Meeting Medvedev Halfway
The morning after Barack Obama’s election, the congratulatory message from Moscow was in the chilliest tradition of the Cold War.
“I hope for constructive dialogue with you,” said Russia’s president, “based on trust and considering each other’s interests.”
Dmitry Medvedev went on that day, in his first State of the Union, to charge America with fomenting the Russia-Georgia war and said he has been “forced” to put Iskander missiles in Kaliningrad to counter the U.S. missile shield President Bush pledged to Poland.
Medvedev had painted Obama into a corner. No new American president can be seen as backing down from a Russian challenge.
Three days later, Polish President Lech Kaczynski tried to box Barack in. His office declared that, during a phone conversation with Kaczynski, Obama had promised to deploy the anti-missile missiles.
Obama foreign policy adviser Denis McDonough denied it.
One week later, however, Medvedev wisely walked the cat back.
During the G-20 summit in Washington, he told the Council on Foreign Relations the issue of Russian missiles in Kaliningrad “is not closed. I am personally ready to discuss it, and I hope that the new president and the new administration will have the will to discuss it.”
President-elect Obama should not let this opportunity slip by, for a second signal came last week that Russia does not want the Cold War II that the departing neocons wish to leave on his plate.
Moscow offered Spain and Germany use of Russian territory to supply NATO troops in Afghanistan. As our supply line from the Pakistani port of Karachi through the Khyber Pass to Kabul grows perilous, this has to be seen as a gesture of friendship by a Russia that shares, as a fellow victim of Islamic terror, the U.S. detestation of al-Qaida.
Opportunity also presents itself with the official report of the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe on the August war. According to The New York Times, the OSCE found, consistent with Moscow’s claims, that Georgia “attacked the isolated separatist capital of Tskhinvali on Aug. 7 with indiscriminate artillery and rocket fire, exposing civilians, Russian peacekeepers and unarmed monitors to harm.”
Russia’s response--running the Georgian Army out of South Ossetia, occupying Abkhazia and recognizing both as independent nations--may seem disproportionate and excessive. But, contrary to John ("We are all Georgians now!") McCain, Moscow has a compelling case that Georgia’s Mikhail Saakashvili started the fire.
Medvedev is now on a four-nation Latin tour with stops in Hugo Chavez’s Venezuela and Fidel Castro’s Cuba. But this seems more like diplomatic tit-for-tat for high-profile U.S. visits to Tbilisi and other ex-Soviet republics than laying the groundwork for some anti-American alliance.
For, just as for Washington the relationship with Moscow is far more crucial than any tie to Tbilisi, so Moscow’s tie to Washington is surely far more crucial to Russia than any tie to Caracas or Havana.
With these opening moves, how might Obama test the water for a better relationship with the Russia of Medvedev and Vladimir Putin?
First, Obama should restate his campaign position that no anti-missile system will be deployed in Poland until fully tested.
Second, he should declare that, as this system is designed to defend against an Iranian ICBM with a nuclear warhead, it will not be deployed until Iran has tested an ICBM and an atomic device.
So long as the Iranian threat remains potential, not actual, there is no need to deploy a U.S. missile defense in Poland against it.
Third, he should invite Medvedev to Camp David to discuss what more they might do together to ensure that no such Iranian threat, to either nation, ever materializes. For if Iran does not test an ICBM or atomic device, what is the need for a missile defense in East Europe?
Fourth, invoking the principle of self-determination, Obama might propose a plebiscite in Georgia and Abkhazia to determine if these people wish to return to Tbilisi’s rule.
The second bone of contention between us is prospective NATO membership for Georgia and Ukraine.
As NATO is a military alliance, at the heart of which is Article V, which obligates every ally to come to the defense of a member who is attacked, to bring Georgia in would be madness.
To cede to Saakashvili power to bring us into confrontation with Russia would be to rival British stupidity in giving Polish colonels power to drag the empire into war with Germany over Danzig, which is exactly what the Polish colonels proceeded to do in 1939.
Before the NATO summit next week, Obama should signal to NATO, and the Bush administration, that nothing irreversible should be done to put Ukraine or Georgia on a path to membership.
