by James Rickards
Daily Reckoning
U.S. relations with Russia have run hot and cold for the past ten years.
In March 2009, shortly after the Obama administration first came into office, Hillary Clinton met with Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov in Geneva. It was her first meeting with Lavrov since Clinton had become secretary of state.
Relations between Russia and the United States had been under stress because of Russia’s invasion of Georgia in 2008 during the George W. Bush administration. Obama and Clinton wanted to reset the relationship and move into a less adversarial posture.
As a goodwill gesture, Clinton asked her aides to create a large red reset button (similar to the “easy” buttons used in the old Staples advertising campaign) with the word “reset” in Russian. The button was put in a case and presented to Lavrov as a gift at the Geneva summit.