NEOAVATARA

Russia, not so impressed with Obama...

So the Obamas headed to Moscow this week, and now on their way to another European summit, with supposed grandiose objectives.  On their return trip, I don’t think they can really claim much in real achievement.

I guess, at the very least, Putin didn’t tear Obama apart ala Khruschev and John F. Kennedy…that is something.

In all fairness, nothing was going to come of this.  Putin (and his puppet Medvedev) weren’t going to give Obama anything that they hadn’t already decided to give George W. Bush.  They agreed on further nuclear arsenal reductions, but they are basically at similar levels that Bush and Putin came close to agreeing on in the previous administration.  On all other major issues (North Korea, Iran, missile defense, NATO expansion) they really maintained the status quo.  I guess we should be happy that at least Obama didn’t barter away SDI for some minimal Russian concession.

Obama did say all the right things in Moscow.  Well, at least for the Russian audience.  Obama somehow blundered the easiest question of all.  Asked by Major Garrett of Fox News whether America won the Cold War, Obama just make himself admit the reality.  Can you imagine, an  American President unable to say the simple fact that we won the Cold War?

Obama responded:

Well, listen, the — I think that you just cut out Lech Walesa and the Poles. You just cut out Havel and the Czechs. There were a whole bunch of people throughout Eastern Europe who showed enormous courage.

And I think that it is very important in this part of the world to acknowledge the degree to which people struggled for their own freedom. I’m very proud of the traditions of Democratic and Republican presidents to lift the Iron Curtain.

But, you know, we don’t have to diminish other people in order to recognize our role in that history.

This, of course, ignores the opinion of those leaders that Obama points out, most specifically Lech Walesa.  From Powerline:

Walesa himself has a somewhat different perspective. In his comments on the death of Ronald Reagan, Walesa wrote: “When talking about Ronald Reagan, I have to be personal. We in Poland took him so personally. Why? Because we owe him our liberty. This can’t be said often enough by people who lived under oppression for half a century, until communism fell in 1989.”

The video of the quote is below.  For him, stating any reality like winning and losing ‘diminishes others’.  This guy must have played team sports as a kid without keeping score. Hilarious.

httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cBo1scLwrH4

There were two major failures of the summit.  First, not getting Russia to budge, even a little, on dealing with rogue states in the United Nations.  Don’t expect any movement from the Russian side on Iran or North Korea, which means that we are on our own; which in turn means, that with Obama leading the way, don’t expect anything substantiative to happen.

The second failure was in Putin resisting more openess on business and freedom of speech, as well as human rights.  Obama first of all walked a tightrope on this.  Remember, Obama’s major diplomatic talent is to avoid insulting the other side, even if it means avoiding reality.  Russia continues down a road, both politically and economially, that is detrimental for Russia and the wider world.  Russian closed-mindedness has helped destroy the Russian economy, and an unstable Russia is not good for anyone.

In fact, there probably was little Obama could do to convince Putin to make any radical changes.  He likes things the way they are; with him in charge, basically for life.  And Russians are still delusional about their world status.  Other than their nuclear arsenal and their United Nations Security Council seat, one could argue that they have less economic clout than India or Brazil, and maybe less political clout as well.  They act like a superpower, with little to back it up.  There entire economy is built upon quicksand…the oil market.  And no surprise, the United States is even undermining that, by building their own pipeline from the Caucuses through Turkey, in order to minimize the monopoly that Russia holds over the oil market in Europe.  Smart move by Obama to only announce that after the Russian summit.

But this again goes to show that Obama’s famed ability to talk to foreign leaders has been vastly overblown.  This is just another summit, after the G20, the OAS, and the NATO summit, where Obama has failed to get anything more done than his predecessor.