...It will also be hard to convince the Kremlin that the comments don't
indicate a deeper drama. Russians have spent months searching for clues
to Mr. Obama's 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.
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/08/02/weekinreview/02barry.html?ref=weekinre
view&pagewanted=print
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: There's 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 weren't shrugging. Within hours, a top Kremlin aide
had released a barbed statement comparing Mr. Biden to Dick Cheney.
Commentators announced Mr. Biden's emergence as Washington's new "gray
cardinal" - the figure who, from the shadows, makes all the decisions
that matter. Others said Washington's mask had been torn off, revealing
Mr. Obama's "reset" as at best insubstantial and at worst duplicitous.
American officials spent several days trying to convince their Russian
counterparts that Mr. Biden's words were, for lack of a better label, a
gaffe. Russia's 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 today's Russia, politicians
just don't 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
Russia's 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 it's not the No. 1 man or woman, clearly that person has been
instructed to say what he or she said," Mr. Pozner said. "It's
psychologically very difficult for a Russian to believe otherwise. If
you write in The New York Times whatever you write, I'm sure Mr. Putin
will say, 'Of course. It was ordered.' "
It will also be hard to convince the Kremlin that the comments don't
indicate a deeper drama. Russians have spent months searching for clues
to Mr. Obama's 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 Moscow's 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. Obama's
overtures, and to him, Mr. Biden's 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.
"It's 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 Moscow's intentions.
This thaw seemed tentative, too, even before Mr. Biden's 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."
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