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Obama hopes to normalize relations with Russia, bit of an oxymoron wouldn’t you say
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Barack Obama and Dimitri Medvedev, AP Photo - Sergei Chirikov, Pool
Russian/American History 101
In 1989 the Soviet Union initiated Glasnost. Glasnost was the official Soviet state policy of openness and transparency. It encouraged open and honest discussion of social, civil and economic problems in the USSR. But Glasnost was not designed as a stand-alone application, it was created to, in part, ease the country’s transition into perestroika.
During roughly the same timeframe, the country undertook perestroika, an economic restructuring which moved the country toward institution of a free market economy. While still under Supreme Soviet Council rule, strict guidelines and oversight were maintained, as Mikhail Gorbachev worked to eliminate state owned monopolies and open the USSR to global commerce.
The two reforms in fact, acted both unexpectedly and synergistically in such a way as to advance destabilization across the Soviet Union and as the economy slumped even further, freedom of speech and press were used to express the huge groundswell of public opinion that the Soviet government was not .
The USSR was declared officially dissolved on December 25, 1991, offering the United States and Russia an opportunity for cooperation made possible by the defeat of communism.
Current Russian global position and US/Russian common interest
Some may not view Russia and the US as interdependent but think about this; Russia possesses roughly 7,200 Active duty nuclear weapons with 1,800 additional in states of disrepair. Of Russia’s nuclear weapons: 550 are tactical (smaller yield) nuclear weapons and 1,800 are strategic (high megaton yield) nuclear weapons.
While, according to US armed forces and nuclear regulatory data; the United States has almost 8,000 operational nuclear warheads, with nearly 2,700 additional warheads kept in inactive status for a total of over 10,600 warheads in the stockpile (see table). In addition to these intact warheads, there are in storage at Pantex and Oak Ridge, respectively, approximately 5,000 plutonium pits and approximately the same number of canned subassemblies, i.e., thermonuclear secondaries, which are retained as a "strategic reserve”.
The nuclear age saw advances in operational and tactical warfare, but experienced it’s greatest advances in strategic warfare. As Ronald Reagan expressed time and again to the American people, the United States’ nuclear stockpile was in and of itself a deterrent to nuclear war. A fact that many military strategists and historians recognize today – deterrence became the primary role of nuclear weapons.
Over a period of many years a level of interdependence developed among countries possessing nuclear arms, especially those two who had the largest stockpiles – The United States and the Soviet Union. Some even point out that the peace we enjoyed for those many years during the US/Soviet nuclear build-up was due to the fear of global annihilation from those very weapons.
With great power comes great responsibility and with the United States and Russia possessing the two largest stockpiles of nuclear weapons, the responsibility is evident. The two superpowers, in fact, bear responsibility for not only maintenance, limitation and appropriate disposal of their own stockpiles, but a global responsibility to educate, example safeguards and in some instances limit countries seeking to develop nuclear weapons. The experience that the US and Russia have in development, storage and disposal of nuclear weapons is greater than that of any other nation or body (i.e. China, I.A.E.A. or the U.N.) in the world.
Economically Russia, much like the rest of the globe, is in the midst of its own downturn. With reduced factory, the country’s less-than robust economy is further slowed by the ongoing global economic decline. As the world shows signs of a further weakening global economy, stabile oil prices cannot be counted on to act as a life preserver for the Russian economy.
The United States and Russian summit
Russian leader Dmitry Medvedev (??????? ??????????? ????????), the 3rd and current President of Russia, met with US President Barack Obama to address; Iranian nuclear arms, US/Russian nuclear arms, global and national economics, the proposed US missile shield and other topics.
To a degree Russia has continued to demonstrate that it is still an unknown quantity, an opinion shared by our President. ABC News quoted President Obama as saying: “"Ultimately we're going to have to see whether a country like Russia, for example, is willing to work with us to apply pressure on Iran to take a path toward international respectability as opposed to the path they're on," Obama said. "That's not something we're going to know the results of for several more months as we continue to do the hard diplomatic work of putting this coalition together to tell Iran: 'Make the better choice.'"
The president also reiterated in his speech Tuesday that it must be an ongoing, shared effort in relationship building; "This must be more than a fresh start between the Kremlin and the White House, though that is important. It must be a sustained effort among the American and Russian people to identify mutual interests and to expand dialogue and cooperation that can pave the way to progress."
In a letter from the President delivered in February to Medvedev, the President explained that the proposed missile defense system that the Russian government has long opposed, could be dropped if Russia would agree to work with the United States to convince Iran that building nuclear weapons would be counterproductive for them and the world.
Russia and Cap and trade
Russia, one of the world’s largest polluters of the air stands to profit hugely from cap and trade. To begin with Russia is one of the largest producers of natural gas in the world a fact that will benefit the economically downtrodden country through billions of cubic feet of natural gas.
But surprisingly, even though companies in Russia are among the world’s biggest manufacturers of greenhouse gases, they stand to benefit financially under both the Kyoto climate treaty and the American Clean Energy and Security Act by selling their rights to release carbon dioxide into the air, if they invest in greater efficiencies.
The Kyoto Protocol set a baseline in 1990 for emission standards for signatory and future signatory countries. This baseline was set just before a deep recession, which reduced production and carbon output in the Russian economy. What this means is that when Russia transfers those credits to its companies they will not only profit anywhere from $6 to $9 billion just selling credits created from investments in emissions-reducing technologies, but will already possess a huge back-stock of carbon credits for reduced cost production.
Cap and Trade promises to be a huge market, where a global governing system controls the means of production through output allowances of greenhouse gasses.
Once Russia capitalizes on Kyoto and Cap and Trade, and begins exporting massive amounts of oil, natural gas and coal they will be less dependant on foreign aid and perhaps less likely to continue to work at the relationship that our president so eagerly seeks.
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