STOP NATO: �NO PASARAN! - HTTP://WWW.STOPNATO.ORG.UK --------------------------- ListBot Sponsor -------------------------- Start Your Own FREE Email List at http://www.listbot.com/links/joinlb ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Moscow Times June 20, 2001 Ljubljana Low Point By Gregory Feifer Gregory Feifer is a Moscow-based fellow at the Institute of Current World Affairs. The amount of hoopla generated by summit meetings between the United States and Russia often forces commentators to read as much as possible into the events. It may be self-reinforcing: The hype somehow has to be justified. After last weekend's meeting between U.S. President George W. Bush and President Vladimir Putin in Slovenia, the spin boiled down to the general opinion that the occasion constituted a positive step forward in bilateral relations. Both leaders were lauded for agreeing to look beyond Cold War-era relations and at the very least work toward reconciling a spate of differences. While I do not mean to deny that the summit was indeed a step away from confrontation and toward cooperation, I think it merits mentioning that the two leaders' rhetoric and body language also showed just how much relations between the two countries have deteriorated. The fact that liberal and conservative commentators � with a couple of notable exceptions � unanimously declared the meeting a success only underlines the extent of the estrangement between Washington and Moscow, chiefly because of the amount of wishful thinking displayed. No two presidents who really trust each other and are confident relations will indeed improve between their countries would have waxed so effusive about one another before the world media in Ljubljana. Bush spoke about the end of the Cold War and declared that Russia is not America's enemy. (What about the past 10 years in which Russia, for all its faults, was at least ostensibly a pretty good friend?) Bush repeated ad nauseam that he trusts Putin, going so far as to say he "was able to get a sense of his soul." Is the dialogue between the two countries so bottlenecked that it needs the U.S. president to transcend it by engaging in metaphysical communion? Later, when asked by a reporter what he offered Putin in the meeting, Bush answered, "logic." After some minutes of listening to the president's confused rambling, the correspondent asked again, and again received nothing but more embarrassing rambling. Putin, by comparison, seemed a seasoned diplomat. Instead of confusion, he stated the obvious. "Friends don't destroy each other," he said in response to a question. "People who cooperate do not base peace on destruction." Much of the discussion at the news conference following the meeting centered on NATO expansion. The delicate fact is that the military alliance does in fact function in opposition to Russia because it aims in part to act as a guarantor of values and behavior antithetical to Russia's. Bush knows that, of course. His administration has contributed its part to souring the relations with its hard-line rhetoric. But instead of taking real actions to demonstrate that Moscow must respect Western values if it is to be accepted in the international community, the Bush White House has resorted to fruitless rhetoric about Russia's diminished role on the world stage. Instead of carrots to encourage Russia to end its brutal campaign in Chechnya, for example, Washington offers provocation that has inflamed Moscow's existing bias toward the United States. It has done so with such counterproductive displays as U.S. Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld's snubbing of then-Security Council chief Sergei Ivanov in Munich earlier this year. For members of an administration purportedly interested in protecting U.S. security, the Bush team could hardly have done more in so little time to undermine it. When it counts, such as during the summit, the Bush administration evidently does little to actively encourage change in Russia. The usual Republican bluster was not in evidence at Brdo Castle, and that does even more to undermine America's position by showing it to be all bark and little bite. Putin, unlike Bush, has nothing to lose and everything to gain on the diplomatic stage at this point. Russia has brought worsening relations with the United States upon itself. Russian politicians, Putin not least among them, have exploited the suffering and frustration of their subjects by stoking general xenophobia and more direct anti-Americanism when it suits their political ends. Moscow railed against NATO bombing in Yugoslavia in 1999, for example, accusing the United States of preparing an attack on Russian soil. (Now that the Russian-backed dictator Slobodan Milosevic is out of power, Putin seems to see no irony in preaching about combating "intolerance and extremism" in the Balkans, as he did during his trip to Belgrade after the summit last weekend.) Putin's credentials as a hard liner are well established in Moscow. His administration has brought back a measure of the fear and arbitrary power once central to the functioning of the Soviet apparatus. When the president acts magnanimously toward Bush on foreign soil � such as by offering documentary proof that Russia had not initially seen NATO as an enemy � he seems stronger at home for doing so. But if Putin's outward role echoes that of Richard Nixon in China, it does not mean the role is substantively the same. U.S.-Russian relations are held hostage by leaders eager to please domestic constituents. They say and do things at home they wouldn't dream of engaging in face-to-face. That is a necessary part of diplomacy, but the hypocrisy cheapens these moments of seeming reconciliation. When Bush and Putin feel the need to assure each other of their personal decency, it shows just how far apart the two really are. Miroslav Antic, http://www.antic.org/ ______________________________________________________________________ To unsubscribe, write to [EMAIL PROTECTED]
