point for his relations with the Russian leader and the overall bilateral relationship.
The majority of Russians (70 percent) view the United States' role in world affairs as negative and just 10 percent view it as positive, Russia's FOM polling agency said, citing the results of its latest opinion poll held on 16 March 2014. About half of those polled (48 percent) assessed the Russian-US relations at present as bad, 38 percent view them as "bad in some areas and good in others" and a mere 5 percent think that they are good. Around the same number of respondents think that relations hadn't changed over the past year, while 60% believe that relations had worsened. Just 17 percent of those interviewed by FOM had a favorable opinion of the United States, 45 percent were neutral and 33 percent disliked the US, the poll showed. About 66 percent of respondents saw major differences between the culture and values of the Americans and Russians, 18 percent see minor differences, 25 percent did't see any differences, and 13 percent had no ready answer.
The Obama administration demonstrated weakness in Ukraine all along. The fact that it announced up-front that it had no intention of using force rendered diplomatic threats empty. During the Ukraine crisis in early 2014, Vladimir Putin — who knows a thing or two about the use of force — brushed off US President Barack Obama. He knew that the American president was weak, so Putin did as he pleased, without paying any significant price.
On 18 March 2014 Putin gave his defining speech on the situation in Crimea, a speech more about relations between Russia and the United States over the last two decades than about Crimea. "In their practical policies our Western partners, spearheaded by the United States of America, prefer the rule of the strong to international law," he said. "They came to believe in their exclusivity, in being the chosen ones; they feel they are allowed to rule the fate of the world and that they are the only ones to always be right." Putin cited the expansion of NATO and plans to install missile defenses in Europe as evidence that the West continues a policy of "containing Russia" that he said stretches back to the 18th century.
"Are we ready to consistently insist on our national interests or will we forever give them up and retreat who knows where? Some Western politicians are trying to scare us not only with sanctions, but with the possibility of worsening domestic problems," he said. "I'd like to know -- what do they have in mind? The actions of some sort of fifth columns, various types of national-traitors? Or are they thinking they can worsen the social and economic situation in Russia and by doing so provoke popular discontent? We will consider such statements as irresponsible and plainly aggressive and we will react to them in the proper way."
“In the practical application of policies, our western partners – the United States first and foremost – prefer to be guided not by international law, but by the right of strength. They believe in their exceptionalism, that they are allowed to decide on the fate of the world, that they are always right,” Putin charged.
The New York Times reported 19 April 2014 that "Obama has concluded that even if there is a resolution to the current standoff over Crimea and eastern Ukraine, he will never have a constructive relationship with Mr. Putin, aides said. As a result, Mr. Obama will spend his final two and a half years in office trying to minimize the disruption Mr. Putin can cause, preserve whatever marginal cooperation can be saved and otherwise ignore the master of the Kremlin in favor of other foreign policy areas where progress remains possible."
“That is the strategy we ought to be pursuing,” said Ivo H. Daalder, formerly Mr. Obama’s ambassador to NATO and now president of the Chicago Council on Global Affairs. “If you just stand there, be confident and raise the cost gradually and increasingly to Russia, that doesn’t solve your Crimea problem and it probably doesn’t solve your eastern Ukraine problem. But it may solve your Russia problem.”
Russia sees no reason why its relationship with the West can’t normalize, President Putin said amid growing tension between the opposing camps over the ongoing political crisis in Ukraine. “You know, it doesn’t depend on us, or rather on us alone. It depends on our partners. I believe there is nothing hindering normalization and normal cooperation,” the Russian president told Rossiya channel’s news show “Sergey Brilev’s News on Saturday”.
A survey conducted by an independent Russian polling agency found anti-American feelings in Russia at a new high, with 71 percent of the respondents expressing either “generally bad” or “very bad” feelings towards the United States. The Levada Center poll, which was conducted in late May and released 05 June 2014, said the number of respondents expressing bad feelings towards the United States was up 10 percent from a similar poll conducted in late March.
On December 4, 2014 Vladimir Putin made his Annual Address to the Federal Assembly. Putin said " ... the sanctions, they are not just a knee-jerk reaction on behalf of the United States or its allies to our position regarding the events and the coup in Ukraine, or even the so-called Crimean Spring. I'm sure that if these events had never happened ... they would have come up with some other excuse to try to contain Russia's growing capabilities, affect our country in some way, or even take advantage of it. The policy of containment was not invented yesterday. It has been carried out against our country for many years, always, for decades, if not centuries. In short, whenever someone thinks that Russia has become too strong or independent, these tools are quickly put into use.... the more ground we give and the more excuses we make, the more our opponents become brazen and the more cynical and aggressive their demeanour becomes."
Deputy Foreign Minister Sergei Ryabkov told parliamentary deputies 08 December 2014 that ties between Moscow and Washington were in a very deep chill and were likely to remain so if the sanctions remained for a long time. “It is hardly a secret that the goal of the sanctions is to create social and economic conditions to carry out a change of power in Russia,” Sergei Ryabkov told a hearing in the lower house. “There will be no easy or fast way out of this.”
The Kremlin’s help on Syria, even while its bombing continues, was seen in Moscow as a victory, ending much of its diplomatic isolation over its actions in Ukraine — though sanctions against Russia were extended by the European Union. “There is the general feeling here, I would say, among the political and military elites, that Russia now has the competitive edge over the West, that it is imposing its agenda,” said Victor Mizin, a political scientist with the Moscow State Institute of International Relations.
“There are some signals that, not just European partners, but even in United States, there are certain understanding that, yes, probably Russia is not as friendly as we would dream about,” said Mizin. “But we have to negotiate with that.”
The June 2016 Sino-Russian joint statement on strengthening global strategic stability starts with a reference to "dangerous trend", associated with the desire to "certain states and military-political alliances to achieve determines the military and political superiority" in order to use force and the threat of force to advance their interests. Further declaration accusing "some countries and alliances" in the care of the dialogue on cuts the weapons that "are considered by them as a means to ensure military superiority." Russia and China refuse to consider strategic stability as a purely military category from the scope of nuclear arms. Russia and China clearly indicated that concerned the deployment of elements of US missile defense system in Eastern Europe and Northeast Asia "under false pretenses".
In a March 2016 interview with The Atlantic magazine, President Barack Obama questioned whether Russia’s military interventions were a sign of strength. "Putin acted in Ukraine in response to a client state that was about to slip out of his grasp. And he improvised in a way to hang on to his control there," Obama said. "He’s done the exact same thing in Syria, at enormous cost to the well-being of his own country. And the notion that somehow Russia is in a stronger position now, in Syria or in Ukraine, than they were before they invaded Ukraine or before he had to deploy military forces to Syria is to fundamentally misunderstand the nature of power in foreign affairs or in the world generally," the president said.
Real power means you can get what you want without having to exert violence," he said.
Obama stopped referring to the United States as "the indispensable nation" in world affairs, calling it "an indispensable nation," suggesting there might be othe equal partners. Whereas he once dismissed Russia as a weak "regional power," he revised that formulation to say "Russia is an important country. It is a military superpower.... It has influence around the world. And in order for us to solve many big problems around the world, it is in our interest to work with Russia and obtain their cooperation."
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