(4 of 5)
But Putin can argue that there are other benefits to his rapprochement with Washington. While previous arms-control treaties have painstakingly dictated force structures, this one gives Russia's generals maximum flexibility in the way they deploy nuclear missiles. Even if full membership in NATO remains, as a Bush Administration official puts it, "a long way off" for Russia, the new accord gives Moscow a seat at the table with the alliance's 19 full-fledged members for discussions on fighting terrorism and arms control. There also remains what Coit Blacker, a Stanford professor and close friend of Rice's, calls "the elusive promise of economic cooperation." Putin is beginning to allow foreign access to Russia's vast petroleum reserves, but trade and investment in other sectors will lag as long as the nation's business laws remain inscrutably complex and arbitrarily enforced.
Another thing Putin wanted--America's acquiescence to his military campaign in Chechnya--in many ways has already been received. Because of Rice's conviction that U.S.-Russian relations should focus on strategic issues instead of internal affairs, the Bush Administration downgraded Chechnya as a point of contention, and that disposition only hardened after Sept. 11. "Putin wants us to legitimate what he's doing in Chechnya, to equate it with the war on terrorism," says Michael McFaul, another former colleague from Rice's days as a professor and provost at Stanford. "He wants Bush to come to Moscow and say, 'We're in this war together.'"
Given Russia's cooperation so far in the U.S. war in Afghanistan, including its sharing intelligence about al-Qaeda and the Taliban, Bush is apt to comply. He is also expected to gloss over Putin's authoritarian crackdown on his country's fledgling independent media, as well as his making the national legislature, the Duma, a totally servile body. "The things about Putin that Bush and Condi criticized during the campaign have only gotten worse in the past two years," says McFaul. "It's not like Putin's suddenly changed his ways at home."
Rice acknowledges the limits to the new relationship. "There are still some hard issues with the Russians," she says. The hardest, by far, is Moscow's refusal to stop supplying Iran--which Bush identified as a member of the "axis of evil"--with know-how that the U.S. fears could be used in Tehran's drive to develop weapons of mass destruction. The Russians, who have been helping Iran build a civilian reactor in the southwestern town of Bushehr, vehemently insist they have imposed strict controls on their exports that rule out sharing any sensitive technology. American intelligence officials disagree, though they refuse to disclose their evidence.