At a round table discussion in Moscow the other evening, two of my American reporter colleagues argued that the United States needs Russia more than Russia needs United States.
At the risk of sounding rude, I am afraid my friends may be suffering from a mild case of…err…localitis.
Here is a reality check:
— Population: Over the next 25 years, the American advantage is to go from two-to-one today, to three-to-one in 2038. That would be 400 million Americans versus 133 million Russians.
— Economy: The U.S. economy is eight times bigger than Russia’s.
— Military: The U.S. outspends Russia 10-to-one.

Barring wild card factors – like worldwide weather chaos – there is no foreseeable reason why these fundamental disparities should change significantly in the medium term.

Indeed, the biggest game changer of our time — the shale gas revolution — benefits the US. With energy self-sufficiency looming and low gas prices a reality, the United States is re-industrializing. In contrast, Russia faces falling gas export revenues.

To compensate for its reduced clout on the world stage, the Kremlin glues Russia to China. It is like the medium size kid who gets protection by bonding with the biggest boy in the playground. The Kremlin works overtime to massage Russia’s relationship with China. The Chinese clear cut Siberian forests, pollute international rivers, and refuse to build manufacturing plants in Russia – and that is OK with Russia’s rulers.

In contrast, the Kremlin goes out of its way to pick fights with Washington.
After January’s infamous ban on Americans adopting Russian children, last week saw Russia slap a ban beef and pork imports from the United States, and a delay in certifying the latest model Boeing 777 passenger jet for use by Aeroflot. Given the already large US trade deficit with Russia, new restrictions on American exports will only further alienate the Obama Administration and the U.S. Congress.

But, protest a few remaining voices in Washington, we have to be nice to the Putin Administration because we really need Russian support on key world issues.

Oh, really?
Let’s run down the checklist:

– North Korea — The Kim dynasty is a political Frankenstein that long, long ago escaped control of its Kremlin creators — probably half a century ago. On the subject of nuclear bombs, Pyongyang simply ignores Moscow. A Russian ambassador once told me that the North Koreans play a shell game, hiding their nuclear bombs in caves – and North Korea’s military has dug thousands of caves. With North Korea apparently preparing a nuclear bomb test this month, the only concrete reaction by Russia has been to turn on radiation detectors around Vladivostok. Only China has real leverage over North Korea.

– Syria – Saturday’s meeting between Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov and a Syria opposition leader was encouraging, but not a first. Outsiders long hoped that a political deal could be brokered if the Russians delivered Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, and the Americans delivered the Syrian opposition. Now, it seems clear that the Kremlin will not – and probably can not – persuade Syria’s president to step aside for a political solution. With 60,000 already dead, there is no harm in trying to enlist Russian diplomatic support for a political solution. But after 18 months of failed diplomacy, Washington has little illusions.

– Iran – Whoever is in the Kremlin has to step carefully here. Russian caution is tempered by a 500-year history of dealing with Persia. Russia does not want a nuclear-armed Iran on its southern border. Nor does it want to take a step today that Persians will hold against Russians for decades to come. That said, Russia’s cancellation of the sale of its S-300 air defense system to Iran put pressure on Tehran to negotiate its nuclear weapons program. Talks resume later this month in Kazakhstan.

– Afghanistan – During the Falklands War, Henry Kissinger once described Argentina as “a dagger pointed at the heart of Antarctica.” For many Americans, Afghanistan has a similar strategic importance. President Obama recently said in his inaugural address: “A decade of war is ending.” For Russia, that means that, after a decade of criticizing from the sidelines, the Kremlin will soon have the privilege of spending Russian taxpayer money to stabilize Afghanistan and prevent the spread of Islamic extremism into Central Asia – a genuine security concern for Russia. At the same time, Russian companies and the Russian government will lose revenues from ferrying NATO war material in and out of the Northern Distribution Network. Billed by the Kremlin as a favor to the West, Russia’s participation in this supply route was highly lucrative and in its own strategic interest.

– Missile Defense – Russian cooperation would be nice in building a picket line against a lone Iranian missile flying West. But Russia’s loud opposition has not slowed the program. For stopping missiles from Iran, today’s sea-based U.S. Navy Aegis interceptors are better positioned than yesterday’s land missiles in Central Europe. The Patriot missiles installed in Turkey in January could also play a role. Last month, Minister Lavrov accurately complained of Washington’s position: “They sort of offer to continue the dialogue, but do what they have decided to do.”

– Nuclear Arms Reduction – This is an issue dear to the heart of President Obama, but not terribly high on the worry lists of American voters. A North Korean nuclear test could change that. Obama Administration envoys are to come to Moscow in coming weeks to start talks. Some mutual cuts can be achieved by executive orders. But given the American congressional skepticism of the Putin government, a new bilateral treaty would be a hard sell. If Russia’s unilateral trade bans expand beyond beef and Boeings, forget it.

– United Nations Security Council Veto – UN Security Council approval gives solid international legitimacy to diplomatic or military actions. In the post-Soviet era, one of the Kremlin’s most cherished powers is Russia’s veto. But after the Bush era invasions of Iraq and Afghanistan, the Obama Administration is wrapping up American involvement in these wars and limiting engagement in new ones. Libya was an example of Washington “leading from behind.” Mali was handed off to the French. Syria is largely under observation. With American voters wary of getting dragged into faraway civil wars, one can predict fewer American appeals to the Security Council for its seals of approval. If there is a direct threat to the security of the United States, the American President, Republican or Democrat, will act – with Security Council approval, or without it.

And what does Russia need from the United States?

Here is a short checklist:

– Industrial investment to diversify from dependency on natural resource exports;
– A boycott-free 2014 Sochi Winter Olympics;
– Support in countering the spread of Islamic radicalism from Afghanistan into Central Asia;
– Continued access for Russian exporters to the world’s largest economy;
– Continued easy access for Russian tourists to the United States
– Continuation of the pax americana where the US Navy has guaranteed freedom of world shipping since World War II.

Last week, then-Senator John Kerry briefly touched on Russia during his confirmation hearings for the post of Secretary of State. His caution — and limited expectations — were clear. He said of Russia: “I would like to see if we can find some way to cooperate.”
——-
PS This just in: Russia bans imports of American turkey meat, effective Feb. 11. That wipes out 10s of millions of dollars of US sales to Russia this year. On the upside, Aeroflot just won permit to fly its new Boeing 777-300ER jet. Good news because they have 16 on order.

Scenes from three weeks of watching US-Russia relations in New York, Washington and Moscow:

 Kate, an old high school classmate, tracks me down to ask it if will be safe for her to take her 17-year-old adopted Russian daughter back to Russia for a visit this summer

 Ruslan, a 22-year-old adoptee of half-Russian, half Chechen descent, listens quietly as I try to explain why Russian officials cite horror stories to justify banning new adoptions by American parents. Nearby, the New Year’s Day table at his grandparents’ house in New England is covered with hams, curries and cakes.

