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Obama's Russia Problem
Haraz N. Ghanbari / AP Photo
As Obama meets with Russian President Dmitry Medvedev in Moscow for a nuclear arms deal, he faces the challenge of winning over an unimpressed Russian public.
I’ll never forget how jazzed my Moscow friends were last March, on the eve of Russia’s presidential election, excitedly blogging about and poring over the latest polls—from the Texas and Ohio primaries. The candidacy of Barack Obama was infinitely more interesting than the coronation of Dmitry Medvedev, forced upon a yawning populace as a fait accompli (the Kremlin candidate couldn’t even bother debating his opponents) and ushered in with obvious and unnecessary poll fraud. A year later, the near-total Russian indifference to Obama’s first presidential visit to the country is a curious and upsetting thing to witness.
Barack Obama occupies in the mind of a Westernized Muscovite a place somewhere between the iPhone and Scarlett Johansson: a nifty little thing it would be nice but impossible to claim as our own.
Sure, on the surface, the two-and-a-half-day trip will end up looking like most of Obama’s foreign visits to date. There will be a couple of photos where he clearly and cruelly outclasses his local counterpart (Medvedev, who’s 5-foot-4 and looks like a balding bobblehead doll, is an especially easy mark); a snapshot of Obama looking pinched and pensive near a sad monument (here, the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier); and some actual policy progress (on a new arms-control treaty as well some Afghanistan logistics).
Yet there’s a major difference, too. Obama is entering a rare land where he is neither despised nor loved, a mind-zone so acclimated to backroom collusion and puppet rulers that it can’t muster much enthusiasm or hatred for anything having to do with politics foreign or domestic. The fact that the U.S.-Russian relations are currently strained has little to do with it. Most Russians simply can’t bring themselves to believe that Obama matters. After all, they have a great example to the contrary in Medvedev.
Owing in part to this national plague of cynicism served up as savvy, Obamamania in Russia has never progressed beyond the hipster set concentrated in central Moscow—or, to be more specific, among the readership of smart homegrown glossies the Afisha publishing house puts out. Barack Obama occupies in the mind of a Westernized Muscovite a place somewhere between the iPhone and Scarlett Johansson: a nifty little thing it would be nice but impossible to claim as our own.
As a result, it is the highbrow and the opposition media that are rolling out the pomp-and-circumstance welcome wagon while the mainstream news phones it in. The liberal Ren-TV network ran a story on soldiers perfecting their drill in preparation for the big day—exactly the kind of item a puffed-up state channel would, but didn’t, run. Bolshoi Gorod, an inventive biweekly that’s half Spy and half The Nation, ran a multi-page “Obama’s Guide to Moscow” pointing out places of the president’s potential interest: a comic-book store, an American diner, a prison ward where “we keep our overly active entrepreneurs.”
Obama’s decision to meet with nominal opposition leader Garry Kasparov and grant an interview to the liberal newspaper Novaya Gazeta, that of four slain reporters, helps complete the circle: In the eyes of most Russians, the opposition is clubby, tired, and utterly irrelevant, and having Obama address it diminishes his relevance in turn. Worse yet, it may leave the president with an impression that this Potemkin village of an opposition, which lives and dies by the Kremlin decree, is the real thing.
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Bunkers!!!
I heard Medvedev, the Russian president in an interview to RAI (Italian Broadcasting Corporation) , say that he had a good phone preparation with President Obama and that he was positive about their upcoming meeting. Also, the analysis of the foreign press is completely different from yours.
This is a link that proves my point: http://www.rainews24.rai.it/it/video.php?id=14517
You would probably like to dictate your failed policies of the past but what did President Bush get for talking tough?
North Korea is more dangerous, Iran has more reactors, Al Qaeda is still around and we spent innocent blood and billions in vain.
Believe me, Jesus the Most powerful man that ever existed did not win minds with force but persuasion.
Deltablue,
Politically Neutral. Not Independent. Sworn enemy of bigots and extremists.
amen.
Unimpressed? According to who? I've seen nothing but praise for him from Russia. Watching the results and Medvedev's words, it's apparent his respect for others is paying off.
Reduction of nuclear arsenals by 1/3rd. Not bad for a community organizer.
The Russian public? Please raise your hand if you give a poop about the Russian public's view of our President.
Nobody Cares!
The belief that we do not give a crap about what other nations think of us as Americans is false. Americans do care and our reputation in the world hinges on how we react and treat others. Bush dragged our national honor and the world opinion of us in the mud, now to move forward, we must interact diplomatically with other nations in an attempt to repair the excessive damage to our reputation.
In each of Obama's sojourns abroad, he's had to deal with the intrinsic mistrust of the Muslim world, the Amer-Euro rivalries, our cross-Atlantic carping and sniping; and now, Russia. Basically, the president, with Russia, is hamstrung, powerless in the face of convoluted and complex ideological competitiveness and real enmity. His position is to set a tone rather than policy; to project an aura of genuine interest in friendship and use the antifreeze of his rhetoric and personality to start the much needed "thaw" in all these relationships. As in his response to Iran, it was measured, pragmatic without being reactionary (McCain & GOP). Both Iranian and Russians have been taught and many may believe we are the devil incarnate, a global power mongering and manipulating the planet according to your national interests. I believe his vision to walk softly, retire the big stick and extend a hand. He's willing to wait. Progress starts slowly and creeps along, takes detours, stops to reconnoiter its position before it moves onto the rocky road of what might become a continuum; not perfect but slogging along nonetheless. It will be a long way to this beginning but Obama has, at last, been willing to jump start it.
Maybe Russia is the only sane (I can't believe I said that) country. Just because they are not drooling and have orgasmic attacks over Obama is not a negative. See, not everybody loves this idiot - why is it so difficult to realize that. And what he did was stupid. He accomplished nothing in our favor in terms of national security. Oh, and this only demonstrated again that he can't speak well without his teleprompters, and he got wrong how he met his ugly wife.
Some talk about a "thaw" in the relationship. We had that thaw long before your anointed messiah came along. Maybe things chilled because of what Russian has done, e.g., Georgia. I can only assume those who feel we should all just get along no matter what the other does are naive and young and have not lived long enough to learn that this is not always the best thing to do. Someday you will learn.
What I find funniest is that the great one who everyone in the world loved and who was going to change things in the world with his smile and wave of his hand wasn't able to work miracles with Russia and was subjected to a one-hour, I believe it was, lecture from Putin. We may never need to use them and don't want to, but reducing our military strength is the dumbest thing we can do in these times.
Thank you.
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