First, because the president-elect will decide himself about new war guarantees in Eastern Europe or the Caucasus. Second, because these are matters to be taken up at a Medvedev-Obama summit, not foreclosed for him by neocons now trooping home to their think tanks.
Comments
Bravo, Mr. Buchanan!
I would like to specially emphasize the absence of wild rhetoric, absence of “Obama derangement syndrome”, in the above article. Evidently, Mr. Buchanan did not vote for Obama, but recognizes Obama as lawful President-elect of our beloved Republic.
Click to flag this comment as abusive
From the look of the new administration line-up, all Mr Obama gets to do is sleep in the White House. He negotiated his way into the nomination by negotiating himself out of the presidency.
Click to flag this comment as abusive
Here’s to hoping we just get out and stay out. Everywhere. I am ready to stop paying for the security of the rest of the world. if Russia wants to invade its neighbors, that is their business.
Stop interfering everywhere, get out, I cant afford to be so nosey.
Honestly I am ready for peak oil to make it financially imposible for us to rule the world. Lets get back to pre-WWI when we only cared about what happened in our own hemisphere.
Click to flag this comment as abusive
Good article, balanced and well-written.
Click to flag this comment as abusive
Excellent article. Obama owes his position to foreign policy realists, and to those who care for and about Christendom rather than the necons’ pseudo-West. He should remember that.
, http://davidaslindsay.blogspot.com
Click to flag this comment as abusive
When the office of the Executive was what the Constitution said it was, there was very little of this anxious co-presidency baloney where the current sitting Executive was second guessed or impugned while the President elect was breathlessly watched for a couple months in hopes that somehow, he might take charge before the Inauguration. President Bush has simultaneously made the office of the Executive the most powerful and most pathetic office in the land. Congress obliges the perversion by maintaining its feckless temerity and utter lack of communication and leadership skills.
Meanwhile, when the reviled President leaves, taking his crude skills with him, he will be replaced by someone more skilled in rhetoric and reason but likely just as hostile to Constitutional Mandate. It will be business as usual because the Separation of Powers is gone and the Consolidation of Power is here to stay..........until the demolition job is complete.
The only thing we have going for us is that all the other nation states are at least if not more screwed up than we are. Take a look around, none of the ongoing debacle is an accident. And they say anarchy is chaos.
Click to flag this comment as abusive
A lot of credit must go to Moscow for playing this very smart; they are testing the waters, pushing a bit to see how much they can get away with. They sense, correctly, that Americans are fed up with war, sick to death of the neocons and their alien schemes. Most Americans are waking up to realize the Russians are not warmongering monsters just because our own warmongering monsters say they are.
Click to flag this comment as abusive
The true problem is Bush has made everyone more or less despise the US. Sad but true. Chavez was almost ousted, much like Massadeq in Iran, the parallels are erie. In any event, whether you like him or not, Chavez does have good reason to fear some sick people here in the states, and if you look at how the Georgian Prez attacked and killed a thousand people the day the Olympics began, you can understand the true Russian position since that day and not the false reality presented in the American media. Stack the missles on top and you’ll get the picture.
Our problem is our leadership. ... If you can call it that. Without anyone representing sanity, such as PaulNaderBaldwinEtc, this country is doomed.
What I don’t like, and believe you should not either, is how the true leadership behind the scenes dilutes democracy not only abroad but here as well.
Chavez’s problem most likely is he is spending money on either bread or circuses or both. Just because he cares for his people and wants to end poverty doesn’t mean he’s smart enough to actually achieve anything.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7ALLUuvsVkM
True foreign and industrial policy if you ask me, but hey, I like City on the Edge of Forever.
Open your mind ... actually the above link won’t fit in most so just pretend none of those people are telling the truth.
Click to flag this comment as abusive
Continuity you can believe in. Promoting John Brennan and Jami Miscik the CIA liars that wrote Powell’s phony UN WMD speech and are anti-Constitution and pro-police state, wanting to keep Gates and his war profiteering management in place at the Pentagon while neo-cons Rahmbo and Hilary run Foggy Bottom for Israel and things can’t be much worse.
Hopefully the Congress won’t be as openly corrupt as it was under Delay and Hastert but the Obama’s insider thieves taking over the economy the working people are screwed.
