Importance of Obama's visit to Russia in a Romanian editorial
President Obama is starting today an official visit to Russia that represents a new and very delicate move in his strategic offensive. The event is part of a well-defined cycle that started with the message that he addressed to the Muslim world and will continue in autumn with a message to China, as Obama has already accepted President Hu Jintao's invitation, with a view to "intensifying coordination and cooperation in global financial and economic problems." The general picture has already acquired a constructive sense. A real rapprochement of the points of view in the planet's power triangle (the United States, Russia, and China) might indicate that the wish imperatively expressed in some circles to put an end to the chaos generated by the power vacuum created by the fall of the Iron Curtain is about to materialize.
There are many arguments in favour of this possibility. First of all, the sudden and almost uncontrollable emergence of some new regional players with global ambitions, some of them possessing nuclear weapons or very close to possessing such an arsenal, even if only in an incipient form. Once the USSR was put in the shade - if it is true that the dividing of its sphere of direct or indirect influence pushed the East European countries towards NATO and the EU - many other countries in Central Asia or Africa found themselves in a double power vacuum, as the absence of the foreign "protector" was combined with the chaos that appeared in the rather stable post-colonial world. All those countries became a vast hunting ground for some countries or multinational companies that started creating small pocket empires for themselves. The Bush Administration made the huge mistake of believing that it could ensure or impose a new world order in a unipolar system, especially one based exclusively on American cultural and political values. The reaction was so violent that it not only radicalized America's traditional enemies, but also re pulsed some of its formerly loyal allies.
Obama gained time and credibility by sending a message to the Muslim world. The essential part is starting now, when the members of the power triangle will discuss the reconstruction of the global power system on the basis of a new system of strategic alliances, with implications in the institutional, political, economic, financial, and military fields. That means that the pragmatic leaders who have now decided to interact will talk about what used to be called "spheres of influence" and will reset them as "zones of economic opportunity." The formula is as global as the interests at stake. A first step in that respect is, for instance, the initiation of the new strategic and economic dialogue between the United States and China. The American and Russian presidents will sign in Moscow a memorandum that precedes a new treaty on nuclear weapons and will also discuss the agreement that will allow the transit of American military freight across Russia to Afghanistan, abandoning the Pakistan option. There will also be discussions about Iran, the Dniester region (an agreement will perhaps be reached on the opportunity of creating a future Federal Republic of Moldova), and also a global framework of collaboration in the fight against terrorism and drugs trafficking.
It is interesting to notice how these priorities resemble and are sometimes even identical to some of the strategic goals of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization. NATO and the EU are waiting for the decisions that will be taken at this level. We are also waiting for them, in the context in which or country's relations with the power triangle are somehow diaphanous and transparent, to say the least.
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