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Putin keen on equal partnership with U.S.

Vladimir Radyuhin

What baffled some commentators about the informal summit between United States President George W. Bush and Russia’s Vladimir Putin this week was the warm hospitality the Bush father and son poured on their Russian guest despite the latter’s recent harsh anti-U.S. rhetoric. Even Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov confessed that the Russian delegation did not expect so much “warmness.”

Mr. Putin was the first foreign dignitary Mr. Bush invited to his parents’ seaside vacation property in Kennebunkport, Maine. Hardliners in the U.S. were outraged to hear Mr. Bush heap praise on Mr. Putin following two days of fireside talks at Walker Point. How could Mr. Bush say he “trusts” Mr. Putin and has “respect” for him after the Russian leader threatened to target missiles on America’s allies in Europe and likened U.S. foreign policy to that of the Third Reich, they fumed.

This contrasting behaviour has an explanation: Washington is trying to preserve the pattern of its relations with Russia as they shaped up after the fall of the Soviet Union, while Moscow is pushing to change it. The U.S. policy on Russia has followed a fairly simple principle — listen to Moscow’s objections, pat the Russian President on the shoulder, call him a partner and a friend, and do it the way it suits U.S. interests. This worked well with the former President, Boris Yeltsin, who presided over a weak Russia, but does not work with President Putin’s rising Russia.

Mr. Bush’s invitation to Mr. Putin for a “lobster summit” at Walker Point was part of the old U.S. stratagem: charm the Russian leader with a warm reception, call him a “consistent, transparent, honest and ... an easy man to discuss our opportunities and problems with” and hope he will sit back and quietly watch the U.S. surround Russia with missiles and military bases and not act on his threats to retaliate by withdrawing from arms control treaties, building new defence-piercing missiles, and beefing up forces on Russia’s western borders.

Mr. Putin has made it clear he is determined to reconfigure the pattern of the Russia-U.S. relationship, to turn it into an equal partnership in deed. He made new proposals to Washington that go far beyond his offer of joint use of a Russian radar station in Azerbaijan to guard against missile attacks against Europe. Addressing U.S. objections that the radar facility was too antiquated to target incoming missiles, Mr. Putin promised to modernise it. And if that was not feasible, he said, Russia was willing to share a modern radar facility it is building in southern Russia. He also proposed discussing in the Russia-NATO Council the establishment of a European anti-missile shield and pressed Mr. Bush to implement their seven-year-old agreement to set up joint early-warning centres in Moscow and Brussels.

Mr. Putin said that if the U.S. accepted the Russian proposal it would mark a turning point in their relations. “The relations between our two countries would be raised to an entirely new level,” he said. “Gradually, our relations would become those of a strategic partnership nature.”

This seems a far prospect. Mr. Bush indicated that Washington would stand by its plan to build a missile shield in the Czech Republic and Poland, saying the two countries “need to be an integral part of the system.” This amounts to a rejection of the Russian proposal. A source in Mr. Putin’s delegation said the Russian offer was only valid if the U.S. dropped its plans to deploy missile interceptors in Europe and put anti-missile weapons in space.

However, the Kennebunkport summit has brought some positive results: the sides announced a deal on civilian nuclear cooperation and an agreement to work towards a replacement for the Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty, which expires in 2009, and which Washington has long refused to extend.

Mr. Putin expressed a resolve to push on with setting new rules for relations with the U.S. “The deck has been dealt, and we are ready to play,” the Russian leader said as he stood with Mr. Bush outside the Walker Point compound. “And I would very much hope that we are playing one and the same game.”

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