The left that is aware, and many are already beginning to wonder, are shocked already to find they have been lied to by the Clinton-Bush party. The Republican leadership is content though the base burns with hatred for anything Democratic without realizing nothing has changed.
Click to flag this comment as abusive
Russian leaders are democratically elected. Polls show an 80% approval rating for their governments. We don’t need to be Russia but they are obviously doing something right. I don’t understand why we have to have such a hostile stance towards this Christian and democratic country. Well I do understand. It’s the neo-cons and they are rife in this new administration so I’m not expecting much by way of foreign policy changes.
What Chavez is doing is par for the course for the more equatorial people of Latin America. They embrace collectivism more so than the more European southern peoples. Again, no intervention neccessary. If that’s the way they want to run the country then let them. He was democratically elected was he not? No democracy to spread in Venezuela. Cuba? That’s coming to an end soon anyway. I’m more worried about communism right here in the USSA.
Click to flag this comment as abusive
While it´s important to avoid unnecessary conflict with Russia, it´s also important not to have a naive trust in their goodwill. Russia is a dysfunctional democracy at best and has imperialistic ambitions, that if pursued, it will be at the expense of it´s neighbors, including countries of the European Union.
Click to flag this comment as abusive
Well said, Mr Buchanan!
Russia may decide to let the Crimea issue slide...if they aren’t provoked. The idea of sending Americans to die for Georgia or the Ukraine is just plain stupid. So, it’s better to turn down (off!) the rhetoric!
I believe that the US and Europe has more in common with Russia than with many other nations. Europe is finally beginning to wake up about the threat of ”soft jihad” and ”creeping Sharia” on its territory. Russia has been dealing with this issue for some time.
It’s time the US woke up and changed it’s immigration policies to prevent a similar problem from developing here. It can be done!
In the meantime Iran and China need to be contained...for the good of BOTH Russia and the USA.
Click to flag this comment as abusive
Am I the only one to be flabbergasted by Mr Lindsay’s comment that Obama owes his presidency to “...those who care about Christendom”?
Is that a typo of some sort? Or is this writer living in cloud cuckoo land? What does the candidate of homosexuals and lovers of infanticide have to do with Christendom?
The writer is also oblivious to the fact that the neocons are already finding spots in the new administration of this creep.
If this is the type of thinking that is common out there we are well and truly doomed.
Click to flag this comment as abusive
Good grief. If Medvedev does not want a defensive missile shield in Poland he should
1) Remove the S-400 Triumph batteries protecting Moscow and many other Russian cities. Russia has missile defense.
2) He should stop arming the Iranian and protecting the open nuclear weapons program.
And if he wants to negotiate territorial changes with Ukraine, something I fully support, he should stop shilling for Stalin and join the 75th anniversary rememberance of the Holdomir.
Anything short of that shows a revanchist desire to punish America for the fall of the USSR. And pace Buchannan’s revisionism, feeding irredentist leaders does not create peace.
Click to flag this comment as abusive
“Good grief. If Medvedev does not want a defensive missile shield in Poland he should
1) Remove the S-400 Triumph batteries protecting Moscow and many other Russian cities. Russia has missile defense.
2) He should stop arming the Iranian and protecting the open nuclear weapons program.” RonL
Asinine! It is unnecessary pot-stirring, plain and simple. The Poles, my people, are willing to get themselves possibly atomized all because of age old ethnic discord with Russia? This is not the course we should take. Provoking Russia is tomfoolery and useless - it only benefits those of a certain tribe, if you catch my drift…
End the inter-Euro strife! It got us two World Wars and a hellish morass in the last 40 years that we call “culture.” But it is not too late to “turn back the clock” so to speak. There are still many among us of quality.
Wake up, White man.
Click to flag this comment as abusive
“Well said, Mr Buchanan!
Russia may decide to let the Crimea issue slide...if they aren’t provoked. The idea of sending Americans to die for Georgia or the Ukraine is just plain stupid. So, it’s better to turn down (off!) the rhetoric!
I believe that the US and Europe has more in common with Russia than with many other nations. Europe is finally beginning to wake up about the threat of ”soft jihad” and ”creeping Sharia” on its territory. Russia has been dealing with this issue for some time.