 Last Monday night in Moscow, as official anti-Americanism matches the bitter cold outside Spaso House, I am inside cajoling, and nearly dragging, U.S. Ambassador Michael McFaul to a live VOA TV interview. Hands keep reaching out for handshakes. Russian guests keep blocking his path for photographs.

On the personal level, relations between Americans and Russians are as good as they have ever been. My 10-hour, every seat packed, Aeroflot flight from New York to Moscow is testament to that.

But, on the official level, relations are bad.
And defying my innate optimism, I see no reason why this should change in the near future.

Last year’s pre-election “silly season” of anti-Americanism has morphed into the silly era.

Obama Administration officials believe that this is driven not by events, but by President Putin’s domestic political strategy. The Kremlin, they say, is using state-controlled television to create a straw foreign “enemy” to reverse a gradual erosion of popular support.

Russia’s powerful state media can reshape public opinion.

In 2010, 38 percent of Russians polled by the VTsIOM pollster said they opposed foreign adoptions. In a survey released by this state-controlled pollster on Jan. 18, the portion opposing adoptions by American families had doubled to 78 percent.

But there is another, more worldly Russia. On the average day, 1 million Russians eat a meal at a McDonald’s restaurant. Last month, 10 percent ordered Christmas presents from overseas. Last year, 15 percent of Russian adults vacationed outside the former Soviet Union. And, most threatening of all, 50 percent of Russians now use the internet.

For Americans, the adoption ban was the breakthrough issue. It brought the cranky new Kremlin home to the American public and to the American Congress. One American official described the mood in Washington as: “Disgust.”

Some Russian officials don’t get the message. At Foreign Minister Lavrov’s annual reception for foreign correspondents, also on Monday evening, Russian diplomats expressed optimism that President Obama will accept President Putin’s invitation for a one-on-one meeting in Russia.

That visit is unlikely to happen, my American sources say. The American President will attend the G-20 meeting in Russia in September. And that may be that. The 1,000-day clock on his presidency will start ticking. More than ever, the American president will devote his time to areas where he can make a difference and create a legacy.

Barring a major crisis, Washington will probably downshift relations. Without top level interest, one American official predicted that the relationship could easily descend into becWashington “sending a midlevel person to Moscow, to hear ‘no’ and then come home.”

Countries don’t have friends. Good will may not count for much in international relations. But civility between leaders does not hurt.

American officials note that during his four-year stint as prime minister, Vladimir Putin never visited the United States. Since returning to the Kremlin as president last May, Putin stood up Obama at the G-8 Summit at Camp David, showed up late for a bilateral meeting with Obama at the G-20 Summit in Mexico, and then presided over the Asia Pacific summit in Vladivostok for September, a time when the American president campaigning for re-election was unable to attend.

And then October brought the start of a series of expulsions of American programs in Russia.

In recent weeks, anti-Americanism reached the level of officials making weird charges that American adoptee parents were, variously: pedophiles, engaged in organ trafficking, interested in acquiring domestic servants, or preparing a legion of 50,000 Russian adoptee zombies to attack Russia.

Now the Duma is studying bills to ban Russian officials from marrying foreigners, to ban foreign passport holders from criticizing Russia on state controlled TV, and to fine officials who use English words in public. On Friday, the Duma gave initial approval to a vaguely worded bill that would ban “homosexual propaganda” that could be seen by minors.

But it would be a setback for Russia if Americans start taking Russian government rhetoric seriously and start writing Russia off as the kooky country.

Almost two decades ago, a Brazilian Finance Minister told me that, after years of annual inflation rates of several thousand percent, the biggest risk to Brazil was “irrelevancia.” The minister, Fernando Henrique Cardoso, went on to end Brazil’s hyperinflation, and to win elections as president.

Today, Brazil is far from irrelevant.

But, today, it sounds like déjà vu when I hear an Obama administration Russia expert exclaim: “We don’t need them. We don’t need the Russians.”

Next week: Why the Kremlin’s Leverage over Washington is Overrated

During my two-week vacation in the United States, American friends again and again looked at me intently, and then asked: How do Russians see the new ban on Americans adopting Russian children?

During the last three months of 2012, the Kremlin read out a steady drumroll of American and international organizations or programs expelled from Russia: USAID, NDI, IRI, UNICEF and Nunn-Lugar. But, for the Americans I talked to in New York and New England, the Kremlin’s clear anti-America message got lost in this murky alphabet soup.

The breakthrough came with the adoption ban. That put a human face on the Kremlin’s calculated xenophobia.

In simple terms, Russian politicians are sacrificing the futures of 1,000 Russian orphans – the number adopted by American parents last year – to make a political point.
Take that, America!

Over eggnog at a New Year’s Day party and over breakfast at my sons’ New England college, Americans gingerly asked me: What kind of people would do that?

To my relief, I found insights Sunday afternoon while walking in an immense column of Muscovites protesting the adoption ban.

After interviewing half a dozen walkers, I concluded that I was covering “The March of the Normal People.”

In contrast to earlier demonstrations, these were Moms and Dads, Grandmothers and Grandfathers.

This was not “the creative class” that spiced up past demonstrations with costumes and skits.

Nor were these the chronically unhappy, brandishing red or black flags tacked on baseball bats.

Sunday’s protesters were middle aged and middle class, the mainstream, the building blocks of society. They were people deeply involved in what is often the world’s most challenging profession: parent.

In American terms, they could have stepped out of a meeting of the Parent Teachers Associations, the volunteer groups that advise local schools in America.

These Russians had no problems with light snow and the -10C temperatures. In Moscow, parents know how to sensibly double fold their scarves, and don warm hats, boots, coats and gloves before stepping outside for two-hour walk on a mid-winter afternoon.
They did not chant the standard protest slogan of 2012: “Russia Without Putin.”

Instead, they chanted something more damning: “Pozor” – “Shame.” They carried posters with portraits of their parliamentarians, also stamped: “Shame.”

They chanted: “Take Your Hands off Children.”

Ekaterina, the 39-year-old mother of a son, carried a sign reading: “Don’t take revenge on children.”

“I’m here because I am against yet another cannibalistic law voted for by the Duma,” she said, referring to Russia’s parliament. “The deputies used children as instruments in their political game.”

A few minutes later, Anna Glukhova, the 40-year-old mother of a daughter, said she found it shocking that the Duma banned adoptions to retaliate against the United States Congress for passing a bill demanding justice in the prison death of Sergei Magnitsky, a Russian lawyer for an American hedge fund.

