Breaking News: The Cold War Is Over!

I knew there had to be some reason I was channel-surfing at 1:30am on a school night. Now I know the reason - it was my destiny to be one of the few East-Coast viewers to see President Bush's speech from Bucharest live (on MSNBC, which seemed to be the only channel to carry it) and to receive this "breaking news":


To be fair to Bush, he delivered the line about the Cold War being over and Russia no longer being our enemy in the manner of one stating the obvious, and its appearance under the "BREAKING NEWS" tagline is the result of MSNBC's laziness with on-screen graphics. What's sad is that in some circles, thanks to the industriousness of the "New Cold War" school of thought, the reminder that the Cold War ended nearly 20 years ago might actually seem like news.

Bush also reiterated his support for NATO Membership Action Plans for Georgia and Ukraine (predictably, the immediate mainstream Russian media reaction seems to be headlining this aspect of the speech). This not exactly breaking news, either - some of the opposition to Bush's stance from our European allies is discussed in this NPR piece, and Matt Rojansky of PSA posted an interesting and thoughtful piece yesterday about NATO expansion, concluding with an April 1st take on Bush's remarks in Kiev:

If I had the President’s ear today, I would advise him to place a call to Vladimir Putin and Dmitry Medvedev, Putin’s incoming successor. He should tell the Russian leaders that this morning’s tough talk about cutting Russia out of the NATO expansion dialogue was just a very poor April Fool’s Day joke. The US-Russia relationship is of great importance to us, and we respect Russia’s legitimate security concerns. It is because we recognize that the Cold War is long over that we want to give Russia a real seat at NATO’s collective security table.

[The rest of the post is worth reading as well, for its look back at NATO expansion rounds past.]


Actually, Bush's Bucharest speech tried to have it both ways, suggesting that NATO should expand but at the same time trying to reassure Moscow that this would not be directed against Russia, and that his pet project white elephant European missile defense system is also not designed to counter Russia's arsenal. Interestingly, RIA Novosti is headlining its initial story on the Bush speech "Bush Calls on Russia to Combat Missile Threat Together," playing up Bush's call for US-Russian cooperation (of course, RIAN also posted, 20 minutes later, an atypically short one-sentence "article" headlined "Kremlin Seriously Considers Recognizing South Ossetia and Abkhazia")


It seems like a difficult needle to thread - promoting NATO's expansion as a way of cementing Ukraine and Georgia's "independence" (that's Bush's word choice, and he is not alone in believing that their independence is imperiled), meanwhile arguing that Russia is not seen as a threat.

The Russian government, though, has its own needle to thread. Although its opposition to NATO expansion into Russia's underbelly is understandable and genuine (NATO expansionists who argue that Russia will eventually fold or that it has little real leverage are in effect advocating a game of chicken with Russia on the issue), it seems unlikely that Russia really wants to make good in the short term on its explicit threats to recognize Abkhazia's independence if Georgia is accepted into the MAP program. It will be very interesting to see what Putin says in his public statements while at the NATO summit. One issue appears to be that he may not get the chance to publicly address the summit - the Russian press is displaying its world-class talent for taking umbrage at imagined national slights.

In any event, it's difficult to imagine that Bush plans to have a positive and productive meeting with Putin later this week if Ukraine and Georgia get MAPs in Bucharest. So perhaps they will get nicely worded statements about cooperation and partnership with NATO but no actual MAPs, and the story of Bush's transatlantic trip will turn out to be the return to a realistic approach - if not an actual rapprochement - with Russia which a number of pundits have advocated of late. I wouldn't want to make any predictions, though, other than the obvious one - that this is going to be an interesting week.

Here's a bonus bit on the idea of a changing US approach to Russia (not immediately relevant, but I've been meaning to post this for a while) from Stephen Sestanovich of CFR, from an event in late February:

I think the phase of, sort of, Western commentary on Russian democratic progress and human rights performance is, sort of, over. The phase that we began at the end -- toward the end of the Cold War has, kind of, played out. And the idea that there's a lot of influence, just in moral opprobrium, is -- that one is not going to work for us as it has. And it -- you know, we might as well think of something, of something new.

If we're going to think of something new, the one thought I would suggest, as this, sort of, starting point for anything, is that it can't be an American attack on, you know, Russia's -- you know, the degree of Russian democratic virtue. It has to be something more broadly agreed among democratic states, and particularly the United States and Europe.

I would say that the administration, in general, has been weak in trying to develop a consensus with Europe about how to deal with Russia -- across the board, whether it's security issues, economic issues, political issues, democracy. And that is now, I think, recognized by the Europeans as something that really does need to be on the agenda of the -- for the U.S. and the Europeans if they want to have any influence in the future.