For me, the meeting of Putin and Obama is larger than the current topic - Syria. The world is held under the threat of military escalations between our two countries. After the collapse of the Soviet Union, there existed hope of a Russia with political philosophy more aligned with the US and multiple treaties including the START nuclear reduction treaty pointed to a normalization of relations.
President Putin's rise to power coupled with what Putin saw as an aggressive westernization of former Soviet states through NATO admissions created a "caged animal" response by Russia. We have witnessed several military exercises and armed conflict in Crimea and Ukraine, for example, and more recently the infringement of western airspace by Russian military aircraft. Our placing sanctions on Russia have not seemed to have the effect that many might have hoped for.
Earlier this year, KSU sponsored a talk by Dr. J Arch Getty, professor at UCLA. Getty discussed "Does Putin have a point?" in which he provided an interesting glimpse of his experiences in Russia and how the US is viewed and how Putin is perceived in Russia. What I took away was - if we were in Putin's shoes what would we do? What would we do if we saw Russian assimilation attempts to annex Puerto Rico, or Guam or American Samoa?
This is the area that I see as a bigger agenda item than Syria - for the US and Russia to respect each other's viewpoint and diminish the escalation of military exercises in Europe.
I really like the points you brought up in this post. I think after years of tension we are finally beginning to see our two countries be willing to consider that the other could potentially have good ideas and respect for each other. It seems to me that interaction between the leaders our America and Russia these next few months are going to be important in determining our relation with each other for the foreseeable future.
ReplyDeleteI wish I had known about the talk by Dr. J Arch Getty because it seems as though he has made several important points about relations with Russia and Putin. I think it is important to look at how things would be affected if the roles were switched and we were actually in Putin's shoes. The two countries are two of the world's major countries and should have respect for each other. Relations with Russian are and always will be important.
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