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Pavel Sharikov

Ph.D. in Political Science, Director of the Applied Research Center and Russian Academy of Sciences Institute for U.S. and Canadian Studies, Assistant Professor of the Faculty of World Politics at Lomonosov Moscow State University, RIAC expert

Last Tuesday, President Obama delivered the annual State of the Union speech which outlined the policies of the U.S. administration for the final quarter of his presidency. Of particular interest seem to be Mr. Obama's views on the role and place of the United States in the modern world and U.S. global strategy in the 21st century. The president's prescription of smart leadership for the two years to come has been formulated by the words of Joseph Nye who in the early 2000s said that the most efficient foreign policy can be found in smart power generated by a combination of soft and hard components.

Last Tuesday, President Obama delivered the annual State of the Union speech [1] which outlined the policies of the U.S. administration for the final quarter of his presidency.

The Democrats' devastating defeat in the November 2014 midterm elections has obviously put Mr. Obama in a quandary. With the country entering the presidential election cycle, when both parties will put forward fresh candidates, Mr. Obama, on the one hand, is expected to display political will to try to erase the lame-duck image, and on the other, generate sufficient support for the Democratic Party. This predicament appears to explain why the POTUS virtually avoided any kind of tough talk.

Focused mainly on domestic economy, the address covered faster levels of growth, lower unemployment, the receding crisis and other positive trends resulting from the vibrant socio-economic policies of the president and his party who are working hard to support the middle class.

According to Mr. Obama, smart American leadership definitely lies in international counterterrorism efforts.

However, of particular interest seem to be Mr. Obama's views on the role and place of the United States in the modern world and U.S. global strategy in the 21st century. The president's prescription of smart leadership for the two years to come has been formulated by the words of Joseph Nye who in the early 2000s said that the most efficient foreign policy can be found in smart power generated by a combination of soft and hard components [2].

According to Mr. Obama, smart American leadership definitely lies in international counterterrorism efforts through the engagement of countries suffering from terrorism. Other successes of U.S. foreign policy include the restoration of diplomatic relations with Cuba, progress in Iranian nuclear program talks, as well as something of paramount importance, i.e. countering Moscow's aggression, as in isolating and sanctioning Russia so that its economy is now "in tatters." At the same time, he failed even to mention either future steps for settling the Ukraine crisis or prospects for Russian-American relations.

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Pavel Sharikov:
Great Russian-Chinese Cyberwall


The Obama administration and the Democratic Party certainly have fundamental contradictions with the Republican majority on several sensitive matters, cybersecurity being one of them.

Finally, smart leadership can be seen in countering the cyberthreat that has become so prominent that Mr. Obama appealed to Republican legislators about the need for adopting a new cybersecurity act.

Ostensibly unimpressed by the content of the speech, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) immediately after the address told reporters that the president failed "to set the agenda." [3]

The Obama administration and the Democratic Party certainly have fundamental contradictions with the Republican majority on several sensitive matters, cybersecurity being one of them, as legislators have been working on a cybersecurity act for almost a decade. In the previous Congress, the White House was twice about to veto the GOP bill, citing poor privacy guarantees and insufficiently strict requirements for information security in the private sector.

In January, some time before the SOTU, Mr. Obama brought up his cybersecurity initiative [4] and later confirmed that he sees the gravest dangers in the breach of privacy for U.S. citizens, industrial espionage, economic intelligence and the destruction of data networks. In order to combat these menaces, the White House suggests strengthening the public-private partnership, one of the most contentious provisions for business being the "data breach notification" and obligatory notification of clients about leaks if their privacy has been violated by a cyber attack. Since the GOP opposes these rules, slight inter-party differences on cybersecurity have emerged, although to the extent sufficient to prevent the bill from passing in the previous Congress.

Moreover, outrages like the North Korean hacker attack provoked by the Interview movie only increase the priority of cybersecurity issues for the.S. national security.

The current round of Russian-American confrontation appears to have regrettably grown into a consistent trend of global politics.

By no means less important for the U.S. national security seems to be the problem of intelligence and the access of security services to the confidential information of U.S. citizens. Along with assertions that intelligence and related services are working to frustrate cyberthreats, Mr. Obama's speech contained a separate section on the activities of the National Security Agency. Shortly before the address, the German media poured out more of Edward Snowden's disclosures [5], but the president failed to respond to the allegations and only promised to present a report in one month on how the NSA and other agencies are defending the nation from information incursions with no damage to Americans' privacy.

DPA / Spiegel
NSA Headquarters Fort Meade


President Obama's speech only offers one more piece of evidence that cybersecurity is a priority for the White House, and the United States is the most powerful and dangerous player in the global information field.

However, a key avenue for countering cyberthreats seems to lie in international cooperation. This January, Mr. Obama and British Prime Minister David Cameron agreed to hold joint cyberspace exercises [6], while provisions on U.S-Ukraine military cooperation in cyberspace can be found in all anti-Russian initiatives of the previous Congress. The toughest proposals, including cybersecurity cooperation with Ukraine, were rejected but the adopted legislation still provides for information operations in mass media [7].

The current round of Russian-American confrontation appears to have regrettably grown into a consistent trend of global politics, and decades after the collapse of the bipolar international system, the emerging faceoff will unfold in an utterly different environment, largely hinging on the information factor.

Information tools are becoming prominent in defense, domestic and foreign policies, inevitably playing a crucial role in the Russia-U.S. dialogue. And President Obama's speech only offers one more piece of evidence that cybersecurity is a priority for the White House, and the United States is the most powerful and dangerous player in the global information field.

In his last address Tuesday, Mr. Obama also reconfirmed his adherence to the principle of net neutrality [8] , stating that a free and open Internet is an intrinsic element of smart power because it is the dissemination of information that creates the attractiveness needed to achieve success in the 21st century.

1. Remarks by the President in the State of the Union Address | January 20, 2015 http://www.whitehouse.gov/the-press-office/2015/01/20/remarks-president-state-union-address-january-20-2015

2. Get Smart. Combining Hard and Soft Power. By Joseph S. Nye Jr. http://www.foreignaffairs.com/articles/65163/joseph-s-nye-jr/get-smart

3. McConnell: Obama ‘doesn’t set the agenda’ http://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/mcconnell-obama-doesnt-set-the-agenda/2015/01/21/3311dd20-a0f5-11e4-9f89-561284a573f8_story.html

4. Remarks by the President at the National Cybersecurity Communications Integration Center. January 13, 2015 http://www.whitehouse.gov/the-press-office/2015/01/13/remarks-president-national-cybersecurity-communications-integration-cent

5. The Digital Arms Race: NSA Preps America for Future Battle. http://www.spiegel.de/international/world/new-snowden-docs-indicate-scope-of-nsa-preparations-for-cyber-battle-a-1013409.html

6. U.S.-United Kingdom Cybersecurity Cooperation http://www.whitehouse.gov/the-press-office/2015/01/16/fact-sheet-us-united-kingdom-cybersecurity-cooperation

7. United States international programming to Ukraine and neighboring regions. https://www.congress.gov/113/plaws/publ96/PLAW-113publ96.pdf

8. http://www.whitehouse.gov/net-neutrality

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  1. In your opinion, what are the US long-term goals for Russia?
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