Past FP contributor Dmitri Trenin has an interesting piece in the Moscow Times sketching out some of the early Russia challenges President Obama will face. While he urges Obama to make a more serious effort to engage Russia on issues of mutual concern, he doesn't see a close relationship between leaders of the two countries as being all that important:
President George W. Bush's jovial camaraderie with then-President
Vladimir Putin simulated -- rather than stimulated -- the relationship
between the United States and Russia. The promise of a strategic
partnership in the wake of Sept. 11 was mindlessly neglected because at
the time preparing for the invasion of Iraq became the sole focus of
the Bush White House. [...]
You will not need to aim for a close working relationship with your
Russian counterpart. All too often, these attempts are treated
suspiciously by the public and not adequately supported by the
bureaucracy. You would do wise, however, to appoint an informal "Russia
tsar" to direct U.S. relations with Russia.
Aside from the unfortunate title "Russia tsar," I think this is good advice. While world leaders should probably be able to work together constructively, it doesn't actually seem all that advantageous when they become personally close.
Bush always seemed frustrated that Putin, who he got along great with personally, was such a thorn on his side politically. On the other side, the close relationship between Bush and Georgian president Mikheil Saakashvili seems to have given both leaders unrealistic expectations about how the other would behave in the run-up to last summer's war.
When Jon Stewart pressed Tony Blair about his continued support for Bush on the Daily Show, the former prime minister somewhat meekly responded, "I like him." In hindsight, many Britons would probably prefer that Blair hadn't gotten along so swimmingly with his American pal.
When leaders think a personal bond can be the basis of a bilateral alliance, they tend to wind up disappointed. Harry Truman's first impression of his Soviet counterpart at Potsdam was, "I think I can do business with Stalin. He's very honest, but he's also smart as hell."
Obama doesn't need to be friends with Putin. They don't even have to like each other. What the citizens of both countries should be hoping for is that they're clear with each other about national interests, especially when these interests are competing. And as Trenin points out, dialogue at the head of state level is of limited usefulness if its not backed by cooperation in the bureaucracy.
To my eyes at least, Obama's basketball-playing regular Joe act has always seemed a bit forced and at odds with the pricklier personality in his early writing. That's not necessarily a bad thing. After eight years of gregarious Texas charm which never led to particularly effective diplomacy, a bit of cerebral Chicago cool might be a welcome change.
Photo: Artyom Korotayev/Epsilon/Getty Images
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