Russia's top diplomat in the U.S. said in a briefing with reporters Monday that relations between Washington and Moscow are in "a deplorably difficult state" and have fallen in recent years to their lowest point since the end of the Cold War.
The argument that Russia-U.S. trade and economic relations have no solid foundation has long since become commonplace. However, such statements are far from reality. Our business cooperation still has a certain base, since for many years we've been a major importer of US grain and poultry, and these factors have always weighed in on our political relations.
Why are international companies still doing business in Russia? Moscow's economic headlines have been downbeat for a year and a half, as the country has been hit by falling oil prices, Ukraine-related sanctions and currency devaluation. Moreover, Russia has long been reputed to be a challenging place to do business.
Even as the Obama administration continues to ponder just how it might respond to the turn of events in Syria in light of Russia's ongoing intervention there, it has studiously avoided addressing a second, far more significant challenge that Russia is posing to the West, that of its nuclear weapons posture.
The aggravation in relations between Russia and the United States weakens the capability of both to confront real, not putative threats. Unfortunately, when observing the development of the situation, one can hardly exclude that the spirit of the Cold War may again set to prevail for quite a long time.
On his weeklong swing through South America, Pope Francis burnished his credentials as a new kind of pontiff, issuing a searing apology to indigenous people for church crimes more than a half millennium old and even making a pit stop at a Burger King to change clothes and freshen up before celebrating Mass.
The situation in the Middle East is unstable and unpredictable. And one of the dominant trends is the ongoing offensive by radical Islamic and terrorist groups, which are a danger to both Russia and the United States.
Relations between Moscow and Washington are obviously at an all time low due to events in Ukraine and the West responding with sanctions on the Russian Federation.
The State Department on Thursday slammed the Russian government's decision to stop making public its peacetime military casualties, calling the decree a clear attempt by Moscow to hide the deaths of Russian soldiers conducting clandestine operations inside eastern Ukraine.
Russian government officials -- and even some outside banking institutions -- are sounding increasingly confident that the Russian economy has weathered the storm brought on by U.S. and European sanctions, but some private analysts say the worst is yet to come.
On July 28, 1943, in one of his famous fireside chats, U.S. President Franklin D. Roosevelt told his fellow citizens: "The world has never seen greater devotion, determination and self-sacrifice than have been displayed by the Russian people and their armies this country of ours should always be glad to be a good neighbor and a sincere friend in the world of the future."
Some things should rise above even the calculations of diplomacy, not just in Washington but on the world stage too. And the 70th celebration of the end of World War II — perhaps the last major anniversary to be celebrated honoring the "Greatest Generation" while it is still on this earth decades it fought in the epic conflict — is one of them.
Does anyone remember what it was that turned America hostile toward the tropical paradise of Cuba? Our president tells us that "we're caught in a time warp, going back to the 1950s and gunboat diplomacy, and 'Yanquis' and the Cold War." Yes, really, "gunboat diplomacy." That is how University of Chicago adjunct law professors talk about American foreign policy. And he adds, "Sometimes those controversies date back to before I was born." So, what got America so riled up over the Castro brothers and Cuban communists even before Barack Obama was born?
