Putin's Legitimate Point

Given the fires the U.S. is attempting to extinguish around the world, many the result of incompetence and not happenstance, why is it fanning a deliberate one in Russia?

At issue is the anti-missile batteries that the Bush administration insists on installing in Poland and the Czech Republic. Earlier this month, the Pentagon yet again crowed over a false test of the anti-ballistic system in which a missile unprotected by decoys was shot down by another missile.

In short -- after more than a quarter-century of development, the technology still does not yet work under authentic conditions. Even if it gets installed, even with hard-fought Russian agreement, North Korea, Iran or whomever will know that the system can be confounded with simple diversion.

Considering the many crucial matters on which to debate Russia (Iran, Iraq, Syria, abuse of petro-power, trans-Caspian pipelines, to name a few), one wonders why Condi Rice and Robert Gates were in Moscow pounding the table on an empty issue.

Moscow makes a practice of provoking incredulity on the world stage. But this is an example of Washington's immature foreign policy leadership.

After six years of repudiated treaties, Gates also kept a straight face while nettling Putin over his threats to withdraw from a couple. ``Europeans are beginning to wonder what the Russians are all about,'' he said deadpan today in Moscow. Read Bloomberg account

The West needs to get serious. Drop the non-issues and talk turkey. Warsaw and Prague will still be game when the system is actually functioning.

Moscow's Red Lines: Kosovo, Missiles and Berezovsky

Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov has used the occasion of a university speech to lay down an implacable position on some of the most divisive issues between Moscow and the West. It was another indication that Moscow is engaged as much in policy as in image-building as someone no longer to be trifled with.

Here is the first paragraph of the Agence France Press story: Russia will not back down on "red line" issues including the future of Kosovo and opposition to US plans for an anti-missile defence system in central Europe, Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said Monday. Read story

And an important quote from the piece: Lavrov said that some were worried by "the rapid rebirth of our country as one of the leading countries of the world. However, this does not mean that it's necessary to think up yet another myth about the Russian threat."

Steve's comment: Lavrov made the remarks today at Moscow State Institute of International Affairs. For those accustomed to negotiating with Moscow, whether during the Soviet or post-Soviet period, it is nothing new for it to "stick to our position until the end," as Lavrov put it.

Its immovable positions, he said, include a refusal to hand over Andrei Lugovoi to Britain in the case of the Alexander Litvinenko murder, rejecting Kosovo independence unless Belgrade itself agrees, and opposing Washington's plans to install an anti-missile shield in Poland and the Czech Republic (on the last item, one wonders about the hulabaloo on either side over an as-yet unproven system).

Lavrov also resurrected Moscow's chagrin over Britain's sheltering of oligarch Boris Berezovsky, whom he called one of several "odious characters" from Russia living there.

As a whole, these do not differ fundamentally from postures Russia has taken previously during the post-Soviet period. What is different is that it appears unlikely this time to shift position. And that appears to be as much show as principle.