K
Kickin' Ass and Takin' Names
Guest
The Bush administration's failure to win Russia's consent to install
U.S. missile defenses in its European backyard and a growing list of
other disputes suggest that President Bush and his aides have misread
the man whose "soul" Bush thought he'd divined when they first met six
years ago.
The U.S.-Russian tensions are a far cry from June 2001, when Bush
declared after his first meeting with Putin in Slovenia that he'd
looked in the Russian leader's eyes, found him "trustworthy" and "was
able to get a sense of his soul."
Bush and his aides "grossly misjudged Putin," considering him "a good
guy and one of us," said Michael McFaul of Stanford University's
Hoover Institution.
The former KGB officer created that illusion partly by appearing to
share Bush's political and religious convictions, standard tradecraft
employed by intelligence officers to recruit spies, he said.
"Putin . . . is a brilliant case officer," said Carlos Pasqual, a
former senior State Department official now at The Brookings
Institution, a center-left policy organization in Washington.
What many experts regard as the real Putin - a hard-line, derisive
Russian nationalist - was on display Friday as he greeted visiting
Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and Defense Secretary Robert Gates
ahead of talks that failed to break the impasses over missile defense
and other key security issues.
After keeping the U.S. officials waiting for 40 minutes, Putin mocked
their mission in front of reporters and television cameras.
"Of course, we can sometime in the future decide that some anti-
missile defense should be established somewhere on the moon . . . ,"
he said.
U.S.-Russian tensions, already at their highest since the end of Cold
War, could worsen in coming months, fanning new regional instability.
Bush's strategy on Russia assumed that Russian President Vladimir
Putin embraced democracy, wanted integration with the West and sought
a "strategic partnership" in which Moscow would acquiesce to U.S.
policies such as NATO expansion. Feuds could be resolved through the
close personal relationship that Bush believed he had with his Russian
counterpart.
Instead, fueled by record oil and natural gas prices and resentment of
what he lambasted in February as Bush's "almost uncontained hyper use
of force," Putin has led global opposition to the U.S. war in Iraq,
hosted Palestinians on the U.S. list of terrorist groups, sold anti-
aircraft missiles and other arms to Iran and stymied Bush's drive to
tighten U.N. sanctions on the Islamic republic for refusing to suspend
uranium enrichment.
The Kremlin has steadily increased spending on defense modernization
and revived symbolic long-range aerial reconnaissance patrols toward
U.S. and European airspace.
Putin also has threatened to re-target Russian nuclear missiles at
Europe if Bush deploys U.S. missile defenses in Poland and the Czech
Republic, declared his intention to trash treaties that eliminate a
class of nuclear missiles and limit conventional military forces in
Europe and compared the United States under Bush to Germany under
Hitler.
U.S. missile defenses in its European backyard and a growing list of
other disputes suggest that President Bush and his aides have misread
the man whose "soul" Bush thought he'd divined when they first met six
years ago.
The U.S.-Russian tensions are a far cry from June 2001, when Bush
declared after his first meeting with Putin in Slovenia that he'd
looked in the Russian leader's eyes, found him "trustworthy" and "was
able to get a sense of his soul."
Bush and his aides "grossly misjudged Putin," considering him "a good
guy and one of us," said Michael McFaul of Stanford University's
Hoover Institution.
The former KGB officer created that illusion partly by appearing to
share Bush's political and religious convictions, standard tradecraft
employed by intelligence officers to recruit spies, he said.
"Putin . . . is a brilliant case officer," said Carlos Pasqual, a
former senior State Department official now at The Brookings
Institution, a center-left policy organization in Washington.
What many experts regard as the real Putin - a hard-line, derisive
Russian nationalist - was on display Friday as he greeted visiting
Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and Defense Secretary Robert Gates
ahead of talks that failed to break the impasses over missile defense
and other key security issues.
After keeping the U.S. officials waiting for 40 minutes, Putin mocked
their mission in front of reporters and television cameras.
"Of course, we can sometime in the future decide that some anti-
missile defense should be established somewhere on the moon . . . ,"
he said.
U.S.-Russian tensions, already at their highest since the end of Cold
War, could worsen in coming months, fanning new regional instability.
Bush's strategy on Russia assumed that Russian President Vladimir
Putin embraced democracy, wanted integration with the West and sought
a "strategic partnership" in which Moscow would acquiesce to U.S.
policies such as NATO expansion. Feuds could be resolved through the
close personal relationship that Bush believed he had with his Russian
counterpart.
Instead, fueled by record oil and natural gas prices and resentment of
what he lambasted in February as Bush's "almost uncontained hyper use
of force," Putin has led global opposition to the U.S. war in Iraq,
hosted Palestinians on the U.S. list of terrorist groups, sold anti-
aircraft missiles and other arms to Iran and stymied Bush's drive to
tighten U.N. sanctions on the Islamic republic for refusing to suspend
uranium enrichment.
The Kremlin has steadily increased spending on defense modernization
and revived symbolic long-range aerial reconnaissance patrols toward
U.S. and European airspace.
Putin also has threatened to re-target Russian nuclear missiles at
Europe if Bush deploys U.S. missile defenses in Poland and the Czech
Republic, declared his intention to trash treaties that eliminate a
class of nuclear missiles and limit conventional military forces in
Europe and compared the United States under Bush to Germany under
Hitler.
