WASHINGTON — President Barack Obama’s meeting today in Prague with Russian President Dmitry Medvedev, where they will sign a new nuclear arms reduction pact, will highlight a thaw in relations between the former Cold War enemies that has occurred since the U.S. called for the countries to hit the “reset button” just over a year ago.
The new Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty is the most visible measure of improving cooperation in many areas, from intelligence sharing to Iran and Afghanistan. Moscow has allowed more than 130 planes carrying U.S. troops to Afghanistan to transit its territory, the first armed Americans permitted on Russian soil.
“For many decades we were trying to kill each other, and now they are allowing our troops to go through their country to battle,” said a senior Obama administration official, who requested anonymity because he wasn’t authorized to speak publicly.
“We’re not interested in a happy or good or positive relationship with Russia,” he said. “We are actually interested in a substantive relationship with Russia that advances U.S. national security interests.”
Some analysts cautioned that some thorny issues could stall the warming trend, such as the expansion of U.S. missile defenses in Eastern Europe and Moscow’s insistence on the primacy of Russian influence over former Soviet republics such as Ukraine.
Obama will have to balance his outreach to Russia with the concerns of Eastern and Central European NATO allies who remain anxious about their former overlord. Obama will dine with the leaders of 11 of those countries in Prague.
The next major test in U.S.-Russian ties comes over the next few weeks, as the United States seeks Russia’s support for harsher U.N. sanctions against Iran for refusing to suspend uranium enrichment work.
Medvedev has been indicating that Moscow might back stiffer sanctions, a key issue that he will discuss with Obama in Prague.
