Global Insights: Lavrov's Visit Reflects U.S.-Russia 'Normalization'

One sign of how good relations between Russia and the United States have become is that Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov spent three days in high-level meetings in Washington without attracting much attention from the American news media. Bilateral ties may finally be evolving, at least for now, into a more mature, almost normal relationship between two great powers sharing common interests as well as limited areas of disagreement.

Lavrov discussed a range of important issues with his American interlocutors, including Libya, Syria, Iran, Korea, Afghanistan, South Sudan, terrorism, the Israel-Palestine peace process, the United Nations and even Alaska and the Bering Strait separating the two countries. But in contrast to past years, these dialogues -- which included sessions with President Barack Obama and Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton as well as several U.S. senators and business leaders -- were more along the lines of respectful exchanges of views, rather than noisy confrontations. Even the contentious issue of European ballistic missile defense seems to pose less of a problem to the broader bilateral relationship. ...