When President Bush said yesterday that “Russia is not an enemy”, he was right. He meant it as conciliation: a decision to try to calm President Putin down from his outburst on Friday, when he attacked the US for its imperialism.

But Bush’s soothing remarks ahead of today’s G8 summit are an accurate description. Russia is not an enemy because it is not powerful enough to be one any more. Most of Putin’s threats are empty; if the US ignores them, as it most likely will, then there is nothing he can do about it.

Some of Mr Putin’s new belligerence no doubt comes from three years of high oil prices. Just as he has sought to rewrite “colonial” energy licences signed in the early 1990s, when Russia was struggling to haul itself out of the debris of the Soviet Union, he is threatening to amend arms control treaties struck at the same time.

But this is bravado. Russia’s population is shrinking and its military budget is small and stretched. Its most powerful weapon is oil; its greatest vulnerability is that the price may fall.

It’s Grrrrr8 (honest)

As the G8 summit begins in Germany, Hugo Rifkind explains everything you need to know – and lots of stuff you don’t

Multimedia

• Audio: Behind the scenes at the G8

• Pictures: G8 summit

BACKGROUND

• Quotes: what Putin told The Times

• Blair reinvented the Middle Ages

• The West is starting this Cold War

• Save the planet: give to China

Putin’s railing at the US, in a Friday night interview with The Times and selected newspapers from the other G8 countries, has triggered comments that the Cold War is back. But it isn’t. As Putin himself acknowledged on Friday, “although there might seem a contradiction” with his threats to quit post-Cold War arms treaties, Russia’s relations with the US are “absolutely different” from “10, 15, 20 years ago”.

The tone of his remarks in the four-hour interview was sour and resentful, accusing the West of failing to appreciate Russia’s actions in complying with treaties. But his threats were more symbolic than substantial.

In particular, Putin threatened to retaliate if the US pressed ahead with installing missile defences in Eastern Europe. But although the Conventional Forces in Europe Treaty, signed in 1990 by Nato and the Warsaw Pact, is considered a powerful symbol of the mutual desire to step back from the threat of war, its implementation has already stalled. Much conventional weaponry was destroyed or moved under the treaty, but Russia later refused to redeploy troops from Georgia and Moldova; and the US and many other countries then refused to ratify it.

Mr Putin also said that he might target missiles on Europe. But again, this is symbolic, as programming takes only minutes.

His most serious threat is to quit the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty. The pact, signed by President Reagan and Mikhail Gorbachev, Soviet General Secretary, in 1987, was the first to reduce nuclear arms, rather than setting ceilings which could not be exceeded.

However, Mr Putin made clear that such a move would not be a response to US provocation, but to the wider scramble of countries such as Iran, Israel and Pakistan for medium-range missiles. This leaves room for talks.

Mr Putin acknowledged that Russia could not fund an arms race. Its military budget, of about 2.7 per cent of national income, is modest by Nato standards, and he does not want it to rise. Russia’s population of 140 million is also shrinking by nearly a million a year, from ageing, illness and emigration.

On Iran, one area where he could cause trouble, his interests now appear close to the West’s. He “agreed absolutely” with Bush that it would be “unacceptable” for Iran to have nuclear weapons, and Russia’s recent delays in supplying nuclear fuel to Iran look like an expression of his disquiet.

The bottom line is that Russia is in little position to hit back if the US and Europe press ahead with their aims. Its strongest card remains the West’s need for energy; as Ukraine and Belarus have found, it is prepared to turn off the tap. Europe has still not responded to that threat, and not for lack of warning. But if the oil price fell, so would Russia’s new confidence, and very likely, the popularity of its President. As Moscow’s traffic jams show, oil at $70 a barrel can buy a lot of Mercedes but like Putin’s outburst, that is an illusory claim to power.

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