She was in Brussels this week on what was her first trip to Europe as Secretary of State, and held discussions with both NATO and EU bodies on topics relations with Russia for NATO and climate change for the EU. Two increasingly important topics.
While on Thursday we learnt that NATO will resume high-level contacts with Russia after having frozen contacts over the conflict between Russia and Georgia, the most interesting development in my eyes came on Tuesday when the world learnt of President Obama’s letter to Russian Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev.
In this letter Mr Obama asked for his counterpart’s support in stopping Iran acquiring long-range missiles. As a trade-off for their support, he is thought to have proposed scrapping the USA’s plan for a missile defence shield to be constructed across Eastern Europe, a plan that quite frankly is one of paranoid-drenched madness.The US maintains that its planned missile defence system in Europe was conceived to destroy incoming ballistic missiles fired from "rogue states", such as North Korea and Iran, but seen from Russian eyes, this interpretation could also easily be seen to include them, and as a consequence be interpreted as a renewed effort to recreate another east-west division (albeit this time virtual not concrete).
Even its proposed location is significant because those countries were the barrier would be were part of the now defunct Soviet Union, which in the view of the Kremlin still falls within its sphere of interest. The Russian’s therefore were understandably unhappy with the USA’s defence shield plan and the EU was most likely uncomfortably also as this would not only intrude upon its own defence strategies but also give the Russians the impression that it was overtly cooperating against them; an act that could so easily have triggered Cold War II.
But one must still ask whether such a defence shield is really necessary? The Iranian military insists its missiles have a range of only 2,000km (approximately 1,240 miles) which would mean they could potentially hit targets in Greece, Bulgaria or Romania, all of whom are NATO member states. But America, being America, is extremely paranoid and does not believe that. After all, relations between the USA and Iran can hardly be described as warm, friendly and ‘special’ in the same terms as that of the UK.Just last week I finished watching the BBC2 series ‘Iran and the West’ that I had downloaded, which was an extremely interesting programme outlining this key events in this relationship. From the citizen revolution which disposed of the US-supported Shah in favour of the banished Ayatollah Khomeini, who preached his revolutionary messages from a small safe house on the outskirts of Paris, US-Iran relations have never been great.
In November 1979 the US embassy in Tehran was overpowered by Iranian students who took 63 staff hostage and prompted the US severing all diplomatic ties and imposing strict sanctions upon Iran. Initially the students demanded that the Shah return from the US to Iran to face trial, but later their demands changed to require the USA to promise it never interferes in its affairs in the future. Evidently the superpower did not comply and the subsequent failure of a top-secret military attempt to rescue the hostages did nothing help the USA’s cause nor did the mistakenly shooting down of an Iranian Airbus by a US gunboat in July 1983…
With Hillary’s husband Bill as US president and Muhammad Khatami elected to the position of Iranian President in 1997, there was a brief glimmer of hope as Khatami appealed for a "dialogue with the American people" in American TV interview he requested set up. However, this hope was short-lived, when in a sermon a few weeks later he was sharply critical of the US and its "oppressive policies".
Then, when in January 2002 the-then president George W Bush describes Iran, Iraq and North Korea as an "axis of evil" in his State of the Union address, it became near impossible to see any cooperation and resumption of friendly ties being resumed.While these are only a small number of incidents (more here*), there is a long-running animosity between the two countries, perhaps as hotly contentious as that between Russia and the USA. So is President Obama’s plan realistic or just extremely optimistic? His campaign may have revolved around the banner of ‘hope’, but I think that this latest step is simply just too hopeful.
Indeed, the arrival of Obama in the White House has exhaled a huge breathe of fresh optimistic air around the world, bought about a renewed sense of global friendships and more importantly brought about a sense of real change. Unsurprisingly, UK Prime Minister was very quick to head to the States and reaffirm the UK’s love and support of America in his speech to Congress. Mr Brown recognises that America is moving forward.
But can the same be said about US-Russia relations? Is there a real possibility now that the Cold War sentiments are really going to evaporate away? Perhaps not entirely. The USA may want a fresh-start but that certainly wasn’t the message that Secretary of State Clinton delivered to Moscow on Saturday (albeit unintentionally).
In case you missed this piece of news, Hillary Clinton gave her Russian counterpart Sergei Lavrov, a mock "reset" button with the complete intention for the gift to symbolise the USA’s hope to mend its frayed ties with Moscow. A good gesture in itself, it didn’t have quite the desired effect as the word written on the button was "peregruzka" meaning "overloaded" or "overcharged", rather than the desired "reset".Naturally this was a too good an opportunity for the Russian press to miss, and so they poked fun at the Americans, with the one of the daily newspapers Kommersant apparently declared on its front page rather wittily: "Sergei Lavrov and Hillary Clinton push the wrong button."
In true Woman’s Day fashion, Hillary Clinton said in a statement this week that “women's full participation is the key for the international community to combat challenges in the 21st century, since women have a crucial role in tackling major issues such as the global economic crisis, sectarian warfare and terrorism.” She is certainly making her mark and combating the challenges of the 21st century, and her efforts have already bought about changes this week. With talks due with Turkey and China next, you have to wonder what will be next…
