The circus has been a great boon to the English language. Circus performers over the years always hated calling things by their dictionary names, so over the years almost anything connected with the circus acquired a new and more interesting one. Clowns called elephants “bulls” whether they were male or female. They called the wires holding up their tent “guys”—so now we have “guy wires.”

A lot of circus jargon ended up being used in the circus’s parallel profession, politics. Shills and advance men first worked in circuses. Graft is what clowns first, and politicians more recently, called money made without lifting a finger.

Then there is the other term, the one describing the kind of event we’re going to see in Slovenia this weekend involving George Bush and Vladimir Putin: “Dog and Pony Show.”

“Dog and pony show” is the derisive name big-time clowns and acrobats gave to the shitty little carnivals that played in two-horse towns and called themselves circuses. A “dog and pony show” is what you went to if you either couldn’t afford a real circus ticket, or else lived in a place where no real circus would ever think of visiting.

The Ringling Brothers Barnum and Bailey Circus, for instance, was known among circus performers as the “Wait Brothers Show,” so named because the circus’s posters read “Wait for the Big Show.” But if you were some poor farmer who knew that his kids would die waiting for the Ringling Brothers to visit, you gave up and went to whatever dog-and-pony sham showed up at your village—usually a whore with a hairbrush tied to her face who was sold to the yokels as a “Bearded Lady.”

Which more or less exactly describes the upcoming Bush-Putin summit. As is the case with most summits, no real action will take place during the course of it. Most of us will never get tickets to the real circus, whose audience is basically restricted to oligarchs on both side of the ocean and the civil servants in both governments who work for them. This thing that’s going to happen this weekend, on the other hand, is strictly for all of us peasants. Obviously, nothing significant could possibly be discussed in the space of two hours, particularly when one of the participants—Bush—is too numbingly stupid to handle anything more complicated than the opening of a beer can without assistance. Outside of a meteor crashing through the roof of the meeting-hall (and it would have to be a big meteor to get past both security services), there is virtually no chance of anything that has not been scripted long in advance ever occurring during this “summit.” The two men will appear to talk about issues of substance—only they will not be talking to each other, but rather to the journalists present, who in turn will report the remarks to all of us.

This summit, in other words, is basically a giant prepackaged media event, designed to leave the out-of-the-loop public with a series of carefully calculated impressions. This is the American media’s favorite kind of political event. There are no subtleties and no moving targets. Instead, there is a steady stream of official press releases and photo opportunities, which reporters then balance out with “commentary” culled from a giant river of analyses provided by the unofficial ideological wing of the American propaganda system-our network of corporate-sponsored think-tanks and academic foundations.

What follows is the eXile’s guide to summit coverage. We’ll explain what will happen in Slovenia, how it will be reported, and why it will be reported that way.

Aside from some vague platitudes about an insane missile defense system that has already been debated endlessly and will never be built, and some pious-sounding promises about future intentions in a Chechen war that Russia will never ever consult with the United States about anyway (assuming the United States even cared), there is little political information that anyone, even a person with a particular interest in U.S.-Russia relations, can gain from watching this summit.

But there is a lot to be learned about the other thing—the gigantic machinery of bullshit that will be cranked up to full volume on both sides to mythologize the political style and the historic relevance of both leaders. While the actual discussion between Bush and Putin will be a stillborn mouse, the other thing will be a raging tiger, very much alive, that will show all of its stripes and then some before the weekend is over.

Here it is, a look at the machine in action.

