Traditional hand-painted birch nesting dolls, the Russian name "matryoshka," painted with the images of U.S. President George W. Bush and is displayed for sale at Moscow''s Red Square.
Photo: AP
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Russia - U.S. Tension
Relations between Russia and the United States have reached the stage where “it's better to chew than talk”. Taking the entire set of bilateral and international problems, there has probably never been such an open confrontation in the post-Soviet period. Meanwhile, at the highest levels, they would rather hush it up.
Recall the end of last year. First, Russian President Vladimir Putin unequivocally supported President George Bush in the elections. Then, after George Bush won and his administration assailed the results of the runoff of the elections in Ukraine, he suddenly changed his opinions drastically and declared that Russia strongly opposed attempts to reshape everyone “using the barrack-room principles of a unipolar world system”. At the time it seemed that Washington should have expressed outrage and threatened, if not sanctions, then at least firm diplomatic measures. But nothing of the sort happened – on the contrary, statements made in Washington gave the idea that it fully understood Moscow's concern.
Then there was Defense Minister Sergey Ivanov's visit to the US. To all appearances, he was assigned the role of “evil investigator” in the present Russian power structure, acting as the sharpest critic and allowing the president to get out of an awkward situation and appear in the eyes of the West as someone more deliberative and pragmatic. Just before the visit, there were fears that the defense minister, as always, would speak harshly and directly, which would leave his American listeners with a choice: either to react just as harshly, drop the matter quietly, or laugh it off.
The fears proved to be groundless: even on the most controversial question – Russian-Iranian cooperation in the nuclear sphere – Sergey Ivanov pretended that nothing terrible was happening, and his American counterpart, Donald Rumsfeld, pretended to believe it. At the same time, both sides were ready to seize on the problem of control over sales of antiaircraft missile systems, clearly aiming to make it the central one at the upcoming summit.
There was no argument: the problem of antiaircraft missile systems is very serious, and their uncontrolled proliferation around the world is a real threat to international security. But is this problem so important that heads of state, rather than the heads of the competent departments, need to discuss it? Are there really no more serious problems in Russian-American relations that demand the authoritative word of the heads of the two powers?
The explanation seems to be as follows: neither the United States nor Russia is interested in discussing issues on which the interests of the two sides actually diverge. It is not to Washington's advantage “to let Russia off the leash” and risk having it jump from the camp of strategic allies, if not to the camp of outright enemies, then at least into a strategic alliance with the leading friendly rivals of the US in the international arena (for example, with Germany and France). And, for the time being, it is inconvenient for Moscow to damage relations with Washington. Thus, the topic of the next summit could well be a ban on butterfly hunting in the Andes.
Boris Volkhonsky
All the Article in Russian as of Jan. 13, 2005
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