World Today

Recently in July Obama made a visit to Russia. Unlike George W. Bush he mentioned that he is willing to press the 'reset' button on relations with Russia. He gave Moscow the priority over Tokyo, Beijing, and New Delhi. The two former rivals were on a brink of war last August when Russian troops entered deep into Georgia, which was strongly opposed by the U.S and NATO.

The major success came out of the July 6 to July 8 summit was that Russia agreed to help U.S in Afghanistan by opening its airspace for the U.S transport air crafts to fly weapons, troops, hardwares, etc. across its territory to Afghanistan without any navigational charge and security check. U.S said that this would save around $133 million per year.

Another agreement was signed to reduce the total number of nuclear arsenal in both the country up to 1675 warheads and delivery vehicles to 1,100. But the problem here lies with how the number of present warheads are counted. U.S says that they have around 2,200 warheads but Russia believes that U.S has more than 5,500 warheads. This is because U.S only counts the number of warheads which are deployed and are in ready to fire state. Another problem which came in Russia's way was that it didn't like the U.S proposal of excluding those long range missiles whose nuclear warheads have been replaced by conventional one.

Russia and the U.S. also agreed to open a joint early warning centre to share data on missile launches.

Russia in overall summit was seen to be a little reserved. Russian foreign ministry described the summit as"groundbreaking" stopped short of using the "reset" metaphor. Foreign Ministry Spokesman Andrei Nesterenko said that the two sides merely managed to halt the degradation of our relations.

For Moscow the main problem is that even after the collapse of the U.S.S.R, America kept treating Russia as its enemy and placed NATO forces on its border, made bases around and started interfering in the region of its influence, that made Russia feel a bit isolated and made it to 'blackmail' the Europe for energy. Also the proposed U.S missile shield in Czech Republic is seen by Russia as a security threat. Medvedev said if u.S moves ahead with its plan then Russia will be forced to deploy Iskander missiles in the Kalingrad region of Russia which is in west Europe, any missile launched from here towards west can not be destroyed by the missile shield placed in Czech Republic.

While Russia is helping U.S in Afghanistan. It doesn't like American presence in the former Soviet Union. Recently Russia praised Kyrgystan's decision to shut down the Manas air base, the only U.S air base in Central Asia. Russia's message to u.S was "if you want us to cooperate on issues of concern to you, then you should accommodate Russian interests."

Obama though refused to stop the talks with Ukraine and Georgia for NATO's membership.

Russia which remained quiet since the disintegration Soviet Union was seen hard against the superpower America. but what more important was seen in the summit that both sides were willing to cooperate and discover the new areas of common interest to work on.