A feel-good summit of tough talk

A MUTUAL RAPPORT, which the leaders of the United States and Russia have established by their own reckoning at a summit in Slovenia, does not conceal their differences over Washington's futurist plans for a missile defence system. Nonetheless, the international community can heave a sigh of relief, at least for the present, that the U.S. President, Mr. George W. Bush, and his Russian counterpart, Mr. Vladimir Putin, have agreed to enter into a serious dialogue over their divergent perceptions of the new threats to the global strategic order in the 21st century. Mr. Bush says that the two sides will soon begin talks on a ``new security framework'' as envisioned by him, while Mr. Putin is keen on pushing for a bilateral engagement to identify an ``overall platform'' for joint endeavour. Shorn of the inevitably arcane phraseology of strategic issues, the most significant outcome of the meeting, which took place at a picturesque castle in Ljubljana last week, is that the U.S. and post-Soviet Russia will try to fathom whether they can indeed work together. The idea is to ensure their own security and that of their respective friends and allies. In post-summit utterances, the two leaders have vied to describe a bond of mutual trust that they struck in their first encounter. Mr. Putin has not only reaffirmed this mystique of mutual confidence in updated comments this week but also underlined his basic scepticism over the American notion of a missile defence regime. New observations by the U.S. Secretary of State, Gen. Colin Powell, and others, too, indicate that Washington is beginning to convince itself of missile defence as the next wonder in mankind's technological destiny.

Comparisons of the latest Bush-Putin parleys with some of the earlier meetings between the leaders of America and the former Soviet Union are simply not in order. Yet, the spirit of the Ljubljana summit need not necessarily wither away. It is obviously a matter of some impressionistic diplomacy that Mr. Bush has been able to look Mr. Putin in the eye and get ``a sense of his soul''. Yet, Mr. Putin also seems to have been responsive to his interlocutor's charm offensive. If their willingness to meet two or three times in the near future holds firm against the uncertainties of an evolving global political situation, the U.S. and Russia can surely address their concerns in a manner consistent with the globalised threats of the unfolding post-Cold War era. The easily identifiable challenges pertain to weapons of mass destruction as also political and religious terrorism besides contagious economic maladies with an inter-state dimension.

Shortly before the Slovenia summit, Mr. Putin met the Chinese leader, Mr. Jiang Zemin, in Shanghai and fuelled speculation about the possibility of a new Sino-Russian strategic axis that could confound Washington on the missile issue in particular. But the undeniable effusiveness of Mr. Putin's subsequent gestures towards Mr. Bush is indicative of Russia's self-confidence on two counts. Washington is relatively isolated among the major powers, including those in Europe, on the missile defence question. Mr. Putin tends to see this reality as an advantage in the context of Russia's own ``special responsibility'', in conjunction with the U.S., to sustain the world's strategic balance. The relevant reasoning is rooted in the fact that the U.S. and Russia are the separate custodians of gigantic nuclear arsenals. And Mr. Putin seems to count on the logic of their collective responsibility under strategic arms limitation treaties and the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty. Mr. Bush, in contrast, wants to wean Mr. Putin away from China by arguing that Moscow can still become America's ``strong partner and friend''. Mr. Bush's gameplan can apply to Russia in a way that his predecessor, Mr. Bill Clinton, actually intended to deal with China. More such subtleties may increasingly mark the global strategic debate.

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