SUMMIT UNDERCOVER    On its face, a Presidential summit is a supremely dull affair. No exchange is permitted to occur before the public that has not been carefully planned and scripted in advance by literally dozens of advisers and handlers on either side. But there is another side that the public never gets to see—the informal bull sessions between two heads of state. It is not too difficult to imagine what topics the alcoholic Boris Yeltsin might have discussed with “His Friend Bill” the inveterate womanizer. But what about at the upcoming Bush-Putin summit in Slovenia? What will Vladimir Putin, a career spook whose every word is carefully calculated toward achieving some policy goal, find to chat about with George W. Bush, a semi-illiterate buffoon whose every unscripted utterance is fodder for the monologues of late-night talk show hosts?   George W. Bush: “Wow, it sure is inebriating to be here in Slovakia.” Vladimir Putin: “I think you mean Slovenia.” GWB: “Huh? ... This is some castle though, just like that one they got at Disneyland. Y’all must have big old castles like this over in Poland, huh?” VP: [aside to translator] “Is he serious?” Translator: [to VP] “I believe so, sir.” VP: [to GWB] “Not quite in the style this one, but some of our old Russian imperial residences are quite impressive, yes.” GWB: “So you used to be an international spy, huh? My dad used to do that stuff, too. I tell ya, he’d bring me home these top secret government pens that could write in like four different color inks. The other kids sure were jealous when I’d bring those gadgets in to school.” VP: “Yes, we’ve always admired the CIA’s technology.” GWB: “You’re gonna let us build our missile shield, aren’t you? I’d have to ask Mr. Cheney, but I’m pretty sure we could let you guys play with it once we’ve got it working. Should be real neat.” VP: “We’ll discuss this later of course, but I must emphasize that we will allow nothing to jeopardize the ABM treaty. The world balance of power depends on it.” GWB: “Come on, now. Don’t you think it’s time we start thinking beyond the old days of when we had the concept that if we blew each other up, the world would be safe? I mean that treaty is from the 1970s, isn’t it? Heck, I used to be something of a boozer back in those days, if you can believe it.” VP: “I find that difficult to imagine, Mr. President.” GWB: “Of course now Jenna, that’s one of my daughter, she’s following in the old man’s footsteps there... developing a bit of a taste for the tequila, ya know.” VP: “I hadn’t heard that.” GWB: “Sure you did... it was on all the news shows. I don’t see what the big deal is, though. She’s just sowing some of those wide oats... But you got two young daughters too, right? They’ll get to be teenagers soon, then you’ll see what I mean.” VP: “Your parental advice is much appreciated, thank you.” GWB: “But about this missile shield. Now the thing is, I don’t want nations feeling like that they can bully ourselves and our allies. I want to have this ballistic defense system so that we can make the world more peaceful, and at the same time I want to reduce our own nuclear capacities to the level commiserate with keeping the peace.” VP: “Of course, we all want to keep the peace. But our concern is that your plans will have just the opposite effect.” GWB: “Huh? ... [looks to translator helplessly] ... OK, OK... I can see you’re all hepped up on this missile thing. We’ll work it out later... So what position did you play back in Little League? You look like you would have been a good shortstop to me.” VP: “I’m not sure what you mean.” GWB: “Little League... you know, baseball.” VP: “Oh, yes, an intriguing game. Not very popular in the Soviet Union, I’m afraid. I was always something of an avid participant in judo, actually.” GWB: “Judo? You mean like in those Karate Kid movies? Those were terrific... [adopts very bad Asian accent] Oh Danielsan, you do right, no can defense... “ [laughs loudly] VP: [with confused look] “...” GWB: [puts up fists in playful imitation of boxing] “Oh boy, remind me not to meet you in a dark alley!” [laughs again] VP: “I see that your mouth is moving, but I cannot understand a word you are saying.” GWB: “Yeah, my dad says that all the time... boy, you spies sure do stick together!” VP: “I believe it’s time to go into the banquet hall for dinner, Mr. President...”

Very few people who read the news really understand how it works. Unless you’ve worked on one side of the news or the other, you have no way of knowing that that power over what goes into the news very often comes down to seemingly irrelevant logistical factors—whether or not you have an established place to hold a press conference, how many fax machines you have and how often you use them, how many people you have answering phones at your office, whether the people answering the phones are able to help journalists instantly, and so on. It comes down to a battle of resources and numbers. In the battle of ideas, he who has the most telephones and the most stamina wins every time.

In the United States, by far the largest producer of news is the Pentagon. The military has thousands of full-time information officers, publishes hundreds of magazines, and sends out literally millions of press releases a year (in 1980, the last time any branch of the armed services released such information, the Air Force alone reported that it had sent out 615,000 press releases). The military lends informational support not only to traditional news outlets like newspapers and television, but to the makers of television dramas and Hollywood feature films—it has dozens of staffers who are assigned full-time to help America produce multi-zillion-dollar bullshit-blizzards like Pearl Harbor and Top Gun. No other corporation, no other corporate association even (i.e., the Chamber of Commerce), comes close to matching the propaganda ability of the military.

But next in line after government information sources like the military are the think-tanks. The largest dozen or so of these privately-funded “research institutions” have an immense impact on public discourse. (See article on page 4). Groups like the Heritage Foundation, the American Enterprise Institute, and the Cato Institute exist entirely to produce research and commentary that will influence public opinion. They have fancy halls in which to hold press conferences and “roundtables,” and their hired chimps-people like Ariel Cohen of Heritage and Ivo Daadler of Brookings—sit next to the telephone virtually around the clock waiting for journalists to call. If you don’t believe us, try calling one of these institutions sometime to see if you escape the phone call without getting a quote. It’s next to impossible.

