The meeting last week in Moscow between U.S. Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld and Russian Defense Minister Sergei Ivanov -- the first time top U.S. and Russian defense officials have discussed strategic issues -- ended unsuccessfully. That should come as no surprise given the perception gap that exists between the two sides over missile defense. Under the circumstances, prospects for progress seem remote.
The Moscow meeting was a followup to the U.S.-Russia summit talks held on the sidelines of July's Group of Eight summit in Genoa, at which President George W. Bush and Russian President Vladimir Putin had agreed to negotiate a package deal about strategic arms reduction and missile defense. The timing was odd, however, considering that the Bush administration had already announced plans to start building a missile defense system, which would be in violation of the Antiballistic Missile Treaty.
In his speech in May, President Bush expressed his intention of promoting the missile shield plan. Saying the world should free itself from the "balance of terror" -- the threat of "mutual assured destruction," or MAD -- that characterized the nuclear face-off of the Cold War years, Bush called for an early deployment of missile defenses and the maximum mutual cuts possible in nuclear warheads.