AT THEIR FIRST MEETING in June 2001, George W. Bush peered into Vladimir Putin's soul and pronounced himself delighted with what he found. Ever since, Bush has treated the Russian president as one of his favorite companions.
But while US-Russian summits have presented nice photo opportunities, the relationship between the two countries is markedly devoid of substance. For the first time since high-level meetings began during the Grand Alliance of World War II, no great crises are being jointly managed, no momentous arms control deals are being struck, and no major Western assistance programs are on the table.
Of course, Russia's decline as a major power helps to explain why the bilateral agenda is so bare. Yet in what business there is, Putin appears to be getting much of what he wants. Meanwhile, when it comes to the war on terror, Bush looks to be receiving very little. Even more important, Russia itself appears to be headed in disturbing directions. When Russia's richest man, industrialist Mikhail Khodorkovsky, was arrested in October, it was not really for tax evasion as claimed, but for the crime of funding opposition parties, promoting civil society, and even hinting at grander political ambitions.
The tables have certainly turned since a decade ago. In October 1993, Russian president Boris Yeltsin used military force against the old guard holed up in the Parliament; two months later, ultranationalist Vladimir Zhirinovsky's party dominated the Russian parliamentary elections. There seemed a distinct possibility that a communist-fascist "red-brown" coalition could regain control and restart the Cold War. The coalition's ultimate defeat appeared to signal that democracy would triumph.
Back then, the United States set the terms of the relationship. Officials in Washington designed the START II arms control accord signed in January 1993, determined Russia's role in the implementation force that followed the US-led negotiations to end the war in Bosnia in 1995, and expanded NATO into Central Europe in 1999 despite Russian opposition.
In the early years of the Clinton administration, the United States gave Russia some tangible rewards for its cooperation. America funded the construction of officers' housing in Russia to encourage Yeltsin to move his troops out of the Baltics. It also offered the Russians a place in the International Space Station in exchange for a halt in the sale of sensitive missile technologies to India. By the mid-'90s, however, most of what the United States was offering for good behavior was symbolic - such as adding a seat for Russia at the Group-of-Seven (G-7) table or creating a NATO-Russian Permanent Joint Council. And once the United States stopped offering much to Russia, Russia stopped doing much in return.
When George W. Bush became president, this pattern of largely symbolic rewards continued. In exchange for Russian acquiescence to the United States's abandonment of the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty, Bush offered the illusory cuts in offensive strategic nuclear weapons that were codified in the Treaty of Moscow in May 2002. And to ease the pain of expanding NATO to include the Baltic states, he offered a new NATO-Russia Council, an entity that has hardly become a major forum in world affairs.
In the meantime, Putin has driven his own bargains. After Sept. 11, 2001, Putin moved quickly to support the United States and declare a pro-Western foreign policy - despite the misgivings of many in the Russian establishment who were tired of the "humiliation" Russia has experienced in the 1990s. Putin wanted two big things: US acceptance of his war in Chechnya as a part of the war on terrorism, and an end to US criticism of his growing crackdown on freedom of the press in Russia. And he got them.
But on two important issues - Iraq and Iran - Bush has received little. Instead of sitting out the diplomatic dispute last spring, Putin stood shoulder to shoulder with Jacques Chirac and Gerhard Schroeder in decrying the US decision to go to war. While Putin moved more quickly than his French and German counterparts to mend fences after the war was over, and even hinted that his troops could serve under US command in the right circumstances, he has given his friend Bush nothing concrete to date.
On Iran, the thorniest issue in US-Russian relations, Putin has barely budged. Russia has an $800 million contract to complete a nuclear reactor at Bushehr. The Clinton team was unable to thwart this deal, and despite tough words during his 2000 presidential campaign Bush has fared no better. Russia has never viewed the prospect of an Iran with nuclear weapons with the same alarm as the United States. The differences between the two countries have erupted publicly at different times since 1994-95, and will continue increasingly to do so, since Iran is unlikely to abandon its nuclear aspirations.
But the biggest concern for the United States should be Russia's backsliding on democracy. We should never forget that the Cold War ended because the Soviet Union changed from within. Those changes, far from being complete, are today even being reversed. The problems the United States continues to have with Russia most often emanate from the most unreformed forces in Russian society. Whether it's the military old guard who sent troops to the Pristina airport during the 1999 war in Kosovo or use indiscriminate violence against civilians in Chechnya, or the apparatchiki in the Ministry of Atomic Energy who have been pushing the deals with Iran, it's the country's Soviet-style forces that remain a threat to US interests.
The United States should welcome Putin's stated desire to integrate his country into the Western community. That Western community, however, is based on a set of economic and political values. Bush may favor any leader who will speak from his script in the war on terrorism. All the same, he can and should challenge the Russian leader's foreign and domestic policies more sharply. It may not change Russia in the short term, but it would give support to those Russians who are bravely fighting creeping authoritarianism, just as speaking out during the Cold War helped those dissidents in the communist bloc who pushed against all odds until cracks in the system broke the whole system open.
Bush has spoken eloquently about the need for democracy in the Middle East - and this makes his silence about the trends in Russia all the more noticeable.
James M. Goldgeier is a professor of political science at George Washington University and an adjunct senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations. He is coauthor, with Michael McFaul, of "Power and Purpose: US Policy toward Russia after the Cold War," recently published by Brookings Institution Press.
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