One senior State Department nonproliferation official said it was Moscow, not Washington, "that is deciding to be uncooperative" on many counter-terrorism, counter-proliferation and military issues, such as forging closer security ties with Venezuela.
Some officials and experts agree, and say the war of words between Washington and Moscow over Georgia has done irrevocable damage to security relationships that have helped the two countries weather previous political storms.
"The environment for working relationships is being poisoned," said one international counter-terrorism official who is in contact with leaders in both countries.
In recent weeks, some administration officials -- nonpolitical career security officials in particular -- have scrambled to keep open the lines of communication and cooperation with Russian counterparts.
Rose Goettemoeller, who heads the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace's Moscow Center, said some ground-level "threat reduction" pacts between the two countries continued, but that she and other influential intermediaries feared that too could change.
"People are mad at the Russians, and they should be, for good reason," said Goettemoeller, who was an assistant energy secretary for national security in the Clinton administration. But, she added, "Is it still in our national interest to pursue key agenda items like nonproliferation and counter-terrorism, or are we simply going to slam the door and turn out the lights? There are some people in Washington who would like to do that."
The few U.S.-Russia bilateral meetings these days are occurring only because they are "below the radar" of hard-line administration officials, the international counter-terrorism official said.
On Wednesday, Deputy Foreign Minister Anatoly Safonov met in Germany with the State Department's Coordinator for Counter-Terrorism, Dell L. Dailey, but the State Department considered it so sensitive that Dailey's office would not even confirm the meeting.
"They don't want it to appear that they are cooperating with the Russians . . . because they are scared that if it comes out, it will become a rallying point by the hard-liners and that they could be overruled," he said.
Pavel Podvig, a Stanford University expert on Russia who spent a decade at the Moscow Center for Arms Control Studies, said hard-liners in Moscow were responding in kind.
"In Russia, many people are spoiling for a fight," Podvig said. "You could easily see how these points of cooperation could die out, and that would be very unfortunate because we need to move in the other direction."
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josh.meyer@latimes.com
