Dengl 44 What Iranian Missiles? The heated edges of Rings of Fire*

Last night I saw the third instalment of BBC2's fine series on Russia and America - depicting some very knotty matters at the cutting edges of the encounter between two massive systems of tradition embodied in statehood.
Unavailable at present to US viewers, via iPlayer, surely this will soon be available to US viewers widespread?

I was (as previously) impressed by the US front line negotiators (Condoleeza Rice, Colin Powell) and also maintained my improving view of Bush. Rice & Powell appear to have done everything they could (to draw freedom's ring tighter round a diminishing 'Greater' Russia) though the impression emerged that Bush's hands were weighed down by 'backroom boy policy makers' who bid for more than they perhaps could get, given the toughness of Putin and the needs and sensibilities of NATO members such as Germany, France.

I dont know if the programme makers had discussed whether to give any space to one or two symbolic elements
which, perhaps Umberto Eco might have woven into the narrative - one: there we saw the sculpted head of American son Winston Churchill in the picture just behind Bush at the White House - an 'ideology reminder' to the President ...another was the presence of George Brown (how are the mighty fallen!) on Bush's right hand at a summit declaration ...
a third was the event of a women's beach volleyball match at Beijing which in the words of a website:

http://news.xinhuanet.com/english/2008-08/13/content_9267520.htm

".... was of symbolic significance due to the conflict between the two neighbors. Georgia began military action against South Ossetia's forces last week in an attempt to re-establish control over the region. In response, Russian troops moved into the region to fight the Georgian forces."

Do I remember rightly that Georgia's team was hugely helped by the presence of two players of Brazilian birth very recently given Georgian citizenship ...?
Might political considerations have played an unseen part in the drama enacted on the sands of Beijing playing fields?

Putin went to talk with Bush, in Maine, in (I think ) 2007 - not long after the 2006 Tear Drop monument** had been unveiled (in Bayonne, NJ). Might it have been opportune for the powers to have drawn on that earlier symbolic gesture?

Questions for Programe 4 (next week) include: Putin said in (2007?) Iranian missiles were a joke; has Russia been helping Iran to get on with its missile development? And right now standing by Iran's ally Assad of Syria? Why? With what risks? Is Obama as firm an exponent of liberty for free countries, as evidently was Bush? Will any symbolically important contests emerge at the London Olympics?

*title of an article by me, in the US journal Conflict, 1986.
** http://www.snopes.com/rumors/tributes/teardrop.asp