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Tavis: David Remnick is the editor of "The New Yorker' magazine who won a Pulitzer Prize for his book 'Lenin's Tomb,' widely considered to be one of the best books ever written about the fall of the Soviet Union. His latest is a collection of his work at "The New Yorker' called 'Reporting, Writings from The New Yorker.' David Remnick, nice to have you out here on the West Coast.

David Remnick: Great to see you.

Tavis: Good to see you. Let me jump right to this war of words, and I guess the question is, is it just a war of words, or is the Cold War back on when you got Cheney and Putin going at each other?

Remnick: Well, it's a little bit of a blast from the past, isn't it? And I think on the American side, they've seen Russia drift into a kind of soft authoritarianism, and so we've got lots of critical things to say. And from the Russian point of view, remember, this was an empire that suddenly shriveled down. And it became known as Upper Volta with rockets.

But now Russia is feeling its oats, because its economy is on the rise, mainly an oil economy, and it doesn't wanna be pushed around by the United States. It doesn't wanna be told about its moral categories at a time when the United States is doing what it's doing abroad.

Tavis: What was that phrase? Soft authoritarianism?

Remnick: Yeah.

Tavis: Define that.

Remnick: Well, when you crack down on the press to the degree that Russia has cracked down on the press. When you don't have opposition political parties of any stature. When you have a leader of the country that's former KGB and behaves like it a lot of the time, you begin to feel that this is not exactly the democracy that anybody was envisioning in 1991, when the Soviet Union collapsed and a new Russia began.

Tavis: It's one thing to not wanna hear what we, or certainly those who are in control in Washington have to say about your behavior, or misbehavior, as it were, but what is, from your perspective, in fact happening inside of Russia?

Remnick: Well, yeah, a lot bad has happened in there, but because the economy is strong, and because we're not at war, and we're not in any hard conflict or even any soft conflict with Russia, the way we were constantly with the Soviet Union for nearly half a century, it seemed like everything was okay. But the relationship, which started out so well between Putin and Bush, has soured.

Tavis: Let me ask you a question. This book, 'Reporting,' is divided up into really two major pieces, and we'll talk about the Middle East in just a second, with Israel and Palestine. But let me stay with this Russia-U.S. thing for just a second. And you can enlighten me here, 'cause this ain't my area of expertise, but it is yours, and so I'm glad to have you on here.

I obviously know why, back in the day, it was important to track the relationship, or lack thereof, it was important to track the tension, as it were, between the U.S. and Russia. What's the value of tracking that relationship today, given that we are the world's remaining superpower?

Remnick: Yeah, but we're a world's remaining superpower that has been proved to be not quite as strong as we thought we were when this first happened in 1991. We are in a war in Iraq that we can't seem to contain or put an end to. The prestige abroad for the United States is not what it was when Clinton came out of office. As you know, we're not exactly loved in many quarters of the world.

And we don't seem to be able to wield the power with either the world's affection, or with the effectiveness of a singular superpower. At the same time, Russia, which is still a country that spans 10 time zones, is enormously important. And its direction, we would be paying a lot more attention to Russia right now were we not so obsessed, and rightly obsessed, with the Middle East and south Asia, and terrorism, and all the rest.

Tavis: Is there a particular danger, to your point now, in not paying closer attention to Russia because we're distracted by some?

Remnick: Absolutely. Absolutely.

Tavis: And the danger is?

Remnick: Well first of all, it is a nation with a huge nuclear arsenal. Let's not forget that. So, even as degraded as it is in certain ways from the Cold War period, it still is in possession of a giant nuclear capacity, and it's a growing economy. Just like India and China and all the rest. And we have to deal with it in terms of diplomacy, in terms of the environment, and in terms of the future direction of Europe.

Tavis: All right, so assess for me the state of the relationship, as we speak, between the U.S. and Russia.

Remnick: Troubled.

Tavis: And - troubled?

Remnick: I would say troubled. I wouldn't put it anywhere near the level of conflict. But some years ago, when Bush first met Putin, Bush, rather foolishly, to be honest, said that he had come away from that meeting, he had looked into Putin's eyes, and had seen his soul. And this was a remark that was laughed at pretty roundly in diplomatic circles and in Russia itself, because what kind of soul was he seeing? He was seeing an ex-KGB colonel who had been more or less appointed into this role by Boris Yeltsin, and who has become tougher and tougher to deal with as time has gone by.

Tavis: I'm not sure, David, that diplomacy revolves around one person, although history records some pretty remarkable people where diplomacy is concerned. That said, Secretary Rice's bailiwick, this is her expertise. She speaks fluent Russian and has studied it. So what role does she play in making the relationship, never mind Mr. Bush's failings, the point you make now, and misstatements, etcetera, but shouldn't we be better off with a Secretary Of State who's expert in this area?

