Ready for Hillary? by Robin Renwick

Author:Robin Renwick [Robin Renwick]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781849548342
Publisher: Biteback Publishing
Published: 2014-05-11T16:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER 10

THE ‘RE-SET’ WITH RUSSIA

FOR HER SECOND visit abroad, Hillary flew to Geneva in March 2009 for a first meeting with the Russian Foreign Minister, Sergey Lavrov. Her ambition, and that of Obama, was to ‘re-set’ the relationship with Russia, which they considered had become far too adversarial under George W. Bush. She took with her to the meeting a green box, complete with a ribbon. In front of the cameras, she opened it and presented Lavrov with a bright red button on a yellow base with the Russian word ‘peregruzka’. Lavrov politely explained that they had got the translation wrong. The Russian word for ‘re-set’ was ‘perezagruzka’. ‘This means “overcharged”’, he said.

Her press secretary, Philippe Reines, tried to get the gift back to change the label, saying that otherwise his boss was going to send him to Siberia. It was, she admitted, a tempting thought, but Reines survived as, to this day, one of her closest advisors.39

Obama and Hillary had a first meeting with Dmitry Medvedev, who had taken over from Putin as President, at the US ambassador’s residence in London in April 2009. Putin had swapped jobs to become Prime Minister, but Medvedev had surprised people by bringing a new, more conciliatory tone to the Kremlin. Hillary had been a critic of Putin, but regarded it as counter-productive to see Russia only as a threat when there were issues on which Russia and the US needed to cooperate, and Medvedev did not have Putin’s Cold War and KGB history.

Obama and Medvedev discussed a new treaty cutting nuclear weapons. On Afghanistan, Medvedev agreed to facilitate US supply routes, which was important, as the US otherwise was entirely dependent on Pakistan. He acknowledged that Russia had under-estimated Iran’s nuclear ambitions, eventually supporting a vote at the UN to impose tougher sanctions, despite Russia’s own civil nuclear cooperation with Iran. He continued to oppose US plans for missile defence in Europe, despite US assurances that this was directed at Iran, not Russia. Obama promised support for Russia’s admission to the World Trade Organization.

A broken elbow caused her to miss Obama’s subsequent visit to Moscow in July, when he and Medvedev issued a joint statement on terrorism, advanced work on the new nuclear arms treaty and sought to find some common ground on Iran and North Korea. An agreement was formally signed to allow the transit of US military equipment through Russia to Afghanistan.

The new strategic arms reduction treaty (‘New START’) was signed in April 2010. Hillary and Biden led the campaign to secure the two-thirds majority needed to get it ratified by the Senate, helped by the co-chairman of the foreign relations committee, John Kerry, for the Democrats and the moderate Republican Richard Lugar. She spoke to eighteen senators, nearly all of them Republicans, in helping to get the treaty ratified by seventy-one votes to twenty-six. Gates regarded the White House (but not Hillary) as naïve about the ‘re-set’. He pointed out to Obama that on the day the treaty was

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