Part 3 Of: "Several Reasons Why President Obama's Early Decisions In Office Have Been Generally Good Ones"

In addition to the topics about which I wrote in my first two installments of this series--which can be found directly below this post--I believe that there have thus far been a few other early Obama Administration decisions/announcements that are generally impressive in nature. (Remember, please, that I number them only to differentiate them from one another, and not necessarily in order of importance.) Here is another one of them:

DECISION #3

Policy Area: Foreign Policy/Russian Policy

Decision/Announcement: The U.S. will review the feasibility of its proposed Eastern European missile defense system prior to deciding whether or not to move forward with it.

Analysis: Russia is being hit hard by the worldwide economic crisis both because of the bad geopolitical state of trade and commerce and because of the low price of oil at present. (Much of Russia's recently-generated wealth comes from oil revenues.) Hence, it has been looking for political "cover" in order to suspend its recent missile development project, which was a very expensive program meant to counter U.S.-backed interceptor missiles and accompanying radar technology in Eastern Europe.

This week, the Obama Administration gave Russia the "cover" it needed to save political face by suggesting that the U.S. will take time to review carefully its interceptor missile program prior to deciding whether or not to move further with the program. (The Bush Administration, by contrast, planned to move steadily forward with the program.) Furthermore, the general tone of this Obama Administration announcement was one of skepticism regarding the workability of the technology associated with the program. Russia's response to this was an almost immediate announcement that it planned to suspend its own program.

In the recent past--such as the period just prior to the worldwide economic crisis--Russia would never have made such an announcement simply because an American administration made its own announcement to review its plans in what seemed to be a skeptical manner. Instead, Russia most likely would have waited in order to see what the ultimate decision of the U.S. was, and then countered that decision in a like manner in order to show the "West" that it will counter any perceived "aggressive" maneuvers regarding what it considers its area of influence. In other words, the Russian "Bear" would have been skeptical of America's new-found skepticism regarding its Eastern European defense program.

But "The Bear" isn't as bullish in these regards as it was even a few short months ago, and this is basically because of dwindling amounts of capital. Russia simply doesn't have the resources at present to reasonably counter an expensive Western missile program with one of its own, which would have to be of a comparable caliber if it were to be taken seriously in an international context.

So the Obama Administration, which was seeking an at least temporary end to Russia's plans for a counter-program, got what it wanted when it gave Russia enough political wiggle room to drop its plans without looking like too much of a paper tiger in the process. As a result, the U.S. received a temporary "thaw" in its relations with what had been an increasingly belligerent and troublesome Russia, and the U.S. needs such a thaw right now, given the various other geopolitical crises with which it must deal, in the Middle East (which is not too far from Russia's southern border) and elsewhere. For its part, cash-strapped Russia avoided embarrassing itself with what may very well have turned out to be a clunky, Soviet-style, "mend-and-make-do" type of missile system aimed in the direction of a more state-of-the-art Western missle system.

For a day, at least, both the U.S. and Russia were able to breathe a sigh of relief about a mutually-beneficial (at least for the present) decision made by the other side. As to whether this temporary thaw in relations continues, particularly given recent developments in increasingly-democratic and independent Russian satellite countries like Georgia and Ukraine, only time will tell.