Washington Post - 12.24.2001

 

The Washington Post

Dynamic Duo Of World Policy

By Jackson Diehl

Most of the world looked at the Bush administration's unilateral withdrawal from the Anti-Ballistic Missile treaty as an affront to Russia and its latterly pro-Western president, Vladimir Putin. That's why the spin offered by one senior White House official was so intriguing: As he described it, this was not a one-sided American decision but something like a consensus strategy by the Bush and Putin teams.

The two presidents, the official said, both came to the conclusion that modifying the treaty wasn't going to work and that a unilateral U.S. withdrawal was the best remaining option. They figured Putin would take flack from his military, and Bush would be called a unilateralist. But both sides, the official explained, judged that they could handle the criticism and thus dispose of the issue.

Though that account may be a little disingenuous -- Putin has been candid about his disappointment with the ABM withdrawal -- it conveys something important: the sense of an insular White House-Kremlin syndicate that is dedicated to redrawing U.S.-Russian relations and mutually overcoming the resistance in Moscow and Washington. Though the reality is surely more complicated, that is increasingly how the Bush-Putin relationship is experienced by European governments, Russian politicians and even the professional policymakers of the State Department and Pentagon.

At the center of the bubble is the white-hot personal bond between Bush and Putin and the understandings the two men apparently have forged, especially at their post-Sept. 11 meetings in Shanghai and Crawford, Texas. Each president, in turn, has been pushing his side to accept far-reaching changes in the U.S.-Russian relationship on short notice and with little consultation. Most famously, Putin overruled his defense minister and forced his military to go along with the basing of U.S. forces in Central Asia, the key to the U.S.-Russian partnership in the Afghan war.

But Bush is pushing boundaries, too. In addition to the ABM decision, it now seems clear that the controversial proposal to include Russia in decision-making by the NATO alliance was another product of the Bush-Putin channel -- one that took the Pentagon brass and a number of NATO governments by surprise. The idea generated a storm of criticism in Europe and Washington when it was floated by British Prime Minister Tony Blair and NATO Secretary General Lord Robertson and now is being painfully walked back by the policy pros. But British officials leave little doubt about where the trial balloon came from -- Robertson and Blair, they say, were only following Bush's lead.

In Moscow, the critique of Putin has been that he is rapidly leading Russia westward without bothering to wait for the consent of his political elite or public and that he is getting a poor bargain for his trouble. Now, in the wake of the NATO initiative, some of the same concerns are being raised about Bush. The grumbling is muffled in Washington, with its wartime political climate -- especially because some of those most alarmed are members of the Republican Party.

But some of those in Europe with the most reason to be concerned about the Russian relationship have started to speak out. During a visit to Washington this month, Poland's new foreign minister, Wlodzimierz Cimoszewicz, observed that the administration seemed to be rushing to reorganize Western institutions to accommodate a new Russia, rather than focusing on making sure that the promised change in Moscow really takes place.

"We believe Putin's choice of the West is a real one, but we still don't know if it is permanent, a choice made by Russia and not just by Russia's current leader. That needs to be tested over time," said Cimoszewicz. "Why should we reorganize the world two months after something has started?"

Though it has been one of the most stalwart supporters of U.S. policy within NATO since joining in 1996, and borders on Russia, Poland first learned of the plan to create a new NATO-Russia council only after Blair already had dispatched a groundbreaking letter to Putin. The Poles -- like some U.S. officials outside the White House -- were taken aback by the reach of the plan, which would give Russia equal standing with NATO's 19 members in decision-making on a wide range of issues. In one Blair variant, all matters that were not specifically excluded by NATO automatically would be referred to the council, giving Russia de facto veto power.

The likely consequences of that step would be dramatic -- as Cimoszewicz points out, if such a body had existed during the past six years, Russia would have blocked NATO's three interventions in the Balkans, and Slobodan Milosevic still would be in power in Belgrade. "The whole mechanism of NATO could be slowed down or even paralyzed," he said -- an outcome that was, after all, one of Putin's explicit goals before Sept. 11.

Cimoszewicz, and other worriers in Europe and Washington, have been promised safeguards that will ensure that NATO remains able to act independently of Russia. Draft provisions now being hammered out at the State Department and Pentagon would quietly neuter the original scheme, delivering a body not much different from the existing NATO-Russia council.

Eventually, however, the formula will come back to the two presidents and the restricted space where they have been reinventing policy. As the bureaucracies in both capitals now understand, that channel can produce an entirely unexpected outcome.