“I think that it’s very bad to defend murderers of Magnitsky with our orphaned children,” said Glukhova, the deputy director of a trading company who marched with her husband.

Flowing up out of metro stations, at least 25,000 people turned out for the “March Against Scoundrels,” the largest protest turnout since President Putin’s inauguration last May. Much of the population of Russia’s capital is indifferent or hostile to the President. In March presidential, Moscow was one of the few places where he did not win a majority of ballots cast, winning only 47 percent.

The moderate nature of Sunday’s protesters contrasted with the radical words of ruling party deputies. The deputies’ extremist views highlight a deepening divide between urban Russians and their government.

In advance of the march, Andrei Isayev, a leader of the United Russia ruling party, warned on the party website about citizen “hysteria” over the adoption ban.

“All the enemies of Russian sovereignty have revealed themselves as ardent supporters of American adoption,” Mr. Isayev, a member of the party’s general council, wrote before the protest. They “will go out to march for the right of unrestricted export of Russian children to America.”

“Let’s look attentively and remember the faces of the organizers and active participants of this march,” he wrote, calling Sunday’s event a “March of Child Sellers.” “Our task in the coming years is to drive them to the farthest edge of political and public life, to the middle of nowhere.”

Yekaterina Lakhova, the United Russia deputy who sponsored the adoption ban last month, told Kommersant FM as the march began: “I am especially surprised to see people gather at such a large action in support of American business – because for them, our children, Russian children, are factually, let’s put it this way, an object of trade.”

After the march, Evgeny Feodorov, a ruling party deputy, warned me in an interview that it is highly possible the Russian children are cut up in the United States for the organ trade.

State-controlled television chimed in with Soviet-style slant.
Dmitry Kiselyov, presenter of “Vesti Nedelyi” or “News of the Week,” showed images of the march, warning viewers: “They urge everyone to protest against a ban on exporting children.”

For the folks back home and around the world, here is what is happening in Moscow:

On one hand, the Kremlin is continuing its year-long anti-American campaign, believing it can shore up support among rural, small city and Soviet generation Russians, the people who get most of their news from state-controlled television.

On the other hand, the Kremlin seeks to focus attention on “foreign causes” for Russia’s looming demographic decline. Because of a dearth of babies born during chaotic years that followed the collapse of communism in 1991, the number of fertile age Russian women is starting to shrink.

A believer of Alice in Wonderland demographics, Lakhova, the ruling party deputy, warns that American adoptions over the last two decades represent a small city lost for Russia.

But in light of Russia’s sky high emigration and abortion rates, the American adoptions of 60,000 Russian orphans are, in reality, a drop in the bucket.

If 5 million Russians emigrated over the last 20 years (a conservative figure), American adoptions equal three months of emigration.
If 1 million pregnancies in Russia end in abortion each year (a conservative figure), two decades of American adoption equal three weeks of abortions.

It is increasingly unlikely that Russia’s television viewers will be exposed to this mathematical reality check. In a move that would bring television news closer to the Soviet model, Duma deputies are debating a law that would ban anyone with a foreign passport, including Russian citizens, from criticizing the Russian government on television.

A light snow covers Moscow, subzero temperatures provide bright sunshine and Jingle Bells wafts through malls filled with happy shoppers.
And, befitting, the holiday season, Russian politicians and American parents are acting out a real life version of Charles Dickens’ 1843 classic, “A Christmas Carol.”
But this is no high school play.

This is…geopolitics!

Guess who landed the role of Ebenezer Scrooge, the miserly millionaire?
(Hint: type ‘World Richest Head of State Wiki’ into your Google search window)

Guess who landed the role of Bob Cratchit, the heart-of-gold, but financially strapped father of Tiny Tim?
(Clue: What country adopts the most orphans every year from Russia, 60,000 in the last 20 years?)

Guess who landed the role this Christmas of Tiny Tim, the plucky, disabled boy? As you remember, he warms hearts in the first act, by crying out at Christmas dinner “God Bless Us, Everyone!” Then, he disappears from the tale, leaving behind his crutch.
(Clue: What country has 633,000 orphans and abandoned children living in state institutions, possibly the most since World War II?)

Guess who plays the four ghosts who torment Scrooge? That’s easy – Russian journalists!

By now you have an outline of the Kremlin’s Christmas Carol, the December 2012 edition.

On Friday, the Duma’s lower house voted 470 to seven to ban American parents from adopting Russian children. The Duma’s upper house is expected to vote to pass the bill on Dec. 26, the day after the Western Christmas.

The Duma bill is known as the anti-Magnitsky bill. It was drawn up in response to an American bill signed into law Dec. 14 by President Obama. The U.S. law normalizes trade relations with Russia. It also directs the president to bar known Russian human rights violators from entering the United States or from holding American bank accounts. Initially, the law is to target 60 Russian officials implicated in the imprisonment and death of Sergei Magnitsky, a Russian lawyer.

In recent weeks, the Kremlin adroitly shifted perceptions of the law here. Instead of being seen as an attack on corrupt government officials, many Russians see it as an attack on Russia.

Realizing that few American officials have property in Russia, the Duma decided to hit Americans where it would hurt – the adoptions of Russian orphans.

Last year, American families adopted almost 1,000 orphans. American families are often seen as the only possibility for orphans with disabilities to escape institutions that are often called “Dickensian.”

On Wednesday, the day of the first Duma vote, dozens of protesters picketed outside in Arctic weather.

Mainly women, they carried signs with such slogans as:
“Why are you taking vengeance on children?”
“Children as a Strategic Weapon. Are you kidding?”
“How many children with disabilities have deputies adopted?
“Don’t deprive children of the chance to live.”

Police said the protest was not authorized. They detained about 30 protesters, mainly women. (You could almost hear a voice grumbling from inside the frost-covered Kremlin walls: ‘Bah! Humbug!’)

Inside the Duma, the vote was lopsided in part because Russia’s parliament is still largely a men’s club, almost as exclusive as the London clubs Dickens so despised in the 1840s.

Women account for only 11 percent of both Duma chambers. In contrast, the European average is 24 percent. The Nordic average is 42 percent.

In a suitably Dickensian twist, one of the legislators, Vyacheslav K. Osipov, actually voted for the anti-Magnitsky bill while dead.

Duma rules allow proxy voting, where a member votes in the absence of another member. In this case, several ballots were cast Wednesday in the name of Osipov, before legislators learned that their 75-year-old colleague had expired in a Moscow hospital.

Prior to the Duma vote, Russia’s ombudsman for children, Pavel Astakhov, a former television reporter with political ambitions, had briefed Duma deputies.

