>Russia may remain Mr Bush’s global partner in the war against terror – at least at the rhetorical level – but in reality the US-Russia relationship has largely stagnated in the wake of the Afghan war.
If Mr Bush’s chief foreign policy goals are the fight against terrorism, countering the spread of weapons of mass destruction and the promotion of democracy, then experts say that on at least two of these counts, Russia could do a good deal more.
By now it’s perhaps no longer possible to separate the nationalist Chechnyan movement from its Islamist element, but it’s obviously true that there are fundamental differences here from the situation that the US and its allies finds themselves in, and that our sympathies may be pulled in different directions. That said, the actual tactics of taking young schoolchildren as hostages is particularly repellent: it’s a situation where it’s hard to see any outcome but tragedy, and what the parents are going through doesn’t bear thinking about.
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