Remnick: Well, the fact that Condoleezza Rice speaks Russian and has a background in academia, that's great. But the fact is there are good reasons for this relationship to be very frosty. Russia did come through for the Bush administration in the early Afghan War, in helping us out in central Asia, and in fact, Putin was very supportive of the United States after 9/11. He was one of the first world leaders to come forward, against the advice of a lot of people around him.

But this relationship has gotten frostier and frostier, and it doesn't really matter that much that Condoleezza Rice has this expertise.

Tavis: So what's the worst-case scenario here in this relationship?

Remnick: I don't wanna overestimate it. I don't think this is ever gonna get to a level of conflict.

Tavis: We're not going back to where we were.

Remnick: No, no, 'cause it's very hard for us to remember how disastrous that was. It was the defining relationship of the entire globe. Every national relationship we had, the Vietnam War, all the rest...

Tavis: Revolved around it, yeah.

Remnick: Afghan War, all revolved around this bit. But we shouldn't take our eyes off the ball, which, as a country, we have, to a large extent, for the last 15 years.

Tavis: All right. To your point, if our eye, and you argue that it has, in fact, been taken off the ball, it is because in large measure, one could argue, of what's happening, or not happening, as it were, in the Middle East.

Remnick: It's for good reason.

Tavis: Okay. And you write a lot about that. So tell me what you mean when you say for good reason.

Remnick: Well, because particularly since 9/11, particularly because of the rise of radical Islamic fundamentalism, terrorism, our mistakes in Iran, all these things, this has become, this is the issue in the United States. It's the reason that President Bush's popularity rating is now in the high twenties, at best, that's what I mean.

Tavis: When you say the reason, you lost me.

Remnick: Well, what I'm saying is...

Tavis: Not what's happening in the Middle East.

Remnick: ...that the average American can only keep in mind just so many subjects at one time, whether it's immigration, and where foreign affairs is concerned, I think the Middle East and south Asia and our military adventures there are certainly first and foremost. Not U.S.-Russia policy, which has a rather distant feel to it, I think, for most Americans.

Tavis: What's your take right now on the relationship, or lack thereof, between Israel and Palestine?

Remnick: Palestine.

Tavis: Yeah, and Palestine.

Remnick: Well, it's very strange, because on the one hand, Israeli public opinion, for the most part, certainly the vast majority realize that there has to be a two-state solution. Now, this is coming a long way, historically, for Israelis in the center, and even the center right, to acknowledge that there has to be a Palestinian state is a form of progress, no matter what other disasters have taken place there, or extremism, and all the rest.

At the very same time, in the Palestinian community, you've got this elevation of Hamas, which is an Islamic-based, fundamentalist, more radical party than has ever been in the Palestinian leadership. And it has changed the picture. So Israel, in a sense, is operating on one track, disengagement from Gaza, and potentially from parts of the West Bank, but is really not dealing much with the Palestinian leadership, which is making the Palestinian leadership, first of all, it's a very complicated picture there. And also very angry.

Tavis: What happens long-term, given that this quartet, back to the U.S., the U.S., Russia, the quartet here finding a way to circumvent Hamas to get humanitarian...

Remnick: There's no circumventing Hamas.

Tavis: Yeah. So you don't even buy that argument.

Remnick: You've got to deal with Hamas. In the history of diplomacy, the business of circumventing people in power goes nowhere. Look at the United States history with Cuba. We decide we're not gonna deal with Cuba, we're gonna have an embargo with Cuba, and we're just, well, t, well, (laughs) how many years later? Forty-odd years later, we're still dealing with this absurd policy in Cuba, largely because of Florida politics.

Same with Iran. Nobody's going to disagree that Iran is now run by extremely irresponsible and troubling people. But is the best thing to do not to have any conversation with them, or not?

Tavis: So an unfair question in 30 seconds here, how does one engage Hamas? Isn't that the big question?

Remnick: Slowly and carefully. (Laughs) Slowly and carefully. But to just cut off any funding to the Palestinians, to do everything possible to anger Hamas, will only radicalize Hamas, in my view. I know exactly what Hamas is, I've reported there, and in this book, I have a long piece about Hamas, and have met with many of their leaders.

I'm under no illusions about what they've done, who they are, and all the rest. But I also know that politics proves that either you can radicalize them or you can move them into the political sphere.

Tavis: You gotta come back. I just scratched the surface, so much more I wanna talk to you about. So, please come back.

Remnick: I'd love to.

Tavis: We gotta continue this. Part two. The sequel. The new book from David Remnick is, 'Reporting, Writings from The New Yorker.' And what a brilliant writer he is in "The New Yorker.' Nice to have you here, David.

Remnick: Thank you.

Tavis: Up next on this program, author and anti-slavery advocate Francis Bok. Stay with us.