Nothing like the imagined dialogue
below will have occurred at the Bush family
compound on the Maine sea coast during President
Vladimir Putin's July 1 retreat with US President
George W Bush.
Putin, I expect, will have
done his best to humor his American counterpart
and keep him off his guard. Bush is prepared
neither intellectually nor psychologically to
understand what a Russian leader must do, and a
practical man like Putin would not waste
words explaining the
unexplainable to the uncomprehending. Putin's
unenviable task is to persuade Bush of his good
intentions, while gaining maneuvering room to take
measures that the US will regard as hostile. I
have no idea how he tried to bring this off in
Kennebunkport. But it is sobering to imagine how
the conversation might have gone if Putin had told
Bush the unvarnished truth.
Bush: You know,
Vladimir, a lot of Americans worry that progress
toward democracy in Russia has run into a rough
patch. They see journalists being intimidated,
businessmen being put in jail, and opponents of
your government dying under suspicious
circumstances. I want to
improve relations with you, but you're getting a
lot of bad press.
Putin:
Tell me, George - what is your idea of Russian
democracy?
Bush: Well, when
Boris Yeltsin stood on top of a tank to face down
the communists and then had free elections,
Americans really got the idea that Russia was on
the road to democracy.
Putin: We were on the road
to something, that's for sure. Why do you think we
went bankrupt in 1998? Everything that wasn't
nailed down was going into someone's Swiss bank
account. Ask your father about it - he gave a
speech to a Goldman, Sachs conference in Moscow in
July of that year telling investors what a great
opportunity Russia was, a month before we ran out
of money.
Bush: You don't
need to drag my father into this ...
Putin: I'm not saying he was
involved in the looting of Russia, the greatest
larceny of all time - I'm pointing out that he was
as clueless as the rest of you. If we hadn't
cracked down on the crooks and thieves who took
the country over and stole everything, we wouldn't
be talking right now. There wouldn't be a Russia.
Bush: But can't you keep the
country honest by democratic means?
Putin: George, everybody
isn't like Americans. If Americans don't like
what's going on, they elect a different
congressman, sign a petition, take out newspaper
advertisements, or whatever. For two generations
Russians learned that if you made the wrong kind
of joke, you disappeared in the middle of the
night. You survived by keeping your head down and
drinking your vodka. We used to have political
troublemakers - in fact, some of the most
enthusiastic ones in the world. They were called
"communists". The ones that Josef Stalin didn't
kill, he sent to the Gulag. Just who do you think
is going to take the lead against crime syndicates
with private armies? If the government doesn't do
it, no one can - and the means we employ aren't
going to be pretty.
Bush: I
don't mean to get personal, Vladimir, but I guess
you know something about those means.
Putin: You had better
believe that I do. Why do you think that the
Russian government is in the hands of people who
served in State Security? In the bad old days, the
only institution that could take initiative was
the security services. There was no other place to
learn how to exercise power.
Bush: I can understand how
bad things were, Vladimir, but you've got to
understand how much Americans care about
democracy.
Putin: Of course
you care about democracy - your population is made
up of people who left their countries, forgot
their language, abandoned their culture and threw
themselves into the melting pot. They believe they
have rights. Russians never had any rights to
begin with and don't know what it means to defend
them.
Bush: I've got to say,
Vladimir, that's a hell of a way to run a country.
Putin: Who told you we were
a country, George? Russia is an empire. We have
160 different ethnic groups spread across six time
zones, and we have plenty of Russians in
territories that used to belong to the Soviet
Union. Maybe you don't like our history, but you
can't run the tape in reverse. Let me give you an
example: how many Muslims do you have in the US?
Bush: I don't see why that's
relevant, but it's probably 3 million or 4
million.
Putin: That's not
even 2% of your population. Do you know how many
Muslims we have in Russia? At least 25 million,
out of 150 million - and they might be a majority
in 50 years, given their birth rates.
Bush: I don't understand
your point.
Putin: My point
is, do you really want democracy in Russia - one
man, one vote? Because if you do, you might end up
with an Islamic state half a century from now with
more oil than Saudi Arabia and a big nuclear
arsenal.
Bush: Vladimir, I
don't get what you are driving at. Americans just
don't think that way. We're trying to help Muslim
countries build democracy so the Middle East can
be at peace.
Putin: I don't
want to throw cold water on your idea, George, but
it doesn't seem to be working out too well in
Iraq, or Palestine, or Lebanon, does it?
Bush: Vladimir, I just don't
get you at all. If you are so concerned about the
Muslims, how come you are making it so hard for us
to put sanctions on Iran?
