Putin’s words lost on Bush

The News Virginian / News Virginian
Published: April 8, 2008

Huddled with reporters aboard Air Force One after having taken another lump in seven years layered with them, President Bush sought by sleight of speech to turn reality on its head, an awkward enterprise under any circumstances, but one particularly so for the man they call Dubya, given his linguistic encumberances and flawed record in attempting the same on the subject of Iraq.

The president concluded over the weekend a whirlwind tour of Europe, having closed with a stopover in Russia, where it was hoped he could persuade Vladmir Putin to concede the necessity of a European missile defense system. After the leaders dined and danced together with their wives at a Black Sea resort, Putin spoke with a level of clarity that even Bush could not have failed to comprehend: "I want to be understood correctly," Putin said. "Strategically, no change happened in our attitude to U.S. plans."

Those plans consist of building a missile interceptor and radar bases in central Europe so that rogue missiles fired from Iran could be detected and shot down. The Kremlin disputes the concept of an Iranian threat and insists that the rockets' actual target would be Russia's nuclear arsenal.

On the plane ride home, Bush acknowledged, "We've got some work to do to convince the Russian side that the system is not aimed at Russia." Still, regarding Putin, Bush insisted, accompanied by the requisite straight face: "I happen to believe it is a significant breakthrough."

Bush based this remarkable analysis on the Kremlin's stated willingness to discuss further the missile plan, ignoring the fact that Putin had agreed to the same last summer. This is a "breakthrough" in point of rhetoric in the sense that President Clinton's brokered Mideast peace accord was one in point of fact, which is to say, not so much.

In batting aside Bush's hope for a rare taste of presidential success, Putin displayed a bit of the political puissance he has quietly but doggedly developed during the last five years while U.S. attention has been affixed on Iraq.

During that time, Putin has diligently pulled under state control the country's vast energy resources. Russia is the world's largest exporter of natural gas and second largest exporter of oil. Putin recognizes this as the readiest means of returning Russia to prominence as a global power.

That power is one that might well be reflected in a manner familiar to anyone who recalls the most frigid days of the Cold War. Under the watch of Putin, a former KGB agent, Russian dissidents again are imperiled as they were in the days of the Soviet Union.

While America wages an expensive war in Iraq, the one-time superpower driven to financial ruin by war in Afghanistan is rousing from the rubble. That irony, like the obvious meaning of his Russian contemporary's words, is presumably lost on the architect of America's current conflict.