News Today

Of all the challenges facing president-elect Obama in the future one of the most important will be Russian and U.S. foreign relations. The Georgia conflict may have brought the growing divide between the countries out in the press, but in reality our alliance with the country has been weakened severely over the past eight years.

Russian officials were unhappy with a recent U.S. decision to send a state-of-the-art warship into the Black Sea as part of an American humanitarian aid mission for Georgia in the aftermath of last August’s war with Russia. The Russians also are angry about the Bush administration’s push to add Georgia and the former Soviet republic of Ukraine as members of the NATO military alliance.

And here’s where a potentially scary situation comes in. Russian warships have been treading along the waters off Venezuela and Panama in recent weeks and are now heading for Cuba. The warships recently crossed the Panama canal for the first time since WWII. Now the ships aren’t violating any treaties or whatnot with their trip, but it is clear that Russia is trying to send a message here.

The act by Russia is not seen so much as threatening but as a show of might to the U.S. Russia is making it clear that it doesn’t like some of the actions taken by the U.S. lately and is trying to send this message by flexing its military might.

“They pose no military threat to the U.S.,” said Admiral James Stavridis, head of the U.S. Southern Command, in an e-mail to the AP on Tuesday.

While U.S. officials aren’t making a big deal of the situation, the same cannot be said for our soviet counterparts.

“God forbid from engaging in any kind of controversy in the American continent,” said Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin, referring to two Russian Blackjack bombers that made a trip to Venezuela earlier, the first trip of its kind since the end of the cold war. “This is considered the ‘holiest of the holy,’” he said during a meeting with Western political scholars at his Black Sea residence in Sochi. “And they drive ships with weapons to a place just 10 kilometers from where we’re at? Is this normal? Is this an equitable move?”

Does that quote sound hostile to you too? We might not feel threatened by their ships, but they obviously feel threatened by us. Earlier this week Gen. Nikolai Makarov, the chief of the Russian military’s general staff, accused the U.S. of setting up military bases in the Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan regions, a claim that U.S. officials are denying. Makarov also said that he doubts relations between the countries will improve under Barack Obama’s tenure.

Time will tell if that last statement holds true or not, until then this appears to be a very sticky situation for Obama to inherit come January 20th.