Did you think this was going to be a nostalgia trip? Well, if Cold War relationships are to your taste, it is. Sec'y of State Rice has just called for 'activists' in Russia to start working against the Duma, in the interests of democracy. Can Cuba be next?

Yesterday, Russian President Vladimir Putin gave the visiting delegation from the U.S. a really nasty surprise when he announced that he wasn't letting us put weapons into Eastern Europe on his doorstep without a fight.

Through his representative in the talks, Putin asked for a freeze on the fatuously named 'defense shield', and we refused to halt while we discussed the planned armament. Putin will travel to Iran next week, and further showed his disregard for U.S. foreign relations by pointing out through Lavrov, his delegate, that sanctions are not improving the prospects for Iran to eschew nuclear arms.

Way to go, Brownies of the executive branch. Cretin-1 announcing that he was seeing his soul sure has given Putin the measure of our diplomatic skills, and it would appear he thinks as much of them as do the North Koreans.

While the U.S. under the executive branch's belligerence gave up all the gains that President Clinton had made in relations with North Korea, recently an agreement has been reached that N. Korea will 'dismantle' its nuclear facilities and the U.S. will remove it from the "axis of evil' designation and lift sanctions. This has met with general skepticism from around the world. Of course, no definition of 'dismantling' has been given, and previous experience shows that meeting deadlines is not the practice of the late great 'evil axis' nation. We have already acceeded to demands from N.Korea to release the funds we had ordered held up in Macao because of rampant counterfeiting by the former evil axis land - and all the concessions we asked for in exchange were foregone. At that time, U.S. spokesman Christopher Hill thought we would begin talks "after shutdown begins." As we all know, the talks went on, and now we have ... N. Korea's word that this time it really, truly, for sure, will shut down its nuclear facilities.

The return to Cold War relationships has broken out with India, because the U.S. has offered to forget its former demand that nuclear powers join in the denuclearization agreement only if we can impose the conditions of that agreement on them. Of course, without inspection rights this is nothing but word games, but word games matter in these relationships. Indian opposition centers around the control exercised by the U.S., which would not allow testing by India although we would retain the option of running our own tests. A little matter of pride seems to be overlooked here by the usual war machine in the White House. The turmoil inside India is large enough that it is possible new elections may need to be held.

We made a lasting impression on a whole lot of nations recently too, by keeping our 'anti-dumping' penalties which are collected from other nations and then distributed to our domestic industries.

It goes on and on. The cabal in the White House gained its voters by appealing to the basest elements, the kind that Michelle Malkin has aroused to attack a horribly injured 12-year-old, the kind that claims Al Gore doesn't deserve the Nobel Peace Prize (which is probably sour anyway), the kind that wants detainees tortured, everyone's phone tapped and death penalties for those not 'lawyered-up' enough to avoid getting the penalty. This is not a nuanced base, remember, it is the one that wants to see the other side of every issue mugged. Appealing to the right calls for a show of nasty chauvinism. That's what we've got in foreign relations these days.

Welcome back to the era of Ugle Americanism. It's with us until January 20, 2009. I sure hope we all survive.

(this post also at http://cabdrollery.blogspot.com )