Russia Rejects Obama's Iran Gambit

Russian President Dimitry Medvedev responded to US President Barack Obama's offer to trade East European missile defense for help in curbing Iranian nuclear ambitions. Russia is interested in ending the missile defense program, but without linking it to Iran.

"Haggling," Medvedev said, "was not productive."

Russia's unhelpful response was inevitable once Barack Obama demonstrated his willingness to throw Eastern Europe under the bus in exchange for Russian promises. The Russians saw Barack Obama's gambit not as the basis of a mutually beneficial deal, but rather as a sign of weakness signally the possibility of further concessions. Anyone familiar with the history of diplomacy with Russia, especially when it was the Soviet Union, could have predicted the outcome.

Kim Zigfeld points out that Barack Obama's Russian gambit on Iran was especially egregious considering Russia's human rights record and its aggressive stance towards its neighbors, such as Georgia and the Ukraine.

"It is simply inexcusable for Obama to fire off such a letter without at least simultaneously addressing the issue of human rights within Russia and military aggression by the Kremlin against neighboring states like Georgia. Only a simpleton would fail to realize that the Kremlin could only understand this failure to mean the U.S. does not care about these issues and will allow Russia to pulverize its helpless neighbors so long as U.S. strategic interests are not interfered with."

By omission, therefore, Barack Obama implied that he was willing to give a myriad of concessions. Russian diplomatic strategy is not to take such an offer, but to demand even more. Russia's goal is to eliminate the missile defense program. That's it. There will be no quid pro quo.

To understand the extent of Barack Obama's bungling, one only has to turn to a man who understood how to negotiate with the Russians, President Ronald Reagan. When Reagan became President, he put into place a multi faceted strategy to not so much counter the Soviet Union as to bring it down. The strategy had military, economic, and diplomatic components. Part of the military component was a massive defense buildup that included the development of missile defense systems known as the Strategic Defense Initiative (SDI).

Despite critics in the West (and some doubt of its effectiveness in the Soviet Union) the idea of the United States developing a strategic defense system terrified Soviet leaders. A Strategic Defense System would negate the Soviet Union's advantage in strategic nuclear arms. The Soviets could not be certain that the United States, which had won the race to the Moon, which had clear advantages over the Soviet Union in all facets of technology, would not be able to build effective missile defenses.

All came to a head in October, 1986, when President Reagan met with then Chairman Mikhail Gorbachev in Reykjavik. Gorbachev was interested in curbing Soviet strategic arms in order to free up resources for economic development under his perestroika program. To that end, Gorbachev offered President Reagan a fifty percent reduction in the strategic arms then possessed by the Soviet Union and the United States.

President Reagan offered Gorbachev one better. Reagan proposed the complete abolishment of nuclear weapons, to be guaranteed by a joint strategic defense system built and operated by the United States and the Soviet Union.

The Reykjavik talks collapsed over the issue of strategic defense, with Gorbachev demanding that the United States give up the program and Reagan refusing to do so. However Gorbachev came away from Reykjavik with a number of sobering conclusions.

The first was that President Reagan was quite genuine in his desire for a massive disarmament of nuclear weapons. Contrary to the contemporary caricature of Reagan at the time, Reagan was very deeply troubled by the idea of nuclear weapons, which he correctly judged to be a threat to the survival of the world. The very idea of SDI was to negate the power of the world's nuclear arsenal to destroy the world.

Second, Gorbachev concluded that Reagan would not be moved from his desire to build strategic defenses. The Soviets were used to being stubborn as a means to extract arms control concessions beneficial to them. But in Reagan, Gorbachev found an opponent just as stubborn as any Soviet diplomat.

Very soon, the United States and the Soviet Union found themselves signing arms reduction treaties that would have been unimaginable just a few years before. It was too late to save the Soviet Union. Three years after Reykjavik the Berlin Wall fell and three years after that, the Soviet Union fell with it. Reagan's tough minded strategy worked beyond the wildest dreams of most analysts at the time.

What lessons should Barack Obama derive from this bit of history? Simply that offering Munich-like deals to the Russians in the manner of Jimmy Carter is not effective diplomacy. Obama should, instead, follow the Reagan model in dealing with the Russians.

First, Obama should announce that the United States is forging ahead with missile defenses and in fact increase the capacity and scale of those missile defenses. Second, Obama should inform the Russians that the United States will oppose Russia's aggressive moves on its neighbors by any means necessary short of war. Third, Obama should impose economic sanctions not only against Iran, but against Russia to apply pressure to be more forthcoming. Fourth, Obama should demand that Russia stop violating the human rights of its citizens and restore democracy.

We know that the Reagan approach works and that the Carter approach, which Obama hitherto has been pursuing, does not. One is afraid, though, that Obama will persist in the latter and eschew the former, much to the detriment of the national security interests of the United States.

Sources: Russian President Won't "Haggle" Over US Missile Defense Plans, Deutsche Welle, March 3rd, 2009

Obama's Russian Gambit on Iran, Mark R. Whittington, Associated Content, March 3rd, 2009

Russia Snubs Obama Overture, Kim Zigfeld, Pajamas Media, March 3rd, 2009