Bush...bush bush...what the HELL is he going to do wrong next?
Analysis: Is the U.S.-Russia divide as deep as the rhetoric?
By Sheryl Gay Stolberg and David E. Sanger
Monday, June 4, 2007
PRAGUE: Not since the end of the Cold War has the president of the United States headed into a summit meeting with his Russian counterpart that was so fraught with tension, mistrust and the lurking fear that a deteriorating relationship could get much worse.
When President George W. Bush and President Vladimir Putin, both lame ducks looking to build their legacies, meet in the German resort town of Heilgendamm this week for the summit meeting of industrial nations, more than just a nuclear Iran, the future of Kosovo and missile defenses will be on their agenda.
Putin only added to the sense of strain this weekend in an interview he gave to reporters from G-8 countries.
In words echoing the cold war, he warned that Russia would respond to the deployment of American missile defenses by targeting its own missiles against European sites. The decision by the United States and Russia to turn off their missile guidance systems was largely symbolic, since missiles can be quickly retargeted, but it was widely viewed after the collapse of the Soviet Union as a step back from potential military conflict.
"We, of course, are returning to those times," he said, when asked about the cold-war era of hair-trigger confrontation, according to a Kremlin transcript of the interview.
"If part of the strategic nuclear potential of the United States finds itself in Europe and, according to our military experts, threatens us, then we will have to take corresponding retaliatory steps. What are these steps? Of course, we will have to have new targets in Europe."
These remarks continue a caustic patter, including an earlier remark that, through a thin veil, compared the United States to the Third Reich, and a warning from Putin that the world should resist a sole superpower that is "nothing other than diktat, than imperialism."
After that barrage, the big question will be whether the divide is as deep as the rhetoric suggests. Everyone, especially the Europeans for whom the Cold War is not a distant memory, are watching nervously to see which way these two famously stubborn leaders will turn in Heilgendamm.
Will they emphasize their common interests? Or will they continue to snipe at one another in what seems at times to be a replay of the bad old days?
"I would say it's true, the rhetoric has seemed to escalate a little bit in the last several months," Stephen Hadley, Bush's national security adviser, said Friday. "And our view is that we ought to be trying to turn that rhetoric down and focus our efforts on identifying areas where we can work together constructively, and trying to manage the differences the best we can."
Last week Bush extended an unusual offer to the Russian leader, inviting him to visit the Bush family compound on the Maine coast at the beginning of July. It is Bush's parents' home, not his own, and no world leader has received such an invitation since Bush's father occupied the White House.
"I think there must have been peals of delirious laughter echoing around the ornate chambers of the Kremlin when the invitation to go to Kennebunkport arrived," said Zbigniew Brzezinski, who was national security adviser to President Jimmy Carter. "Putin has been spitting at the United States for the last year, and what is the reaction? An invitation to a family gathering."
Some experts say the Kennebunkport invitation was meant to defuse any potential blowups during the Heiligendamm summit. Still, there are no guarantees.
"You can't be sure," said Stephen Sestanovich, an expert on Russia at the Council on Foreign Relations. "Putin is on a tear. One week it's the Third Reich and the next week, it's diktat and imperialism. He is in kind of a snarling frame of mind and it may be that he will pick a fight at the G8, but that hasn't been his habit. The G8 mode is good fellowship and good manners."
Putin made his biggest statement at a speech at a European defense forum, an indictment of American practices that brought a mild and humor-filled rebuttal from Secretary of Defense Robert Gates. "There were a lot of negative parts to the Putin speech, a lot of harsh words," said Brent Scrowcroft, who was national security adviser to Bush's father and an early architect of the transition to the new relationship with Russia. "But it's important to read the whole speech, especially the last part on nuclear issues where Putin listed a lot of areas for cooperation."
Indeed, both Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and Hadley have pointed in recent days to Russian cooperation on limiting Iran's nuclear ambitions. Rice, speaking last week in Potsdam, Germany, described the American-Russian relationship as one of "cooperation and competition, of friendship and friction."
But the limits of that cooperation have yet to be tested, because the United States has not yet tried to get mandatory sanctions in a broad array of Iran's financial network.
As to another area of disagreement - efforts to persuade Russia to accept the American plan to base missile defenses in Poland and the Czech Republic - Hadley said, "I cannot tell you, for the life of me, why they say no."
This will be Putin's last G-8 summit meeting, and it will be Bush's next-to-last. As to whether relations can improve, either between the men or their countries, Sestanovich responded: "Look to 2009."
Steven Lee Myers contributed reporting from Moscow. |
