Special Report - How the U.S. made its Putin problem worse

[dipsydoodle]

(Reuters) - In September 2001, as the U.S. reeled from the terrorist attacks on the World Trade Centre and the Pentagon, Vladimir Putin supported Washington's imminent invasion of Afghanistan in ways that would have been inconceivable during the Cold War.

He agreed that U.S. planes carrying humanitarian aid could fly through Russian air space. He said the U.S. military could use airbases in former Soviet republics in Central Asia. And he ordered his generals to brief their U.S. counterparts on their own ill-fated 1980s occupation of Afghanistan.

During Putin's visit to President George W. Bush's Texas ranch two months later, the U.S. leader, speaking at a local high school, declared his Russian counterpart "a new style of leader, a reformer…, a man who's going to make a huge difference in making the world more peaceful, by working closely with the United States."

For a moment, it seemed, the distrust and antipathy of the Cold War were fading.

Then, just weeks later, Bush announced that the United States was withdrawing from the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty, so that it could build a system in Eastern Europe to protect NATO allies and U.S. bases from Iranian missile attack. In a nationally televised address, Putin warned that the move would undermine arms control and non-proliferation efforts.

http://uk.reuters.com/article/2014/04/18/uk-ukraine-putin-diplomacy-special-repor-idUKBREA3H0OS20140418

[pscot]

1. "That fight..vaporized the relationship" Weiss said

In 2011, Putin accused Secretary of State Hillary Clinton of secretly organizing street demonstrations after disputed Russian parliamentary elections. Putin said Clinton had encouraged "mercenary" Kremlin foes. And he claimed that foreign governments had provided "hundreds of millions" of dollars to Russian opposition groups.
"She set the tone for some opposition activists, gave them a signal, they heard this signal and started active work," Putin said.
.....

In 2012, Putin was elected to a third term as president and launched a sweeping crackdown on dissent and re-centralization of power. McFaul, then the U.S. ambassador in Moscow, publicly criticized the moves in speeches and Twitter posts.

In the interview, McFaul blamed Putin for the collapse in relations. McFaul said the Russian leader rebuffed repeated invitations to visit Washington when he was prime minister and declined to attend a G-8 meeting in Washington after he again became president. Echoing Bush-era officials, McFaul said it was politically impossible for an American president to trade Russian cooperation on Iran, for example, for U.S. silence on democracy in Russia and Moscow's pressuring of its neighbours.
...

Andrew Weiss, a Russia expert at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, said that clashes over democracy ended any hopes of U.S.-Russian rapprochement, as they had in the Bush administration.

[swilton]

2. The article

fails to mention the influence (negative) of National Security Advisor/Secretary of State Condosleeza Rice from the first Bush Administration. Her specialty was Russia/Soviet Union and she orchestrated the withdrawal from the ABM treaty and the collapse of the START II framework which followed.

[KoKo]

3. True....wondered about that..

[KoKo]

4. What was Obama reacting to in that photo. Never have seen him make such a face...

Would love to have been a fly on the wall for that one.