John Vinocur: Putin's redlining plan for Eastern Europe

PARIS: Location, location, location. On Main Street, you're in business. On Drain Street, around the corner, you're nowhere, and maybe in bankruptcy court.

Project that home truth on the scale of Russia's attempt to reassert itself as a world force, calling the shots again for the countries at its borders from the Baltic to Caucasus:

Vladimir Putin, simon-pure democrat turned real estate broker, suddenly decides that an American missile shield that could block Iranian nukes is not such a lunatic, war-mongering idea after all, and tells George Bush, do I have a location for you! It's Azerbaijan, right on Iran's doorstep, and what a place for a radar installation. Just to accommodate you, we've got one there already.

As for stationing the 10 U.S. interceptors that could actually shoot down an Iranian missile heading west, Putin, talking at the Group of 8 summit meeting in Germany last week, was full of suggestions on more sun/fun locations - Iraq or Turkey, he said, or on American ships at sea.

In real estate terms, it's a new kind of Russian redlining scheme.

In fact, it's a method for moving the shield's radar, to be positioned in the Czech Republic, and its interceptors, scheduled for deployment in Poland, out of the Central and Eastern European neighborhoods that Putin seems intent on reorienting toward revised status as neutered, limited partners of NATO and the European Union.

Responding rather more directly to the Russian proposal than a cautious Bush did, Mirek Toplanek, the Czech prime minister, said he said saw it as effort by Putin to regain a sphere of influence in Central Europe.

An allied diplomat, with long and direct experience in negotiating with the Russians, had an even more explicit formulation: "They've now shown they're exclusively interested in rolling back NATO presence in the old Soviet orbit which, beyond the missile shield, comes down today to a grand total of four policing aircraft in the Baltics and a combined total of couple of thousand men in Romania and Bulgaria. It's an attempt to set a precedent."

The problem is, it's an attempt that might work. In acquiescing to the reality that a missile shield against Iran is not folly, Putin is also telling European public opinion, particularly in Germany, that U.S. radar and interceptor installations in Europe can be easily displaced - forget about the technical, political and security issues involved in Azeri or Turkish sites - to locations that are out of sight, out of the European mind.

The appeal is obvious. To make sure Europe gets the point, Putin said he would drop his threat to retarget Europe with his own missiles but only if the Czech and Polish deployments are abandoned.

And, with a Czech response to draft contracts due in July, he has warned the Americans against moving forward with the installation while his real estate deal is on the table.

Russia refined the ploy further over the weekend, blurring the willfully upbeat notion last week that some kind of underlying Russian-American cooperation could emerge on the shield. Instead, it restated its old line that the shield endangers Russia.

Putin's foreign minister, Sergey Lavrov, insisted in Moscow that no Iranian nuclear threat had been proved (read: where's the problem, what's the hurry?), and said, concerning Russia's active participation in aspects of the shield, "To suppose that we take part in building such a potential, which creates a threat to us, is wishful thinking."

This seemed directly pointed at hopes that a trace of compromise was in the air. Those hopes had been expressed by the Czech deputy prime minister, Alexandr Vondra in terms that also confront Russia's basic aim of re-establishing its veto rights up to Germany's southeastern border. Vondra talked about Azerbaijan's possible inclusion in the missile shield - but as a complement to the planned European sites.

In fact, according to the allied diplomat, Secretary of Defense Robert Gates in April had already proposed to Moscow in a "nonpaper" (a memorandum without official character) that Russia incorporate some of its radar installations into a backup for the shield system.

The idea was rejected.

The diplomat said the Russians then suggested to the Americans that the shield's 10 interceptors be based in Britain instead of Poland. This was described as massively disingenuous because, unlike Poland, interceptors launched from England could actually hit a missile if one from Russia's arsenal were ever fired.

For the diplomat, suggesting England as a site made obvious that the Russians' goal in challenging the missile shield was returning Central and Eastern Europe to glacis or buffer state status, with its implications for the proposed entry of Ukraine and Georgia into NATO and the European Union.

With Bush's reluctance to say what the Russians' real missile shield game is about - out of fear of new controversy, Putin's targeting a strategic rollback by NATO in Europe is not yet a part of the American or NATO's public policy agenda - the United States is left in a cramped, reactive position.

Doubly so.

As the stakes become clearer, and Iran moves toward nuclear capability, any bargaining by the Bush administration on its agreements concerning the shield with the Czechs and Poles for the sake of looking forthcoming with the Russians will open a breach of confidence within NATO.

It will affect the new democracies of Europe which continue to regard America as their ultimate security guarantor (despite the administration's inaction in helping them alleviate or skirt Russia's control of their energy supplies.)

And, it will immeasurably embolden Putin and the men and factions who are supposed to succeed him in Russian leadership next year.

While Bush continued to speak of Putin's Azerbaijan play "as a very positive gesture," Tony Blair, in a surprise burst of frankness summing up meetings with Putin last week, said people in the West were "becoming worried and fearful" about Russian "external policies."

Blair has the luxury of leaving office by the end of the month. Bush, who is around till January 2009, meets Putin again on July 1 and 2 in Maine.