“Do not believe the myths and hysterical warnings of those who try to convince us that foreign adoptions must not be banned because that would leave Russian orphans without a future – these are all lies,” he said at a Duma hearing on human rights problems in the United States. “Those who spin us tales about the happy lives that Russian children have in America and their bright future there, are either involved in this business or are simply unscrupulous.”

Astakhov and others say that 19 Russian children have died following abuse by American foster parents since the international adoptions began, in the early 1990s.
Nineteen children killed by foster parents out of 60,000 is 19 too many. But Astakhov neglected to mention that from 1991 to 2006, 1,200 Russian adopted children were killed by their Russian foster parents.

Astakhov cited the case of an American woman who placed her seven-year-old adopted son alone on a one-way flight back to Moscow in 2010.But he neglected to mention that last year Russian foster parents returned 4,500 children to orphanages.

Nor did he mention, that during the first nine months of this year, 1,291 Russian children were killed, largely by a parent. Nor did he mention that Russian ranks third in the world for suicides by minors, about 1,700 a year. One boy committed suicide because a Russian judge refused to allow him to be adopted by a Spanish couple.

Despite the Duma’s overwhelming support for the adoption ban, more rational views are appearing in Russian society.

More than 100,000 Russians have signed an online petition organized by Novaya Gazeta newspaper demanding that the Kremlin review the law.

Grigory Yavlinsky, a veteran liberal politician popular in Moscow, tweeted this week: “Because some bureaucratic scum will not be allowed into the U.S. for shopping, thousands of tiny children will be denied a normal life,”

On Thursday, at Vladimir Putin’s annual marathon press conference, the Russian president’s bravura performance before 1,000 journalists was marred by repeated questions about the adoption ban.

“I understand that the response of the State Duma is emotional. But I also think it is appropriate,” Putin said of a law that deems all of America’s 150 million parents unfit to adopt a Russian child.

“This is how we see it,” continued the Russian president. “American lawmakers sort of showed everyone who is the real master of the house, so that we don’t get relaxed. Had there been no Magnitsky, they would have found another pretext.”

Slumped in my seat in row 23, I watched one Russian journalist and after another needle their president about the adoption ban. Slowly, Putin started to sound like Ebenezer Scrooge, tossing in bed as he is haunted by visits from The Ghost of Jacob Marley, The Ghost of Christmas Past, The Ghost of Christmas Present, and The Ghost of Christmas Yet to Come.

“Do you consider this normal?” Putin finally blurted out at one journalist. “You like this? What are you? A sado-masochist? There is no need to humiliate the country! We do not forbid the adoption by foreigners in general. There are other countries besides the United States.”

Every Orthodox Christmas Eve, Mr. Putin goes to church. He appears on national television, crossing himself and lighting a candle. But Mr. Putin was not in the Christmas spirit when the adoption ban came up yet again at his press conference.

“But we are not – or, probably, I am not a very good Christian, because when you are slapped on one cheek, you are supposed to turn the other,” said Mr. Putin, black belt judo athlete. “I am not morally prepared for this so far. If we are slapped, we should respond, or otherwise we will always be slapped.”

But, in many people’s eyes, those who are getting slapped here are the kids.

In October, the Kremlin kicked out USAID, the American aid program.
A U.S. Embassy fact sheet described one program: “USAID’s child welfare program has provided over 80,000 at-risk children and their parents with innovative services designed to reduce abandonment, resulting in a 33 percent increase in family reunification and an 85 percent increase in the number of foster families in target regions.”

Next up? UNICEF.

On Dec. 31, the United Nation’s Children’s Fund is to close all activities in Russia, per Kremlin order.

One of UNICEF’s goals in Russia: reducing the number of orphans.

For Christmas season readers who find Charles Dickens’ 1843 story a little heavy going, an eminent American analyst, Theodor Seuss Geisel, better known as Dr. Seuss, has written a hipper, simpler – although equally scary — analysis of Kremlin politics.

It’s called “How The Grinch Stole Christmas!”

Ashley, an American friend, and I were walking on a bridge over the Moscow River to the “Inostranii Agent” or “Foreign Agent” party. To dress the part, I wore my trench coat.

Our destination: Red October, the rambling red brick industrial space that has morphed in recent years from Soviet chocolate factory to hipster hangout. The party organizers had emailed a password: “I am the agent.”

I knew the party organizers. At first, the concept seemed to be an edgy Muscovite response to the official spy paranoia emanating from the Kremlin. But, on crossing the Moscow River, my own paranoia grew with each step. As the byzantine towers of Kremlin glowed in the background, I started to fret that the party was a clever trap set by the FSB, Russia’s successor agency to the KGB.

Hidden cameras would record dozens of gullible foreigners “confessing” — simply in return for a club admission.

Ashley thought otherwise. Accordingly, she had dressed for success. She suspected a simpler plot line: Moscow women flocking to the Foreign Agent party, scheming to meet a foreign man for the holiday season.

Ashley’s instincts were correct.

At the party, at Reka (or River) Club, the music was so loud, the liquor so abundant and the female outfits so distracting, that no one remembered to ask for the “secret password.” The crowd was 95 percent Russian, drawn largely by the opportunity to meet members of the opposite sex — and the chance to win a door prize, like a BMW X5 car for a day.

Meanwhile, official Moscow – the humorless, political one — marches on with its foreign agent witch hunt.

Last week, prosecutors charged that Leonid Razvozzhayev, a jailed leftwing dissident, was taking “Georgian money” to organize “mass riots” and a “coup.”

Andrei Isayev, a ruling party leader in the Duma, charged that Mikhail Kasyanov, a former prime minister, “absolutely corresponds to the status of ‘an agent of foreign influence.’” Kasyanov supports the Magnitsky Act, which was overwhelmingly approved last week by the U.S. Congress. It calls for placing visa and banking bans on Russian officials believed to involved in major human rights violations.

Earlier this year, the Duma passed legislation requiring foreign supported nongovernmental groups to declare themselves “foreign agents.” Soon, spray paint appeared on the walls of Memorial, the Russian history and human rights organization: “Foreign Agent. I love USA.”

Now the Duma is considering legislation that would apply to reporters for media organizations that receive financial support from foreign governments, such as VOA, BBC, and AFP, the French wire agency. Under this bill, we would not only have to get accreditation as “foreign correspondents,” we would be register as “foreign correspondent foreign agents.”

Presumably, “foreign correspondent foreign agents” would be required to walk the streets of Moscow wearing fluorescent yellow beanies, topped with wind-driven propellers that would power flashing red warning lights. (That is a joke, OK?)

As the “Foreign Agent” party indicates, some Muscovites roll their eyes at the government’s attempt to blame Russia’s social change on foreigners.

