Bush looks to his father to mend relations with Putin
The man who, famously, consulted his "other father" before deciding to invade Iraq, has turned to his paternal father to sort out his decidedly frosty relations with Vladimer Putin.
The venue for Bush's latest meeting with Putin is not the White House or Camp David or even Bush's own Texas ranch. For the first time in six and a half years Bush is to hold a meeting at his father's home in Kennebunkport, Maine. The 41st President was known for his deft handling of theUS-Soviet relationship, a trait for which the 43rd President is decidedly less known.
He may have looked into Putin's eyes and seen a good soul but his planned missile defence system in Europe went down in Russia like a plate of cold sick. Putin has gone as far as to compare Bush's foreign policy to that of Nazi Germany.
Time to call for daddy's help.
And therein lies the rub. Bush has always rejected the style of Clinton and his own father, believing that he could reject diplomacy and insist on his strange "my way or the highway" style of leadership.The bracing surrounds of George Bush Snr's home at Walker's Point, a rocky promontory on the Atlantic coast, was where the former president used to oil the wheels of top-level diplomacy with fishing trips and games of horseshoe.
Tomorrow and Monday, his son will be hoping to do the same. "What the President wants ... is the ambience and the background and the life out here just as it is when our family is here," Mr Bush Snr told a local radio station yesterday. "You sit down, no neckties, in a beautiful house looking over the sea and talk frankly without a lot of strap-hangers and note-takers."
Perhaps tactfully, the 41st president did not mention the deeper symbolism of the venue, a reminder of the moderate and multilateralist foreign policy he pursued, so conspicuously abandoned by the 43rd. The century-old stone and shingle house breathes the old East Coast Republican establishment - similarly rejected by the defiantly Texan son.
It has been catastrophically unsuccessful. We watched as he refused to do any deal with North Korea, saying that to do so would only be to "reward" North Korea for nuclear proliferation. North Korea simply went ahead and developed a nuclear weapon which Bush then "rewarded", in the words of John Bolton, by offering a deal if they would freeze their nuclear activities.
We are also witnessing a similar approach to Iran, who Bush refuses to negotiate with until the Iranians freeze all nuclear activity, despite the fact that what Iran are doing is perfectly and within their rights under the nuclear non proliferation treaty.
The Bush regime appear to have an almost pathological aversion to negotiation, insisting always that opponents concede defeat before any negotiations can take place.
After six and a half years we have the first indication that 43 might have worked out that this plan isn't working.
Such a sensible change of direction can only mean one thing: Dick Cheney is sedated and quietly sleeping in some antechamber.
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