Hans-Joachim Spanger Between Ground Zero and Square One How George W. Bush failed on Russia PRIF Reports No. 82 Translation: Katharine Hughes © Peace Research Institute Frankfurt (PRIF) 2008 Correspondence to: HSFK x Leimenrode 29 x 60322 Frankfurt am Main x Germany Telephone: +49 (0)69 95 91 04-0 x Fax: +49 (0)69 55 84 81 E-mail:
[email protected] x Website: www.prif.org ISBN: 978-3-937829-68-5 Euro 10,– Summary Towards the end of George W. Bush’s administration, relations between Washington and Moscow are back to the point where they started, the Cold War. Public debate has clear ideas about where to attribute the blame: to Putinism with its emphasis on an authoritar- ian and interventionist state and the overweening self-confidence of the energy bully, on the one hand, and to Bushism with its militarized endeavours to mould a world in its own democratic image, on the other. However both these represent an inadequate simplifica- tion of the actual complexity, which does not sufficiently take into account the vacillations of the Bush administration, swinging between the realism of Bush’s father and the liberal internationalism of his predecessor turned neo-conservative, or the interaction between Washington and Moscow. This swing towards emphasizing democratic values may well make the increasing es- trangement appear more plausible. But in actual fact Bush’s policy towards Moscow, just as Clinton’s before him, consisted of a contradictory and changeable amalgam of values and interests. The most obvious constant feature in the Bush administration, in contrast to Clinton’s, is the malign neglect of Russia.