#4
Why Bush Exempts Putin From Punishment
BY JOHN FARMER
May 1, 2003
c.2003 Newhouse News Service

Like Dante's "Inferno," the Bush administration has various levels of punishment for different degrees of evildoing by those who opposed Washington on the Iraq war and sandbagged Uncle Sam in the debate at the United Nations.

In the very bottom crypt, where sulfurous fires burn hottest, we find French President Jacques Chirac, who seemed to take special delight not merely in opposing President Bush's request for U.N. authorization for war in Iraq but in demonizing Americans as warmongers. Chirac will make a comeback with the Bush administration when hell freezes over.

But what about Russian President Vladimir Putin? Putin was every bit as much of an obstructionist during the U.N. debate -- maybe more so. Russia's support gave France a second vote in the U.N. Security Council, this one with a veto. Without Putin in his pocket, Chirac would have had a much weaker hand to play -- and none at all if Putin had supported Bush on the war.

Yet unlike Chirac, Putin appears to be getting a pass on punishment. In fact, he's being courted by Bush, who recently dispatched Condoleezza Rice, his national security adviser, to Moscow to brief Putin on progress in Iraq and remind him of their palsy-walsy relationship (riding at the ranch, munching on barbecue, that sort of thing).

There was even a suggestion that there might be a role for Russia after all in the rebuilding of Iraq and its oil industry.

Why the different treatment? Because France, despite Chirac's Gaullist pretentions to leadership, has nothing to offer that Bush and Washington need, not even in Europe. Not that Chirac would offer help in any case. Putin, on the other hand, has something to offer in the reconstruction of Iraq, in negotiations with North Korea over nuclear weapons and in the war against terrorism.

Bush wants the U.N. embargo on Iraq lifted to hasten the sale of Iraqi oil and help finance the revival of ordinary life in the country. France is once again emerging as an obstacle. But a decision by Putin to back Bush and lift sanctions would leave Chirac isolated in the United Nations, something Washington believes he won't be willing to risk in the wake of the convincing U.S.-British victory in Iraq.

North Korea is an especially tough nut for the Bushies because they've had little or no contact with that isolated regime. Moscow, on the other hand, is one of the capitals with which the North Koreans have maintained some links. It's assumed -- or at least hoped -- that Putin, along with the Chinese, can play an honest broker role with Pyongyang and persuade it to back off its nuclear threats. It isn't in Russia's interest to have a paranoid nuclear neighbor on its borders.

Chirac has been helpful on terrorism; his country has Western Europe's largest Muslim population and is thus a potential intelligence treasure trove. But Putin and Russia have been even more helpful.

In what at the time was a stunning concession, Putin allowed Bush to insert American forces and military hardware into some of the Central Asian republics that were once part of the Soviet Union. Admittedly, Russia's own interests were served by the move; Moscow has its own Muslim extremist troubles. But the presence of U.S. military forces and intelligence operatives in Central Asia was a godsend in the fight to oust the Taliban in Afghanistan and in unearthing and disrupting al-Qaida operations in that part of the world.

There's more. The Russian president raised little more than a murmur of protest when, at American urging, NATO expanded eastward until today it is cheek by jowl with Russia's western border. And he even swallowed -- hard, maybe, but he swallowed it -- Bush's unilateral decision to give the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty the kiss-off.

If Putin disappointed Bush when he joined the French opposition at the United Nations, he had little choice. Opposition elements in Russia have been increasingly vocal about his failure to resist U.S. unilateralism around the globe, even his willingness to accommodate it. In a way, he has been an Eastern European Tony Blair, with the same kind of home-front problem.

Bush owes him. And he needs him. It's why Vladimir Putin matters and gets the kid glove treatment, while Jacques Chirac does not.

(John Farmer is national political correspondent for The Star-Ledger of Newark, N.J. He can be contacted at jfarmer@starledger.com.)

BACK TO THE TOP    #255 CONTENTS    NEXT ARTICLE