As policy initiatives go, the "reset button" didn't exactly have the smoothest of rollouts. On March 6, 2009, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton presented her Russian counterpart Sergei Lavrov with a literal button meant to symbolize the Obama administration's intention to repair frayed ties with Russia. Unfortunately, one misplaced syllable on the Cyrillic label meant that the button actually said "overcharge," not "reset," and Clinton was subjected to a few days of media mockery in both capitals.
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But despite (or perhaps because of) the initial gaffe, the phrase caught on. More than a year later, and just ahead of Russian President Dmitry Medvedev's visit to Washington next week, "reset button" has become shorthand for the administration's entire Russia policy. Virtually every big-think article or op-ed written on U.S.-Russia relations since that day has referred to the reset button either admiringly or disparagingly.
What's more, the phrase has gone viral. Commentators have invoked the reset button in discussions of U.S. policy on Iran, Afghanistan, Turkey, Israel, Islam, Britain, Latin America, BP, climate change, Africa, health care, the economy, the war on drugs, and even the Obama presidency itself.
Now, when hostile leaders like Venezuelan strongman Hugo Chávez talk about reaching out to the United States, they say they're "willing to press the reset button." When Obama makes a major policy address on a controversial topic like the Gulf oil spill, the question pundits ask is whether he will be able to "hit the reset button."
One might almost get the impression that the U.S. political and media establishment has become one giant tech-support line, where the first response to any problem is, "Have you tried restarting the machine?"
"It definitely became a much bigger metaphor than was originally intended," said one senior administration official who spoke on condition of anonymity. "It was not a conscious thing that we were going to go out and create this image. It's since been codified. Not by us, by the way."
The phrase, in verb form, actually dates back to the presidential transition period when then President-elect Obama told NBC's Tom Brokaw that "it's going to be important for us to reset U.S.-Russian relations." But it entered the popular lexicon when Vice President Joe Biden used it during a widely touted foreign-policy address at a security summit in Munich in February 2009.
"The last few years have seen a dangerous drift in relations between Russia and the members of our alliance," Biden said, referring to NATO. "It is time -- to paraphrase President Obama -- it's time to press the reset button and to revisit the many areas where we can and should be working together with Russia."
The basic premise of the strategy is that on the major priorities of U.S. foreign policy -- containing Iran, fighting international terrorism, and reducing the risk of nuclear weapons -- there's no reason for the United States and Russia to be at odds. By focusing on these areas, there's potential for "win-win" outcomes rather than "zero-sum" competition. "This was a fairly radical notion in U.S.-Russia relations," says the administration official.
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