On the surface, it seems Presidents George W. Bush and Vladimir Putin each got what they wanted most at the NATO and Sochi summits.

Bush is moving forward with the placement of anti-Iranian missiles in Poland, and Putin kept Ukraine out of NATO, at least for the time being.

In fact, Bush's anti-Iranian missile plan was a godsend for Putin. It gave him something to protest as long as he got what he really wanted -- to keep Ukraine out of NATO.

Losing his temper, Putin revealed his real attitude toward Ukraine..."Do you understand, George, that Ukraine is not even a state?" Putin told Bush in an outburst at a closed session of the NATO-Russian Council in Bucharest...

What is beyond doubt, however, is that the Poles are hitting up Washington for billions in military aid in exchange for allowing 10 missiles to be based on their territory. But Moscow's demands for a permanent monitoring presence on Polish territory could be a deal-breaker. Moreover, Warsaw is aware that if the next U.S. president is a Democrat he or she will be very unlikely to sign onto this foolish, costly and unpopular project. In other words, the U.S. missile-defense system, which might not work anyway, may never get built in the first place. That hardly sounds like a success.

But this Bush initiative did succeed in one respect. It infuriated the Russians. Of course, only the most paranoid and gullible could believe that these missiles would ever be targeted at Russia.

This could lead to hostilities...

The Kremlin has already threatened to target Ukraine with nuclear weapons, and now it might just be tempted to use them.

But hold on a minute...

Thanks to Bush, there might be a missile-defense system in Poland that now could be used to shoot down Russian missiles -- the first 10 anyway.