In sharp contrast to the closed days of Ivan the Terrible or Joseph Stalin, about 10 percent of Russian adults now vacation outside Russia every year. About 50 percent freely surf the worldwide web.

A few days after the “Foreign Agent” party, I got a reminder that foreign agent paranoia can be a political dead end.
Around the alley from Reka, in a building where Soviet worker elves once made delicious chocolate bars, Lumiere Brothers Photography Center was hosting a thought provoking show.

Called “Living America,” the show of photojournalist Steve Shapiro captured a time – half a century ago – when some conservative Americans brushed off social change as the work of agents of Moscow.

First the civil rights movement, then the anti-Vietnam War movement were dismissed by many American conservatives as plots led by agents of Moscow, paid by “Moscow’s gold.”

Yes, the Communist Party USA received funding from Moscow. Yes, the CPUSA was very active in both movements. But, the Communist Party’s influence in the sea changes of late 20th century American social history was, at best, marginal.

Dismissing wide social change as the work of “foreign agents” was not only intellectually lazy. It put a good number of American politicians on the losing end of history.

A lesson for modern Russia?

It snowed in Russia last week.

(Yawn. What else is new?)

But Russia no longer is Dr. Zhivago country, a rural place where troika sleighs slide smoothly across white, wintry landscapes.

Modern Russians have a deep, passionate, often unrequited, love affair with rubber tires.

Last weekend, on the highway between Moscow and St. Petersburg, the nation’s two largest cities, an above-average snow storm trapped drivers for three days in a traffic jam that stretched for 200 kilometers.

In Moscow, drivers ignored snow warnings, and drove into a storm that paralyzed the capital’s streets for hours.

A snowstorm in the beginning of December is nothing new for Russia. Over two days, the city was treated to 30 centimeters of snow and some freezing rain. Not pleasant, but part of winter life in this part of the Northern hemisphere.

But Russians’ inability to cope with the white stuff is news.

In Moscow, snow was forecast, and yet hundreds of thousands of drivers set off for work in the morning as if they were living in Miami. For some modern Muscovites, the right to drive is their most cherished civil liberty.

The right to sit in a mobile steel cocoon is a key to many people’s identity.

In 1970s America, gun owners used to sell bumper stickers that read: “I’ll give you my gun, when you pry it from my cold, dead fingers.”

For Moscow commuters, the refrain would be: “I’ll give you my steering wheel, when you pry it from my cold, dead fingers.”

Some Muscovites recount with pride that they have not been down in the metro in 13 years, in 18 years.

So off they drove Thursday and Friday mornings. Within minutes, the city’s Yandex traffic jam meter hit 9. On a scale of 1 to 10, one is good.

They sat in four-hour traffic jams watching digital billboards beckoning them to tropical beach vacations. So many Muscovites now live for their warm weather vacations that they seem to be in denial of about living in Moscow. It is hard to drive in an ice storm, if you are day dreaming about Christmas in Goa, the Maldives or Phuket.

On the other side of the car windows, armies of workers from Uzbekistan and Tajikistan wielded alien implements, once familiar to Russian young men as snow shovels.

Moscow and St. Petersburg, like northern versions of the oil-rich city states of the Persian Gulf, have outsourced much manual labor to gastarbeiters, in Russia’s case from Central Asia.

Russia’s social chasm was captured recently in a cartoon health booklet addressed to Central Asian migrant workers. Russian health workers were depicted as people. Migrant workers were depicted as smiling mops, brooms, and paintbrushes. Maybe next year’s booklet will feature smiling snow shovels.

Last weekend in Moscow, 12,000 snowplows moved 1.1 million cubic meters of snow. Of drivers blamed gridlock on city officials. But, in reality, Moscow’s chaos was created by as many as 1 million individuals deciding to drive to work in falling snow.

In contrast, the highway chaos of last weekend was largely the government’s doing.

The highway between Moscow and St. Petersburg should be a national showcase. It unites the nation’s largest and wealthiest cities – with a combined population representing at least 10 percent of Russia’s total population.

Crammed 24 hours a day with thousands of tractor trailer trucks bringing goods to Moscow, the 600-kilometer road is narrow, potholed and scary. (So scary, in fact, that last December, I shelled out $1,000 for five train tickets to St. Petersburg and back, rather than risk the lives of most of my family by driving in a car).

For starters, there should be an eight-lane highway joining Russia’s two biggest cities. If Russian contractors are unable to build it without going five times over budget, hire the Chinese. In 10 years, China has built an interstate highway system rivaling one that took 30 years to build in the United States.

For the challenge of this winter, highway police should watch weather forecasts around the clock. When storms are coming, close the road with storm gates, forcing traffic to wait in holding areas in towns. That solution saves lives every winter on highways in North America’s snow country. Also essential is a fleet of snowplows with drivers on 24-hour call.

Instead, Russia’s laissez faire approach resulted in a line of stopped vehicles that stretched, in American terms, half the distance from New York to Boston. An estimated 10,000 trucks and cars were marooned in sub-freezing temperatures, with drivers running engines to keep warm.

News crews from state television focused on the warming tents and field kitchens offering hot tea and sandwiches. But – surprise! – many drivers report that they were stuck in areas without these tents.

The traffic jam took on a life of its own, prompting headlines like this one from Interfax: “Authorities pledge to do away with traffic jam near Tver by Monday morning.”

If it is any consolation to Russians, Brazilians recently faced a worse traffic jam. On June 1, heavy rains combined with Friday evening weekend departures to create 295 kilometers of traffic congestion around Sao Paulo, the largest city in the southern hemisphere.

North or South, it pays to check the weather before you get behind the wheel.

Near the VOA office in Moscow, an entrepreneur has found one solution. He named his cafe “Probki,” – or traffic jam. That way, drivers can call home – or to the office – and say, in good faith: “I’m running late, I’m stuck in the Probki.”

The U.S. Ambassador labored to get Congress to ratify a trade treaty that would grant “favored nation” status to Russia. Washington’s leading newspaper harshly criticized Russia for human rights violations. Russia’s secret police were reading all the Ambassador’s mail. The Czar was convinced that Washington was fomenting democracy rebellions inside his empire.

Sound like last week’s news? No, this is not about U.S. Ambassador Michael McFaul, the Magnitsky Act, President Vladimir Putin, ‘color revolutions’ and US-Russian relations in 2012.

It is 1832. It is US Ambassador James Buchanan trying to negotiate the United States’ first free trade treaty with Russia, under Czar Nicholas I.

My trip back 180 years started on Thanksgiving, a family day in the United States. On Thursday, I gave the family tree a good shake. Down tumbled Buchanan, a family ancestor who became the 15th president of the United States.

