Obama & Russia the Great

Obama has entered the White House and gone gray faster than we can say "cottage cheese." He stayed silent on Israel before he entered Capitol Hill in December, faced a severely cracked world economy, emphasized putting troops back into Afghanistan and faced his own whiff of opposition in London this past week at the G20 Summit. CNN International's Ralitsa Vassileva wrote an interesting blog on Obama trying to close the Atlantic gap b/t the U.S. and European countries.

The news anchor notes that Obama's foreign support in Afghanistan is growing weaker. She also stated that the U.S. relationship with Russia is tense. And in order to continue moving forward with Afghanistan, since getting through Pakistani border is dangerous, -will basically take an act of truce with Moscow. Yet Russia seems to have it's own power struggle as Medvedev is trying to rise as the true leader of the country as Putin still sits with a grip on the government's practices and policies. Of course, there is also the state of the Czech Republic and the Ukraine. Their grievances cannot go ignored.

Vassileva said, "President Obama's foreign policy is helping restore America's image around the world, but the U.S. will still have to rely more on self-help than it's allies..." If the latter is the case then, is the former still true? And what of the protests in London and across Europe last week? Ultimately, what do you think?