It’s time the US woke up and changed it’s immigration policies to prevent a similar problem from developing here. It can be done!
In the meantime Iran and China need to be contained...for the good of BOTH Russia and the USA.”
Esmeralda Pearl
Glad to see that there are some women left with their head screwed on right. I wish I knew even one personally that could speak with your candor and clear head on these issues.
Click to flag this comment as abusive
Bravo, Pat! Russia wants friendly relations with the US, and only the neocons are too stupid to see why this is in the best interests of the US. Any vote in Abkhazia or South Ossetia would go strongly against Tbilisi.
Russia opposes any nuclear weapons program by Iran but has the good sense to see that helping Iran to develop civilian nuclear power is the way forward.
Click to flag this comment as abusive
John
It´s no meaning to respond all bullshit about how Jews, the West,and how capitalism has corrupted Russia.You expect any will take sources like “realjewnews” serious?
Russians alone are responsible for the corruption, and the abuses the commit against their own, or other peoples, whetever it´s done by tsarists, communists, maffia, ruthless capitalisits or KGB agents like Putin.
Click to flag this comment as abusive
Russia is on the verge of bankruptcy with oil at a price which affords little or no profit given their high production costs.
This is an economy that is smaller than California.
Why do we suffer their foolishness gladly?
Click to flag this comment as abusive
Russia was also cash rich when it starved 10 million and exported the grain and built the largest army and air force in the 30’s.
What did that portend?
And we suffered Duranty’s foolishness gladly as the Kremlin became the agent of genocide for 100 million in the last century.
That thuggish zero-sum-banditry culture still exists in the Kremlin and it is no wonder that many lend us money to fend off modern day brutes as we did with the nazis, imperial japanese, and finally the Kremlin.
Do you think it is chance that has dropped oil by 60% since Russia’s invasion… towards the middle east oil fields? Or when oil plummetted 40% when they poisoned Yushchenko? How do you think Reagan tore $10 oil.
The Kremlin only yields to persuasive force and it is for the benefit of the world as well as the common Russian that we need to contain the Kremlin.
Their cash will run out very soon as the middle east oil producers have not forgotten Russia’s ham handed foray towards them by way of Afghanistan.
PS - our missile shield is not nuke capable - the war head can only fit a small amount of high explosives and has no offensive capability.
Click to flag this comment as abusive
@blackminorcapullets
Let me enlighten you on the facts.
Russia was not rich during the 30’s and recieved high interest loans from the Federal Reserve for its 5 year industrialisation plan.
“Russia was also cash rich when it starved 10 million”
Kaganovich, Stalin, Yagoda, Yezhov, etc. Not exactly Russian are they.
“And we suffered Duranty’s foolishness gladly as the Kremlin became the agent of genocide for 100 million in the last century”
As I provide evidence and links above by reputable sources Communism was a Jew coup in Russia backed by the West and the mass murderers were not Russian but Jewish Kaganovitch, Trotsky, etc and Georgian Stalin and Beria.
Even post Stalinist era leadership if not Jewish had Jewish wives.
Lazar Moiseyevich Kaganovich chief mass murderer for Stalin, ordered the deaths of millions and the wholesale destruction of Christian monuments and churches, including the great Cathedral of Christ the Savior. Standing amid the rubble of the cathedral, Kaganovich proclaimed, “Mother Russia is cast down. We have ripped away her skirts.” (N.Y. Times, Sept. 26, 1995).
Western powers and socialist movements put Communism into power in Russia in the first place killed 20 million Russians before the 1930’s and given praise and money to prop up the regime.
They knew these Pale of Settlement Jews would genocide the Russians and when they did they covered up there crimes. The only problem was they created a Frankenstein monster and went beyond Russia’s borders.
In case you missed it or so blind to see the obvious truth then he is the link again.
http://www.the7thfire.com/new_world_order/zionism/jews_and_bolshevism.htm
Here’s another link:
http://www.revisionisthistory.org/communist.html
I also provided a link to the fact that the Russian mafia is Jewish.
