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security. In fact, this would lead to the gradual development of a strategic partnership in the area of security.’
    So far, so good, but the Americans had yet to see what kind of facility Putin was offering. The neo-cons in the defence establishment were highly sceptical, and saw the move as a ploy to drive a wedge between the US and the Poles and Czechs. Under-secretary of defence Eric Edelman recalls: ‘I was doubtful that this actually indicated a Russian desire to cooperate on missile defence. My view was that a lot of what they were doing was tactically aimed at preventing us moving forward on missile defence by drawing us into unproductive discussions or into other issues.’ 13
    In September a team of experts led by the director of the Missile Defence Agency, General Patrick O’Reilly, flew out to Azerbaijan to inspect the Gabala radar station. They were not impressed by what turned out to be an ageing Soviet installation. The neo-cons were not unhappy to have their suspicions confirmed. According to Edelman, ‘What [O’Reilly] said was that this was a radar that had some capability. That it could be useful. But that it was also quite old. That it needed major upgrade. And that in order in the future to really play a role it was going to need some considerable expenditure and work.’
    The team concluded that Putin’s offer could help only to monitor the threat of a missile attack. But the American vision was of a system that could defend against it – and for that they would still need other sites in Poland and the Czech Republic.
    The more Russia-friendly axis in the administration accepted this, but did not want to throw away an olive branch they had not even expected to see, after Putin’s Munich speech. Condoleezza Rice and Robert Gates met alone in the defence secretary’s office at the Pentagon. Rice recalls: ‘We’re both Russianists, and we said: what we have to do is, we have to break the code somehow, we have to find a way to scratch the itch that the Russians have about being left out of this, about it being in the Czech Republic and Poland, which was obviously a lot of the problem. And are there some things we can do as confidence-building measures?’
    Gates and Rice batted ideas back and forth and eventually came up with an idea that might do the trick. In October they headed out to Moscow for what were dubbed ‘two plus two’ talks – between the foreign and defence ministers on each side: Rice and Gates, plus Lavrov and Serdyukov.
    On the morning of Friday 12 October they drove out to the president’s Novo-Ogaryovo residence, travelling the same road Rice had taken a year earlier for the surprise birthday party that had ended so testily. Putin wanted to see them before the 2+2 talks got going – and he was in much the same mood as a year before. Again he kept the Americans waiting for half an hour, though he had no other meetings. Then, when he assembled the two delegations around the table, with the television cameras running, he launched into a fresh tirade against the American plans: ‘The one point I would like to make is that we hope that you will not push ahead with your prior agreements with Eastern European countries while this complex negotiating process continues. You know, we could decide together to put a missile defence system on the moon some day, but in the meantime, because of your plans, we could lose the chance to achieve something together.’
    According to Gates, Putin questioned whether the Americans really needed a system to defend them from an Iranian attack. ‘He passed me this piece of paper that showed the range arcs of Iranian missiles, and he was basically saying that their Russian intelligence was that the Iranians couldn’t have a missile that could hit Europe for years and years and years. That’s when I said, “You need to get a new intelligence service.” ’ 14
    News reports at the time quoted Putin’s sarcastic comment about missiles on the moon, and concluded that the talks had failed. But behind the scenes, Gates and Rice made an offer that the Russians liked. It was intended to bridge the divide over whether or not the Iranians posed a threat. Lavrov remembers: ‘They suggested that the US would not activate their missile defence system until we, together with them, established that there was a real threat.’ 15
    According to Rice, ‘Bob [Gates] said: suppose we dig the holes, but we’ll do a joint threat assessment on Iran, and