As Russia stands poised on the edge of a military invasion of Ukraine and tensions are at an all-time high between Moscow and the West, it is evident that the seeds of deep-rooted suspicion between the U.S. and Russia were sown during the second term of the Barack Obama administration. As the U.S. correspondent for this newspaper during 2010-15, it was obvious to me that what could loosely be described as ‘Cold War 2.0’ was gaining traction during those years, and the interregnum of the Trump years thereafter did little to mitigate the bilateral malaise.
Mr. Obama began, as most idealistic leaders do, with good intentions, to bring about a “reset” in relations with Russia. At the time, Vladimir Putin had stepped back from the Russian presidency to the role of Prime Minister, ceding the top post to Dmitri Medvedev. Yet within the politics of Washington’s beltway, it was hardly a secret that Mr. Medvedev was considered Robin to Mr. Putin’s Batman. Nevertheless, Mr. Obama and Mr. Medvedev, it was clear, shared a decent amount of personal chemistry and that allowed them to earnestly embark on tackling some of the big bilateral policy issues of the day. In early 2010, they signed the New START Treaty, which restricted both nations to 1,550 deployed strategic nuclear warheads, nearly two-thirds less than what the original START treaty permitted. Russia entered the World Trade Organization in 2012. However, by that time, Mr. Putin had re-entered the presidency and then the troubles began again.
