Crises Reveal Limits of Bush's Personal Diplomacy on World Stage

President Bush has devoted considerable time and effort to forging a bond with Russian leader Vladimir Putin. They met last year in Kennebunkport, Maine. (Pool Photo By Matthew Cavanaugh Via Bloomberg News)

National security adviser Stephen J. Hadley said in a recent interview that Bush's strategy of engaging the Chinese leadership more aggressively -- he has met 15 times with Hu or his predecessor -- had proved of great help, especially on diplomacy aimed at halting North Korea's nuclear weapons program. "His notion was, 'I am going to engage the leaders, I'm going to try and empower but also energize the leaders to take some responsibility," Hadley said. "And that's paid dividends, in terms of North Korea."

By many accounts, Bush has also grown close to Abdullah, rescuing a relationship with Saudi Arabia that got off to a tense start in the months before the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, largely over the Saudi leader's belief that Bush had abandoned any sense of balance in his approach to the Israeli-Palestinian dispute.

Relations were cool when Abdullah and his entourage arrived in Crawford, Tex., in April 2002 for a meeting at Bush's ranch. The first several hours of conversation did not go well, said Robert Jordan, who was the U.S. ambassador to Saudi Arabia at the time and had attended the meeting.

"After a while, we took a break, and the president said, "Why don't we go for a ride in my Jeep," Jordan recalled in an interview in May. Bush and Abdullah toured the ranch, accompanied by only a translator, Jordan added, and "when they came back, they acted like the best of friends. They were beaming."

How much this kind of personal warmth pays off for the United States is a matter of dispute: Some U.S. officials, for instance, remain disappointed with Saudi Arabia's performance in cracking down on the financing of jihadists around the world or with its unwillingness to offer stronger support for the government in Iraq.

Leslie H. Gelb, former president of the Council on Foreign Relations, said Bush is more naive about personal relations with other leaders than past U.S. presidents, alluding to his meeting with Putin in 2001, after which Bush famously said he looked the Russian leader in the eye and got a "sense of his soul."

"The others were far more realistic," Gelb said. "This Bush thinks when he calls Putin, they are soul mates, and when he expresses a desire for Putin to do something, he will do it. [Putin] had other reasons for going into Georgia than the personal relations with the president of the United States."

Another case is Musharraf: Even officials in the administration thought Bush did not push the former president hard enough to crack down on radicals on the Pakistan-Afghanistan border. "Musharraf is charming, funny, quick. . . . They had a great relationship," one former administration official said. "Bush is very good at establishing personal relations, but once he does, he tends to not be willing to take them on in a tough way."

Peter D. Feaver, a former National Security Council aide, dismissed such criticism. "My answer is: What is the alternative? What Pakistani leader was going to be a more reliable ally and better able to secure Pakistani nukes?" Feaver asked. "What we got from Musharraf was better than the Clinton team was able to get and likely better than the next team is likely to get."