Most of these organizations have either tax-exempt or tax-reduced status, which forces them to pretend that they are not lobbyists. Cohen’s Heritage Foundation, for instance, includes a disclaimer on each on of its press releases and reports which indicates that it this or that report is “not intended to influence legislation” in any way. But in fact the Heritage Foundation often promotes itself as the “unofficial research arm of congress,” helping elected officials draft legislation and position papers. The contradiction generally goes unnoticed in the press, which seldom takes any time out to describe these sources at all. A shill like Cohen is usually described simply as “an analyst for the Heritage Foundation,” leaving the impression that he is an independent academic, and not a creature of huge corporate interests like right-wing beer tycoon Joe Coors.

In fact, most of the oft-quoted Russia specialists have massive corporate funding behind them. The ubiquitous Thomas Graham of the Carnegie Institute, for instance, last year received a $100,000 grant from the Smith-Richardson Foundation, which is really the Vicks Cough Drops company, one of America’s largest companies and a frequent and enthusiastic contributor to right-wing research organizations. Analysts from the Cato Institute can boast of having AIG, the insurance giant, as their largest contributor-which may or may not affect the Institute’s stance toward privatization of health care in America and abroad. The Center for Strategic and International Studies, another big producer of Russia commentary, has companies like Exxon, British Aerospace, TRW, Citigroup, Cisco systems and Raytheon backing it.

The Russia policy generally favored by these institutions has generally followed a familiar plotline, i.e., favoring privatization, deregulation, tariff reduction, the relaxation of rules for foreign investment, elimination of social spending, and so on. During the summit, however, the think-tanks will talk less than usual about the need for “economic reform.” Since nothing is really at stake during the summit apart from the potential for a massive public relations haul for both governments, the think tanks—the would-be producers of “serious” research—are working tirelessly to imbue this extremely meaningless spectacle with an atmosphere of gravity and drama.

There will be much talk in the upcoming days about the “new language” of the U.S.-Russia relationship—language that will described as extremely important to U.S.-Russian relations. Much of this talk about language revolves around whether or not Russia and America consider each other “friends.” The exact nature of this friendship—really a complex matter of economics and raw geopolitical interests—is never delineated, only the superficial aspects of the various protestations of friendship or hostility, which are described in human terms, as one would describe the relationship between two people.

Take this quote from the abovementioned Daadler, for instance, which was printed in a recent AFP story about the summit:

“I don’t think we’re going to see a repeat of the Bill and Boris show in the way we had in the early 1990s. This is a meeting ... that will set the atmospherics because Putin will want to take the read of Bush and Bush will want to take the read on Putin and if they read each other wrong, that’s going to be determinative for the rest of the relationship for the next few years.”

The picture Daadler is describing is of Bush and Putin, masters of vast empires and thoroughly experienced gorgons of the most extreme kind of cynicism, as a pair of dumb dogs sniffing each other in a park. He is playing up psychological dramas so crude and simplistic and innocent that they would not be out of place in a James Whale movie—with the monster Putin and the blind stranger George Bush circling each other in mute distrust until one offers the other cigar, causing Putin finally to grasp Bush by the shoulders and cry, bolts bursting from his neck, “Friend!”

Cohen, likewise, was one of a number of analysts who played up the “friend or foe” question. Russia is a country that is “neither America’s enemy nor its ally,” he says, arguing that the articulation of this relationship is likely to be the primary outcome of the upcoming summit. Ted Carpenter of the Cato Institute, meanwhile, asserted that Bush “got off on the wrong foot” with Russia by describing it as a “potential threat if not an enemy”, a semantic distinction he said Russians would not be impressed by.

The idea that either Putin and Bush would be seriously impressed by the use of vague words like “threat” and “enemy” should be transparently silly. Remember, these are two politicians who took the most extreme steps to get elected, with Putin invading a territory and almost certainly blowing up his own citizens for p.r. purposes, and Bush assigning whole armies to articulate elaborate lies and rationalizations about the results of the Florida elections and other matters. What really matters between heads of state, of course, are the issues themselves-and a close look at the relationship between the two countries shows that nothing much has changed between Russia and America since the Yeltsin-Clinton days.

