World

'Reset' on US-Russian relations has failed

by The 1 | October 28, 2011 at 10:54 am

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Diplomacy is not a science, but sometimes diplomatic theories can be tested. As a presidential candidate, Barack Obama hypothesized that relations with Russia could be much improved. The key was offering respect and demonstrating a commitment to engagement and compromise.

On Feb. 7, 2009, newly inaugurated Vice President Joe Biden addressed the 45th Munich Conference on Security Policy. He said it was “time to press the reset button and to revisit the many areas where we can and should be working together with Russia.”

The following month, Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton presented Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov with a red button on which the Russian word for reset was written. Or so she thought: The correct term would have been “perezagruzka.” Instead, the word used was “peregruzka” — which means “overload” or “overcharged.” The Russian newspaper Kommersant ran on its front page a picture of the button and the caption: “Sergei Lavrov and Hillary Clinton pushed the wrong button.”

The results since then: continuing intimidation and censorship of the Russian press; aggression against former Soviet states; support for Iran’s nuclear weapons program; multiple murders in Chechnya which does not, for some reason, cause outrage in the Muslim world; cronyism, corruption and the oppression of political opponents including Mikhail Khodorkovsky, the once-prominent industrialist. Oct. 25 was the eighth anniversary of his incarceration.

And this month, Russia, along with China, vetoed what Ambassador Susan Rice called a “vastly watered-down” Security Council resolution criticizing the “violence, torture, and persecution” being inflicted on peaceful protesters by the Assad regime in Syria, Iran’s most important Arab client.

Rice declared the United States “outraged” that Russia and China had “utterly failed to address an urgent moral challenge and a growing threat to regional peace and security.” She dismissed Russian and Chinese explanations for their position as “a cheap ruse by those who would rather sell arms to the Syrian regime than stand with the Syrian people.”

http://www.sfexaminer.com/opinion/op-eds/2011/10/reset-us-russian-relations-has-failed#ixzz1c6YkKe9q

http://www.whitehousedossier.com/2010/08/18/russia-reset-button-failure-led-bushehr-reactor-fueling/