AP News, June 29th, 2007
After the Sept. 11 attacks, Vladimir Putin and George Bush ushered in a short-lived era of cooperation between Russia and the United States, which had been firm adversaries for most of the 20th century.
At their weekend summit in Maine, the two presidents will try to salvage some of that spirit after years of growing animosity and what one analyst has called the "Cold Spring" of 2007.
Washington today is disappointed by Russia's increasingly confrontational tone and steady retreat from political pluralism. The Kremlin contends the U.S. seeks to weaken Russia and it is demanding a larger role in global affairs.
The Putin-Bush meeting on Sunday and Monday "represents the last real opportunity for the two presidents to try to reverse this downward slide that has characterized U.S.-Russia relations for the past several years," Steven Pifer, a deputy assistant secretary of state during Bush's first term, told reporters in Washington on Wednesday.
Sarah Mendelson, a scholar with the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington, said the venue _ the summer home in Kennebunkport of Bush's parents _ suggests Bush's chief aim will be to renew the friendship he and Putin forged six years ago.
After Bush met Putin for the first time at their 2001 summit in Slovenia, which came three months before the Sept. 11 attacks, Bush declared: "I was able to get a sense of his soul."
Mendelson told The Associated Press that Bush once again hopes "to make this personal, to try to have this set in the context of his family. In some ways this feels like a last ditch try to reboot this relationship."
For Putin, the meeting is another chance to demonstrate Russia's revived influence following his nation's political and economic implosion in the 1990s. "This is showing that Russia's back on top, Russia is back in the game, nothing can be decided without Russia being at the table," Mendelson said.
There are still important areas of cooperation between the two nations, especially in efforts to prevent the proliferation of nuclear weapons in North Korea and Iran. Washington and Moscow also recently extended a joint program to boost security at nuclear facilities.
But the Kremlin has threatened to target its missiles at sites in eastern Europe if the U.S. builds an anti-missile system there. It tolerated a sometimes violent siege of Estonia's embassy in Moscow by protesters after the Baltic nation moved a Red Army monument from the center of its capital. And Russia has hinted it would veto independence for Kosovo, which the U.S. favors.
Putin has also sharply criticized the United States, denouncing what he called Washington's "hyper use of force" during a speech in February. In May, he seemed to compare the United States to Nazi Germany and this month said U.S. conduct during the Vietnam War was worse than the state-sponsored terror of Soviet leader Josef Stalin.
"Putin's comments are adding a lot of anxiety and anger in the relationship," Mendelson said.
In part, the Kremlin's criticism of the U.S. appears intended for internal consumption, analysts say, appealing to growing nationalist sentiments as the country prepares for parliamentary elections in December and a presidential vote in March.
Russia's resurgent economy also seems to have reawakened the Kremlin's geopolitical ambitions after more than a decade of feeling powerless to influence international affairs.
The United States, meanwhile, is concerned about the Kremlin's consolidation of power under Putin.
Unlike in the Soviet era, political dissidents aren't routinely jailed and there is no formal censorship in Russia. But most opposition protests have been disrupted by mass detentions and police violence, dissenting voices are rarely heard in the major media and occasionally critics of the Kremlin _ like Alexander Litvinenko, the former KGB officer poisoned in London _ die mysteriously.
Lilia Shevtsova, an analyst at the Moscow Center of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, wrote in a Hudson Institute report released Tuesday that Russia "falls into the political gray zone between democracy and dictatorship."
She said the Kremlin uses a "Potemkin village style imitation of democratic and liberal institutions" to cloak its quasi-autocratic rule. The "Cold Spring" of 2007, she added, resulted from its efforts to perpetuate that rule.
Some U.S. critics of Putin, including Harvard historian Richard Pipes, have urged the White House to more bluntly challenge Russia's rejection of the Western liberal democratic model.
These critics have called on Washington to renounce any implicit deals granting Russia the right to intervene in the affairs of former Soviet states and to consider kicking Russia out of the NATO-Russia Council and the Group of Eight.
Bush has resisted, perhaps because the United States has little to gain and much to lose by a dramatic rupture with Russia.
During the Cold War, the Soviet Union was dismissed by some as "Upper Volta with nukes" _ a reference to the African country that is now Burkina Faso _ because of its poverty. Today Russia has a trillion-dollar economy and the world's largest oil and gas industry.
Moreover, Russia remains a regional power with significant influence over neighboring former Soviet states. It is a major producer of advanced military technology and still has a huge arsenal of nuclear weapons.
"Russia is one of the most important bilateral relationships that the United States has in the world," Andrew Kuchins of the Center for Strategic and International Studies said Wednesday.
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Douglas Birch is Moscow bureau chief for The Associated Press.
