Making up with Vladimir

Can this marriage be saved?

When George W. Bush first met Russian President Vladimir V. Putin in June 2001, Bush rhapsodized that he “looked [Putin] in the eye” and got “a sense of his soul.” For a time, Bush viewed “Vladimir” as his staunch friend. In joint appearances, Bush would wax eloquent about the “war on terror,” and Putin, the former KGB man, would smile a supportive crocodile smile, then go home and use similar rhetoric to justify crackdowns on Russian dissidents and minorities. It promised to be, as Bush put it, “a very constructive relationship.”

But like most marriages of convenience, it soon frayed. Putin refused to support the Iraq war in 2003, and by 2005, his government had launched a rollback of Russian democratic reforms. Bush was left helplessly on the sidelines, insisting that “Vladimir” had privately assured him of his commitment to democracy, and “when he tells you something, he means it.”

Even so, U.S.-Russia relations got worse. By 2006, when Bush spoke of his hope that Russia would someday be “like Iraq, where there’s a free press and free religion,” Putin was openly mocking: “We certainly would not want to have the same kind of democracy that they have in Iraq.” By February 2007, Putin was denouncing U.S. foreign policy as having “nothing in common with democracy.” Rather, he said, it was “an almost uncontained hyper-use of force ... in international relations.” By summer 2007, Putin was threatening to point missiles at Poland if the U.S. deployed a planned European missile defense system.

If U.S.-Russia relations have soured, much of the blame lies with the Bush administration. Despite Bush’s claims of friendship, the U.S. has generally treated Russia as a washed-up power, eager to learn at our feet and grateful for the occasional crumb of U.S. attention.

It’s been a costly error in judgment. Russia may be corrupt, repressive and internally weak, but it still has the capacity to help or hinder U.S. goals in Iran and Iraq and the capacity to destabilize much of Central Europe and Central Asia. Not least, Russia still possesses the world’s second largest nuclear arsenal -- but meaningful talks on negotiated nuclear threat reduction have come to a virtual halt.

The U.S. can’t afford to turn Russia into an enemy. If Bush wants to salvage something from his disastrous presidency, he needs to use his Sunday visit to Russia to get the relationship onto a healthier footing.

It won’t be easy. Bush’s Russia trip follows the NATO summit in Romania, and Bush this week reiterated his commitment to initiating a NATO “membership action plan” for Ukraine and Georgia, and to deploying missile defense systems in Poland and the Czech Republic. Because Russia regards both steps as hostile acts, it’s hard to see how Bush can make much progress when he meets this weekend with Putin and Putin’s handpicked successor, Dmitry Medvedev.

Hard -- but not impossible. Conveniently for Bush, France and Germany seem determined to stall NATO expansion, which lets Bush put that issue on the back burner in talks with Putin. But real progress will almost certainly depend on Bush’s degree of stubbornness over missile defense.

In theory, missile defense is supposed to protect Europe from Iranian missile attacks. It’s a dubious theory; there’s no evidence that Iran has the capacity (or desire) to lob ballistic missiles at Europe. (There’s also, alas, little evidence that our missile defense systems have the capacity to intercept incoming missiles).

In a universe run on fact-based pragmatism, not ideology, Bush would use his visit to Russia to accept the offer Putin put forward last summer: to open up an American-European-Russian dialogue about missile defense, one that might include intelligence sharing, technological cooperation and jointly operated missile defense installations -- some in locations offered by Moscow. We’d gain Russian goodwill and retain the freedom to try to develop missile defense systems that actually work. Russia would gain reassurance that no U.S. missiles are pointed its way -- and lose an excuse for bullying its neighbors.

It’s no panacea, but in the context of a genuine commitment to treating Russia as a partner and reinvigorating stalled talks on a broad range of nuclear issues, this would change the atmosphere. In the longer run, it would make it possible to meaningfully reengage Russia on vital issues ranging from nuclear nonproliferation to climate change and public health.

In Romania on Wednesday, a reporter asked Bush if it was possible to “avoid ... a diplomatic train wreck” during his visit to Russia.

Bush, the eternal optimist, retorted, “You call it a diplomatic train wreck; I call it an opportunity.”

If he can be flexible on missile defense, he might even be right, for once.