For decades, relations between Moscow and Washington looked like two deaf people trying to have a spoken conversation.

Each side put down its own position and blatantly ignored what the other side had to say. The only aim of negotiations was to frame the other side in a bad light. These senseless games continued until Mikhail Gorbachev came to power.

But 15 years later, the Kremlin got it into its head to revive its Soviet-style diplomacy. In the opinion of many Moscow analysts, all the right conditions were in place. The new Bush administration in the United States has called its plans to deploy a National Missile Defense system (NMD) a major national priority. This has President Vladimir Putin and his team trying to prove that the U.S. plans would undermine the 1972 Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty and threaten to destroy the whole existing international security system.

But Moscow's reactions didn't include trying to find a mutually acceptable solution. The thing is, the NMD issue looked like such a convenient wedge to drive between the United States and its European allies, who have their own reservations regarding the American plans.

The missile defense issue isn't the only question on which America and Western Europe differ. The new U.S. administration's intentions to reduce its participation in peacekeeping operations in the Balkans have European countries worried. The European response has been to speed up efforts to create a European Union rapid-reaction force, a move that has met a wary reaction from Washington.

The annual conference on security held in Munich provided an excellent forum for Russia to make a move of its own and significantly increase its influence. For a start, such an opportunity for dialogue puts those who lead it on an equal footing, and the way the conference was planned gave, it seemed, a real advantage to Security Council Secretary Sergei Ivanov, who was to explain Russia's foreign policy positions.

At the first day of the conference, which looked at European security issues, observers predicted disputes between U.S. Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld and his NATO colleagues. The second day was devoted entirely to Russia, which gave Ivanov the leading role. It was also then that Ivanov was to meet Rumsfeld – essentially the first contact between top officials of the two administrations since George W. Bush's election.

Ivanov's speech at the conference took all of this into account. It contained an unexpectedly realistic statement that Moscow was not going to pursue attempts at integration within the C.I.S., but rather, intended to concentrate on bilateral ties with individual countries. In this way, Ivanov sent the West a reassuring message that Russia had no plans to revive the Soviet empire.

But this constructive tone was only a prologue to the hard-line statements that followed. Moscow reiterated its previous refusal to even discuss possible amendments to the ABM Treaty. Russia also made it clear that it will agree to cut nuclear weapons to 1500 warheads for each side but only on condition that the ABM Treaty remains unchanged.

This looks like a compromise, but only at first glance. It was Russia, not the United States, that spent a whole year pushing through a proposal to reduce nuclear arms. Russia's aging nuclear arsenal would inevitably end up being reduced over the coming decade with or without arms- reduction agreements. It was, therefore, all in Moscow's and not in Washington's interest to have the Americans also cut back their arms stocks.

Events in Munich did not unfold, however, as Moscow had predicted. For a start, Rumsfeld behaved as though Russia simply didn't exist. In the plane on the way to Munich, he said that the ABM Treaty had been concluded in a different era, and not with Russia, but with the Soviet Union. In his speech at the conference, Russia didn't get a single mention.

Rumsfeld concentrated on explaining the new U.S. administration's policies not to Moscow, but to America's Western European allies. Judging by the most recent statements from NATO Secretary General Lord Robertson and German Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder, the European nations could be willing to accept the American plans, all the more so as Rumsfeld hinted that an American NMD system would cover all U.S. allies. The Europeans also hastened to assure Rumsfeld that the EU rapid-reaction force had been conceived as a complement to, rather than a substitute for, NATO.

In short, there was no fight between Europe and America. Ivanov's carefully planned speech turned out a flop – Rumsfeld, the man at whom it was addressed, didn't even hear it because he'd already left for the United States.

There is no coincidence here. Henry Kissinger, in his speech to the conference, made it clear that unlike the United States, Russia today is not responsible for global security. The implication is that Moscow should therefore tone down its ambitions.

When NATO operations in the Balkans began two years ago, and friction between Russia and the United States looked to have reached burning point, a highly pragmatic Russian diplomat told me there was nothing to worry about. "If they're arguing with us, if they see us as a threat, then everything's fine. The real strategic nightmare will begin the day they start ignoring us," he said.

The nightmare, it seems, has already begun.