Bush-Putin summit could create safer world

Guardian News Service, London

The three-day summit meeting between U.S. President George Bush and Russia's President Vladimir Putin that got underway in Washington on Tuesday has the makings of a truly historic event, marking a possibly radical new departure for both countries. But one crucial element is missing. Its continued absence could yet undermine the whole enterprise.

The summit is nothing if not ambitious. It is expected to bring a sweeping agreement on cuts in each nation's nuclear warhead stockpiles. This suits Russia -- which cannot afford to maintain its nuclear arsenal and has well-founded security concerns about its weapons installations. And it suits the Bush administration -- which after a distrustful start has come to view Putin's Kremlin as more of a potential partner than a military threat.

Closely linked to this pact is a prospective compromise on U.S. plans for national missile defense -- "Star Wars II." Putin has softened his earlier opposition and hinted that he may agree to amend or tacitly ignore the 1972 anti-ballistic missile treaty. This will allow the Pentagon to begin vigorous new missile testing next spring and start building associated tracking and early warning facilities. In return, Bush will drop, for now at least, his threat to withdraw unilaterally from the ABM treaty and may offer a technology-sharing arrangement.

Underlying this deal-making is Bush's insistence that the basic cold war doctrine of "mutual assured destruction" is now moribund; and Putin's assessment that the real security challenges of the 21st century lie elsewhere. One such challenge is international terrorism and how to defeat it -- another important item on the summit agenda.

The U.S. has been impressed by Putin's active support for its Afghan campaign, particularly in facilitating access to bases in the "frontline states" of central Asia and in sharing intelligence -- an act of cooperation by the former KGB spy unimaginable even during the Yeltsin years.

Putin also appears to agree with Washington (and Tony Blair) that the proliferation of nuclear, chemical and biological weapons, the problems emanating from failed and "rogue" states, festering regional conflicts such as Palestine, and transnational evils such as drug-running are the big, future challenges.

There remain clear differences over how best to address these issues. The U.S. objects to Russian arms sales to Iran; Russia opposes U.S.-led sanctions against Iraq. And both sides offer conflicting definitions of terrorism: What for Bush are Chechen freedom-fighters are for Putin a despicable foe.

But these concerns are easily outranked, for example, by Russia's importance to the U.S. as a counterweight to a strengthening China and its potential as a major, non-OPEC oil supplier; and by the modernizing Putin's need to reduce Soviet era debt, increase western investment, entrench market reforms, and obtain entry into the World Trade Organization.

In other words, this week's summit -- which will include a spot of male bonding, tree-felling, and cattle-poking on Bush's Texas ranch -- comes at a moment when U.S. and Russian interests appear to be converging to an extraordinary degree. And the opportunity this represents is partially understood. Bush says he and Putin are on the brink of forging ties which "will outlive our presidencies". Condoleezza Rice, the U.S. national security adviser, talks of creating nothing less than "a new strategic relationship".

But if Bush is serious about this root-and-branch new beginning, a bigger leap of faith, imagination and plain common sense is required. It is time to invite Russia to become a full member of NATO. More than a decade after the Soviet Union imploded, the alliance has still to find a convincing global role -- as its sidelining in the "war on terrorism" has witheringly shown.

Politically and philosophically speaking, NATO is overdue for a existential overhaul of a far more fundamental nature than that attempted in its 1999 Strategic Concept review. Twelve years after the Berlin Wall fell, NATO still symbolizes the anachronistic division of Europe into eastern and western camps. The alliance's projected expansion, up to and around Russia's borders, is threatening to Moscow, yet deeply illogical if Russia is now considered a friend. Much of NATO's European role may in time be superseded by the EU; in Macedonia, this is already happening.

Despite its 1994 NATO partnership deal, Moscow is still held at arms-length. But the balance is shifting: More and more, a rudderless NATO needs Russia.

The prize could be a revamped, retasked, even renamed alliance girdling the earth, purged of the last century's old thinking and dedicated to meeting the new, common dangers of the coming age -- together, not separately. As Blair might say, events have shaken the kaleidoscope. Now what is needed is a clear vision.