At the 2008 NATO summit in Bucharest, both Georgia and Ukraine applied for Membership Action Plans, MAPs, the final step before consideration for full membership. I was a strong supporter of their applications. But approval required unanimity, and both Angela Merkel and Nicolas Sarkozy, the new president of France, were skeptical. They knew Georgia and Ukraine had tense relationships with Moscow, and they worried NATO could get drawn into a war with Russia. They were also concerned about corruption.
I thought the threat from Russia strengthened the case for extending MAPs to Georgia and Ukraine. Russia would be less likely to engage in aggression if these countries were on a path into NATO. As for the governance issues, a step toward membership would encourage them to clean up corruption. We agreed on a compromise: We would not grant Georgia and Ukraine MAPs in Bucharest, but we would issue a statement announcing that they were destined for future membership in NATO. At the end of the debate, Prime Minister Gordon Brown of Great Britain leaned over to me and said, “We didn’t give them MAPs, but we may have just made them members!”
The NATO debate over Georgia and Ukraine highlighted the influence of Russia. In my first meeting with Vladimir Putin in the spring of 2001, he complained that Russia was burdened by Soviet-era debt. At that point, oil was selling for $26 per barrel. By the time I saw Putin at the APEC summit in Sydney in September 2007, oil had reached $71—on its way to $137 in the summer of 2008. He leaned back in his chair and asked how were Russia’s mortgage-backed securities doing.
The comment was vintage Putin. He was sometimes cocky, sometimes charming, always tough. Over my eight years as president, I met face to face with Vladimir more than forty times. Laura and I had wonderful visits with him and his wife, Lyudmilla, at our home in Crawford and his dacha outside Moscow, where he showed me his private chapel and let me drive his classic 1956 Volga. He took us on a beautiful boat ride through St. Petersburg during the White Nights Festival. I invited him to Kennebunkport, where we went fishing with Dad. I’ll never forget Putin’s reaction the first time he came into the Oval Office. It was early in the morning, and the light was streaming through the south windows. As he stepped through the door, he blurted out, “My God … This is beautiful!” It was quite a response for a former KGB agent from the atheist Soviet Union.
Through all the ups and downs, Putin and I were candid with each other. We cooperated in some important areas, including fighting terrorism, removing the Taliban from Afghanistan, and securing nuclear materials.
One of the biggest achievements emerged from our first meeting, in Slovenia in 2001. I told Vladimir I planned to give him the required six months’ notice that America would withdraw from the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty, so that we could both develop effective missile defense systems. He made clear that this wouldn’t make me popular in Europe. I told him I had campaigned on the issue and the American people expected me to follow through. “The Cold War is over,” I told Putin. “We are no longer enemies.”
I also informed him that America would unilaterally cut our arsenal of strategic nuclear warheads by two thirds. Putin agreed to match our reductions. Less than a year later, we signed the Moscow Treaty, which pledged our nations to shrink our number of deployed warheads from 6,600 weapons to between 1,700 and 2,200 by 2012. The treaty amounted to one of the largest nuclear weapons cuts in history, and it happened without the endless negotiations that usually come with arms-control agreements.
Over the course of eight years, Russia’s newfound wealth affected Putin. He became aggressive abroad and more defensive about his record at home. In our first one-on-one meeting of my second term, in Bratislava, I raised my concerns about Russia’s lack of progress on democracy. I was especially worried about his arrests of Russian businessmen and his crackdown on the free press. “Don’t lecture me about the free press,” he said, “not after you fired that reporter.”
It dawned on me what he was referring to. “Vladimir, are you talking about Dan Rather?” I asked. He said he was. I said, “I strongly suggest you not say that in public. The American people will think you don’t understand our system.”
At a joint press conference after the meeting, I called on two American reporters and Vladimir called on two Russian journalists. The last question came from Alexei Meshkov of the Interfax news agency. It was addressed to Putin. “President Bush recently stated that the press in Russia is not free,” he said. “What is this lack of freedom all about? … Why don’t you talk a lot about violations of the rights of journalists in the United States, about the fact that some journalists have been fired?” What a coincidence. The so-called free press of Russia was parroting Vladimir’s line.
Putin and I both loved physical fitness. Vladimir worked out hard, swam regularly, and practiced judo. We were both competitive people. On his visit to Camp David, I introduced Putin to our Scottish terrier, Barney. He wasn’t very impressed. On my next trip to Russia, Vladimir asked if I wanted to meet his dog, Koni. Sure, I said. As we walked the birch-lined grounds of his dacha, a big black Labrador came charging across the lawn. With a twinkle in his eye, Vladimir said, “Bigger, stronger, and faster than Barney.” I later told the story to my friend, Prime Minister Stephen Harper of Canada. “You’re lucky he only showed you his dog,” he replied.
Taking my man Barney for a spin on the ranch, the only place the Secret Service let me drive. White House/Eric Draper
The Barney story was instructive. Putin was a proud man who loved his country. He wanted Russia to have the stature of a great power again and was driven to expand Russia’s spheres of influence. He intimidated democracies on his borders and used energy as an economic weapon by cutting off natural gas to parts of Eastern Europe.
Putin was wily. As a quid pro quo for supporting Jacques Chirac and Gerhard Schroeder in their efforts to counterbalance American influence, Putin convinced them to defend his consolidation of power in Russia. At a G-8 dinner in St. Petersburg, most of the leaders challenged Putin on his democratic record. Jacques Chirac did not. He announced that Putin was doing a fine job running Russia, and it was none of our business how he did it. That was nothing compared to what Gerhard Schroeder did. Shortly after the German chancellor stepped down from office, he became chairman of a company owned by Gazprom, Russia’s state-owned energy giant.
Putin liked power, and the Russian people liked him. Huge oil-fed budget surpluses didn’t hurt. He used his stature to handpick his successor, Dmitry Medvedev. Then he got himself appointed prime minister.
The low point in our relationship came in August 2008, when Russia sent tanks across the border into Georgia to occupy South Ossetia and Abkhazia, two provinces that were part of Georgia but had close ties to Russia. I was in Beijing for the Opening Ceremony of the Olympic Games. Laura and I were standing in line to greet President Hu Jintao when Jim Jeffrey, my deputy national security adviser, whispered the news about Russia’s offensive. I looked a few places ahead of me in line. There was Vladimir. I decided the receiving line was not the appropriate place for heated diplomacy.
I also thought it was important that I direct my concerns to President Medvedev. I didn’t know Medvedev well. In April 2008, just before the change of power, Vladimir had invited Medvedev to visit with us in Sochi, Russia’s equivalent of Camp David. The mood was festive. Putin hosted a nice dinner, followed by folk dancing. At one point, members of my delegation, including me, were plucked from our seats to take the stage. The dance felt like a combination of square dancing and the jitterbug. I’m sure I would have been more fluid if I’d had a little vodka in my system. Curiously enough, I rarely saw vodka on my trips to Russia, unlike in the old days of communism.