No lobster, says Putin

Miguel Murado

For his last meeting with Vladimir Putin, President Bush did an extra effort as a host. Like a groom in a desperate bid to impress, he took his guest to see his parent’s. Literally. In the residence ex-President Bush senior has by in the see in Maine, Putin was treated to a day out fishing and to a dinner with lobster as the main course. Maybe the lobster wasn’t that great, for, less than a month later, Putin is putting an abrupt end to President Bush’s charm offensive and has just given him a diplomatic slap in the face. He is withdrawing from the Conventional Arms Control Treaty (CTE).

Is not as if the CTE matters that much. As of now, a war in Europe is pure science fiction and, in practice, all this fuss only means that NATO won’t be able to monitor on the ground what it can monitor perfectly well from its satellites anyway. The whole thing is about gestures, and, seen from Moscow’s viewpoint, one must admit that it make sense. After all, the truth is that it’s NATO that is refusing to sign the CTE’s revision agreed in 1999. Even worse, it is Washington who withdraw from the Anti-Ballistic Missiles Treaty in 2001, a far more disquieting decision than this one made by the Kremlin. What Putin is doing is making clear that Russia feels within its rights to imagine itself as the military superpower no longer is, and also within its rights to feel threatened when someone deploys missiles close to its borders, which is what the Americans intend to do in the Czech Republic and Poland. Add to those the wave of anti-West sentiment unleashed by the Russian spy affair in London and it’s easy to imagine why it pays off for Putin in the domestic front to make such gestures of defiance. It’s not coincidence that in Moscow they are restoring these days the statue of Zhukov, the Stalinist Marshal who conquered half of Europe from the jaws of the Nazis, nor that the Russian TV is encouraging the Russo-phone minority in Estonia to demonstrate against the removal of a monument in tribute to the Red Army. The price of oil, he GDP and patriotism, all three grow steadily in Russia at the same time.

If Bush thought he could sort this whole thing out with just a fishing day he was dead wrong. Furthermore, it was the Russian President the only one who did made a capture that day: a 76 centimetres long bass. They could have cooked it with marinated sauce, but Bush stuck to the lobster menu and also to his refusal to the Russian proposal of a radar station which would monitor the American missiles in Europe. Wrong dish, wrong negotiating strategy.

(Miguel Murado is a former Middle East correspondent and current political analyst for the Spanish newspaper La Voz de Galicia)

Miguel Murado
La Voz de Galicia,