America Hears a Gaffe, Russia Sees a Plot

Well, you (collective, not individual) don't seem to want to comment on the Obama Administration's handling of the "shoe bomber" so ... how about Biden's most recent "gaffe?" Any comments?

August 2, 2009
America Hears a Gaffe, Russia Sees a Plot
By ELLEN BARRY
MOSCOW

AFTER Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr. gave an interview to The Wall Street Journal portraying Russia as a limping and humbled nation, many in Washington responded last week with a helpless shrug: Theres crazy Joe, they said, the guy who once told a wheelchair-bound state senator to stand up for a round of applause.

But in Russia, they werent shrugging. Within hours, a top Kremlin aide had released a barbed statement comparing Mr. Biden to Dick Cheney. Commentators announced Mr. Bidens emergence as Washingtons new gray cardinal the figure who, from the shadows, makes all the decisions that matter. Others said Washingtons mask had been torn off, revealing Mr. Obamas reset as at best insubstantial and at worst duplicitous.

American officials spent several days trying to convince their Russian counterparts that Mr. Bidens words were, for lack of a better label, a gaffe. Russias highest officials have kept silent on the matter, but their initial responses were skeptical.

Biden has said this in such a way that the whole world heard it, said Alexei K. Pushkov, who is the anchor of the current events show Post-Scriptum. And then there are secret, furtive calls in the night, dragging Russian officials from their supper. They want to say this is not true. But somehow everybody still thinks it is.

Among the reasons for their skepticism: In todays Russia, politicians just dont run off at the mouth. Not so long ago, Russian public life was a symphony of embarrassing episodes. Remember when Boris Yeltsin confused Norway with Sweden, suggested that Germany and Japan had nuclear arsenals, and toppled over while saluting an honor guard in Uzbekistan?

That all ended with the presidency of Vladimir V. Putin. Mr. Putin, now Russias prime minister, occasionally departs from statesmanlike language, as when he threatened to hang the Georgian president by his testicles or offered a French reporter an especially thorough circumcision. But coming from Mr. Putin, these statements are expressions of Russian might, something like a political philosophy never, ever mistakes.

For anyone subordinate to the president to allow themselves that freedom is inconceivable, said Vladimir V. Pozner, the host of a talk show on state television.

If its not the No. 1 man or woman, clearly that person has been instructed to say what he or she said, Mr. Pozner said. Its psychologically very difficult for a Russian to believe otherwise. If you write in The New York Times whatever you write, Im sure Mr. Putin will say, Of course. It was ordered.

It will also be hard to convince the Kremlin that the comments dont indicate a deeper drama. Russians have spent months searching for clues to Mr. Obamas true intentions; when Mr. Obama killed a fly during a television interview shortly before traveling to Moscow, for example, several analysts here interpreted it as a message to Russia.

Mr. Biden has now supplied evidence for two plotlines a deep rift within the administration, or a sophisticated game, said Andrei V. Ryabov, a political analyst at Moscows Carnegie Center. This ambiguity, he said, plays into the conviction of Mr. Putin and his team that real events take place far from view, among a handful of powerful individuals, and that public politics are no more than puppetry, decoration in the theater.

Nothing accidental can happen in this system, Mr. Ryabov said. Everything has a hidden meaning. Even accidental words from officials are likely to be read closely; as a Russian proverb has it, What a sober man has on his mind, a drunk puts on his tongue.

Mr. Pushkov was among those who put little credence in Mr. Obamas overtures, and to him, Mr. Bidens words offer a far more honest assessment of American policy. He says he reads in them a split in Washington between cold war heavyweights and a president too weak to bring them to heel.

Its not just a question of schools of thought, he said, dryly, but something far more serious. Schools of thought, he added, are something to be exercised on a veranda with a cup of coffee on a summer evening.

Of course, every warming of the relationship between Moscow and Washington has been a tenuous process, punctuated by false starts and furious backpedaling.

In 1974, after signing on to the idea of peaceful coexistence, Leonid Brezhnev seems to have been called on the carpet by a Central Committee concerned about ceding ground to the United States; he went on to repudiate two key agreements with the Americans. Jimmy Carter, under a drumbeat of criticism for caving in to Russia, halted ratification of the second strategic arms limitation treaty after the Soviets invaded Afghanistan in 1979; he explained that the invasion had changed his view of Moscows intentions.

This thaw seemed tentative, too, even before Mr. Bidens words. The coming months could bring renewed fighting in Georgia, or another gas crisis with Ukraine, or a deadlock on the renegotiation of the Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty.

At this point these were just words unfortunate words, reckless words, but still, it was just words, not of the president but of the vice president, said Dimitri K. Simes, the president of the Nixon Center. The question is what is going to happen next.



Take care.
Blessed Be.
Alice

"Politicians are like diapers. They should be changed frequently and for the same reason." From the movie, "Man of the Year"