Putin: Did it ever occur to
you that you have an insignificant number of
Muslims to answer to - and half of them are
native-born American blacks who never vote
Republican? I have millions of Azeri Shi'ites
attending mosques supported by Iran. I don't have
the luxury to rap the mullahs on the knuckles and
hope they stick their hands back in the pockets.
Read what Niccolo Machiavelli had to say on the
subject: never inflict a minor injury upon an
opponent. Men will avenge themselves against minor
injuries, but they can't avenge themselves against
major injuries.
Bush: You're
not telling me to inflict a major injury on Iran,
by any chance, are you, Vladimir?
Putin: If anyone is going to
do it, George, it's going to be you - you or the
Israelis. I simply can't afford to - at least not
for the moment, certainly not until after our
presidential elections next March. Maybe you won't
have to. Iran is weak. There's still an outside
chance that someone reasonable like Akbar Hashemi
Rafsanjani might replace that lunatic Mahmud
Ahmadinejad as president. But there's one thing
you can count on: nobody hates the idea of an Iran
with nuclear weapons more than we do. Our "near
abroad" shares a border with Iran.
Bush: So when push comes to
shove, Vladimir, you're going to let me do the
dirty work and keep your hands clean?
Putin: Remember, I've got
elections six months before you do, and a
different kind of succession problem. Your
democracy has been around for more than 200 years.
We're barely adolescents. I need someone to follow
me who's hard and sly enough to prevent Russia
from flying apart. We can be tough when we have to
be. Or haven't you heard of Chechnya?
Bush: You're not taking into
account how tough my problem is - unless I can
settle the Iran problem, there's no way I can get
US troops out of Iraq without a full-scale war
between Shi'ites backed by Iran and Sunnis backed
by Saudi Arabia.
Putin:
Well, you're on your own there. Don't blame me for
that.
Bush: Vladimir, I was
hoping we'd come out of this discussion with an
understanding of at least one point: Why are you
so upset about our putting anti-missile systems
into places like the Czech Republic? You know that
we can't defend Europe against a Russian missile
attack.
Putin: George, it's
not just about the missiles. It's about your
lily-pad bases in Kyrgyzstan, Uzbekistan,
Tajikistan, and elsewhere in our near abroad. It's
about fomenting those pointless color revolutions
in Ukraine, Georgia and Kyrgyzstan. You aren't
going to get democracy in these places - it's
silly presumption. All you will do is foster the
centrifugal forces that threaten to tear apart the
Russian Federation. Don't you get it, George? We
are only three-quarters Russian, and in a
generation we might be only half Russian. We
haven't recovered from the beating you gave us in
the 1980s. Half of adult male deaths in Russia are
due to alcoholism. Our women have 13 abortions for
every 10 live births. We're fighting for our life.
We are not going to let what remains of Russia be
torn to pieces.
Bush: Do you
think we can find some kind of common ground over
Kosovo?
Putin: That's where
you are really playing with fire, George. You are
proposing to dismember Serbia to add a province to
Greater Albania, and you will set a precedent for
every breakaway minority that wants to leave
Russia. We can't possibly accept this - and I warn
you that if you insist on this dangerous and
reckless course of action, we will do precisely
the same for disputed territories in the near
abroad, starting with South Ossetia.
Bush: But Vladimir, how are
we going to convince the Muslim world that we can
partner up with them for peace if we don't respect
the wishes of an overwhelming Muslim majority in
Kosovo?
Putin: I hate to put
it this way, George, but I think I could teach you
a lesson about how to gain influence among
Muslims. You aren't particularly popular among
Muslims at the moment.
Bush:
Okay, you don't have to rub it in. How do you
propose to gain influence among Muslims?
Putin: Do you know how many
civilians died in Chechnya when we suppressed the
rebellion there? No one knows exactly, but the
number is around 100,000. We know that half a
million Chechens lost their homes. That's half the
country. We've been killing Muslims for 300 years.
That's why they respect us.
Bush: Vladimir, what you are
saying is horrible. The American people will never
see the world that way.
Putin: The American people
don't have to. They are sitting comfortably in
their own continent and think it's a great
disaster when a few thousand people are killed in
an office building. I'm not suggesting that you go
out and explain to your voters that things might
be very different in other parts of the world. But
I am warning you: we have a tough enough job on
our hands. Don't make it harder for us, or you
will be sorry.
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circumstances. I want to
improve relations with you, but you're getting a
lot of bad press. 
