To President Bush, they're the "axis of evil," but seen from the Kremlin, they're more like members of the "best customer club." North Korea, Iran, and Iraq are among Russia's favorite business partners even though they're at the center of the White House's war on terror.
Just this week, the Iraqi foreign minister met with his Russian counterpart, and received a statement of Moscow's opposition to an American attack on Baghdad. Iran's set to get nuclear plants, Pyongyang may get money for railroad construction. You could call the recent high-profile connections a thumb in the eye of U.S. policymakers, a reassertion by President Vladimir Putin of the nation's superpower sensibilities. It could also be simple economics. Pride and nostalgia.
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Mark Kramer, director of the Harvard Project on Cold War Studies, and a senior associate at the Davis Center for Russian Studies, Harvard University
Dmitri Trenin, the deputy director of the Carnegie Moscow Center
Scott Peterson, Moscow bureau chief for "The Christian Monitor"
Pavel Podvig, researcher at the Center for Arms Control, Energy, and Environmental Studies at the Moscow Institute of Physics and Technology, currently a visiting researcher at the Program on Science and Global Security at Princeton University
