Obama & Russia Part 2: The Beginning of Obama’s Presidency
His first term's attempt to "reset" relations and engage in bilateral cooperation
In our last article, we looked at the post-Cold War development of NATO: the uncertainty of the early 1990s, the Clinton administration’s liberal rationale for the expansion of NATO into the former Warsaw Pact countries, and NATO’s involvement in the conflicts surrounding the disintegration of Yugoslavia. We also chronicled Russia’s wounded pride, economic collapse, and how its sense of exceptionalism molded and was molded by the government of Vladimir Putin - and how his government utilized the mid-2000s economic recovery of Russia in pursuit of global status. We ended with the US and Russia at a nadir in their relations. After 9/11, both governments had attempted to cooperate in fighting Bush’s Global War on Terror. By the end of Bush’s presidency, however, both sides had grown preoccupied with their vehement disagreement over the expansion of NATO into Georgia and the prospect of US missile defense deployments to Eastern Europe.
We now turn our attention to the Obama presidency, where an attempt to “reset” relations quickly got under way. The hope was that bilateral cooperation would replace mutual suspicion and animosity. Let’s see if the Obama team succeeded in achieving that goal.
2.1 The Reset Begins
Obama understood that relations had soured throughout the Bush II years. Not only had Putin grown more bellicose during the early 2000s, but US policy under Bush II had become (in Obama’s estimation) both dangerously unilateral and tethered too tightly to the Middle East, leaving other regions to suffer by neglect. To that end, as he wrote in his memoirs:
My administration’s hope was to initiate what we were calling a “reset” with Russia, opening a dialogue in order to protect our interests, support our democratic partners in the region, and enlist cooperation on our goals for nuclear nonproliferation and disarmament.1
Of course, cooperation with Russia did not mean abandoning existing commitments. Obama understood that NATO allies needed reassurances from the new administration, for many European leaders no longer trusted US leadership after the fiasco of the previous eight years. To that end, on March 3, 2009, Obama declared that,
Russia needs to understand our unflagging commitment to the independence and security of countries like a Poland or a Czech Republic. On the other hand, we have areas of common concern. And I cited two examples: the issue of nuclear nonproliferation and the issue of terrorism.2
Russia’s leaders foresaw opportunities for the reset as well, primarily the prospect of recognition as a global power and a more equal relationship with the United States. Economics also entered into the calculus, as Russian president Medvedev hoped that bolstering western ties would allow Russia to obtain Western technology, foster foreign investment, allow Russia to repair its infrastructure, and reduce its economic dependence on energy exports.3
In April 2009, Obama met with president Medvedev, himself recently elected. They talked about a range of issues. Although they disagreed over the recent invasion of Georgia, Obama recognized that, at base, there was little to be gained by harping on the subject. Instead, he focused on future possibilities. The two leaders agreed on the need for cooperation on Obama’s highest priority, nuclear nonproliferation. Medvedev agreed to begin immediate negotiations to hammer out a follow-up to the soon-to-expire Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty (START). Medvedev also seemed open to the idea of working with the US to contain Iranian nuclear ambitions, admitting that Iran’s nuclear and missile programs had advanced much faster than Moscow had expected. The two men also discussed the possibility of Russia assisting US efforts in Afghanistan, where the US mission was currently hampered by a reliance on Pakistani supply routes. Since one of Obama’s earliest foreign policy goals was a victory in this Good War, Russian cooperation there was certainly welcomed.
The meeting left the Obama team optimistic. Recalled Obama, “Medvedev showed a readiness to engage with frankness and flexibility.”4
Secretary of state Hillary Clinton recalled that “The reset seemed to be on track.”5
2.2 Bilateral Cooperation
2.2.1 Afghanistan
In July 2009, Russia and the US signed an agreement to allow the transport of lethal military equipment through Russia to Afghanistan. The US needed a supply route for its troops that circumvented the monopoly currently enjoyed by Pakistan.
