Dan Rather

IT IS one thing for scholars and pundits to predict the coming of another arms race between the United States and Russia or the re-emergence of the Cold War; many have, and many will continue to do so at a time when United States-Russian relations are at their worst point in decades. But it's another thing altogether when Russian President Vladimir Putin, his First Deputy Prime Minister Sergei Ivanov and the Russian Duma all predict the same thing. Unlike historians, analysts and editorialists, this latter group actually has the power to make these predictions reality.

For Russia, this ability to help precipitate and participate in an arms race stands at its highest point since the fall of the Soviet Union. The U.S.S.R. had a hollow, Potemkin village economy, but the concen-tration of political power in the Kremlin enabled it to pour its resources into armaments while Muscovites waited in long lines for bare necessities. In today's Russia, the economy is strong and growing (albeit with a long way to go), and Putin has so ruthlessly and effectively consolidated power around himself that one could now say that it is Russia's democracy, rather than its economy, that is a Potemkin village.

When it comes to giving the U.S. an arms race - or, as Putin himself put it recently, turning Europe into a 'powder keg' - Russia perceives a motive, and it has the means and opportunity.

New generation of missiles

The motive, as Russia's leadership sees it, is the planned deployment by the U.S. of interceptor missiles in former Soviet-bloc states. The Kremlin, citing geography, claims these missiles are designed to thwart Russia's nuclear capabilities. President Bush's foreign-policy team, which envisions these missiles as part of a European missile-defence shield, says that the interceptors are aimed not at Russia, but rather at potential nuclear missiles fired by a rogue state such as North Korea or Iran.

Whatever the actual reason or reasons for placing defensive missiles in eastern Europe, Putin has used the missiles as a pretext for preparing and, this past week, testing a new generation of missiles designed to carry nuclear weapons and penetrate missile defences. Russia has demonstrated, at least for the moment, that it has the means to match U.S. strategic moves.

Post-cold war balance

As for opportunity, it has come in two forms: One is the Bush administration's relative disdain for international agreements, such as the ABM (Anti-Ballistic Missile) agreement from which the U.S. withdrew in 2001; the other is the administration's focus on Iraq and the war on terrorism, and the corres-ponding lack of focus on develop-ments elsewhere, including Russia.

For these reasons, the upcoming summit between Presidents Bush and Putin, announced this week for July 1-2 in Kennebunkport, Maine, will arrive not a moment too soon. It is probably not an exaggeration to say that the Cold War and post-Cold War treaty regime may hang in the balance, with Russia now threatening to withdraw from the INF (Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces) treaty and suspending compliance with 1990s CFE (Conventional Armed Forces in Europe) treaty.

These treaties and others like them were not perfect, but they helped the world avert nuclear catastrophe when tensions between the U.S. and U.S.S.R. were at thei and later played a role in normalising Western relations with post-Soviet Russia. With a summit at the summer home of former President George H.W. Bush, an internationalist who presided over U.S. foreign policy at the end of Cold War I, one hopes that the current President Bush can head off a Cold War II. As the war on terrorism has shown, one generational war at a time is more than enough, even for a superpower.