Vladimir Putin -- Russia's president, although the more accurate title would be godfather -- made head-lines last week with a speech in Munich that set a new standard in anti-Americanism.
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When today's world appears too complicated to deal with, some have been known to long nostalgically for the days of the Cold War. It is clear the Russian President Vladimir Putin is among them, judging by his tirade against the United States at the annual Wehrkunde conference on security policy in Munich.
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Since 2003, democratic revolutions in Ukraine and Georgia have dealt stra-tegic blows to the ambition of Russia's leaders to reconstitute the former So-viet empire by retaining political and military suzerainty over their weaker neighbors. But Russia's imperial pre-tensions along its periphery linger.
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Last Sunday, while returning home from Pakistan aboard Air Force One, President Bush received a telephone call from his Russian counterpart, Vladimir Putin. The two men dis-cussed several issues that threaten to disrupt U.S.-Russian solidarity in the war on terror--foremost, Russia's dip-lomatic support for Iran in the dis-pute over its nuclear program at the IAEA, and its decision to welcome Hamas, which recently won control of the Palestinian parliament, to Mos-cow.
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In recent weeks, Russia has distanced itself from positions on the Middle East that it once held in common with the U.S. and the European Union.Russia may have several aims in pur-suing this new Middle East policy. Among them, keeping the price of oil high will certainly accrue to Russia’s short-term advantage. Russia may sense an opportunity to increase its standing in its own backyard, at the expense of the power of its putative Western allies. Most foolhardy of all, Russia may be trying to placate Islamist extremists for the sake of its own security—a policy that is doomed to fail.
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