Former US secretary of state Henry Kissinger, who visited Moscow this week, thinks that Moscow and Washington have entered a "new phase of negotiations" and are undertaking efforts to strengthen relations. That may be. However, no compromise in relations between the two countries is in sight.

For example, in terms of its quantitative and qualitative parameters the US missile defense
system in Eastern Europe is not capable of threatening Russia's nuclear deterrence forces.
But it is not needed against Iran because that country will never be able to build intercontinental ballistic missiles. And even if it could, its leaders are not so insane that they would deliver a suicidal strike against US territory. Therefore, from a rational point of view, it is absolutely impossible to understand either the reasons for the Russian hysterics about missile defense or the reasons for America to build this system. We are looking at a double absurdity.

No country that is party to the CFE (Conventional Forces in Europe) treaty selects its own quotas for any of the five classes of weaponry and military hardware that are limited by the treaty. The superiority of the 19 NATO countries over lone Russia in the CFE zone is at least three-fold in all of these classes of equipment, and in economic terms (volume of GDP) NATO surpasses Russia by almost 30-fold. Russia is very unhappy with the restrictions that the CFE treaty imposes on it, although it does not even select the quota that it is supposed to. It is very displeased that the summary quotas for the NATO countries are too high (the fact that they are only partially selected is ignored), so it is withdrawing from the CFE treaty (provisionally at this point), thereby abolishing all quotas and giving NATO an opportunity to turn its less than three-fold superiority into 30-fold (in correspondence with the economic capabilities of the two sides). NATO should simply be happy that Russia has so openly and stupidly put itself in this embarrassing situation, but it is afraid and is beginning to talk about concessions. We are facing another double absurdity.

For the sake of the struggle against Islamic terrorism, the United States began a senseless war in Iraq, where there was never any terrorism. Iraq has now been successfully turned into a breeding ground. As its strategic allies in the fight against terrorism Washington chose the two main countries that created it -- Saudi Arabia and Pakistan. And Iran, which has already fought against terrorism, has been declared the embodiment of world evil.

And now the time is arriving for the great geopolitical exchange. The United States is asking Russia to soften its position on Iran, that is, allow America to go substantially deeper into its already disastrous situation by getting involved in a much more hopeless campaign than the one in Iraq. In exchange for this they are asking Russia not to withdraw from the CFE treaty, that is, not give the West an opportunity to make its economic superiority into military superiority. But Russia cannot agree because that is not enough. It wants more: prohibit the United States from throwing away the American taxpayers' money on an absolutely senseless -- no matter what the targets may be -- missile defense system in Eastern Europe.

In this way, Washington is doing everything it can to bring about the collapse of its own foreign policy (and perhaps its economy too), while Moscow is furiously resisting this. The most amazing thing in this situation of multiple absurdities is that Washington is absolutely and sincerely convinced that it is defending its own geopolitical positions and even fighting to strengthen democracy in the world. Moscow is just as sincerely convinced that it is defending its own geopolitical positions and fighting against US hegemony. And it is this complete -- and apparently growing -- disconnect between the top echelons of power in the world's two leading military countries that is seriously frightening.