Sometimes Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin and his handpicked successor as president, Dmitry Medvedev, seem to play a good cop, bad cop routine. President Obama has had his first meeting with Medvedev, the good cop, and the outcome seems remarkably positive.
The two issued a 1,500-word communique after their meeting Wednesday in London that promised a "fresh start" and a "fresh tone" in U.S.-Russian relations. The centerpiece is an agreement to begin fast-track negotiations on a new nuclear arms limitation treaty to further cut the two nations' nuclear arsenals. The current treaty governing arms levels, the 1991 START, expires at the end of this year.
About half of the joint statement dealt with mutual concerns over nuclear proliferation, nuclear terrorism and securing existing stocks of nuclear weapons and materiel.
The United States and Russia agreed to disagree in some areas, like the U.S. plan to install a missile defense system in Eastern Europe, and papered over areas of serious disagreement. There was no explicit mention of Russia's invasion of Georgia last summer, only the "military actions of last August." And there was no mention at all of the breakaway provinces of Abkhazia and South Ossetia, only a bland call to find a peaceful and lasting solution.
Obama and Medvedev did agree that al-Qaeda and other terrorist organizations operating in Afghanistan and Pakistan posed a threat to both nations. In the joint statement on Iran, Russia in a roundabout way indicated that Tehran may be pursuing a nuclear weapons program by saying that Iran needed "to restore confidence" that its nuclear program "is exclusively peaceful in nature."
The length and scope of the document indicates that diplomats have been working for some time at dialing back what seemed to be increasingly testy relations between Moscow and Washington.
After the meeting, Medvedev said he was "optimistic" about better relations. Obama accepted an invitation to visit Russia in July. Then, he'll find out if the bad cop has that same optimistic view.
