Hoping for a breakthrough, US and Russian negotiators instead ended high-level talks at yet another impasse. The inability to bridge major differences on missile defense, arms control and Iran is the latest sign of a hardening frost in relations between the US and its former Cold War foe.
One US official told reporters on Friday after the talks that the US still hopes to establish a "virtuous cycle of cooperation" with the Russians. At this point it looks more like a vicious cycle of disagreement.
Broadly, it was a case of two sides failing to see eye-to-eye. The point could hardly have been more clear at the outset when Russian President Vladimir Putin described a central US proposal as pie-in-the sky.
The chief disagreement, spelled out by Putin for US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and Defense Secretary Robert Gates, was over US efforts to expand its missile defense system to Europe. It is a plan that strikes at the heart of Russian concerns about US power and Russia's own role in the world.
"We may decide someday to put missile defense systems on the moon," Putin said with apparent sarcasm, sitting across an oval table from Rice and Gates at the president's country residence outside Moscow. "But before we get to that we may lose a chance for agreement because of you implementing your own plans."
Rice and Gates appeared taken aback -- an interesting spot for two experienced officials who pride themselves on their expertise in Russian affairs. Gates was a career CIA analyst specializing in the former Soviet Union before he rose to be director of the spy agency in the Cold War's final years. Rice is a former senior director of Soviet and East European affairs at the National Security Council.
Aides to both secretaries later insisted that the Putin talks -- once reporters were let out of the meeting room and the formal discussions began -- were modestly productive and not in any sense combative.
Still, the outcome could not have been fully satisfying, with disagreements remaining on numerous issues: the need for missile defense; the terms of a 1990s arms control treaty that Moscow is threatening to abandon; and the US push for sanctions against Iran outside the UN Security Council process.
The spat over missile defense is particularly telling. Russia's objections reflect its worry about the US asserting itself too forcefully in areas once firmly within Russia's sphere of influence: Poland, where the US wants to install 10 missile interceptors, and the Czech Republic, where a high-tech missile tracking radar would be linked to interceptors and other elements of the US system.
In recent months the Russians have sought to push back. Besides fighting the missile defense proposal, they have continued selling arms to Iran and Syria over US objections, and they have made largely symbolic gestures of defiance by flying strategic bomber missions closer to US and British shores. They also have announced progress in developing a weapon system that could defeat US missile defenses.
In Friday's talks, Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov insisted the US freeze its negotiations with Poland and the Czech Republic over terms of hosting US missile defense bases. Rice and Gates said the talks would go forward.
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