Anti-Americanism plays in Russia

It's not all empty posturing. There are serious, stark differences between the two countries. Russia feels both insulted and threatened by the expansion of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, created during the Cold War as a deterrent to the Soviet military, into countries along its border and U.S. plans to build a missile shield at Russia's edge. And it is enraged by what it sees as U.S. meddling in the domestic politics of onetime client states Ukraine and Georgia.

But those issues are expected to be publicly downplayed at the summit, where the focus will be on less politically barbed agenda items: reducing nuclear stockpiles and sealing the agreement to transport lethal supplies into Afghanistan. But for Russia's power structure, analysts say, the backdrop of hostility and distrust is unlikely to change.

"There's no future in Russia for pro-American policy," said Nikolai Zlobin, director of the Russia and Eurasia program at the World Security Institute in Washington. "You can build your whole career based on anti-American policy -- build a political career, become a famous journalist or public figure. But if you promote the idea of friendship with America, you'll be denounced immediately."

The Cold War is a faded relic in American memory. Now there are Iran and North Korea to worry about; a few years ago, there was Saddam Hussein. And so it is perhaps easy to forget that, in Russia, the Cold War remains a poignant and powerful idea.

Talk of current events often conveys the distinct sense that Russia is clinging to the idea of an American threat. If there is no hostility with the United States, the thinking runs, it can only mean that Russia is no longer important enough to merit it. And that's unpalatable to Russia's political elite.

When Russian tanks and warplanes poured over the border last summer to battle Georgian troops in the breakaway republic of South Ossetia, Russian news reports ascribed the war to U.S. missteps, primarily Washington's backing for the anti-Russian president of Georgia, a nation Moscow regards as within its rightful sphere of influence.

Russian leaders believed the U.S. had set the stage for the war when it recognized the independence of Kosovo, a former province of Serbia. Traditionally protective of Serbia's interests, Moscow was infuriated by the move, and said it would set a precedent for other rebel republics to secede.

"We are not afraid of anything, including the prospect of a new Cold War," Medvedev thundered last summer.