U.S. Hopes for Democracy in Russia Fade

The secretaries of state and defense and a squadron of other U.S. officials head to Moscow next week for a series of top-level meetings. They will discuss missile defense, a conventional forces treaty and the next step in nuclear arms cuts.

Not on the official agenda -- the future of Russian democracy.

In watching Russia's slide toward authoritarianism, the Bush administration once considered the ultimate test to be whether President Vladimir Putin voluntarily gave up power in 2008 as promised. But this week Putin shrugged off U.S. warnings and signaled that he plans to keep power by becoming prime minister, once again surprising an administration that has now all but abandoned hopes of influencing Russia's internal direction.

Some administration officials had assumed Putin would at least give up any formal leadership role out of a desire to avoid an international backlash. "We didn't really think through the possibility of him staying on in this kind of high-profile position," said a senior official, who like others spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss sensitive diplomatic issues.

Yet Putin's plans have only underscored the administration's emerging conclusion that it is powerless to prevent the Kremlin's retreat from democracy and reinforced a gloomy resignation about where Russia is headed. "What are we supposed to do?" asked another frustrated official. "One shouldn't exaggerate our ability to shape the future of Russian politics."

The prospect of Putin's remaining in charge in Moscow in whatever position after next year's Russian presidential election would cement one of the greatest U.S. foreign policy setbacks of the Bush era and could trigger a "Who lost Russia?" debate in the 2008 U.S. presidential campaign. Instead of the democratic ally Bush envisioned after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, Russia has become a challenge and an embarrassment for a president who made the spread of democracy a central mission of his administration.

"That was the red line -- the upcoming '08 election," said Andrew C. Kuchins, director of Russian studies at the Center for Strategic and International Studies and one of a group of Western scholars who just returned from a meeting with Putin in Moscow. "But I have a feeling the red line has either moved or it's evaporated. Whatever hope people had for democracy in Russia in the near term two or three years ago, that's really changed. And there's just nothing we can do about it."

The discouragement stems from a fundamental miscalculation of Putin's motives in backing the U.S. operations in Afghanistan after Sept. 11, according to current and past officials. "People read too much into the post-9/11 support," said Angela E. Stent, the Russia officer at the National Intelligence Council from 2004 to 2006. "That support was there because the Taliban was also their enemy. And we mistook that for something else."

So Bush is recalibrating expectations for the relationship and has essentially stopped putting much pressure on Putin about democracy. The two had testy, closed-door discussions on Russian democracy in Chile in 2004 and in Slovakia in 2005. Vice President Cheney delivered a blistering speech on the rollback of political freedoms in Russia in 2006. But in recent months, according to aides, the issue has come up only as a formality, if at all.

When Bush invited Putin to his family's compound in Kennebunkport, Maine, in July, the president made no public mention of democracy. Asked by a reporter how concerned he was about shrinking liberty in Russia, Bush talked instead about how much he trusts Putin. By the time they met again, on the sidelines of an Asian economic summit in Australia last month, the issue did not come up at all in their public comments.

After Putin this week effectively outlined his plan to remain in power, U.S. officials said, no special meetings were held within the administration to discuss what to do, no action memos were drafted with options. Bush did not call Putin to seek an explanation or publicly express concern, leaving it to spokesmen to say that "this is ultimately a matter for the people of Russia to decide," as White House press secretary Dana Perino put it.

Instead, during interagency meetings on Russia this week, the Bush team is focusing on areas where it hopes to make progress during next week's talks. At least half a dozen officials from the White House, Pentagon and State Department fly to Moscow early in the week to lay groundwork for an end-of-the-week summit between Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates and their Russian counterparts.