Are Bush and Putin returning to a new Cold War?

JYOTI MALHOTRA

Berlin, June 7, 2007 : The shifting tides of history have always claimed Germany for their major share of attention. From Potsdam to Heilingendamm, at the crossroads of both empire and ideology, Germany has more often than not been in the crossfire of Cold Wars and conflict zones.

Over the last week, a new Cold War seemed to threaten Europe’s new prosperity as US President George Bush and an assertive Russian president Vladimir Putin exchanged angry insults over an American proposal to deploy a missile defence system right at Russia’s doorstep, is in Poland and the Czech Republic.

Bush had argued that it needed the missisle system to counter threats from Iran and North Korea, and asked Putin to ``stop hyperventilating’’ about the proposal

But in Heilingendamm, over the last 24 hours, Putin, keenly aware that an economically weak Russia may not be able to take on the combined might of the US superpower and its European allies, stepped back from the face-off and offered a compromise.

Putin told the US that instead of building the missile defence system in Poland and Czechia, two former Soviet satellite states, it could build it in the Caucasian nation of Azerbaijan.

Putin, who believes the missile system is really intended to monitor Russia’s defences, had said that Russia would take retaliatory steps if the US went ahead. He pointed out that neither Iran nor North Korea had the capability to deploy intercontinental ballistic missiles.

The Putin face-saver has elicited a huge sight of relief from Europe, even as US national security adviser Steve Hadley described the Russian offer as ``walking back from the threats’’ the Russian president had issued recently.

So what’s all this got to do with India anyway?

Lots, especially when New Delhi has decided to keep a stranger’s arm length away from the biggest Cold War spat between the two major powers in decades.

Shrugging their shoulders, Indian officials in Berlin said they were simply going to keep very quiet and adopt the Middle Path. ``This quarrel,’’ they said, ``is their problem.’’

To be sure, New Delhi is not interested in getting caught in the crossfire between its oldest strategic partner, Russia, and its newest friend, the US. The Russians still supply most of India’s armaments and helped out New Delhi with crucial nuclear fuel for Tarapur when the Western world had placed an embargo.

Clearly, though, it is the mention of America – Indian students, over 11,000 of them, are the biggest expatriate student community in the US, trade booms every year, while the nuclear deal promises to catapult India onto the high table – that sets the pulse of the Indian establishment racing.

But as the US-Russian quarrel escalated last week, Indian officials admitted they were following it closely.

After Bush accused Putin of raising the spectre of a new Cold War, his Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, a Russian hand, warned, ``This isn’t the Soviet Union, we need to drop the rhetoric that sounds like what the US and the Soviet Union used to say about each other …’’

Analysts pointed out that Russia was supposed to have been let into the charmed circle of the trans-Atlantic nations led by America, when Boris Yeltsin dismantled the Soviet Union 15 years ago. Instead, Bush is seeking to establish American supremacy even as he prepares to hand over power.

Russia, though, was always kept out. It was let into the G-8 as a favour. Over the years, both nations have quarrelled publicly, over Iran, Iraq, Central Asia or energy security.

But as both sides de-escalated tensions, Europe was crossing its fingers. Here in Berlin, a city that is still rising from the trauma of partition, people say they certainly don’t want to choose between old friends and new neighbours. In all Europe, Germany has been at the forefront of attempts to integrate Russia into the West.

Germany, in fact, looks like it has confirmed its special place at the crossroads of Europe. Last week, in the runup to the G-8 summit, the G-8 foreign ministers met in Potsdam, where the victors of the Second World War – Stalin, Attlee and Truman – had divided up the spoils. Last night at Heilingendamm, Russia offered to kiss and make up with the US again.

John F Keenedy, speaking in Berlin in July 1963, had said, ``Two thousand years ago, the proudest boast was `civis Romanus sum. I am a Roman citizen. Today in the word of freedom, the proudest boast is `Ich bin ein Berliner…’’ I am a Berliner.

Vladimir Putin understands that idea perfectly. As a former member of the KGB, the Soviet intelligence agency, Putin was posted in East Berlin when the Wall fell in 1989. Apart from Russian, he speaks German like a native.

ENDS