My paternal grandmother was the granddaughter of Edward Buchanan, a younger brother of the President. Ok, that’s a bit tenuous. It might get me a free cup of coffee the next time I stop by the James Buchanan Pub and Restaurant on North Main Street in Mercersburg, Pennsylvania.

My father had a few books around the house signed by Buchanan. Unfortunately, his is not a hot presidential autograph. American historians routinely rank Buchanan as one the five worst presidents of the United States.

In the last two months of his Presidency, seven southern states seceded and formed the Confederate States of America. On March 4, 1861, President Buchanan handed over power to president-elect Abraham Lincoln. Five weeks later, the opening shots were fired in the Civil War, the bloodiest war in American history.

Complicating the ancestor claim is the fact that Buchanan never had any children. Through the 1970s, history books diplomatically referred to him as America’s only bachelor president. Now, he is more often referred to as America’s only gay president.

Before he became president, Buchanan shared a house in Washington for 15 years with Alabama Senator William R. King. President Andrew Jackson, an army general who fathered 10 children, lampooned Buchanan and his Washington housemate as “Miss Nancy” and “Aunt Fancy.”

Historians differ on why Jackson dispatched Buchanan, then a former Congressman, to St. Petersburg. Some say it was a reward, some say it was a punishment for a political slight.

It is known that in January 1832, days after the Senate ratified his posting to Russia, Buchanan wrote a letter to an influential friend in Washington, hinting that “London would be a pleasant exchange for St. Petersburg.”

But his destination was to be Russia.

Relations between US and Russia have changed – and have not changed, if one is to judge by old letters and a 1962 book, “President James Buchanan: A Biography” by Philip Shriver Klein.

Transport and communications have changed, but a values trench still separates Russia and the United States.

The transatlantic sail from New York to Liverpool took 25 days. Buchanan wrote home that he was seasick almost the entire way.

In Liverpool, he was met by a Mr. Ogden, the American consul. According to Klein, Ogden warned the neophyte ambassador “of the need for security in diplomatic activity, and gave him a special cipher” to code his letters.

Happy to see the world at Washington’s expense, Buchanan visited London and eight other British cities. He took his first ride on a railroad, traveling from Liverpool to Manchester at the giddy speed of 30 kilometers an hour. Finally, he set sail for Lubeck, Germany and on to St. Petersburg.

In St. Petersburg, he found an American legation that, in these days before the international telegraph, had not received mail from Washington in one year. He raised their spirits by renting a large mansion at “Grand Neva 65.” The villa was furnished with bronzes and marbles and the pantry had enough silver, porcelain and crystal for dinner parties of 30.

On June 11, two months after leaving New York, Buchanan presented his credentials to Czar Nicholas I.

Klein writes: “The monarch rather surprised the new envoy by coming forward, shaking hands with warmth and cordiality, and wishing him a happy stay in the city.”

The Czar’s wife, Empress Alexandra Feodorovna, proved to be very talkative, repeatedly stressing one point: “She thought the Americans were wise to keep out of European troubles, because they had enough of their own at home, especially with the Southern states.”

This sounds like advice Russia’s Foreign Ministry could have offered yesterday.

At the palace reception, Buchanan did not argue with the Empress. He said his mission was to negotiate the first trade treaty between the United States and Russia.

While getting acclimated to Russia, Buchanan studied French, then the language of diplomacy and of Russia’s upper class. Buchanan had grown up in Pennsylvania, a state where the second, unofficial language was German.

“What a dunce I was not to have learned the German language!” he lamented in a letter to a friend back home. “It would have been almost as useful here as the French. I now understand the latter tolerably well, but it will be long before I shall speak it fluently.”

German would have been useful in 1830s St. Petersburg. Not only was the Empress a Prussian princess by birth, but the Ambassador’s key interlocutors on the trade treaty were four Baltic Germans working for the Czar: Count Nesselrode, Russia’s foreign minister; Baron Von Stieglitz, banker to the Czar; and Barons Krudener and Sacken, who served successively as Russia’s ambassadors to Washington.

To an American born in a log cabin, Buchanan wrote Russia’s titles and aristocratic pomp grated on “the Republican simplicity of my country.”

He wrote that if the folks back home in Lancaster could see his coach with four horses, “I would soon have a mob of men, women and children in my train.”

“What is most ridiculous of all is the Chasseur, who stands behind me,” he wrote in a letter. “He is decked out in his uniform more gaudy than that of our Militia Generals, with a sword by his side & and a large chapeau on his head, surmounted by a plume of feathers.”

Noting that passersby were supposed to doff their hats as his coach passed, he wrote: “I feel ashamed of myself whenever I pass through the city.”

In his letters, Buchanan also had some undiplomatic remarks about Russian food and drink.

“The Russian employed the best French cooks,” he wrote. “But usually ate a sour soup that would have repulsed a Delaware Indian.”

Here he probably refers not to borscht with sour cream, but to shchi – a vegetable soup based on cabbage or sauerkraut.

“Russian ladies were of high caliber, beautiful and educated,” Klein wrote. But Buchanan apparently preferred what he called ‘stag parties.’ Writing 180 years before St. Petersburg’s City Council passed a law banning “gay propaganda,” Buchanan apparently followed local tradition by keeping things discreet.

But, in general, Buchanan wrote of St. Petersburg aristocracy: “Too quiet for me!”

In contrast, the American envoy found Russia’s ‘lower classes’ were more convivial and drank “a species of white brandy strong enough to kill the Devil.”

Presumably, he was talking about vodka, a spirit largely unknown to Americans for another century.

The Ambassador felt free to be undiplomatic in his outgoing letters, because he personally handed them to American ship captains sailing out of St. Petersburg.

But, he repeatedly warned friends to be careful in their letters to him.

“When you write, do not say anything which would be offensive to the Government,” he once wrote. “They are not very delicate about opening letters here.”

One day his secretary, Captain Barry, rushed to the ambassador, saying he had just seen a Russian servant of the legation going through official papers. Buchanan later wrote that it was no surprise to him.

Klein, his biographer, wrote: “He had known, before he ever got to St. Petersburg, that there was no security of information in Russia, and he made it a point never to put in writing anything that could give offense or disclose a secret. In practically every document he wrote official and private, he included some comments highly complimentary to the Emperor.”

Instead, Buchanan focused on his mission — negotiating the trade treaty. American unrefined sugar would be traded for Russian hemp, iron and sail cloth. Just the way Russian and American businessmen today lobby Congress to grant preferential trade status to Russia, Buchanan enlisted the help of von Stieglitz, the Czar’s banker, who maintained a large trading office in New York.

A separate maritime treaty failed. Russian shipping companies feared that their seamen would jump ship in American ports, leaving their ships stranded.

