Several well-respected individuals have recently warned on the possibility of a severe social crisis erupting in the United States.

As Barack Obama is sworn in for another presidential term, the United States is experiencing a severe fracture between the conservative and liberal camps, not to mention between the economic haves and have-nots. Should Moscow hold out hope for another push on the Russia-US reset button?

Indeed, the challenges confronting the Democratic leader are unsettling.

George Soros, the US financier known as “the man who broke the Bank of England,” warned of possible riots on the streets of America, saying the economic situation is “about as serious and difficult as I’ve experienced in my career.”

“We are facing an extremely difficult time, comparable in many ways to the 1930s, the Great Depression,” the billionaire speculator noted. “We are facing now a general retrenchment in the developed world, which threatens to put us in a decade of more stagnation, or worse.”

Warren Buffet, the second wealthiest individual in the world, candidly admitted “there’s class warfare, all right, but it’s my class, the rich class, that’s making war, and we’re winning.”

Robert C. Lieberman, Professor of Political Science at Columbia University, captured the breathtaking levels of inequality in the United States in an article in Foreign Affairs: "Income inequality in the United States is higher than in any other advanced industrial democracy and by conventional measures comparable to that in countries such as Ghana, Nicaragua, and Turkmenistan."

Lieberman warned that such an socioeconomic system "breeds political polarization, mistrust, and resentment between the haves and the have-nots and tends to distort the workings of a democratic political system…" 

Meanwhile, potentially more disruptive than a broken economy is the explosive question of gun rights, an issue that Obama has promised to address following the indiscriminate killing of 20 children at a school in Newtown, Connecticut in December. 

In his pledge to address the issue of America’s massive gun collection, the Democratic leader faces a challenge that may well overshadow the debate on abortion rights and same-sex marriages combined.

Obama’s pledge to work for a ban on assault weapons, as well as other initiatives, is hugely unpopular to many Americans, including not least of all members of the National Rifle Association (NRA), America’s most influential domestic lobby group (the NRA claims that its membership has surged by 250,000 people – up to 4.25 million – since the Newtown shooting, according to U.S. News and World Report).

Gun-rights enthusiasts have been holding protests at various state capitals around the country in a show of support for the Second Amendment of the US Constitution, which guarantees “the right of the people to keep and bear arms.” 

With the United States increasingly divided along economic, cultural and political lines, the Obama administration may realize that it desperately needs the distractive element of international bogeymen, of which Russia has long been typecast.

Blame Obama?

“Obama is being blamed… that no serious (economic) progress has been made over the past four years," Nikolai Zlobin, director of Russian and Asian programs at World Security Institute, told reporters on Sunday. 

At the same time, according to Zlobin, Russia and the US lack an agenda that could facilitate the reset.

"There are no occasions suitable for improving Russian-American relations,” he said. “They have not been seen for a long time. Therefore, bilateral relations will be objectively deteriorating.”

Given the domestic challenges that Obama will be facing, will the Democratic leader have the time and resources for building bilateral relations with Russia?

According to Fyodor Lukyanov, Foreign and Defense Policy Council Chairman, "Obama's foreign policy will not be particularly active given the US leader's plans to cut the number of global problems it will have to tackle."

The last four years of Barack Obama’s presidency have witnessed Russia-US relations go from sweet to sour despite a declared reset between the former Cold War foes. Should Moscow hope things will change in the next four years?

When Obama beat out the ‘maverick’ Republican challenger John McCain in the 2008 elections to become America’s first black president, Russia breathed a momentary sigh of relief. After all, not only were Russia-US relations grinding to a standstill under the leadership of George W. Bush and his 'War on Terror,' but McCain will never be confused as a Russophile.

Four years later, in the presidential contest that pitted Obama against Mitt Romney, it seemed that Russia-US relations were once again saved by the grace of democratic intervention. In a fiercely fought race, Obama edged out Romney, who played up to voter passions by declaring in the heat of the campaign that Russia is America’s “number one geopolitical foe.”

Judging by the semi-delusional tweets and rants of Obama’s last two contenders, Russia, some might be tempted to argue, should consider itself lucky to be working with such a sober, level-headed partner as Barack Obama. Like some kind of good cop, bad cop routine, Obama is able to position himself as Russia’s best hope for building a solid relationship with Washington.

“After my election, I will have more flexibility," Obama was overheard telling former President Dmitry Medvedev in March."On all these issues, but particularly missile defense, this can be solved but it's important…to give me space."

The problem, however, with the Democratic leader attempting to portray himself as the only man qualified to work with Russia is that thus far Obama, like on so many other fronts, has been all words and no action; one of those rare moments – though less rare in politics – when smoke exists without a fire.

Indeed, Obama’s tendency to wiggle and waffle on political pledges was immediately clear to Moscow in the early days of the American leader’s first term in office. 

Declaring that he was “shelving” the Bush administration’s ambitious plan to build a missile defense shield in Poland and the Czech Republic, Obama quickly dampened Moscow’s initial optimism by saying that his administration would instead deploy US Naval ships – equipped with sophisticated Aegis radars and antimissile interceptors – in the Mediterranean and North Sea.

Despite the Republican Party’s predictable and politically motivated objections, the Obama sea-based system is actually more flexible than the Bush version, not to mention more threatening as far as Russia’s national security is concerned.

“The second phase, which will become operational around 2015, will involve putting upgraded SM-3s on the ground in Southern and Central Europe,” Robert Gates, the former US Secretary of Defense, wrote (“A Better Missile Defense for a Safer Europe,” The New York Times, Sept. 19, 2009). “All told, every phase of this plan will include scores of SM-3 missiles, as opposed to the old plan of just 10 ground-based interceptors.
By 2015, the new Obama plan envisions those same interceptors being deployed on land with additional radars in Europe – perhaps in the Caucasus or elsewhere," Gates added. 

Some would say that was a very strange way of opening a Russia-US reset, which had been declared six months earlier when US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov pushed a symbolic “reset” button (there may have been some unintended truth behind the mistranslated word that accompanied the button, which was incorrectly translated in Russian to “overload” by the US button designers).

Thus far, Obama has shown the same level of political honesty with Russia as he has with the subject of Guantanamo Bay detention facility, which he promised to close as one of his first acts of president. Just as Obama caved into Republican demands that the Cuban purgatory remain open for business, Obama – despite the threat of another arms race – has failed to come to terms on missile defense with the Russians.

But now that Obama is safely in the White House for another four years, there is no more opportunity to blame the Republicans for his inability to show more “flexibility” with Moscow on the subject of missile defense, following his inauguration today.

Following his inauguration today, Moscow will watch to see if Obama lives up to his commitment to cooperate with Russia on missile defense.

Should the Democratic leader balk on his word and refuse to cooperate with Russia, this will expose the lie of the reset once and for all. In the event of such a scenario, not only will Russia respond by fortifying its borders with ballistic missiles, it will also be forced, in all likelihood, to walk away from the New START Treaty, signed by Obama and Medvedev on April 8, 2010, which slashes the number of deployed strategic nuclear warheads to 1,550 on both sides.

Such a scenario, needless to say, would be a tragedy of immense proportions not just for Russia-US relations, but for the future safety of the planet, littered as it is with weapons of mass destruction.

Yet Moscow will have no choice in the matter. After all, no country would agree to reduce the size of its nuclear sword while other countries – even friends and allies – are busy constructing a mighty shield.

Yet, as Barack Obama himself advised four long years ago, we can always hope.

Robert Bridge, RT

• A Permanent Economic Emergency