It was the Clinton administration, after all, that first decided to start the process of reneging on the 1972 ABM treaty. NATO expansion? The Baltics and Ukraine were targeted under Clinton, and nothing much has changed there. As it was under Yeltsin in 1995-96, Russia is at war in Chechnya, and the United States has nothing much to say about that—again. The United States continues to support factions within the Russian government which are pressing for liberalization of the Russian economy—Chubais and Gaidar before, Gref and Illarionov now. Then as now, Carnegie Endowment hack Michael McFaul is advising the United States president on Russian affairs. As there were under Yeltsin, when the tightening of the media began, there are periodic pronouncements of dissatisfaction with the state of the free press in Russia, but they remain just that—a few public statements thrown out here and there.

In this atmosphere, the cosmetic differences between Clinton-Yeltsin and Bush-Putin are being played up as much as possible. The differences are almost entirely stylistic in nature. Clinton’s schtick as a politician was to play himself up as a gregarious humanitarian, his interventionist leanings an extension of his natural idealism. Yet his desire to befriend Russia did not extend to not invading Kosovo, which genuinely enraged Russians to a degree not seen since the days of Ronald Reagan’s most fervent red-baiting. Bush, on the other hand, has campaigned as a classic confrontationalist conservative, more isolationist and “realistic” than his predecessor, yet his realism does not extend to not offering, even in word, to make Russia a partner of sorts in his plan for a nuclear missile defense, which even to us here at the eXile seems like an insane breach of American national security. Nor has Bush given any indication that he plans to cease aid to Russia.

What’s left is the same script, with different actors. We had a good ole boy and a drunk; now we have a rich dweeb and a beady-eyed spook. This is going to be the chief substantive difference between coverage of the upcoming summit and the previous summits. The technique is the same one that was employed during the U.S. presidential election, when Americans were treated to two years and hundreds of millions of words listening to a story about a moron (Bush) and a snob (Gore), without ever hearing anything at all about what the election was really about.

Here’s a typical press report, from Reuters, which cites yet another analyst in talking about the bygone days of the Bill and Boris show:

“Whatever happens in Ljubljana, Viktor Kremenyuk, deputy director of Moscow’s respected USA-Canada Institute, says the backslapping era of ‘Bill and Boris’ summitry is over, and that ties are being rebuilt from close to ground zero.”

What “ground zero” could Kremenyuk be talking about? It was under Clinton that the United States gave a $500 million Ex-Im bank loan to Tyumen Oil—which then turned around and used that money to by more than $300 million worth of petroleum servicing equipment from Halliburton, Dick Cheney’s company. The only ground zero is in semantic territory. The important relationships, mainly commercial, have remained fluid throughout.

In the few instances where reporters have ventured to talk about the issues behind the summit, what they’ve basically done is parrot the idiocies communicated to them by the governments of both countries. The most ridiculous rhetoric has centered around the fate of the ABM treaty. In article after article, Western journalists have gone to great lengths to describe as rational America’s stated position that it needs to withdraw from the treaty... because it is dangerous and counterproductive to enter into treaties in which one of the parties might withdraw. Here’s how New York Times reporter Thom Shanker put it:

SOUND FAMILIAR? Will George Lucas Replace Pavlovsky? Ever wonder where Vladimir Putin gets his wacky ideas? It might be that he’s a bigger fan of American pop culture than we thought. Here’s part 1 of the eXile’s refresher course in LucasFilm ideology—the first Imperial Council scene from the original Star Wars: (in the Death Star) Imperial officer #1: Until this battle station is fully operational, we are vulnerable. The rebel alliance is too well-equipped. They’re more dangerous than you realize. Imperial officer #2: Dangerous to your star fleet, commander, not to this battle station. Imperial officer #1: The rebellion will continue to gain support in the imperial senate Death Star commander: The imperial senate is no longer of any concern to us. I’ve just received word that the emperor has dissolved the council permanently. The last remnants of the old republic have been swept away. Imperial officer #1: That’s impossible. How will the emperor maintain control without the bureaucracy? Death Star commander: The regional governors now have direct control over their territories. Fear will keep the local systems in line. Fear... of this battle station.

“A brawnier complaint — against allowing virtually any treaties, not just the old cold war ones, to frame America’s security architecture — is also heard in administration corridors and in Senate confirmation hearings. It says that in a world of proliferating weapons of mass destruction, and of the means to deliver them great distances, treaties only bind those who intend to keep them and offer legal cover to cheaters.”

The obvious flaw in this argument-that pulling out of the ABM treaty necessarily undermines America’s ability to credibly enter into treaties in the future—is never brought up by American reporters.