The Russians acceded because they hoped it would allow them to expand their own military footprint across Central Asia. Facilitating US efforts in Afghanistan in order to bolster Russian influence in Central Asia was a calculated risk, but one that, reflected Clinton, fitted the “Great Game” mentality that characterized Russia’s foreign policy. This was an outlook that stood in stark contrast to US liberals who preferred an international system of trade and relation institutionalized under US hegemony.6
2.2.2 NATO
Obama had inherited a nervous and disgruntled batch of European allies. Their support for Bush’s invasion of Afghanistan in late 2001 had been practically universal, but sharp divisions emerged between the US and many of its major continental allies after the US invaded Iraq in early 2003. In the years that followed, many western European leaders, who had to grapple with terror attacks of their own, grew ever more frustrated with the Global War on Terror that seemed more prone to spreading than containing violence. While major western European allies fretted at the vicissitudes of war in the Middle East, countries closer to Russia had observed Bush’s acquiescence to Russia’s invasion of Georgia in 2008 and grown increasingly skeptical of US leadership.
Obama had sought to ameliorate European allies early in his term, and used the 2010 NATO Summit in Lisbon to continue these efforts. Addressing western European critiques of US foreign policy as warlike and adventuresome, Obama stressed that the US and NATO were committed to drawing down the fight in Iraq and stabilizing the situation in Afghanistan. Obama stressed that the fight against terror would continue, as that was necessary for the safety of people in both the US and EU. Nevertheless, his constant focus on the already existing fights, especially Afghanistan, was meant to allay concerns that the War on Terror would fester and grow. Obama’s, it seemed, was to be a policy of containment. (My book details how, as his tenure went on, Obama would actually expand the War on Terror.)
In order to mollify the concerns of the eastern European NATO members, Obama reaffirmed his nation’s commitment to NATO, lauding its past accomplishments and declaring it essential to the future of European security:
For more than 60 years, NATO has proven itself as the most successful alliance in history. It has defended the independence and freedom of its members. It has nurtured young democracies and welcomed them into a Europe that is whole and free. It has acted to end ethnic cleansing beyond our borders. And today, we stand united in Afghanistan, so that terrorists who threaten us all have no safe haven and so that the Afghan people can forge a more hopeful future.7
He echoed the language of Bush II in characterizing the challenges faced by NATO in the 21st century as different from those of the Cold War and therefore needful of revised organizational structure and updated capabilities. To that end, while he reaffirmed Article V (an attack on one is an attack on all) as the bedrock of the alliance, Obama declared that his administration was working hard with other alliance members to reform NATO, specifically by:
Ensuring success in NATO’s mission to Afghanistan
Creating a new strategic concept for NATO
Modernizing NATO’s forces and capabilities
Strengthening cooperation with other institutions, notably the Russian Federation
Notably absent from these reforms was the expansion of NATO’s borders. Indeed, Obama was silent on the future enlargement of the alliance. Gone was his predecessor’s material support and vociferous backing for Georgian and Ukrainian entrance into thealliance. The Russians, whose very presence at the Lisbon Summit already evinced an increased openness to cooperating with NATO, took this silence as further evidence that cooperation might bear fruit.
2.2.3 New START
The Obama administration’s early emphasis on the importance (and ominence) of Russia’s nuclear arsenal had played into one key aspect of Russia’s identity as a great power. Its nuclear capabilities remained broadly on par with the United States, meaning that without question, in this arena Russia had legitimate claim to special consideration. Russian leaders were therefore eager to be seen as engaging in negotiations with the US on equal footing. And so, after a year of negotiations, Obama and Medvedev signed the New START Treaty on April 8, 2010. It faced resistance in Congress but ultimately passed there as well.
New START limited each side to a total of no more than 800 deployed and nondeployed launch vehicles. This included:
Land-based intercontinental ballistic missile systems (ICBM)
Submarine-launched ballistic missile systems (SLBM)
Deployed and nondeployed heavy bombers equipped to carry nuclear armaments.
