The Return of Statecraft-How Obama proved his mettle at the G20 summit

[babylonsister]

The Return of Statecraft
How Obama proved his mettle at the G20 summit.

By Fred Kaplan
Posted Thursday, April 2, 2009, at 6:49 PM ET


Barack Obama speaks during a press conference following the G20 summit


Vast multinational conferences, like the G20 summit in London, are useful mainly for the "bilaterals"—the one-on-one side-room conversations—and, in these forums, President Barack Obama is living up to high expectations.

Which is to say, the United States seems to be returning to diplomatic basics—a development that in the wake of the last eight years is practically revolutionary.

Take Obama's meeting on April 1 with Russian President Dmitry Medvedev, which produced an unusually substantive 19-paragraph joint statement laying out a broad but specific agenda—all stemming from a cleareyed, even somewhat steely grasp of what international relations are all about.

"What I believe we began today," Obama said at a joint press conference afterward, "is a very constructive dialogue that will allow us to work on issues of mutual interest."

The italics are mine, but a "senior administration official" also drew attention to the phrase in a background press briefing and contrasted the approach with George W. Bush's first meeting with a Russian president, after which he proclaimed that he'd looked into Vladimir Putin's eyes and seen his soul.

The Medvedev meeting, then, marked the occasion when Obama officially pushed that "reset button." The move was recognized as such by Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov, who noted a "new atmosphere of trust," stemming not just from personal camaraderie—which, he said, creates only "the illusion of good relations"—but from recognition of "mutual interests" and a "readiness to listen to each other." Lavrov added, "We missed this much in the past years."

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http://www.slate.com/id/2215264/pagenum/all/#p2

[rateyes]

1. knr

[Schema Thing]

2. Russia to Bush: my new boyfriend really listens

[4_TN_TITANS]

3. I'm overwhelmingly impressed with how it's going so far.

Or maybe it's just been that long since I've seen real diplomacy.

[Cha]

4. This is the way it always should

have been but instead our government was taken over by machiavellian neocons for 8 years assisted by the US corporatemediawhoredom.

We're damn lucky that fate created the Perfect STorm.