Reporters like Shanker also make a concerted effort to shy away from the obvious possible implications of the missile defense shield. The rationale for the missile shield is generally described as being rooted in a desire to move away from “cold war relics” like the doctrine of mutually assured destruction, which of course worked quite well. But even a child could see that the result of moving away from mutually assured destruction is to create a security situation in which one side is not assured of being destroyed in a nuclear war. In other words, the missile defense shield has obvious offensive implications. The Bush administration has been coy but largely unapologetic about this obvious aspect of the missile defense plan, and reporters like Shanker have helped them out by writing passages like the following:

“These days, the officials say, arms treaties with Russia bring insecurity instead of certainty, because they seem to confirm a reality — the balance of terror — that no longer exists; because they don’t let either side take advantage of new technologies to defend against missiles; and because they don’t take account of emerging new threats to both signatories.”

Not all of this makes sense. Russia still has an enormous nuclear arsenal. Whatever shape it’s in, it still presents a maximally terrifying threat to the United States. The shift in balance is not in the ability to deliver a terrifying attack, but in the ability to fund an expensive defense. In the 1970s, an ABM treaty made sense because it would have been extremely costly, but possible, for both sides to pursue missile defense. Now Russia is completely incapable of funding anything of the sort. The United States, on the other hand, is free now to pursue an insanely expensive missile program that will be not even slightly more effective as a deterrent to Russian attack than mutually assured destruction. On the other hand, if the missile defense system is actually completed and proves functional in tests-a big if-it would introduce one and only one new variable into the U.S.-Russian security equation: the possibility of an American attack with impunity.

The rationale that America needs to pursue missile defense to deter attacks from rogue states is generally left unchallenged, despite its obvious flaws. Rogue states are still subject to the doctrine of MAD. The only potential enemies not subject to MAD are terrorist groups, and it is a great stretch to imagine a terrorist group having the means to construct a functioning intercontinental missile delivery system. In any case the whole notion of a suicide nuclear attack by a rogue nation like North Korea or Iraq is based mainly on the same kind of racist propaganda that allowed people like Madeline Albright to blame the crash of an Air Egypt Boeing on the suicidal ravings of an Islamic pilot desperate to meet Allah.

As with that crash, the more rational explanations for our government’s position are left unexplored. The Boeing corporation being afraid to lose contracts to Airbus over perceived safety problems makes more sense than a suicidal Muslim pilot; likewise, the Bush administration’s desire to hand out two decade’s worth of extravagant military contracts to its friends makes more sense than the United States actually being afraid of a bunch of North Koreans launching an ICBM at Seattle with a slingshot made of giant chopsticks.

Then there’s NATO expansion. There is an argument going around now, one that is being circulated seriously, which contends that backing away from NATO expansion to the Baltics would set a negative precedent because it would allow other countries to dictate our policy. Here is how Oregon Senator Gordon Smith put it in an interview with The Wall Street Journal:

“To exclude them [the Baltics], in particular Lithuania, would be to give Russia a veto over the enlargement process.”

No journalist yet has bothered to pursue this line of reasoning via reducto ad absurdum: if we don’t nuke Tokyo because the Japanese object, doesn’t that give Japan a veto? Better to say it straight out; the United States intends to expand NATO because it intends to expand NATO. Even we could accept that kind of reasoning. But this is not done in the United States, where the media machine must always make our actions seem defensive and reasonable, rather than simply logical from a material point of view.

All of which brings us back to the upcoming summit. The two men will meet and sniff each other’s genitals, as predicted. Unless he farts or drools, Bush will be given credit for showing “surprising composure” in his meeting with the crafty Russian. Putin, on the other hand, will be given credit for taking a “defiant” and “aloof” posture toward his more powerful adversary. One or the other participant, probably Putin, will be judged to have “stolen the show.” Analysts will talk at length about the ushering in of a new “chill” in U.S.-Russian relations, symbolized by the “somewhat cold” manner in which the two leaders receive each other. A photo of Bush and Putin shaking hands, but not smiling, will be widely distributed all over the world. Some minor agreement will be reached on some ostentatiously meaningless issue of bilateral trade; a new academic institute or foundation will be created, one which almost certainly contains the word “Reasonable” or “Realistic” in its name (i.e., the Institute for Reasonable Cooperation); meanwhile, major questions revolving around NATO, missile defense, and Chechnya will be left unresolved.

Once all this is done, everyone will go home. The clowns will go back to the real circus. In public, much ado about nothing. In private, business as usual. All of us losers will be left to sift through a wave of muck in the newspapers. 50-cent stuffed animals from the dog an pony show. If you like those kinds of souvenirs, pay attention this weekend. We’ll probably sleep in.