Peter Cheremushkin: Put in the back

In the last days of stay in the White House of the Barack Obama administration, many Russian publicists undertook to summarize the foreign policy results of the activities of the departing president of the United States, especially in terms of his relations with Russia. The last steps are specially criticized, in particular the sanctions and expulsion of Russian diplomats . Of course, there is not enough pleasant in this. But what to do - who sows the wind, everyone knows that he is reaping. In the past, the US administration undoubtedly made mistakes during its stay in power (by the way, in the United States itself, Obama was most often criticized for softness), but the tonality of some Russian media is now more like an attempt to spit in the back than to conduct a benevolent analysis or evaluate the facts.

Sometimes it seems that the sanctions and other unpleasant actions for Russia were not a retaliatory measure, but a whim of an anti -Russian president of the United States, who does not understand how the world works and does not realize that if the population of some countries wants to live in a medieval dictatorship and obscurantism, then he does not need to prevent him (this population).

It is quite difficult to expect the special love of President Barack Obama for the Russian order. His first experience of introducing to Russian reality in 2005 was, to put it mildly, unsuccessful. When the American special brittle with Senators Obama and Lugar was detained for inspection at the airport of Perm, the future president of the United States had to spend several hours on the sofa in the waiting room. Obama and Richard Lugar flew to Perm to inspect the chemical weapon destruction plant, which was financed with the money of American taxpayers under the Nanna -Lugara program . Obama slept on the sofa, read, while the Russian border guards wailed with representatives of the US Embassy regarding the extraterritorial status of an American military aircraft on which the senators flew. But Senator Obama did not hide resentment, but did what he should. And then, when he became the president, he tried in every possible way to flash with Russia.

It is especially funny to read the criticism of Obama’s actions about the fact that at the beginning of his presidency he relied on Russian President Dmitry Medvedev and sought to develop relations with him, and Prime Minister Vladimir Putin ignored, or even (terrible to imagine) criticized as a representative of the forces of the past. Indeed, Medvedev at the presidential post spoke of modernization, teninization, that freedom is better than not free. He set out ideas that were quite consistent with Obama's advanced views and his vision of the world. Who else could an American president who strive for a bright future and did not try to plunge the world into hopeless darkness? By the way, some Russian Americans pretend that they have forgotten how Obama during his visit to Moscow in 2009 visited the Prime Minister’s residence in Novo-Ogarev, where he was treated with tea from a samovar, who was of a boot, and a lecture on the dangers of the spread of democracy.

The signing in Prague in 2010 of the START-III agreement with Russia was a confirmation that the idea of a nuclear world, which in the United States seems utopian, can still be realized in small steps. It is difficult to imagine that the young and advanced president of the United States, who was elected not so much because of the political correctness attributed to the American society, but due to the expectation of the world, because of the fatigue from the war in Iraq and Afghanistan, would be unrevigns to bomb Damascus to smoke Bashar Assad from there. Probably, this is how Russian publicists would imagine the "strong owner of the White House." Or - so that the American leader would take on granted that dear Russians are satisfied with the opposition’s clamp, the tapping of democratic freedoms, political murders and the construction of a police state. Not to mention the fact that they will enthusiastically welcome the tapping of the tidbit of the Earth from a neighbor, which at some point appeared to be ownerless.

Obama came to the White House as a peacemaker, who wanted to correct the then hopelessly spoiled relations with Russia after the war in Georgia. Then, in 2008, it was unthinkable to imagine to what depth of the fall the connections between Russia and the USA could collapse in 2016, carefully built by the efforts of many people in the 1990s. Today, there is practically nothing left of the achievements of those years - except cooperation in space and trade in Kamchatka crabs. The abolition of joint projects in the field of ecology, health care, cooperation of law enforcement and counteratroaches, the closure of the American center in Moscow and the "American corners" in the regional and regional libraries, coagulation of programs of the English language and much more occurred due to the fault of the Obama administration, but due to the fault of those who are pathologically afraid of the "Orange Revolution", fed from their imagination from their imagination Washington regional committee, those who need an external enemy to justify the legitimacy of the regime.

