Why Obama Might Be Able to Reconcile with Russia

After his first encounter with Vladimir Putin, George W. Bush famously said that he had gotten a sense of the Russian leader's soul. President Obama is unlikely to do any similar soul searching when he sits down with Russian President Dmitry Medvedev for the first time tomorrow in London ahead of the Group of 20 economic summit. But their long-awaited meeting may represent the best chance in years to begin repairing a sorely wounded U.S.-Russian relationship. "Time," former Soviet President Mikhail Gorbachev said on a visit to Washington this month, "is opening up another window of opportunity for us."

Obama and Medvedev are both seen as new, younger-generation leaders who are more intent than their predecessors on rebuilding bilateral ties and dealing with issues that range from arms control and nonproliferation to energy and trade. They may get a needed, if indirect, hand from an unlikely source: the global recession that is battering both powers.

In recent years, historic levels of oil and gas revenue buoyed the Russian economy, rekindling great-power instincts already piqued by deep resentment over Moscow's treatment by the Bush administration. The post-Soviet prosperity underwrote an ever more assertive foreign policy. Russia invaded Georgia to back the breakaway republics of South Ossetia and Abkhazia. It squeezed Ukraine over natural gas prices. It prodded Central Asian regimes to stop hosting U.S. military bases and vowed to put missiles next to NATO territory if a U.S. missile shield was built. And it resisted further sanctions over Iran's nuclear drive.

A fresh American outreach to the Kremlin, coinciding with an economic downturn in Russia, looks like a case of good timing. "I think it does," says one senior U.S. official. "Our relationship has been allowed to drift a little bit—not a little bit, but a lot."

This year, Russia's economy is expected to contract 2.2 percent. Stocks have plummeted 75 percent since May. Unemployment is up, currency reserves down. The tumult is feeding Russia's interest in trimming its dependence on oil and gas revenues, something that the United States is well placed to help with.

All that might make the Kremlin more amenable to cutting deals with Washington, though it's not certain. "I don't know if there's a correlation, but we have seen a different tone coming out of the Russian leadership," says the senior official. Medvedev calls the signals from Washington "completely positive." And he has praised the administration's call to "reset" relations.

Moscow also is allowing nonlethal military supplies bound for Afghanistan to move through Russia. And it invited U.S. officials to a meeting last week of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization—a Russian- and Chinese-led group seen as a counter to U.S. influence. Tomorrow's London meeting is likely to advance a nuclear arms control pact to replace the expiring landmark START I treaty and to produce a joint statement on future relations.

But the signals from Moscow are mixed. Russian troops are settling in for a long stay in South Ossetia and Abkhazia, and anger over NATO expansion and Ukraine's pro-West leanings persists. Says Stephen Sestanovich of the Council on Foreign Relations, "Falling energy prices may make de-escalation with the West look desirable to some, but you wouldn't know it from the rough way Russia has played its hand against Ukraine."

• Read Obama Heads to Europe to Pitch Economic Plan at G-20.
• Read more by Thomas Omestad.