U.S.-Russia: A side meeting, and then a breakthrough

Reporting from Washington —  As he flew to Yokohama, Japan, this month, President Obama was on the way to the sleeper event of the fall, a peripheral get-together almost entirely overlooked amid a battery of colossal global summits.

Hardly anyone outside the White House even knew of the one-on-one with the Russian president, quietly scheduled for a Sunday morning two weeks ago.

Even Obama’s team didn’t realize that he and Dmitry Medvedev were on the brink of a deal that could eventually bring the Russians in on a plan to build a missile defense system in Europe in cooperation with NATO, the organization whose longtime mission was to keep Moscow’s nuclear threat in check.

For weeks, Russian negotiators had been putting the brakes on missile talks. One top Obama advisor was ready to let it go for at least a year.

But it was to be a lesson in summitry for a White House entourage — officials, advisors and journalists — that had been focused on the big-name acronym summits this month. Especially stinging for Obama had been the failure to achieve key objectives at the G-20 summit of industrialized nations days earlier in Seoul, leaving the United States on its own in dealing with its fragile economy and high unemployment rate.

In the realm of diplomacy, though, deals that seem entirely on track can fall apart when the titans convene. And newer, more significant ones can appear out of thin air.

“It’s interesting,” deputy national security advisor Ben Rhodes said in retrospect, “how a bilateral meeting at one summit is necessary to yield results at another.”

Just before boarding Air Force One to Yokohama, the president shook off the headlines that had irritated him in Seoul. Such meetings don’t always produce “revolutionary progress,” he said, but rather “evolutionary progress.”

The Nov.13-14 trip to Japan was devoted almost entirely to the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation summit. A meeting on the sidelines with Medvedev was expected to be just another get-together for the two fortysomething lawyers.

That Sunday morning, the presidents and their top advisors arranged themselves around a long table in a small meeting room of the InterContinental Yokohama Grand Hotel and started talking about previously negotiated issues: Afghanistan, trade, the START arms treaty they’d signed but not ratified.

On missile defense, Obama knew that the negotiators in Brussels had not worked out the important issues, such as how to agree on common threats or resume joint-defense exercises. He turned the conversation there anyway. And as he did, advisors in the room were surprised by Medvedev’s demeanor.

“He was leaving himself wiggle room,” said one senior Obama administration official who was there, “and not committing to anything. But he was clearly very friendly and open to what the president was saying.”

That meant something to the Americans at the table. In treaty talks the year before, when Medvedev had wanted to give some ground but hadn’t yet built support for it back home, they’d seen him adopt the same mien.

Four days later, U.S. Ambassador Ivo Daalder, Obama’s NATO point man in Brussels, called to report a development. The Russian brakes were off, he said.

Indeed, at the final summit of the month — of North Atlantic Treaty Organization leaders in Lisbon — the Russians shook hands on some surprising plans, although the details have yet to be worked out. Medvedev agreed to work toward cooperation with NATO on a missile shield designed to protect Europe and the United States, beginning with a study of each side’s technologies and how they might be interwoven.

Missile defense was no longer a problem in U.S. and NATO relations with Russia, Daalder said. Instead, it was now “a means to foster greater cooperation with Russia.”

The plan is far from reality. Medvedev is imposing some conditions that have to be studied, and it may be more likely that the best result will be cooperative development of separate NATO and Russian missile defense systems.

Still, analysts say there was a breakthrough in Lisbon, owing in large part to the “reset” in relations with Russia that began when Obama came to office and pledged to start over with Moscow.

“This was an important moment to show we’re moving beyond that confrontational relationship,” said Stephen Flanagan, former Russia advisor to President Clinton and a now scholar at the Center for Strategic and International Studies.

Just getting Medvedev to show up for the NATO summit was a feat, he said, as was the fact that the European nations welcomed his presence.

Obama sees the Russian relationship as a long game, said Mike McFaul, his top Russia advisor. The reboot of the American relationship had to come first, and a fresh start with NATO could follow.

cparsons@latimes.com