In behind the scenes court intrigue, Russia’s Ministers of Finance and Interior nearly persuaded Czar Nicholas I to scrap the trade treaty with Washington.

In a last minute move, an aide to the Russian foreign minister went to the American legation and coached the ambassador changing the language to win the Czar’s approval. (Only one year ago, American diplomats were coaching their Russian counterparts prepare their ultimately successful application to join the World Trade Organization.)

On Dec. 18, 1832, at a court reception for foreign ambassadors, Czar Nicholas announced that he had approved the trade treaty with the United States. The treaty, which awarded each nation “most favored nation” trading status, was believe to the first that Russia signed with a foreign power.

In a snub to the British, the Czar then turned to the British ambassador, a Mr. Bligh, and ordered him to translate his remarks for the linguistically challenged American ambassador.

With Czarist approval coming just before Christmas, Buchanan suddenly became the popular man about St. Petersburg. He was invited to the best winter season balls. The Emperor would stop him on a snowy street and loudly address him as “Buchanan.” The Empress praised him as fine dance partner.

It took a while for Buchanan to realize why he was the flavor of the season. The British and French had come to an agreement over Belgium and were moving toward an entente. The Russians were hedging their bets, cultivating United States.

Fueling tensions, British and French newspapers were filled with reports of Russian atrocities in the Czar’s repression of the Polish uprising of November 1830. Buchanan had avoided taking sides in the Polish conflict, ducking any statement that today would be called advocating “human rights.”

But the Czar saw a hidden American hand at work in restive Poland.

“America was its home, American was its spokesman,” Klein writes of the Czar’s view of Poland’s ‘color revolution’ of the early 1830s. “If America saw mitigating factors, it would moderate the frenzy of European revolutionaries on the subject.”

Foreign Minister Nesselrode complained to Buchanan that The Washington Globe, a newspaper that backed President Jackson, “had been reprinting from the French and English journals some of the worst attacks against the Emperor.”

Klein summarized: “Would Buchanan not write to Jackson and request to him to have the editor of the Globe stop printing this kind of material and to direct him to publish some compliments about the Emperor?”

Buchanan tried to explain that the U.S. Constitution guarantees an independent press, ruling out the possibility that presidents would order newspaper editors to print articles. Perhaps Buchanan suspected that President Jackson, a tough, two term president nicknamed “Old Hickory,” was not likely take advice from a man he had dispatched as far from Washington as possible.

Why not, Buchanan suggested, have Russian newspapers print rebuttals to British and French stories? Then, translations of these can be supplied to American newspapers to give Americans the Russian side of the Polish question.

Buchanan apparently thought this pioneering foray into international public relations was successful.

But back in Washington, the Russian Ambassador was now Baron Sacken, an elderly, ill-tempered Baltic German who had commanded Russian troops in Poland. Sacken accused President Jackson of hypocrisy: “He claimed friendship for Russia in his messages to Congress, but encouraged the Globe to print articles abusive of the Emperor.”

At the time, Buchanan knew what Washington and the State Department were thinking – weeks after his Russian counterparts. Buchanan later complained that he never received a letter in St. Petersburg that had not been opened by the Russian police.

“The letters have been sent to me either almost open, or with such awkward imitation of the seals as to excite merriment,” he complained in a letter to the State Department.

What did get through to the State Department were his appeals to be relieved of his post before the onset of winter. While waiting for a response, he did some tourism in June of 1833, visiting Moscow and the Sergiyev Posad, the 16th century monastery outside of Moscow.

On his return, he found that Washington has granted his wish. On August 5, he had his last audience with Czar Nicholas I. By then, the U.S. Senate had ratified the Russia-US trade treaty. The U.S. ambassador was back in the good graces of Czar Nicholas I.

“Whilst we were taking leave, he told me to tell General Jackson to send another Minister exactly like myself – he wished for no better,” Buchanan wrote proudly of their last meeting, at Peterhof, the summer palace on the Gulf of Finland. “Thus has my mission terminated.”

Then, with no one in Washington to check his expense accounts, Buchanan turned his trip home into a leisurely four-month Grand Tour of Europe, paid for by US taxpayers. After sailing from St. Petersburg to Lubeck, Germany, he visited Hamburg, Amsterdam, the Hague, Brussels, Paris, London, Edinburgh, Glasgow, Belfast, Dublin, and Liverpool. The stop in Paris included a meeting with the Marquis de Lafayette, the hero of the American Revolutionary War, then in the last year of his life.

By December, he was back in Pennsylvania, preparing to run for the US Senate. After 12 years in the Senate, he served as Secretary of State, then as ambassador to Great Britain.

During his term as President, he seemed to have carried with him the advice given him one quarter century earlier in St. Petersburg by Empress Alexandra Feodorovna. He avoided European entanglements, focusing instead on such bizarre ideas as purchasing Cuba from the Spanish and turning Mexico into a protectorate.

It is too bad he failed to act on the second part of her advice: Take care of problems at home, “especially with the Southern states.”
For the next chapter, go watch Steven Spielberg’s new hit movie “Lincoln.”

For Moscow of 1962 – it was Yuri Gagarin.

With his wide, easy grin, Gagarin was an internationally renowned poster boy for Soviet science – first man in space! – and for Soviet health care – great teeth! From East to West, from First World to Third, the Soviet regime put forward Gagarin as a walking advertisement for the New Soviet Man.

As a young stamp collector in the United States, I carefully stuck in my Stamps of the World album stamps that honored Gagarin and his April 12, 1961 flight. Some stamps came from countries that today no longer exist — Czechoslovakia, East Germany and North Vietnam.

To this day, cranky grandmothers in Moscow will melt at the memory of that magical summer day in Minsk when they met…Yuri Alekseyevich Gagarin!

Half a century later, their grandchildren are supposed to emote over the Kremlin’s current hero – Viktor Bout.

But while Gagarin was world famous, Bout is world infamous.

In 2005, he was Hollywood’s model for the Nick Cage movie  “Lord of War.” Two years later, he was the subject of an unflattering biography: Merchant of Death: Money, Guns, Planes, and the Man Who Makes War Possible.

While most governments might avert their gaze, not a day goes by in Moscow without a Foreign Ministry statement, or a Duma declaration, or a state-run TV show — all lamenting the martyrdom of Viktor Bout.

Which is all very odd, because, with a click of a computer mouse, anyone can learn that, starting in the 1990s, Bout made his living as an international arms merchant, ducking sanctions to fuel wars in Africa and Afghanistan with excess arms stocks from the old Soviet war machine. 

