Word: putin
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...Bush administration, which has made a national missile defense an almost obsessive focus of its foreign policy, seemed to score a coup of sorts last week when Russian President Vladimir Putin offered an anti-missile proposal. Putin's plan accepted the possibility of certain types of limited missile defenses. However, on close examnination, the proposal looks more like a mere barganing ploy vastly different from the system Bush would build. This gap between the president's designs and the systems our foreign allies and partners would support shows how much the U.S. stands to lose diplomatically if it continues...
...Putin's counter-proposal was motivated by Russia's wariness that a missile defense would render its aging nuclear stockpile obsolete. Putin's suggestion of a limited theater system to protect Europe from missile attacks by rogue nations would have been based on already-existing Russian technology and would have been compatible with the 1972 Anti-Ballistic Missile treaty, an agreement that currently prohibits the deployment of large-scale missile defenses. However, Putin's offer would have dealt only with Europe, not the United States. As a result, it should not be seen as an acceptance of the principle...
Then there's the National Missile Defense (NMD) system that Bush has made his pet rock. Bush seems to put as much faith in NMD as he does in Jesus, and he offends as many people along the way. Defense experts decry the danger, Democrats bemoan the cost and Putin is giving us all kinds of spooky looks. Annoying Canadians may be excusable, but I draw the line at angering leaders who look like Bond villains and who can blow up the world at a command. (The command is "Blow up the world...
...Bush appears to be carrying on his family's diplomatic tradition that, until now, has been highlighted by a certain meal that his father shared with the Japanese prime minister. Junior, in his own way, is worse. On his first phone call with Russia's Putin, Bush reportedly greeted him as "Ostrich Legs." Putin, used to being called things like, "Mr. President," "Mr. Putin," or "Aaaaah!" was, sources say, not amused...
...deals to be signed, as bureaucracy, xenophobia and corruption combined to thwart their dreams of bringing Sakhalin's well-known oil riches to the outside world. But in recent months, the oilmen have turned almost giddy--buoyed in equal measure by the high price of crude and President Vladimir Putin's pledge to build a legal foundation for the West's multibillion-dollar oil bet on Russia...