President Barack Obama and Russia's President Dmitry Medvedev sign a preliminary agreement to reduce the world's two largest nuclear stockpiles by as much as a third, to the lowest levels of any U.S.-Russia accord, before a joint news conference at the Kremlin in Moscow on Monday, July 6, 2009. (AP)

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Last summer, it was all but proxy war between the United States and Russia. Russian troops in neighboring Georgia. Washington’s rhetoric on fire.

This summer, it’s Barack Obama in Moscow, talking about a new beginning in U.S.-Russia ties. He talked with Medvedev. Talked with Putin. He got the start of a nuclear arms deal. He got over-flight rights for the U.S. military to Afghanistan.

But as for a real restart, a reset — not so clear. There are tough issues here with a defiant, oil-rich Russia.

This hour, On Point: Zbigniew Brzezinski, and more, on Obama in Moscow and the push for a reset with Russia.

You can join the conversation. Tell us what you think — here on this page, on Twitter, and on Facebook.

-Tom Ashbrook

Guests:

From Moscow we’re joined by Karen Travers, White House reporter for ABC News. She’s been traveling with President Obama in Russia and covered his speech today and the arms agreement signed yesterday.

From Washington, we’re joined by Zbigniew Brzezinski, national security advisor under President Jimmy Carter, from 1977 to 1981, and now a professor of American foreign policy at the Johns Hopkins School for Advanced International Studies and a trustee of the Center for Strategic and International Studies. 

And joining us from New York is Stephen Cohen, professor of Russian and Slavic Studies at New York University and a contributing editor to The Nation.  His most recent book is “Soviet Fates and Lost Alternatives.”

On Tuesday, Sept. 30, the commanding officer of a U.S. Navy guided-missile cruiser monitors the pirated motor vessel Faina off the coast of Somalia while one of his helicopters provides aerial surveillance. (US Navy photo)

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Somali pirates don’t joke around.

Off one of the busiest sea lanes in the world, where oil-tanker traffic and a whole lot more flow to the Suez Canal, they have been taking ship after ship this year. Boarding bloody if need be, commandeering the bridge, holding crew and cargo ransom for big money.

Ten days ago they hit a deadly jackpot. A Ukrainian freighter stuffed to the gunwhales with heavy weaponry. Soviet tanks. Grenage launchers. Ammo.

Now U.S. warships have the captive ship cornered. A Soviet frigate is on the way. But the problem is spreading.

This hour, On Point: Pirates, global order fraying off the Horn of Africa, and a high seas crisis on the world stage.

-Tom Ashbrook

Guests:

Jeffrey Gettleman, East Africa bureau chief for The New York Times, based in Nairobi, Kenya. He joined us earlier from an island near the coast of Somalia.

Joining us from London is Roger Middleton, consultant researcher for the Africa program at Chatham House in London. He’s the author of “Piracy in Somalia: Threatening Global Trade, Feeding Local War.”

Joining us from New York City is J. Peter Pham, director of the Nelson Institute for International and Public Affairs at James Madison University and a Senior Fellow at the Foundation for Defense of Democracy in Washington, D.C. He writes a weekly column for the New Atlanticist about African security issues. His Sept. 29 column was “The Challenge of Somali Piracy.”

Joining us from Bahrain is Lt. Nathan Christensen, deputy spokesman for the U.S. Navy’s 5th Fleet headquarters in Bahrain.

U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice at NATO headquarters in Brussels, Aug. 19, 2008, after an emergency meeting on the conflict in Georgia. (AP Photo/Yves Logghe)

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What a mess on the Russian front. Russian troops in Georgia, and the West and NATO looking weak. The U.S. and Poland inking a deal to put American missiles a hundred miles from Russia’s border — and Russians warning Poland of nuclear retaliation.

In the 1990’s, Russia seemed like the world’s pet rock. Now, it’s alive with anger, oil-wealth and — in Georgia — action. The new state of affairs seems too hot to be called cold war.

This hour, we’re talking with a top architect of U.S. Russia policy in the 90s, Strobe Talbott, plus a critic of that policy and a top voice now from Moscow on where the U.S.-Russia relationship goes next.

You can join the conversation. Did the U.S. bait post-Soviet Russia with NATO expansion to its doorstep? What’s the right formula now for dealing with a resurgent, energy-rich Russia? Are Russia and the West destined to be enemies? Combatants? If we could replay the ’90s, how might we do it differently? What’s the real U.S. leverage with Russia now, if any? Do you want to hear Russia’s complaints? Or beat it back? Can’t we all just get along? Tell us what you think.

-Tom Ashbrook

Guests:

Strobe Talbott, president of the Brookings Institution, he served as deputy secretary of state from 1994 through 2001, and for a year before that as ambassador-at-large and special adviser to the Secretary of State for the new independent states of the former Soviet Union. He’s the author of “The Great Experiment: The Story of Ancient Empires, Modern States, and the Quest for a Global Nation” (2008).

Stephen Cohen, professor of Russian studies and history at New York University and author of “Failed Crusade: America and the Tragedy of Post-communist Russia” (2002). He is a contributing editor of The Nation and has written recently for the magazine about “McCain, Obama, and Russia.”

More links:

In the news this morning, Poland and the U.S. have signed a missile shield deal. Anne Penketh of The Independent (UK) covers it here.

And a couple of important opinion pieces in today’s papers:

On The New York Times op-ed page, Mikhail Gorbachev says “Russia Never Wanted a War.”

