Well, the Moscow summit is over and the judgments from the experts are in.
From the beginning, Obama was seen by many as to be mounting a "charm offensive" against Medvedev and Putin. However as F. Stephen Larrabee, the Corporate Chair in European Security at the RAND Corporation, reminds us, to the Rus, it's all about "national interests," not personal friendships.
Strafor has a nice but lengthy breakdown on the fundamental issues of the summit (i.e Nuclear Arms Reduction, Poland, Iran, Eastern Europe, and US usage of Russo airspace for operations within Afghanistan), what was accomplished, and potential leveraging items each country might be able to use in the future.
George Friedman, Stratfor's CEO and author, seems to summarize Obama's accomplishments in Russia quite well, "Ultimately, little progress was made in finding ways to bridge the two countries’ divergent interests."
However, in defense of the President and with the exception of Reagan, this was pretty much the diplomatic norm in dealings with the former Soviets.
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