"Look deep into my eyes, soul-searcher"
Bush, aides 'grossly misjudged Putin'WASHINGTON — 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.
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.
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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.
Amazing, you would have thought the Bush administration had sent Maxwell Smart to negotiate. Instead he sent Condoleezza Rice, who...
At Stanford, she has been a member of the Center for International Security and Arms Control, a Senior Fellow of the Institute for International Studies, and a Fellow (by courtesy) of the Hoover Institution. Her books include Germany Unified and Europe Transformed (1995) with Philip Zelikow, The Gorbachev Era (1986) with Alexander Dallin, and Uncertain Allegiance: The Soviet Union and the Czechoslovak Army (1984). She also has written numerous articles on Soviet and East European foreign and defense policy, and has addressed audiences in settings ranging from the U.S. Ambassador's Residence in Moscow to the Commonwealth Club to the 1992 and 2000 Republican National Conventions.
From 1989 through March 1991, the period of German reunification and the final days of the Soviet Union, she served in the Bush Administration as Director, and then Senior Director, of Soviet and East European Affairs in the National Security Council, and a Special Assistant to the President for National Security Affairs. In 1986, while an international affairs fellow of the Council on Foreign Relations, she served as Special Assistant to the Director of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. In 1997, she served on the Federal Advisory Committee on Gender -- Integrated Training in the Military.
Not all is lost perhaps...
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice lambasted Moscow on Monday for using its oil and gas wealth as a "political weapon" and said democratic reforms would strengthen Russia's ties with Washington.
In a speech on the state of U.S.-Russia relations, Rice conceded there was a "certain distance" between Washington and Moscow, but she rejected suggestions there had been a return to the frosty ties of the Cold War era.
She would know.
Posted by kerry at October 23, 2007 02:55 AM