The treaty also limited each side to no more than 1,550 deployed warheads, i.e. those warheads actually mounted on ICBMs, SLBMs, or bombers (each deployed heavy bomber counted as one “warhead” for treaty purposes). Provisions specified satellite and remote monitoring of each signatory, with monitoring tags on missiles and bombers for the first time.
Within these limits, the treaty bore legitimate fruit. In 2009, before New START, the US had a combined nuclear arsenal of 2,152 warheads deployed across ICBMs, SLBMs, and heavy bombers; Russia possessed 2,787 warheads distributed across a similar array of launch vehicles. By 2021, those numbers had been reduced to 1,357 and 1,456 respectively. The treaty thus reduced the combined count of deployed strategic warheads from 4,939 down to 2,813, a decrease of 56.9%.8
2.2.4 Early Missile Defense Policy
Obama had campaigned against Bush’s missile defense posture. An early campaign ad called for cutting “tens of billions of dollars of wasteful spending” including “investments in unproven missile defense systems.” That same campaign ad also promised reductions in military spending and a freeze on the development of new nuclear weapons.9
Many of these promises would ultimately fall by the wayside, but early in Obama’s administration this campaign rhetoric did translate into policy. In April 2009 his administration approved a $1.4 billion reduction of the Missile Defense Agency’s budget. In September, the administration went further by indicating that it no longer intended to move forward with plans proposed by Bush II to deploy a radar in the Czech Republic and 10 Ground-Based Interceptors (GBI) in Poland.
Missile defense was not done away with entirely, however. Obama may have considered Bush II careless and bellicose, but he did not actually reverse his predecessor’s stance on missile defense as a useful deterrent. He simply amended it. In place of the Bush plan, Obama outlined his own vision of a missile shield in Europe, the European Phased Adaptive Approach (EPAA). This was to be deployed in four phases.
Permanent deployment of ships equipped with Aegis ballistic missile defenses to Rota, Spain and a TPY-2 Radar deployed to Turkey
Deployment of Aegis Ashore missile defenses to Poland
Deployment of Aegis Ashore to Romania
A planned fourth phase, designed to protect against limited ICBM threats, was ultimately cancelled, perhaps to appease Russian objections to the system. If so, then this move was bolstered by Obama’s assurances that the missile defense initiative was not a countermeasure to perceived Russian aggression, but rather a deterrent against a possible Iranian threat.10 He also spoke of possible cooperation between Russia and the West on a joint missile defense initiative.
In an effort to negotiate as a peer-partner, Moscow proposed a joint anti-missile system. Mirroring its status on the UN Security Council, Russia would have veto power over the use of this proposed system, a limitation that NATO could not countenance. By the end of November 2011, with veto power unattainable and Russian negotiators unable to obtain written guarantees that the system would not be used against Russia (something the US Senate would not accept, whatever Obama’s feelings on the matter), Medvedev announced that negotiations on cooperative missile defense were over.
In light of these failed negotiations, Obama decided to proceed with his existing plan for deploying missile interceptors in Romania and Poland by 2018. No longer feeling themselves part of this process, Russian leadership now reacted angrily, assuming that the US sought to undermine Mutually Assured Destruction (MAD) and the very notion of strategic parity, twin pillars of Russian geopolitical identity and the centerpiece to Russia’s security doctrine. In other words, the Russians feared that better missile defenses would make the US think a nuclear war could be won, thus making a US first strike more likely. Tension mounted.11
2.2.5 Iran
As mentioned, in 2009 Russia facilitated the US war in Afghanistan by allowing supplies to route their way through Central Asia. Russian cooperation also assisted the US in dealing with another enemy in the Greater Middle East: Iran.
In 2010, Russia agreed with the other UN Security Council members to impose severe sanctions on Iran. The sanctions (which included Russian refusal to deliver already paid for surface-to-air missiles to Iran) proved a weighty imposition, one that prompted the Iranians to negotiate a settlement with regard to their nuclear capabilities. This process would culminate in the 2015 Iran Nuclear Deal, a diplomatic achievement that Obama himself has heralded as one of the brightest spots of his foreign policy record.
