Henry Kissinger’s proposals too were effectively assuming a new geopolitical division of the world which was unlikely to bring us to anywhere we would want to be. What we need, I wrote, is new, modern approaches. I pinned great hopes on Obama, and was not alone in that.
I have had two meetings with President Obama. The first was in spring 2009 during a trip to the United States. I first talked in detail to Vice-President Joe Biden, and we covered a whole raft of problems, after which I had a brief conversation with the president. Taken together these conversations merited a telegram, which I duly sent the following day from our embassy to President Medvedev. What seemed particularly important to me was that Obama understood the need to break the stalemate in reducing nuclear stockpiles. For that, I said in our talk, the United States needed to take some constructive steps on anti-missile defence. I had the impression that the president and vice-president were both listening.
My second conversation with the president came during his visit to Moscow in summer 2009, and confirmed my impression that he was a serious person with a modern outlook, open to dialogue and capable of taking far-reaching decisions.
Obama was an hour late arriving at the old Gostiny Dvor commercial centre, where he addressed students and where we met. The delay was caused by a long conversation with Prime Minister Putin. I told the president I fully understood the importance of this conversation for both of them. He replied: ‘I was more inclined to listen, because it seemed to me it was very important to Putin to have an opportunity to get many things off his chest. We had a frank and friendly discussion and I was pleased with it.’
The president added that he had a lot of concerns and complicated matters to deal with back home, but thought it very important to come to Russia and not put off making a start on improving relations after eight years during which the previous administration had let them drift, which had led to their present state. I supported the president and said that, of course, there are always many problems and, as we had discussed in our first meeting at the White House, approval ratings may fall but action has to be taken here and now, without any pauses for reflection such as had been favoured by the administration of President Bush Senior. I told Obama he would see in his meetings with representatives of Russian society that people here wanted good relations with the United States, but on an equal footing, with Russia being listened to.
In our short conversation I managed to raise several important issues: nuclear disarmament and its link with anti-missile defence and the problem of conventional weapons; the triangular relationship of Russia, the United States and China; and President Dmitry Medvedev’s initiative for a new pan-European treaty. I said it was important for dialogue between the United States and Russia not to be restricted to acute immediate problems like the nuclear programmes of North Korea and Iran, and for both sides to feel they were achieving real benefit from it.
Obama said he would pay constant personal attention to relations with Russia, and I think that, subsequently, this was clearly evident.
I believe Barack Obama succeeded in doing a lot during his first presidential term, despite extreme opposition from conservatives and the far right. That was true of both his domestic and foreign policy agendas. At home he introduced and pushed through important social reforms, particularly in respect of healthcare, where he introduced a system of statutory health insurance. His political stance was that the market system should be subject to rational regulation, whereas Mitt Romney, his opponent in the second election campaign, advocated giving priority to market forces which would supposedly sort everything out for the best if they were just left alone.
Obama has had his successes in foreign policy too. He honoured his promise to withdraw from the conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan. He openly supported the idea of a world without nuclear weapons, spoke out in favour of ratifying the Comprehensive Nuclear Test Ban Treaty, and decided against deploying anti-ballistic missile systems in Poland and the Czech Republic. It is too soon to judge whether Russia and the United States will find a mutually acceptable solution to the ABM problem. Other systems are being deployed in Europe that may yet affect the overall strategic balance. Nonetheless, Obama’s decision was an important step in the right direction and paved the way for signing of the New Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty in Prague in 2010.
When Obama was victorious in the November 2012 election I sent him the following message:
I understand the weight of responsibility resting on your shoulders in the years ahead. They will not be easy years either for America or the rest of the world. I am certain that the desire of the United States for leadership will be successful if it is based on partnership with other countries, because the answers to today’s global problems can only be found through the joint efforts of all peoples.
I expressed confidence that ‘the prerequisites are there for our countries to cooperate, both bilaterally and on the international stage’, and that, cooperating on a basis of mutual respect and trust, they ‘can do much to advance their own interests and those of the whole world’.
In late summer 2013, Obama found himself in an awkward situation in connection with the Syrian crisis. Responding to reports that Syria had used chemical weapons, he rushed, without waiting for the conclusions of UN experts, to lay responsibility on the Syrian government and declare he was prepared to authorize a missile strike even without the authorization of the UN Security Council. When I was asked to comment on this (I was in Geneva for the celebration of Green Cross International’s 20th anniversary), I called on the president to tread warily and make sure he fully understood the situation. At the time, most commentators were saying a military strike on Syria was unavoidable, but I was hoping for a different response. I suggested the opportunity should be taken at the imminent G8 summit in St Petersburg for the presidents of the United States and Russia to meet.
This happened, and it would seem that it started the search for a solution to the problem. Before that, Obama had proposed to Congress, including his opponents from the Republican Party, that they should take a vote and arrogate responsibility to themselves. Instead, he gained a tactical advantage, a temporary pause which, especially thanks to Russia’s initiative in joining the search for a solution to the conflict, allowed the problem to be dealt with through political and diplomatic channels. There was an important, identifiable result in that Syria announced its accession to the Chemical Weapons Convention. Its existing reserves will be destroyed. (The experts at Green Cross International believe that task, although difficult, is feasible.)
America under Obama is still only feeling its way to a new role in a world where the policy of unilateralism is guaranteed to fail. In my opinion, not everything is being done as it should be. There was a relapse into the policy of trying to impose democracy with tanks and bombs in Libya, but where we see realism and a willingness for dialogue as, for example, in recent years between the United States and Iran, we should all support leaders who assume the responsibility to find a peaceful, rather than a military, solution.