Dear Vladimir

Wonderful to hear from you after so long. We were beginning to fear Barack had offended you in some way at those interminable meetings, but it’s reassuring to know you still care.

We too remember when “we were allies...and defeated the Nazis together.” Those were the good old days, meeting up in Czechoslovakia and swapping Mickey Mouse watches for vodka.

It’s reassuring to hear you’re willing to forgive our little misunderstandings since then (that really was a dustup in Cuba!) and that you still have our best interests at heart. Too many old friends drift apart after such spats as a Berlin airlift and cold war.

We haven’t gotten together much at our old hangout, the United Nations, since Khrushchev had one too many and start pounding his shoe on the bar, but your nostalgia for “consensus” there is touching, and it’s good of you to straighten us out on how it’s not Assad in Syria using poison gas but “opposition forces, to provoke intervention by their powerful foreign patrons, who would be siding with the fundamentalists” and that “militants are preparing another attack-—this time against Israel.”

Who knew? Only a true friend would show such concern for helping us avoid making mistakes. We’ll certainly take another look at what those bumblers in the White House and CIA have been telling us before we blunder into another one of our “commonplace...interventions in internal conflicts in foreign countries.”

It’s also good to hear you have been in touch with “major political and religious leaders, including the Pope” who agree with you about our misguided missile strike plan in Syria.

The next time you talk to the Pope, give him our best. And write again soon. Don’t be such a stranger.