Bout’s arms dealing career came to an abrupt halt in 2008, when he flew from Moscow to Bangkok to meet with men he thought were representatives of the FARC, or Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia. According to court testimony, Bout popped open his attaché case and offered to take orders for his latest specialty: shoulder-held surface-to-air missiles.

The Colombian “guerrillas” turned out to be US Drug Enforcement agents. Royal Thai Police arrested Bout. After a 2.5-year legal battle he was extradited from Bangkok to New York for trial. One year ago, he was convicted of selling weapons to a terrorist group and sentenced to 25 years in jail.

But here is Alexei Pushkov, chairman of the Duma’s International Affairs Committee, speaking Monday in Moscow: “Bout committed no crime. Instead, his abduction from the territory of a foreign country and conviction in the U.S. based on false and fabricated documents violated international norms.”

Coincidentally, also on Monday, peace talks started in Havana, Cuba,  between the Colombian government and representatives of the FARC. I used to cover Colombia as a newspaper reporter. I have flown over Colombia’s rugged landscape in Army helicopters, the workhorses of a campaign to control an insurgency financed by kidnapping and cocaine manufacturing. I wonder if the FARC would be talking peace today if they had gotten hold of the shipments of Russian-made shoulder-held missiles promised by Viktor Bout.

Some analysts here feel that the government’s campaign to free Bout has a very important audience of one: Alla Bout. Alla can raise the morale of her husband, who now faces the prospect of emerging from an American jail at age 70.  If Bout feels the Kremlin has abandoned him, the thinking goes, Viktor could squeal to the Americans about Moscow’s gray zone of arms sales.

While victimization and anti-Americanism attract some Russians, negative sentiments do not a hero make. The Soviets were smart enough to realize that with Gagarin they had scored a golden PR coup. The current inhabitants of the Kremlin don’t seem to realize that Bout is a turnoff.

It is hard to imagine, Viktor Bout standing in the back of an open convertible, grinning as confetti swirls around him. Gagarin got that kind of reception, not just in Moscow, but in Manchester, Cairo, Paris, Rome and Rio.

The reset jet no longer flies to Moscow.

In March of 2009, Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov and Hillary Clinton, then a brand new secretary of state, jointly pushed a “reset” button, signaling an end to the acrimony of the George W. Bush years. In that same month, United Airlines inaugurated direct jet service between Washington and Moscow.

A few weeks ago, United quietly suspended the Washington-Moscow flight.

International air passenger traffic out of Moscow is up 19 percent this year. But traffic to Washington is soft.

President Putin may drum up a little business with his invitation last week to President Obama to visit Moscow in 2013.

But to use 1980s Cold War vocabulary familiar to Russia’s rulers, let’s see how far the Kremlin’s détente lasts with the second Obama Administration.

This week, the U.S. Congress is set to debate the Magnitsky Act. Tied to a bill granting permanent normal trade relations to Russia, this legislation allows Washington to impose banking and visa restrictions on foreign officials seen as guilty of human rights abuses.

Russia sees this bill as being aimed at Russians, and has already announced that it will take retaliatory measures. So the Russian-American détente may last — until Christmas.

On the Kremlin side, President Putin needs an enemy to rally his blue collar, small city, less educated supporters. The United States is a convenient “enemy” — because, from the Kremlin’s viewpoint, the U.S. ‘threat’ is manageable.

Unlike a certain Asian country with 10 times Russia’s population, the United States does not share a long land border with Russia. The U.S.-Russia border is water, ice, and lightly populated by Eskimos.

One generation after the collapse of the Soviet Union, trade between Russia and the U.S. is so anemic that the Kremlin feels it can afford to give Washington a few verbal kicks. On the trade side, 40 percent of Russia’s imports come from Europe, 16 percent from China, and only 4.5 percent from faraway USA.

For the Cold War generation, now ruling Russia, the U.S. is easy to see as a threat, or, at least, as a rival.

Fifty years ago, Nikita Khrushchev did not pound his shoe on a desk, and exhort his Soviet countrymen – “We must catch up with…the French.”

Since then, the reality on the ground has changed. But nearly half a century of Cold War rivalry has a psychological momentum that continues into the 21st century in the brains of many Russians.

But, it is an unrequited enmity. On the American side, Americans are obsessed – not with Russia – but with the rise of China, and how to react to it.

I once interviewed Fernando Henrique Cardoso, the Brazilian sociologist who was launching his ultimately successful candidacy for the presidency of Brazil. Looking back at Brazil’s “lost decade” of the 1990s – hyperinflation and low growth – he said the biggest threat to Brazil was “irrelevancia.”

Russia, with its massive nuclear arsenal, will never be irrelevant on the international stage.

But to many Americans, Russia too often gets attention for the wrong reason – for playing the spoiler, for kicking Washington in the shins.

On Syria, the world looked last July to the Kremlin as the only outside power that could broker a deal to end the civil war and to ease Bashar al-Assad into a golden exile. But instead of playing a constructive role, the Kremlin, as the Brazilians would say, stepped on the ball.

More constructive is the Kremlin’s recent acceptance – and advocacy – of the idea that the United States and Iran talk directly about Iran’s nuclear weapons program. Creative thinking goes like this: if Nixon could go to China, maybe Obama, in his second term, can go to Tehran.

But, in general, official Washington remains wary of Putin’s Russia. While most of the anti-American propaganda here is for domestic consumption, Russian officials seem to forget that what is said here eventually makes it back to Washington.

If Russia’s state-controlled media harasses and vilifies U.S. Ambassador Michael McFaul, the Kremlin should not forget that he worked for three years inside the Obama White House, was unanimously approved by the U.S. Senate, and maintains a direct line to the man who will be President of the United States through 2016. Guess who will walk with President Obama into the room for a meeting with President Putin?

While I spent the U.S. election period in Moscow, my friend and fellow columnizer, Konstantin von Eggert, spent the election time in Washington. In his latest Due West column, this Russian columnist for Ria Novosti writes of American attitudes:
“’Let the Russians do their own thing as long as they do not become too much of a nuisance,’ seems to be the prevailing view in the White House. Once adopted, it is hard to change. As long as the Kremlin makes sure it does not do anything that is spectacularly offensive to America’s sensitivities, this policy is bound to last.’’

President Putin’s invitation to President Obama is a positive step forward.

But Obama is just as pragmatic a politician as is Putin.

In his second term, Obama may have more flexibility, but he wants concrete results. The essence of a transactional relationship is to do deals. Obama’s job is not to lead group therapy for Russian officials bitter over perceived American slights that took place when he was in law school.

If Obama sees that Moscow’s polemics and posturing are going to bog down the Russian-American deal making, he will redirect his time and attention elsewhere.

The American voters have reset the Obama presidential clock for four more years.

Now let’s see if Moscow and Washington can reset the reset.