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| | On April 1, 2009, Obama and Medvedev met each other personally for the first time within the frameworks of the "G20" London summit. The outcome of talks between the presidents of the two countries resulted in concluding an agreement to reduce strategic nuclear weapons (SNW) till the expiry of the SNW-1 agreement in December 2009. Noticing that their opinions differed on the deployment of MDS in Eastern Europe and on the assessment of war in South Ossetia, active members agreed for cooperation in the field of the establishment peace in Afghanistan and search for solutions to Iran's nuclear program.
Also, in the 2009 spring, Obama set aside attention towards the bankruptcy of the two largest car manufacturers in the USA: General Motors and Chrysler. Chrysler declared bankruptcy on May 1, 2009 and General Motors - on June 1, which became the biggest industry bankruptcies in US history. Obama stated that he would make the best efforts to bail out the American automobile industry and to preserve jobs. As a result, Chrysler was sold to an Italian car manufacturer Fiat and 60% of General Motors shares should be transferred to the USA government.
In the beginning of July 2009, Obama visited Moscow and once again met Medvedev. During the visit, the presidents of Russia and USA signed an agreement MoU on the further reduction and restrictions of strategic nuclear arms". The given document included a statement of preliminary agreements on the preparation of a new contract for the restriction of strategic nuclear arms (SNW). Also, according to the results of the negotiations, Russia allowed the USA to transit military equipment to Afghanistan through their territory. Meanwhile, according to the assessment of experts, results of the bilateral summit were quite moderate: an absolute agreement on SNA was not reached, also the agreement regarding the issues of Russian policies in the post-Soviet period could not be achieved.
On September 17, 2009, Obama announced that the USA will curtail its program on deploying NMDA in Czechoslovakia and Poland. According to him, the Iranian short and medium range missiles posed considerable threat to the USA and its allies, rather than ballistic intercontinental missiles, for countering of which, Bush planned to deploy radar and missile interceptors in Eastern Europe. Instead of this, Obama offered them to deploy a small group of US Naval Force ships having missile interceptors in the Mediterranean and North Sea, which would allow them to be flexible and react to a possible missile threat promptly. Deployment of the ground elements of the NSNA in Eastern Europe was deferred till 2015.
The given decision received a negative response from the republicans and also by many politicians in Czech and Poland. Also, experts contemplated that, this step was made as a compromise for Russia though it was denied by Obama's Administration. Dmitry Medvedev stated that, he "appreciates the responsible approach of US president" and is ready to continue negotiations on NSA, where as a permanent member of Russia in NATO, Dmitry Rogozin urged not to fall "into childish euphoria", noting that the American ships can reach the Russian coasts any moment.
On October 9, 2009, Barack Obama received the Nobel peace prize for "making efforts in strengthening international diplomacy and cooperation between the nations". The award sum was 10 million Swedish crones (about 1.4 million US dollars): after knowing about the reward, Obama promised to spend the money on charity and regarded the award as an "appeal for action". Conferring the Nobel Peace Prize on Obama, who worked as US president for less than a year, invoked mixed reactions. Some Nobel winners, including Michael Gorbachev and Jimmy Carter responded to the reward positively. Fidel Castro and Dmitry Medvedev also welcomed the conferring of the award on Obama. Meanwhile, 1983 Nobel peace prize winner, Lech Walesa remarked that, Obama received this award having done nothing and Hugo Chavez, president of Venezuela, was even more categorical: he compared this award to the presentation of sports trophy to the "baseball player, who only promised to win 50 matches". The award ceremony took place on December 10, 2009.
In November 2009, the House of Representatives and in December 2009 – the US Senate approved the draft bill on reforming the public healthcare system: this is a ten-year reform, costing 1.1 trillion dollars, aimed at building a public medical services system, which was one of Obama's pre-election promises (in the 1990s a draft for reforming the public health services was proposed by Clinton, but the US Congress did not approve it). |
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