On the eve of the visit of Russian President Dmitry Medvedev in Washington in June 2010, Obama was busy clarifying relations with his generals. Despite this, he took the time to answer the written questions of the Interfax news agency, whose correspondent I worked in the United States then. Now it is in vain to look for an interview on the Interfax website, which once became an agency’s achievement and considered his pride. The essence of Obama’s message to the Russians came down to stop playing the game with a zero result, it is better to apply an approach from which everyone would win. Who can condemn this approach? Only an immense cynic and hypocrite.

It is clear that the American leader will always be on the side of the forces striving for freedom

With the departure of Medvedev from the post of president of the case in Russian-American relations, they went very badly. The new American ambassador in Moscow, sent personally by Obama, the author of the so -called "reboot", an intellectual, but not a diplomat Michael McFol , met as a specialist in the spread of democracy and "orange revolutions" and arranged almost open persecution of him. Each of his steps was accompanied by the so -called journalists from NTV, and the driver was even sent to Kutuzka for a fictional violation. As one American diplomat told me, even by Moscow standards, how they behaved with Macfol, was a clear overcruming. It is unnecessary to talk about open persecutions to which the Russian intelligence agencies subjected Russian employees to the US Embassy in Moscow.

Obama did not come to the opening of the Olympics in Sochi, which caused considerable discontent in Moscow. In Kyiv, the Maidan was already blazing with might and main, which in the Kremlin is loved to call "inspired countries of the West by state revolution", and in Moscow there was a clamp of imaginary "foreign agents" and non -governmental organizations. It is clear that the American leader will always be on the side of forces striving for freedom, especially under the pressure of such an influential lobby as Ukrainian. The White House determined the Vice President Joseph Biden as a curator of reforms in Ukraine, and the famous polemicist and Catholic did not depart from the phone, on which he spoke with President Poroshenko, flew several times to Kyiv to exhort Ukrainian politicians to end corruption.

For some reason, Russian publicists tend to forget that the sanctions did not appear at Obama’s whim, but were, as they say now in Russia, “responding” to the annexation of Crimea, a bloody bath arranged in the Donbass, endless attempts to undermine the democratic process in Ukraine, tear the country into parts. Even in these conditions, President Obama tried to maintain relations with the Kremlin and prevent the complete gap that many predicted. He refused to supply the so -called lethal weapons to Ukraine, to which he was called up. If you recall the Kremlin’s press service on the endless telephone conversations of Putin and Obama (more reminiscent of the dialogues of residents of different planets-especially in the part of the Minsk agreements), they were invariably accompanied by the “telephone conversation took place on the initiative of the American side”. Such a posted suggested an understanding: they say, we (Americans) need them than they are than them. The usual logic of the kitchen in a communal apartment, which was not very inherent in the Chicago peacemaker.

But the most interesting thing is what will happen next? Donald Trump will come and cancel everything? Maybe. In Israel, where, as you know, Obama was not loved and considered an accomplice of the Arabs, they already thought about what would happen if the elected president proclaiming himself Tel Aviv will cancel the Iranian nuclear program that has been born in torment? Will this lead to an increase in Iran’s nuclear ambitions and the renewal of the threat of an atomic war against the state of Israel, the right to exist by some figures in Tehran?

The driving force of President Obama was a desire to make the world safer and more peaceful. Sometimes his approach seemed naive and beautiful -hearted, but this is what you can’t take away from him - he strove for reconciliation, as happened with Cuba, and for the best future. And it is not his fault that the world consisted of politicians and "legally elected" dictators who played according to other rules. In a word, there is reason to believe that Obama’s foreign policy will be appreciated over time with a plus sign, and not with a minus sign.

Peter Cheremushkin - Journalist of Radio Liberty