During her 48 hours in the Russian capital, Clinton will also meet with members of the Mideast Quartet -- the European Union, Russia, the United Nations, as well as the United States -- to discuss the latest developments in the Middle East peace process.
Washington has been leading the effort to restart stalled peace talks, but the current diplomatic crisis between Washington and Israel over Israel's plans to build new Jewish settlements in a Palestinian area of East Jerusalem has significantly lowered hopes for progress. Instead, all eyes will be on whether Clinton can finally tie off negotiations on a successor to the 1991 Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty (START), which expired in December.
Obama and Medvedev agreed in July that their countries should each slash the number of deployed strategic warheads and delivery systems by at least 25 percent. Almost nine months later, a new treaty remains unsigned, held up by disagreements over issues including verification methods and the recently announced U.S. plan to base part of its missile-defense shield in Romania.
Reports say the draft treaty has been ready for months, but negotiators in Geneva have been hammering out more than 100 pages of details in the protocol that accompanies the agreement. Clinton's trip to Moscow comes as officials in both governments say the two sides have reached a bridgeable distance in their differences.
Following a March 13 phone conversation between Obama and Medvedev, a White House spokesman said the two men had "had a good conversation" about "the progress and consensus reached" in Geneva, and added, "Both leaders are committed to concluding an agreement soon."
The Kremlin sounded more optimistic, saying, "It is now possible to talk about specific dates for the submission of the draft START treaty for signing by the heads of state." That echoed comments by Foreign Minister Lavrov, who a few days earlier said negotiators "want everything to be completed in the next two to three weeks."
Baby Steps
But James Dobbins, a former U.S. assistant secretary of state for Europe who now directs the RAND Corporation's International Security and Defense Policy Center, says that doesn't mean Clinton will return to Washington with a deal in hand.
"This agreement has always been a few weeks away, and yet in the end it's been impossible to close the remaining differences," Dobbins says. "I would interpret what the Russians had to say as [meaning that] there's still some unresolved issues [and] that they still hope they can push the U.S. a little further on these, but that the differences aren't that great, and that there is some chance that there'll be a convergence."
The White House insists it's in no rush to finalize the new treaty before Obama hosts 44 heads of state at the Nuclear Security Summit in Washington on April 12-13, but a signed agreement by then would stand as a powerful symbol of a world free of nuclear weapons as envisioned by Obama.
Steven Pifer, a former U.S. ambassador to Ukraine who now directs the arms control initiative at the Brookings Institution, points out that the original architects of the START treaty took more than six years to reach agreement, and the current process has only been under way for nine months.
"I think it's good news that the Kremlin is beginning to talk now about signing the treaty," Pifer says. "And my impression, in fact, is that while Secretary Clinton will certainly talk about where the START negotiations are, it's not like she's having to go to [resolve] some crisis point. I think that seems to be behind us."
Hand-Wringing
Late last fall there were high hopes that a treaty would be signed before START expired on December 5, and the delay in reaching an agreement has caused more than a few Russia watchers to wonder aloud whether the White House's much talked about "reset" in relations between Washington and Moscow has begun to slip.
Adherents of this view point to Moscow's anger at the U.S. plan to build part of its missile-defense system in Romania and its characterization of NATO's expansion plans as something akin to "a violation of international law." Critics also note that Clinton recently rejected Moscow's calls for a new European security structure.
An article in the current U.S. edition of "Time" magazine declares: "U.S.-Russia Relations: In Need Of A New Reset." It goes on to quote a senior Obama administration official as saying, "We've definitely overloaded the circuits in this relationship."
But many observers say the new relationship between Washington and Moscow has already borne fruit and will continue to do so. Russia is allowing U.S. military overflights to Afghanistan, and, perhaps most critically, it has indicated that it is prepared to support a targeted sanctions package at the United Nations to punish Iran for a lack of transparency over its nuclear program.
Pifer says the reset may not be moving as fast as some people would like, but a glance back to a recent low point in U.S.-Russian relations -- in August 2008, right after the Russian-Georgian war -- puts the progress in context. He calls the difference between then and now "significant."
It's a view shared by Dobbins, who notes that there will always be disagreements between the former Cold War foes.
"The U.S. wasn't going to make substantial concessions on many of the things that the Russians would like to see, so there were always limitations," Dobbins says.
Talking Tehran
Iran is Clinton's other main focus in Moscow, and on this issue much of the groundwork has already been laid. Russia has made it clear that it does not want Iran to obtain a nuclear weapon and that the time for sanctions is fast approaching.
But three times previously, Moscow has successfully removed the teeth from Iran sanctions at the UN Security Council. This time, Russian officials sound considerably more convinced of the U.S. position -- which is that a package of tough, targeted, and painful sanctions aimed at Iran's leaders is justified after months of failed diplomacy over its disputed nuclear program.
But they still haven't explicitly said they will stand arm in arm with the United States when the time comes. Pifer says they probably won't after this latest round of U.S. diplomacy, either.
"I think the Russians will be prepared to adopt significantly tougher sanctions than they have in the past when this comes up to the UN Security Council," Pifer says. "I suspect in the end, though, it won't be quite as tough as Washington might like."
He says Russia, which has maintained a long-term diplomatic relationship with Iran, may not want to see Iran with a nuclear weapon, but it doesn't feel the same urgency as Washington does. In Moscow's view, Pifer says, a nuclear Iran is "not a nightmare scenario, as it is in Washington," but rather "something that they believe they can deal with."
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