New Wave Of Terrorism May Draw Russia & U.S. Closer Again

Interestingly, VOICE OF RUSSIA, the Russian news-service which is a virtual mouthpiece for the Putin regime and the Putin dominated United Russia political party seems to be taking a much less confrontational opinion of the U.S. in the last few days since the violence in Mumbai, India as well elsewhere in the world. Since the Russian military offensive in Georgia in August, American and Russian relations had been greatly strained, but now Russia views a recent uptick in international terrorism as evidence that the United States, Russia and the EU must work together as allies to prevent a spread of this epidemic of violence around the world.

Russia might also be realizing that with a fresh administration coming into power in Washington soon, that it might just be more pragmatic to paper-over the recent bad relations since Georgia, and work together for a better relationship with Washington. And the shared international fears of terrorism just might give both Washington as well as Moscow good enough of a reason to forget each nation's problems with the other somewhat, and work together to stem rising international terrorism.

Besides the terrorist violence in Mumbai, terrorism in Georgia claimed the life a pro-Moscow mayor, and a U.S. embassy in Kabul was attacked as well. VOICE OF RUSSIA notes that these actions came recently when Russian-Western relations have suffered in the wake of the Georgia conflict. Russia seems to be opening the door to improved relations with Washington and the EU by running such a feature on VOICE OF RUSSIA, where it appears that they are inviting an improvement in relations, perhaps viewing the incoming Obama Administration as less confrontational to Russia than the Bush administration.

Interestingly, the news coverage on VOICE OF RUSSIA appears to be far less anti-Washington in tone as well in recent days, a sharp contrast from the more heated opinions in Russia around the time of the August actions in Georgia.

Surprisingly, it appears as though Moscow might have blinked first here. And if anything, this is an important signal to the incoming Obama Administration that better relations with Russia built on common ground issues such as combating international terrorism are very possible.

An improvement in relations with Russia is very important because it is the only nation in the world with a nuclear weapons force large enough to battle the U.S. to draw or worse. The two world military superpowers. Russia and the U.S. need to work together on many issues, and not allow events like Georgia to put the two nations at dangerous odds with other, especially when world terrorism just might be on the rise once again, taking some advantage of the problems that Washington and Moscow have been having since the Georgia incident.

There is the saying that the, "Enemy of my enemy is my friend". And since Russia, the U.S. and the EU are all three disgusted with worldwide terrorist violence, then this may well provide the common ground required for better relations between the states.