Barack Obama’s re-election as U.S. president, while representing the Kremlin’s desired outcome, will not invariably lead to major improvements in near-term Russia-U.S. relations. As its name implies, the Obama ‘reset’ was a quick, necessary, and largely successful fix to a badly frayed bilateral relationship that had reached its post-Cold War nadir in the last years of the George W. Bush administration due to the disputes over missile defence, NATO membership enlargement, and the war in Georgia.
Barack Obama’s re-election as U.S. president, while representing the Kremlin’s desired outcome, will not invariably lead to major improvements in near-term Russia-U.S. relations. As its name implies, the Obama ‘reset’ was a quick, necessary, and largely successful fix to a badly frayed bilateral relationship that had reached its post-Cold War nadir in the last years of the George W. Bush administration due to the disputes over missile defence, NATO membership enlargement, and the war in Georgia.