“when they poisoned Yushchenko”
They did not poison Yushchenko a central banker Rothschild agent financed by the CIA/George Soros. They made the story up as an election ploy
His former campaign manager came forward and admitted this that his condition was due to alcohol poisoning and that he was drinking heavy the night before and was unwell before the infamous dinner were he was alleged to be poisoned.
A specialist that specialises in tests and recognise alcohol poisoning affirmed that it was alcohol poisoning not dioxin.
Know one has ever died of Dioxin poisoning and the symptoms he has shown if Dioxin would take a month to develop at least not 24 hours.
Plus the fact that he said the poison was put in his soup yet the restaurant did not sell soup.
“The Kremlin only yields to persuasive force and it is for the benefit of the world as well as the common Russian that we need to contain the Kremlin.”
Just like you did the Czar and put Russians in concentration camps.
Russia has not used it’s force outside its territory since the collapse of the USSR until the recent Georgia conflict which Georgia initiated blitzing the capital of South Ossetia and killing Russian peacekeepers 12 hours before Russian forces entered South Ossetia.
A plan orchestrated by the EU, US and NATO.
I think what you really mean is that you want to finally genocide the Russian people as a whole.
Who is advocating and launching multiple wars and sponsored Islamic terrorism for the past 3 decades especially during the 90’s against the Serbs?
“That thuggish zero-sum-banditry culture still exists in the Kremlin and it is no wonder that many lend us money to fend off modern day brutes as we did with the nazis, imperial japanese, and finally the Kremlin”
All three of which were encouraged, financed and propped up by international western banking firms which can also include Schultz and Kissinger’s backing of Pinochet.
“Their cash will run out very soon as the middle east oil producers have not forgotten Russia’s ham handed foray towards them by way of Afghanistan.”
Zbignew Brezinski Obama’s foreign policy advisor admitted in a French newspaper in 98 that he trained Islamic militants 6 months prior to the Soviet invasion in 79 to lure them into a trap.
It is the US and the western coalition that is in Afghanistan and Iraq now and advocating war with Iran.
Pale of Settlement Bolshevik Jews are the one running the US due to Jewish immigration in the early and mid 20th Century.
They are even running the former soviet prisons in Eastern Europe to interrogate “terror suspects”.
PS – The launch pads are capable of hosting nuclear armed missiles hence why Neocon’s during the Georgia conflict advocated a nuclear first strike policy.
And they are not fooling anyone that it’s designed to shot down Iranian missiles since Russia proposed that they could be stationed in Turkey and Azerbaijan which would have a much faster intercept time.
Click to flag this comment as abusive
Why do we suffer Russkie’s foolishness? The same they put up with ours I suppose.
Once upon a time....
“A paper tiger “
Mao Tse Dong to Kruschev on his opinion of America
“..... with atomic teeth.”
Kruschev’s reply.
I’ve always found that funny, ... especially today with Iran and everyone else looking for dentures as we gaze back into King George’s wake ....
why the hell couldn’t Paul jump on the ticket with either Baldwin or Nader? Preferably Nader. Nader and Paul could have taken it. The best of the old right and old left. Sigh.
Stock up on ammo bros!
Don’t worry bout the Ruskies, worry about the scum who gave us the bailout, the wars, amnesty and the Patriot Act ....STILL being in power!
I am mortified when I think of the bail out an no one like Paul or Nader at the helm.
It’s so obvious how much better a President Paul’s positions would be towards Russia.
Click to flag this comment as abusive
“Why do we suffer Russkie’s foolishness? The same they put up with ours I suppose.”
I don’t see what Russia’s foolishness is.
I don’t think Russia could have handled the Georgian conflict any better other than have more English language media outlets.
Georgia and Ukraine’s leaders are in trouble for instigating the Georgian war and selling illegal arms to Georgia during the conflict and shipping arms to the Sudan via an Israeli company.
The US on the other hand it seems as if they are deliberately trying to destroy there own country.
If Paul or Kucinich were president we would not have a problem with Russia.
In fact on other things you wouldn’t have problems either.
Paul interview:
http://www.russiatoday.com/guests/video/1833
Kucinich interview:
http://www.russiatoday.com/guests/video/1823
Click to flag this comment as abusive