I find one of your sentences somewhat puzzling: "US officials seem completely at a loss as to how to effectively reduce tensions." I don't see how US actions, at least during the Bush administration were aimed at anything but bullying Russia. I know the US has a very particular method to try to make friends, but even for exceptionalists I think proposing Georgia's entrance to NATO (among other attempts to 'effectively reduce tensions') seems too much. Other than that point in particular, let me join you in mourning Russia's freedoms.
Martin: Let me be clarify my point, because I suspect that you and I actually agree on the problem. The Bush administration *says* they want good relations with Russia, but their *actions* are consistently read as provocative. Whether or not this a deliberate strategy or simple incompetence is not clear to me, though, as with all things related to the Bush administration, I tend to lean toward incompetence as the primary explanation. In other words, they say they want to de-escalate tensions, but they seem to have little to no comprehension as to how their own actions work at counter-purposes to their stated goals. For example, the crazy obsession with siting missile defense systems (which will probably never work) practically right on the Russian border, which plays into long-standing Russian fears of encirclement. Presumably, a competent Russia analyst could have explained this to them, but they probably wouldn't listen to him/her anyway.
For more on this point:
http://duckofminerva.blogspot.co...-go-
around.html
I see now that even a brief look at what you've written on the Duck clarifies your view (and its similar to mine). It didn't seem like that on the sentence I mention though. Regarding the Bush administration's puzzling foreign relations strategies (or for that matter most of what they do) I think at this stage there is a strong case for ideology based incompetence.
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