Looking Into Putin's Eye Fails as War Shows Friendship's Limits

By Ken Fireman

Aug. 18 (Bloomberg) -- President George W. Bush once told the world that he had looked Vladimir Putin in the eye, gotten ``a sense of his soul'' and found the Russian leader to be ``very straightforward and trustworthy.''

That moment in 2001 was the apex of a belief that a close personal relationship between the leaders of Russia and the U.S. could be a cornerstone of American foreign policy and a stabilizing influence in international affairs.

Last week, as Russian forces hammered their way into Georgia, U.S. Defense Secretary Robert Gates pronounced the epitaph for that approach, which has been central to American policy since the Soviet Union collapsed in 1991.

``I have never believed that one should make national security policy on the basis of trust,'' Gates told reporters on Aug. 15. ``I think you make national security policy based on interests and on realities.''

The Russian offensive, launched even as Bush and Putin were socializing at the Beijing Olympics, demonstrated the irrelevance of interpersonal connections when national interests collide, several Russia experts said.

``This shows that you can't overcome real policy differences by developing personal relationships,'' said Barry Blechman, a senior fellow at the Washington-based Stimson Center. ``There are bigger stakes here, and each country's interests have to be accommodated.''

Clinton and Yeltsin

Bush isn't the first president to personalize U.S.-Russian relations. His predecessor, Bill Clinton, developed a warm relationship with Russian President Boris Yeltsin and preserved it at the cost of tolerating Yeltsin's military assaults on rebellious lawmakers and Chechen separatists.

Ellen Laipson, who was vice chairwoman of the U.S. National Intelligence Council during Clinton's second term, said she saw in him a capacity to identify with other world leaders like Yeltsin and ``feel solidarity with the loneliness'' they experience.

In addition, Laipson said, Clinton genuinely liked his Russian counterpart. ``Clinton had this curiosity and this appetite for colorful characters,'' she said. ``He was taken with the larger-than-life aspects of Yeltsin.''

Bush, 62, took personality politics even further, starting with his June 2001 summit with Putin in Slovenia that generated the public proclamation of the Russian's trustworthiness.

Over the next seven years, Bush hosted Putin, 55, at his Texas ranch and his father's house in Maine and was Putin's guest at the Russian's summer home in Sochi.

`Remarkable Relationship'

``It's been a remarkable relationship,'' Bush said at a joint news conference on April 6 at the end of the Sochi visit. ``We worked very hard over the past years to find areas where we can work together, and find ways to be agreeable when we disagree.''

For all that friendliness, the two nations were drifting apart. The U.S. pulled out of a treaty banning anti-ballistic- missile defenses in 2002; Russia suspended participation in an accord limiting conventional forces in Europe last year. Russia bristled at America's support for Kosovo's independence and its plan to base a missile-defense system in Eastern Europe; the U.S. condemned what it called Russian bullying of neighboring countries such as Georgia and Ukraine.

Then came Georgia's military thrust into the breakaway region of South Ossetia on Aug. 7 and the Russian counterattack the next day. As Russian troops poured in, Bush raised the issue with Putin in Beijing, telling him that ``this violence is unacceptable'' and that Russia's response was ``disproportionate,'' as Bush later recounted in an NBC interview.

Beijing Meetings

His remonstrances had no effect on Russian behavior, and the televised images of the two leaders taking in the Olympics while Russian tanks rolled didn't go down well in some quarters.

Michael McFaul, a Russia expert at Stanford University's Hoover Institution, said he was speaking by telephone that night with a senior Georgian official in Tbilisi. The official, whom he declined to name, was ``rather appalled to see our president being so jolly with Putin at the Olympics,'' McFaul said.

That scene now seems part of another era, with little chance of repetition under Bush or his successor.

The president, since his return from China, has issued several increasingly sharp condemnations of Russia. Republican presidential candidate John McCain has long advocated a tougher approach to Russia and often quips that when he peered into Putin's eyes, he saw only the letters KGB. Democratic contender Barack Obama says he would reassess all aspects of U.S.-Russian relations in light of the recent events in the Caucasus.

Policy Over Personality

Analysts say this decoupling of policy from personality is long overdue.

``It can never be the goal of American foreign policy to have a close relationship with a president or a prime minister,'' McFaul said. ``That has to be a means to advancing the interests of the United States.''

Blechman says that, while it may in time be possible to change Russian behavior, that will only be done by persuading Russian leaders that the price for resorting to force isn't worth paying, while taking into account their legitimate interests.

``The only way to do it is to cajole them by pointing out the choice they face,'' he said. ``Their economy isn't going anywhere, they have no high-tech sector. If they want to reverse the trends they're on, they really need the West.''

To contact the reporter on this story: Ken Fireman in Washington at kfireman1@bloomberg.net