Diplomacy in action:
At a signing ceremony, Obama and Medvedev, wearing identical dark suits, white shirts and red ties, pledged to finalise a treaty by the year-end to cut the number of deployed nuclear warheads on each side to 1,500-1,675 from levels above 2,200.
If they both happened to wear the same thing, then maybe they just happened to choose similar target numbers for warhead reductions.
Of course, that’s not how diplomacy is conducted. I have to agree with Matt Yglesias that, in terms of negotiating with Russia, the game of huffing and puffing about topics on which neither side is at all likely to budge is far inferior to conducting negotiations on issues about which the two countries may actually come to an agreement. If one of these happens to be fashion, then so be it.
To read this Wall Street Journal editorial, one might seriously conclude that Medvedev doesn’t deserve to wear the power suit that befits an American president.
Here’s an idea. Set aside the dime-store national psychoanalysis and return to first American principles and interests. This summit rests on a fiction: That Russia is an equal power to the U.S. that can offer something concrete in return for American indulgence.
Here’s the thing. It doesn’t matter that Russia is not “an equal power.” Nobody this side of the Cold War is disputing that. But it doesn’t change the fact that Russia and the United States have some interests in common, and other issues in which they differ, but both have a lot at stake. The way to achieve these “first American principles and interests” is not to rail against Russia’s autocracy and heavy-handed role in certain small, independent countries in its orbit (the protection of Georgia’s freedom may be important, but an American “principle” of the first order?). Reducing Russia’s nuclear stockpile, securing its cooperation in fighting climate change — these are the concrete goals that the Journal scorns. And it’s going to take something much more nuanced than “indulgence” — and, okay, more substantive than matching suits — to reach them.
A picture of the two leaders from before their historic agreement to wear suits that are more than just almost identical.
