World View:"The cold war is over. It ended . . . Russia is not our enemy." These remarks by George Bush in Prague form a suitable backdrop to the intriguing game of chess he played at the G8 summit with Vladimir Putin over the US anti-missile system to be deployed in Poland and the Czech Republic, writes Paul Gillespie.
Inviting Putin to "send your generals over here to see how such a system would work", Bush spoke of "the ability to discuss this issue in an open forum".
He thereby allowed Putin to make a brilliant counter-move with his offer to allow the US use a Russian-leased radar station in Azerbaijan - a neighbour of Iran's from where Bush says the main threat emanates. In that case, Putin added, it would be unnecessary for the Russians to retarget European countries with their nuclear weapons.
This threat was part of his effort to divide Nato allies on what is very much a unilateral US initiative.
Within the rhetorical spirit of inclusion and transparency he has used on this issue, it was impossible for Bush to turn this offer down. Hence the suggestion that a joint group of specialists examine it in detail.
This reduces the tension, a considerable achievement given how much it been ratcheted up in recent weeks. But it also raises two fundamental questions: does sufficient trust exist between the US and Russia to ensure a joint system would operate effectively? And what is the real purpose of this US anti-missile system anyway? Trust is a major issue in Russia's relations with the US and its allies.
Much of Putin's political strength and domestic popularity flows from his repudiation of Russia's post-cold war weakness and capitulation to the West in the 1990s, and his ability to turn higher world energy prices to advantage in doing so.
Presidential elections next year give him an additional reason to dramatise differences with western states. Scoring points against Bush will do him no harm at home.
In a typical flourish this week Putin described the energy contract that gave Shell control of the huge Sakhalin project in 1991 as a "colonial treaty", saying the Russian officials who agreed to it should "have been put in prison".
It is one thing to recognise the psychological importance of retrieving Russian pride after that humiliating decade, and quite another to extrapolate this process into an assumed revival of Russia's imperial ambitions.
These processes may be politically inseparable - especially for former Soviet or Warsaw Pact states in Russia's "near abroad"; but they are analytically distinct and should not be collapsed into one another.
Thus the New York Times asked yesterday whether, with the two sides already embroiled in disputes over the future of Kosovo, the state of democratic institutions in Russia, and how to deal with Iran's nuclear programme, Mr Putin was serious. And, if he was, whether the White House would ever accept the offer.
"For that kind of co-operation to be treated seriously by the United States and Nato they would have to have more trust than people really do now toward the Russian military," Stephen Sestanovich, an expert on Russia at the Council on Foreign Relations, told the paper. "The question is, can you one day have the Russians acting in such a way as to advertise their lack of trust in the United States, and the next day insist that the United States trust them?"
From the Russian point of view, extending such trust would depend on what the US anti-missile system is intended to do.
The economist Robert Skidelsky, in a letter to the Financial Times this week, disagreed with an editorial that had dismissed Putin's threats and called on him to "demonstrate that his Russia is a partner, not an old, aggrieved foe of the West".
He said the editorial failed to "address the question of why the new bases have to be placed there in the first place. No one believes the American justification that they are needed to defend Europe against nuclear attacks from North Korea or Iran. This being so, the Russians may reasonably ask: Why are they being put there?"
Skidelsky points to two possibilities. One is a way of "humiliating" the Russians by reminding them "that they lost the cold war, and that it is the Americans, not Russia, who now call the shots".
The other possibility, which is "more disturbing", Skidelsky writes, is that the purpose is "to neutralise Russia's nuclear capability. Russia would be deprived of the ability to deter an American attack, whether nuclear or conventional . . . If this is the game, the Russian response is understandable. Russia is playing the only card it has."
Skidelsky was born in Russia, is a member of the Conservative Party in the House of Lords, and is best known for his three-volume biography of John Maynard Keynes. His opinion counts and should be taken seriously.
In the Guardian, Simon Jenkins recalled Keynes's attack on the Versailles Treaty that ended the first World War, The Economic Consequences of the Peace.
He warned that punishing Germany and demanding crippling reparations would jeopardise Europe's stability and Germany's democracy. Jenkins wonders whether a similar mistake has been made with Russia.