Russia pursued these diplomatic efforts for three reasons:
Trepidation at the prospect of a nuclear-armed Iran
The status and prestige to be gained by working in concert with peer nations to resolve an international dispute. Indeed, the fact that Russia, in acting as a peer-partner with the US and other major powers, put prestige over economic gain (integrating Iran into the world economy meant Iranian oil could flow more freely, which could threaten Russia’s oil exports) signaled the lengths to which Russian leadership would go in the pursuit of status
The possibility that defusing the missile threat posed by Iran might slow or stop the development of missile defense, particularly in Eastern Europe. Russia’s leaders might have recalled Obama’s March 2009 statement:
To the extent that we are lessening Iran’s commitment to nuclear weapons, then that reduces the pressure for, or the need for, a missile defense system.12
And although the deal would be partially undone by Obama’s successor, the fact that the US was able to work so fruitfully with Russia in this endeavor is a notable diplomatic achievement.
2.2.6 Libya
My book covers Libya in more depth, especially as it relates to Obama’s broader expansion of the War on Terror across Africa (including the use of proxy troops, special operations, and drone strikes). Here I wanted to give it mention only as it relates to Obama’s diplomatic relationship with Russia.
In 2011 when the US pushed for international intervention into Libya, Russia declined to use its veto power in the UN Security Council, a move which prompted China to demure as well. This allowed UN backing for the no-fly zone in Libya, which grounded Gadhafi’s air force and helped topple his government. Like Iran, the fact that Russia did not spoil western designs provided both a short-term victory for the United States but some international prestige for the Russian Federation as well.
2.2.7 Trade
In December 2012, Congress overwhelmingly passed legislation allowing Obama to grant permanent normal trade relations to Russia. This was done in order to ensure that US companies got the most out of Russia’s recent entry in the World Trade Organization. This step removed the last vestiges of Soviet-era limitations on US trade with Russia. Nevertheless, a caveat remained. Via the Sergey Magnitsky Rule of Law Accountability Act, Congress did leave room for the president to sanction Russian “human rights violators.” Obama himself resisted this bill but signed it when he realized that its passage was the only way the old trade restrictions could be lifted.13
The rationale that a bipartisan Congress provided for this law is worth pausing to consider. The text begins with Congress declaring that the US:
aspires to a mutually beneficial relationship with the Russian Federation based on respect for human rights and the rule of law, and supports the people of the Russian Federation in their efforts to realize their full economic potential and to advance democracy, human rights, and the rule of law.
It then lists the international institutions that Russia is a party to that hold it to a higher human rights standard, including its membership in international bodies, ratification of treaties like that against Torture or the Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, and its signing of the European Convention on Human Rights.
At this point, the bill’s authors make a critical assertion:
Human rights are an integral part of international law, and lie at the foundation of the international order. The protection of human rights, therefore, particularly in the case of a country that has incurred obligations to protect human rights under an international agreement to which it is a party, is not left exclusively to the internal affairs of that country.
With the international status of Russia thus outlined, and a justification for possible US intervention established, the bill then turns to its titular example: Sergei Magnitsky (whose investigations into corruption led to his arrest and death at the hands of Russian authorities). After establishing the martyr’s credentials, the bill then explicates the policies that the US government has at its disposal in the defense of Russian human rights.
It is the sense of Congress that the United States should continue to strongly support, and provide assistance to, the efforts of the Russian people to establish a vibrant democratic political system that respects individual liberties and human rights, including by enhancing the provision of objective information through all relevant media, such as Radio Liberty and the internet. The Russian Government's suppression of dissent and political opposition, the limitations it has imposed on civil society and independent media, and the deterioration of economic and political freedom inside Russia are of profound concern to the United States Government and to the American people.14
It is hard to take this kind of concern seriously given the current state of US “democracy”: the low voter turnout resulting from unpopular and corporate-backed candidates and exacerbated by the swath of voter suppression laws enacted since 2008; the anti-protest laws supported predominantly by the GOP; the bipartisan support for increased police funding; the dominance of for-profit media companies in the US information landscape; and the rampant union busting perpetrated by the likes of Amazon or Starbucks (often in the face of laws that, miraculously, go unenforced). Why, one is left wondering, such concern over the rights of those so far away when the ability of people here to dissent, to access independent media, or to exercise economic freedom is so limited and precarious?
