13 July 2009 America’s most important national security concern is not Iran, Iraq, Al Qaeda, Afghanistan or North Korea. It is Russia, which has over 2,000 nuclear warheads pointed at the United States.

Clearly, Washington’s first priority is maintaining correct, civilised relations with Moscow. That means avoiding confrontation, and treating Russia as an equal.

The Bush administration put the US and Russia on a collision course by expanding American strategic influence into the Baltic, East Europe, Georgia and Ukraine. Bush’s plans for an anti-missile system in the Czech Republic and Poland (only 190 km from Russia’s border) to supposedly shoot down Iranian nuclear-armed missiles that don’t exist was an act of stupidity and pointless belligerence. Moscow was predictably enraged.

Last year, the Bush administration encouraged Georgia’s not so bright leader to invade the pro-Russian breakaway region of South Ossetia, sparking a short, nasty Russo-Georgian conflict that brought Washington and Moscow into dangerous confrontation. US warships moved into the Black Sea and US military aircraft began ferrying supplies to Georgia. Imagine America’s reaction of Russia began arming Mexico and sending warships to cruise off Miami.

President Barack Obama wisely went to Moscow this week to push what he called the ‘restart’ button on battered US-Russian relations. The two powers signed another nuclear arms reduction treaty making modest cuts in their nuclear arsenals over ten years to 1,500-1,675 warheads each – still enough to destroy civilisation three times over.

This was a major disappointment. Neither side needs more than a few hundred nuclear warheads. In fact, the ‘anti-war’ Obama should have begun seriously negotiating scrapping all nuclear weapons rather than modest reductions. Every American president since Dwight Eisenhower called for global nuclear disarmament, mostly recently Barack Obama – but to no avail.

The US and Russia are also violating the 1968 Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty which called on all nuclear powers to totally eliminate their nuclear weapons.

Obama came away from Moscow with the Kremlin’s curious agreement to allow the US to fly soldiers and supplies across Russian territory to Afghanistan. Either Moscow got some serious secret payoffs from Washington, or the Kremlin is happy to see the US sink ever deeper into the Afghan morass.

President Obama was politely received in Moscow by President Dimitri Medvedev and Prime Minister Vladimir Putin. However, Obama’s golden oratory did not move Russia’s leaders or people. Both remained deeply skeptical of Washington’s professions of friendship and concerned by America’s growing influence around Russia’s borders.

A just-issued World Public Opinion survey finds that opinion of President Obama is generally positive on a personal level. But 66-68 per cent of British, French, Poles, Ukrainians, Iraqis and Egyptians surveyed believed the US was abusing its great power. In Russia, the result was 75 per cent. In two key US allies, an alarming 86 per cent in Turkey, and 90 per cent in Pakistan.

Russia and the Muslim world are waiting to see President Obama turn his professions of change, friendship, and improved relations into actions. Unfortunately, they seem to be seeing the opposite.

The US is pressing ahead with the Polish/Czech missile project, still wants to bring Ukraine and Georgia into NATO, and is expanding American strategic power into former Soviet Central Asian Republics. In short, surrounding Russia on the strategic chessboard.

These actions threaten both Russia and the US. Russia holds a nuclear gun to America’s head, as America does to Russia.

The two great powers cannot afford any confrontations and crises when nuclear annihilation is only a button-push away.

Is Washington really ready to risk a possible nuclear war with Moscow over Georgia, Abkhazia, South Ossetia or Luhansk, Ukraine – places very few Americans could find on a map if their lives depended on it. Building anti-missile sites on Moscow’s doorstep is a reckless and pointless provocation. You don’t kick a man in the shins who is holding a gun to your head.

Russians, peoples of the Muslim world, and some Americans are wondering if they are seeing Bushism without Bush?

Half a century ago, President Dwight Eisenhower warned Americans about the growing power of the military-industrial complex. Is the updated version -- the financial-military-industrial complex—making US foreign policy no matter who is in the White House?

Hopefully not. But we were hoping for much more change in foreign policy from President Obama than we have so far seen.

Eric S Margolis is a veteran US journalist who has reported from the Middle East, Pakistan and Afghanistan for several years.