On the Wall Street Journal opinion page, Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov says “America Must Choose Between Georgia and Russia.”

Also in today’s New York Times, columnist Thomas Friedman asks “What Did We Expect?”

There’s plenty more news and opinion on this subject, of course. What are your thoughts? And what are your “must-reads” today?

Russian troops near Khurcha in Georgia's breakaway province of Abkhazia, Aug. 10, 2008. (AP Photo/Vladimir Popov)

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Russian forces rolled south into the heart of Georgia on Sunday, pressing the attack against the former Soviet republic and U.S. ally in the heart of the Caucasus.

The move is Russia’s first use of military force beyond its borders since the Soviet Union fell, and observers around the world are trying to decipher what Prime Minister Vladimir Putin wants.

Some see a neo-czarist Russia bent on restoring its power. Others see Russia responding to the encroachments, and humiliations, of NATO and the U.S. One thing is clear: Russia has changed the game.

This hour, On Point: Russia goes to war.

- Jane Clayson, guest host

* * *

Guests:

Anne Barnard, reporter for The New York Times in Moscow.

Masha Lipman, editor of the journal Pro et Contra published by the Carnegie Moscow Center and an expert in the Center’s Civil Society Program.

Robert Kagan, contributing editor at The Weekly Standard, op-ed columnist for The Washington Post, and author of “The Return of History and the End of Dreams.” His column in today’s Post is “Putin Makes His Move.”

Stephen Sestanovich, senior fellow for Russian and Eurasian Studies at the Council on Foreign Relations, professor of international diplomacy at Columbia University, and author of “Russia’s Wrong Direction: What the United States Can and Should Do.”

Mikhail Khodorkovsky. Photo: Voice of America

Mikhail Khodorkovsky was the richest man in Russia. Multi-billionaire. Oil-rich oligarch. No saint, but no worse a sinner, maybe, than many other Russian oligarchs.

Then he crossed Vladimir Putin. Ended up in a cage, on trial, and then in a prison in Siberia. Gilded life — gone.

Now, an American attorney is fighting to free Khodorkovsky. He says it’s Russia on trial here — and whether or not a now oil-rich Kremlin believes in the rule of law.

His story is a legal thriller where losers can end up in Siberia, or dead. And the answers ripple well beyond Russia.

This hour, On Point: Russia, riches, and the law.

-Tom Ashbrook

* * *

Guests:

Robert Amsterdam, lead legal strategist in the campaign to free Mikhail Khodorkovsky, he’s an attorney specializing in “cause lawyering” and property rights in emerging markets and author of a blog on global politics and business.

Christopher Stewart, contributing editor at Portfolio magazine and author of the recent profile of Robert Amsterdam, “Enemy of the State,” in the magazine’s August issue.

Marshall Goldman, professor of economics emeritus at Wellesley College and author of “Petrostate: Putin, Power and the New Russia.”

Russians went to the polls yesterday and handed Vladimir Putin’s party, United Russia, a landslide victory in the parliamentary elections. It came as no surprise — for weeks, election watchers have pointed to massive voter intimidation.

Putin, as he asserts his “moral authority” to lead Russia, may be an old-style Russian strong-man — but his grip on power is a mix of old and new. And what it means, not just for a resurgent Russia but for global politics, no one knows.

This hour, On Point: Vladimir Putin’s grip on Russia, and Russia’s place in the world.

-Jacki Lyden

Guests:

Arkady Ostrovsky, Moscow correspondent for The Economist.

Dmitry Sidorov, Washington correspondent for Kommersant, a leading Russian newspaper.

Masha Lipman, Editor-in-chief, Pro et Contra Journal, Carnegie Moscow Center, and columnist for The Washington Post.

David Kramer, Deputy Assistant Secretary for European and Eurasian Affairs at the State Department.

Renowned historian Orlando Figes has shed fresh light on the darkest chapter of Russian history — the 25-year reign of Joseph Stalin, from the late 1920s to his death in 1953.

The Great Purge and the Gulag rank with the 20th century’s worst crimes. The numbers — the 700,000 shot in one year during the purge, the 25 million sent to the Gulag — numb understanding.

In his new book, “The Whisperers: Private Life in Stalin’s Russia,” Orlando Figes makes the terrible story new.

This hour, On Point: an up close and personal look at ordinary Stalinism.

-Jack Beatty

Guest:

Orlando Figes, professor of history at the University of London and author of the new book “The Whisperers: Private Life in Stalin’s Russia.”

“On the twelfth of June, 1812, the forces of Western Europe crossed the borders of Russia and war began,” goes Leo Tolstoy’s epic novel “War and Peace.” “That is,” wrote Tolstoy, “an event took place contrary to human reason and to the whole of human nature.”

And in a pair of lines, we are deep in the onslaught of Napoleon and the wonder of a great Russian mind. The battlefields and ballrooms and human hearts of Tolstoy’s sprawling world, and maybe our own. It’s out in a great new translation.

This hour, On Point: Tolstoy’s great “War and Peace” and the couple who have brought it to life, again.

-Tom Ashbrook

Guests:

Richard Pevear and Larissa Volokhonsky, translators of a new version of “War and Peace” and best-selling versions of “The Brothers Karamazov” and “Anna Karenina.” They are a husband-and-wife team that has published translations of 14 Russian works, including those of Chekhov, Gogol and Bulgakov.