This concern over Russian human rights would translate into more than merely providing “objective information” to the Russian people. With this Wilsonian line of argument as its foundation, the bill armed the executive with the legal basis for disciplining Russian human rights abuses via the weapon of economic sanction.15
Russian elites balked at this law, which Putin said “poisons our relationship.” Russian leadership in general considered the law as infringing upon the domestic affairs of what was supposed to be a sovereign nation. Putin’s response to this slight was multi-faceted and colored by earlier Obama administration support for anti-Putin protestors who had decried the Russian president’s 2012 re-election as a fraud. Putin took the Magnitsky Act as another interference in a domestic concern, another slight against Russian sovereignty. Among other things, the Russian government prohibited the US adoption of Russian orphans, pressured most NGOs to leave the country, asked the US Agency for International Development to shut down its operations within the country, and refused to renew the Nunn-Lugar Cooperative Threat Reduction program, a primary avenue of US-RF cooperation going back decades.16
The way in which the US government re-established normal trade relations with the Russian Federation encapsulates the essentially limited nature of Obama’s Russia Reset. Both countries stood to make real, material gains from an increase in trade. But the strings that Congress foisted upon this deepening of commercial ties came off to Russia’s leaders as judgmental, hypocritical, even hostile – certainly not the kind of treatment one peer nation would inflict upon another.
Given the long history of US intervention in the internal affairs of nations on its borders and around the globe,17 up to and including US leadership in the NATO interventions into Yugoslavia during the 1990s (recall how Russian elites thought about their duty to defend neighbors like Serbia), is it any wonder that Russians looked upon the language of the Magnitsky Act with scorn? Keep this in mind as we move further along, chronicling the limited diplomatic cooperation that took place in Syria and the diametric opposition that characterized Ukraine. Also keep this precedent in mind when we come back to Russia’s role in the 2016 US presidential election.
Join us next time for a deep dive into US/RF relations within the context of the Syrian Civil War.
Obama, Barack, A Promised Land, pp 344
Obama, Barack , Presidential Speeches 2009 Vol 1, pp 173
Larson, Deborah Welch and Shevchenko, Alexei, Quest for Status: Chinese and Russian Foreign Policy, pp 217.
Obama, A Promised Land, pp 346
Clinton, Hillary, Hard Choices, Chapter 11.
Ibid.
Obama, Barack, Presidential Speeches 2010 Vol 2, pp 1840
Congressional Research Service, “The New START Treaty: Central Limits and Key Provisions,” updated February 2, 2022, pp. 2; 27-28.
Romero, Abel. “Thanks Obama: Tracking the President’s Missile Defense Embrace,” https://tinyurl.com/yuadpz4z
AP Archive, “UK PM Gordon Brown meets President Obama; comments,” https://tinyurl.com/3cbythcp
Larson and Shevchenko, Quest for Status, pp 219.
AP Archive, “UK PM Gordon Brown meets President Obama”
Palmer, Doug. “Obama grants Russia ‘permanent normal trade relations’,” https://tinyurl.com/4ds5w9c4
Congress.Gov, “H.R.6156 - Russia and Moldova Jackson-Vanik Repeal and Sergei Magnitsky Rule of Law Accountability Act of 2012,” https://tinyurl.com/4ysv4u79
Palmer, “Obama Grants Russia.”
Larson and Shevchenko, Quest for Status, pp 221.
In addition to the 188 interventions listed below, the US has engaged in at least 80 wars (by my count) of varying size, duration, and severity with the Indian tribes, nations, communities that once spread across North America. GPF. “US Interventions,” https://archive.globalpolicy.org/us-westward-expansion/26024-us-interventions.html