Everybody is getting their pre-spin before President Obama arrives in Russia. Here’s Vlad Putin’s angle:
Prime Minister Vladimir Putin will use next week’s Moscow talks to relieve President Barack Obama of mistaken impressions he remains mired in Cold War thinking, Putin’s spokesman said on Firday.
The spokesman was reacting to comments Obama made in a pre-trip interview. The U.S. leader told the Associated Press that Putin needed to “understand that the Cold War approach to U.S.-Russian relationship is outdated” and that Putin had “one foot in the old ways of doing business.”
Putin spokesman Dmitry Peskov, in mildly-expressed comments, said: “I see that he does not possess full information. After visiting Moscow, President Obama will know the realities better.
The irony here of course is that Russia is in no way mired in Cold War thinking — but Obama most decidedly is.
Moscow is all hep to the new ways of doing things. They’ve got cyber attacks (against Estonia), limited war (against Georgia), energy war (against pretty much all of Europe), and all the rest.
Meanwhile, Obama seems determined to give Russia a standing her actual status doesn’t earn her, through nuclear-weapons reduction treaties. Hello — START III or whatever is so ’87. Not to mention that Obama threatens to wed us to 1970s-era Mutual Assured Destruction madness by cutting back on missile defense.
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