Should Ray of Ray’s Hell Burgers ever be at a loss for an eye-catching menu item, he can certainly add a ‘reset burger’.  Unless you are entirely impervious to news of a non-verbal nature or have been cruelly denied media access these past days, it seems unlikely that you will have missed the numerous pics of Presidents’ Medvedev and Obama’s fast food pitstop in Arlington, Viriginia.  The media has naturally been delightedly waxing metaphorical about burger bonhomie and a fast-food fast-forward.  Nor has Coca Cola has been oblivious to the gastronomically-themed detente, seizing the opportunity to sell its version of a traditional Russian soft drink called kvass in the New York City area.  What we could suggest is that some critics might consider burger diplomacy to be rather an apt epithet for a relationship that is, in the moment, enticingly satisfying, but in the long term, possibly artery-blocking: as the Russian president put it, ‘not quite healthy, but very tasty’. 

Other journalists have also reminded readers to consider that belief in the import of an Obama-Medvedev meeting is predicated, to some extent, on the notion that the President has the power to change relations.  Simon Tisdall in the Guardian encourages us to take this news, like french fries, with a pinch of salt.  Whilst Medvedev was hobnobbing with the governator and chewing the fat with his friend Obama on Capitol Hill, Putin has been engaged in iron-fisted wrangling with Belarus’ Alexander Lukaschenko over gas:

President Dmitry Medvedev this week stepped up his campaign to convince the west that Russia is changing and can now be counted on as a reliable political and business partner. But even as he toured California and talked of creating a Russian equivalent of Silicon Valley backed by foreign investment, the senior partner in Kremlin Inc, prime minister Vladimir Putin, was up to his old tricks.