The hardliners were won over. ‘Even the doubters agreed,’ Putin said in an interview. ‘New circumstances meant we had to help the Americans.’
After four hours, Putin left the meeting to call the American president and inform him of their decision. ‘It was a substantive conversation,’ Putin recalls. ‘We agreed on concrete steps to be taken straight away, and in the long term.’ He offered Russian logistical help, intelligence, search-and-rescue missions if American pilots were downed in northern Afghanistan, and even the right to military flights over Russian territory for humanitarian purposes. Most importantly, he told Bush: ‘I am prepared to tell the heads of government of the Central Asian states that we have good relations with that we have no objections to a US role in Central Asia as long as it has the object of fighting the war on terror and is temporary and is not permanent.’16 The last words were crucial. Ten years later (despite a Russian attempt to have them evicted in 2009), American forces still operate out of the Manas Air Base in Kyrgyzstan.17 They were asked to leave their base in Uzbekistan in 2005.
The American campaign was mainly going to involve air strikes, while the Afghans themselves (the anti-Taliban Northern Alliance) would be doing the fighting on the ground. Rice says that she and Sergei Ivanov were given responsibility for getting supplies to the Northern Alliance and preparing them to fight. Even as Putin was calling Bush from Sochi, Russia’s chief of staff, General Anatoly Kvashnin, was holding talks with a Northern Alliance leader in Tajikistan.
Russia, it seemed, was now totally aligned with the US in the war on terror. Sergei Ivanov claims that some days after the war began, Russian border guards on the Tajik frontier with Afghanistan were approached by representatives of the Taliban. ‘They said they had authority from Mullah Omar to propose that Russia and the Taliban join forces fighting the Americans.’ Putin referred to the same incident when the US defence secretary, Donald Rumsfeld, visited Moscow. ‘We gave them only one answer,’ said Putin in English, showing a crude Russian hand-gesture, a fist with the thumb pushed between the forefinger and middle finger. ‘We do it a little differently, but I get the point,’ laughed Rumsfeld.18
The American assault began on 7 October. It was Putin’s birthday. Together with the guests at his party, he watched the news of the first air strikes on television. Defence minister Sergei Ivanov turned to him and raised a glass of vodka: ‘Vladimir Vladimirovich, it’s a birthday present for you.’
The George ’n’ Vladimir show
It seemed that Putin had now answered that journalist’s question in Ljubljana: was this a man Americans could trust? Delighted to be seen to be acting in concert with the West rather than against it, Putin now kept up the charm offensive, travelling first to Germany, where he impressed his hosts by making a speech to the Bundestag entirely in German.
He emphasised his country’s cooperation in the war on terror, and contrasted this with the slap in the face Russia had felt over the bombing of Serbia – an event now more than two years old but still rankling. ‘Decisions are often taken without our participation, and we are only urged afterwards to support them. After that they talk again about loyalty to NATO. They even say that such decisions cannot be implemented without Russia. Let us ask ourselves: is this normal? Is this true partnership?’
‘We cannot have a united Great Europe without an atmosphere of trust,’ he said, laying out a grand vision to put an end finally to the Cold War. ‘Today we are obliged to say that we are renouncing our stereotypes and ambitions and from now on will jointly ensure the security of the population of Europe and the world as a whole.’
Chancellor Gerhard Schröder fully supported Putin’s idea of involving Russia in ‘jointly’ ensuring Europe’s security. Even before this visit they had begun to think the unthinkable: that Russia might even become a member of NATO. Schröder recalled later in an interview that they had discussed what he called a ‘fairly visionary’ approach to foreign policy: ‘I had discussions with Putin about whether it would make sense for Russia to join NATO – and I thought that it made perfect sense, a good prospect for Russia and also for NATO.’19
A week later Putin was in Brussels for a meeting with NATO secretary general George Robertson, ready to push his luck. Robertson was taken aback when Putin opened the meeting by asking, ‘When are you going to invite Russia to join NATO?’20
Putin’s adviser Sergei Prikhodko insists it was just a ‘figure of speech’, but Robertson took it seriously.21 He patiently explained that this wasn’t how things were done. He recalled: ‘I said, “Well, Mr President, we don’t invite people to join NATO. You apply for membership. You then have to go through a process to show that you can be integrated within NATO, and then an invitation to membership is issued.” So he sort of shrugged and said something to the effect of “Russia is not going to stand in a queue with a lot of countries that don’t matter.” So I said, “Well in that case can we stop this diplomatic sword dance about membership and actually get down to building a practical relationship and let’s see where that takes us?”’22
Undeterred, Putin continued to woo the West with conciliatory gestures. On his return from Brussels to Moscow he approved the closure of two Soviet-era military facilities abroad – a naval base at Cam Ranh Bay in Vietnam and a listening post at Lourdes in Cuba. In private, Russian officials admit that these had become expensive white elephants that they were glad to get rid of. But still they hoped they would be seen as goodwill signals that deserved to be reciprocated. Moscow was looking for accommodation on a number of longstanding concerns. An American Soviet-era law, known as the Jackson–Vanik amendment, was introduced in 1974 to restrict trade with the USSR until it lifted restrictions on Jewish emigration. The problem had long since vanished, but Jackson–Vanik was still on the statute books, despite Russian pleading (and American promises to repeal it). Russia also wanted to join the World Trade Organisation to facilitate the growth of its economy, but the US blocked its application and increased tariffs on Russian steel imports. Above all, Putin was still hoping that his good behaviour might earn a reprieve for the ABM treaty and even persuade the Americans not to go ahead with a missile shield.
Such hopes were soon to be dashed. George W. Bush had campaigned for the presidency on a promise to build an American national missile defence system, and the ABM treaty stood in his way.
The issue was top of the agenda when Putin made a state visit to the USA in November 2001. The Americans tried to convince the Russians that they had nothing to fear from a missile shield, since its aim was to protect the United States from missiles that might be developed in the future by ‘rogue states’ such as Iran, Iraq and North Korea (countries he would soon refer to as the ‘axis of evil’). As such the defence system would not destabilise the US–Russian strategic balance. Colin Powell recalls: ‘The president wanted to convey to President Putin that he, Bush, understood that the Cold War was over and that we had to avoid looking at the Russian Federation through the lens of the Cold War.’23
According to deputy national security adviser Stephen Hadley, Bush said, ‘My preference would be that we both agree to leave the ABM treaty and we announce cooperation on ballistic missile defence. If it’s better for you, Vladimir, for me just to go unilaterally, so that you’re not part of it – and maybe even criticise it a bit – that’s okay.’24