ურთიერთობები ამერიკის შეერთებულ შტატებსა და რუსეთის ფედერაციას შორის ბარაკ ობამას პრეზიდენტობის დროს: ,,გადატვირთვის’’ პოლიტიკის მარცხი

The purpose of the Master’s thesis is to study the features of the relations between the United
States and the Russian Federation during the presidency of Barack Obama and explain the
reasons which caused the ‘’Reset’’ policy failure. In 2009, the Barack Obama administration
announced the formation of a new foreign policy, in which one of the key roles was defusing
the difficult situation with the Russian Federation and deepening bilateral cooperation.
Nevertheless, as subsequent events have shown, the ‘’reset’’ cannot work effectively and the
relations between US and Russia has not only failed to improve, but went back to the Cold War
level.
The research question is worded as followed: Why did the ‘’Reset’’ policy with Russia turn out
to be unsuccessful for the United States?
Accordingly, the hypothesis has been formulated in the following way: excessive concessions
made to Russia by the Obama Administration under the ‘’Reset’’ policy, namely during the
crisis in Syria and Russian-Ukrainian conflict, not only failed to make Russia’s actions more
constructive, but also facilitated its more aggressive conduct, which caused the ‘’Reset’’ policy to
be unsuccessful.
The paper analyzes and explains the reasons to what extent did the U.S concessions policy
impact on the failure of the “Reset’’ policy. In order to reach this goal, the research reviews two
cases: Syrian Crisis and Russia-Ukraine conflict as examples of the United States’ concession
policy with Russia.
The paper employs the qualitative research methodology. The Normative Foreign Policy
Theory by Natalie Tocci serves as a theoretical framework for the research. The theory defines
the features of the formation of the foreign policy and achieved results by the international
actor