Two weeks ago there was a meeting at President Putin’s home in Moscow. High powered delegations of U.S. and Russian foreign policy and business establishment discussed global policy.

The Russian news agency RIA Novosti reported:

The panel called "Russia-USA: A Look Into the Future," led by former U.S. Secretary of State Henry A. Kissinger and former Russian Prime Minister Yevgeny Primakov, declined to comment on the first Moscow session, but said it was a successful beginning to a series of high-level meetings.

"We discussed many issues. Our goal was not to get media coverage, score public relations points, or press home any propaganda messages. We came here to solve problems," Primakov said.

"We agreed to hold the next meeting in mid-December in Washington, D.C.," where the panelists will meet with President George W. Bush, he added.

Kissinger thanked Putin for his hospitality and praised the Russian leader for his realistic and open approach.

"We appreciate the time that President Putin gave us and the frank manner in which he explained his point of view," he said.

When asked whether U.S. unilateral interventionism was on the agenda, Kissinger said that "nuclear proliferation" and "nuclear threats," rather than U.S. policies, are the biggest danger to world peace.

In diplo-speak "frank manner" describes some fairly loud behavior. Like when Putin’s fist hit the table. Kissinger evades the question on the unilateral vs. multilateral issue, certainly the biggest point Russia has on its agenda, and instead quacks about "nuclear threats", i.e. the missile defense system the US wants to place at Russia’s door. (As there are no rational reason for such an installation, Russia assumes that these are offensive weapons pointed at Moscow.)

The U.S. media embargoed any news about the event. No mention of it in the NYT, WaPo, LAT, WSJ or elsewhere. There was a tiny bit in the Guardian, the International Herald Tribune hides it in general piece running a week after the event. Why wasn’t this news?

At GlobalResearch Mike Whitney, while asking the same question, is also looking at the bigger picture:

[T]he US and Britain have placed Russia on their “enemies list” and are planning to execute a guerilla war of harassment, slander, and covert operations intended to deepen the divisions between Europe and Russia. Naturally, Putin will continue to be demonized in the western media as a looming threat to democratic values.

Ultimately, the goal is to pit Europe against Russia while the Pentagon, the CIA, and M-15 settle on a long-term strategy for gaining access to vital petroleum and natural gas supplies in Central Asia and the Caspian Basin. That is still the main objective and both Putin and Kissinger know it.

So far, Putin appears to have the upper-hand in this regard because he has skillfully strengthened alliances with his regional allies–under the rubric of the Commonwealth of Independent States—and because most of the natural gas from Eurasia is pumped through Russian pipelines.

That sounds about right to me, though the aim likely exceeds the Caspian Basin. There are parts in U.S. policy that want to revive some cold-war scheme for tactical reasons. The strategic endgame is about a tame Russia, its resources under U.S. corporate control, unable or unwilling to challenge any U.S. move.

But even with the help of some continental European countries the U.S. is unlikely to achieve that goal. Even though there are U.S. friendly politicians in Europe, like Merkel in Germany and the nutty Kaczynski brothers in Poland who would like to go along, they can not ignore a simple fact.

If Russia turns off gas supply to Europe and instead sells to China and Japan, homes here will stay cold and voters will turn up political heat. The only alternative to hydrocarbonize Europe are  natural gas supplies from Iran. But the U.S. is balking at those too.

Since WWII the U.S. has lost the capacity to export energy. Since the end of the cold war the other major U.S. export, "security" in form of a nuclear umbrella, is no longer needed in Europe. The missile defense sham is a sorry try to revive that need. But so far there are no takers. A non-existing technology against a non-existing threat is a hard sell.

So I do expect that this will turn out to be a last ditch U.S. effort. Europe, old and new, will turn away from the U.S. and endorse those who sell warm water instead of cold wars.

The big 1990 victory in the cold war may not have been the beginning of the U.S. empire, but the beginning of its end.
It ended the need for the last product the U.S. could supply and where customers felt a demand. Real international power comes from providing needed products, not from fake marketing campaigns.

Bush certainly is a lousy salesman. But it’s also the product. What, other than destruction, can the U.S. provide?