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How Putin Played Bush in KennebunkportAnd how Bush could still come out on top.

By Fred Kaplan
Posted Thursday, July 5, 2007, at 6:36 PM ET

(Continued from page 1)

Meanwhile, the Polish and Czech parliaments, which must ratify the basing plan, are getting nervous about the idea, for three reasons. They don't savor the prospect of reigniting long-doused tensions with Russia. They're beginning to realize that the radar could as easily be a target of an attack as a defense against one. And they're noticing that the system wouldn't defend all of Europe, in any case. (In fact, the original plan was for the system to shoot down Iranian missiles as they flew overhead on their way to the United States; only later, to gain local support, did the Pentagon expand the concept to include defending part of Europe, too.)

In other words, all this fuss is over a missile-defense system that probably can't defend against an attack by missiles that don't exist—deployed on territory that might not be leased.

Putin knows this, Bush knows this, and each knows the other knows he knows this.

The easiest way to get out of this jam is to concede that the whole concept is a fantasy and to drop it. But President Bush won't do that, in part because it would look too much like surrender, in part because he still seems to believe that missile defense will work.

So, here's another way to escape Putin's trap: Accept his proposal.

Besides throwing Putin off balance, the move would have three benefits.

First, a radar (even a more advanced radar) in Azerbaijan might not be well-positioned to track missiles once they're streaking across the heavens, but its closer proximity to Iran would make it extremely well-positioned—more so than radar in Eastern Europe—to provide early warning of a missile's launch.

Second, accepting Putin's proposal would derail his campaign to split the United States from its new allies in Eastern Europe. If Putin's aim is to depict America as intransigent and hostile to Russia, Bush's acceptance of his offer would make the United States seem sincere and diplomatic—and, for what it's worth, keep alive the possibility of a Czech-Polish deployment in the future.

Third, lassoing Russia into a plan that allegedly protects Europe from an Iranian nuclear attack would place Russia under greater pressure to help keep Iran from enriching uranium for building nuclear bombs. Any subsequent reluctance by Moscow to rein in Tehran—through either U.N. sanctions or European Union negotiations—could be depicted as a sign that the Russians, not the Americans, have dubious motives when it comes to missile defense.

Since the purpose of a European missile defense is to ward off the threat of Iranian nukes, a better way to do this—both cheaper and more foolproof—would be to block them from getting nukes in the first place.

However, Bush is not likely to go this route because he and Putin are, in fact, playing different games.

Putin wants to block the United States from establishing any sort of military toehold in Eastern Europe, the front yard of its former empire; and, in the process of doing so, he wants to disrupt this bourgeoning East-West alliance as much as possible.

Bush wants to start laying concrete on the Czech and Polish bases—to establish this toehold—while he's still in office. One reason he doesn't even want to look at the Azerbaijan offer is that, even with both sides acting on the best of intentions, it will take at least two years to do the analyses and work out the details—by which time there will be a new U.S. president, who might choose to scuttle the whole notion.

The political and technical realities dictate that the United States might have to let go of the Euro-missile-defense fantasy in any case. We might as well, therefore, press the current situation to our advantage while we can. Putin's trap provides an ironic opportunity.

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Fred Kaplan is Slate's "War Stories" columnist and the author of Daydream Believers: How a Few Grand Ideas Wrecked American Power. He can be reached at .
Photograph of Vladimir Putin by Alexander Hassenstein/Getty Images.
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