Andrey Kazantsev: European missile defense system could serve as a bargaining matter in resolving conflicts of interests between Russia and the United States in other parts of the world

Today at the summit on nuclear security in Seoul a meeting was held between Russian President Dmitry Medvedev and US President Barack Obama. A key theme of this meeting was the situation surrounding the deployment of the NATO missile defense system in Europe. Despite the fact that, according to Medvedev, the last three years in relations between Russia and the U.S. were the best in a decade, the acting president of Russia was forced to admit that Russia and the United States remain in the same phase of negotiations on the deployment of the missile defense system, but stressed that there is still time to reach certain agreements.

Commenting for "Vestnik Kavakza" on the situation, the Director of the Analytical Center of Moscow State Institute of International Relations, Andrey Kazantsev, noted that the unresolved conflict on the European missile defense is the factor complicating American-Russian relations. "We know that when Barack Obama came to power he decided to turn the US 180 degrees towards Russia as compared with Bush's term, and the reboot policy was created especially for this purpose. Now, most experts believe that the reboot policy, in a sense, has reached its climax and ceased," the expert said in an interview to "Vestnik Kavkaza".


Andrey Kazantsev stressed that Obama is not the initiator of confrontation."The Russian leadership does not want to agree on concessions in the field of missile defense system, despite the fact that the US government argues that the first phase of the missile project is technically not even aimed against Russia's interests - it is too weak and would not be able to intercept Russian missiles. Serious Russian experts believe the same, but Russia needs a binding serious document, which would clearly state that the US is never going to deploy the missile defense system against Russia at any stage of deployment."

The expert also added that the European missile defense system could become a bargaining matter in resolving conflicts of Russian and US interests in other parts of the world.