Protection for Snowden Russia's latest affront to U.S.

• Obama is considering canceling September summit
• Russia is supplying weapons to Syria
• Putin has been jailing political opponents

Russia's protection of NSA leaker Edward Snowden, who is hoping for temporary asylum in Moscow, is President Vladimir Putin's latest show of disdain for U.S. wishes and a sign that U.S.-Russian relations are at one of their lowest points since the end of the Cold War, experts say.

The Snowden affair has become so toxic that the White House is considering canceling a planned summit between Putin and President Obama in September.

"It's pretty bad," says Ariel Cohen, a Russia expert at the Heritage Foundation. "U.S.-Russia relations are at their nadir, rock bottom since the end of the Cold War."

Russia's hospitality to a man wanted by the United States on charges of espionage is only one of several instances in which Russia has emerged as an adversary, frustrating U.S. aims globally.

Russia has used its veto power in the U.N. Security Council to frustrate U.S.-backed measures against Iran's nuclear program. Putin is supplying weapons to Syrian dictator Bashar Assad, propping up a dictator whom Obama's stated policy is to have removed from power. Putin has been on a campaign to repress and jail political opponents who have appealed to the West for help.

All this comes despite Obama's vow early in office top hit a "reset" button in U.S.-Russian relations by listening more to Russian concerns. Obama suspended longtime efforts to deploy a defensive missile shield in Eastern Europe at Russia's request and backed its permanent membership in the World Trade Organization.

Obama also acquiesced to Putin's position of nuclear arms reductions, and famously told former prime minister Dmitri Medvedev in 2012 that he would have "more flexibility" on U.S-Russia issues if elected to a second term.

Putin has said often he is acting in the best interest of Russia and has said he wishes to return his nation to the status of a superpower it held prior to the dissolution of the Soviet Union in 1991.

Putin says he is arming Assad because he is concerned a Sunni Islamist victory there will spillover into Russia's Caucasus region, where Russia has fought a decades-long war against an Islamist insurgency, Cohen said.

But he also opposed the Western-backed military effort to topple dictator Moammar Gadhafi in Libya and accuses the U.S. often of fomenting rebellion in his region by standing up for the democratic rights of his political opponents. Russia has also banned U.S. organizations that promote political activism and free speech overseas.

Russian "policy is to blame the United States for everything that is going on in the world and in Russia and attempt to consolidate popular support of the regime by manufacturing an external threat," Cohen said. "Communist Russia used to do the same thing."

The freeze has enormous consequences in the Middle East, where Islamist terror movements have yet to be defeated and revolutionary forces threaten to turn out U.S. allies in Jordan, Bahrain and Yemen. Russia can be a force for cooperation or agitation, analysts say.

"The question is what kind of relationship can we have with the Putin government the way it's behaving (now)," says Andrew Weiss, a Russia expert in the Clinton White House who's now at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. "The answer is not much."

The last time Putin and Obama met, at the G-8 summit in Northern Ireland, they disagreed over Syria and both appeared unhappy in each other's presence. Other high-level meetings between U.S. and Russian diplomats and ministers in Moscow and Washington have pushed the two sides even further apart, Weiss says.

Relations between the two countries were worse during the 2008 Russian invasion of the Republic of Georgia, which caused a breakdown of senior level contacts between U.S. and Russian leaders, prompting Obama to seek to "reset" the relationship, Weiss says. But lately, "the Russians are stonewalling (U.S. efforts) every step of the way."

That is why the White House is signaling that it may skip a planned two-day visit to Moscow before the planned St. Petersburg G-20 summit of the world's wealthiest nations in September, Weiss says. It would be the second cancellation of a planned meeting between the two leaders during Obama's tenure. The first was when Putin backed out of planned meeting in Washington in May 2012.

"Putin has never been responsive to efforts to get him engaged in U.S.-Russian relations, going back to January 2009," Weiss says. "His current motivation for wanting to host Obama is to show the Russian people that he's one of the big boys, that Obama is just one more of a parade of international visitors seeking an audience with him, and that no one questions his legitimacy."

Rather than "chase after Putin" and hope the Russians have a change of heart, Weiss says it would be better to cool it with the Russians and "have a period of disengagement for the next few months."

John Bolton, the U.S. ambassador to the United Nations under President George Bush, says Russian anti-American policies show the failure of Obama's "appeasement policy" toward Russia.

As long as US policy is conciliatory toward Russia, the more concessions Russian leaders will push to deny the U.S. national missile defense capability, to expand Russian influence in nations of the former Soviet Union and to counter U.S. intent in the Middle East and Iran, Bolton says.

"They're advancing their interests at our expense," Bolton says. "We're pressing the reset button and they're pressing us."

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