Bush's Tricky Trip

What image will define President Bush's upcoming foreign trip: The president speaking glowingly of freedom in some of Europe's newer democracies? Or the president cheering as a Russian military parade rumbles by in Red Square celebrating the Soviet victory over Nazi Germany?

The White House is sure hoping it's the former.

But this trip is going to be tricky.

Peter Baker writes in The Washington Post: "For a president who has made it his mission to champion democracy around the world, Bush's trip to Europe starting Friday presents one of the trickiest diplomatic challenges of his young second term, an uncomfortable balancing act of honoring the enormous Russian sacrifice during World War II without condoning the repression that followed.

"In a complex choreography to avoid sending the wrong signal, Bush will bracket his visit to Moscow with stops in two former Soviet republics that still resist Kremlin influence, Latvia and Georgia. Yet his attempt to prod Russian President Vladimir Putin into owning up to the dark side of the Soviet past evidently has failed. The Bush administration, U.S. sources said, privately tried to persuade Putin to use the occasion to renounce Stalin's agreement with Hitler dividing up Poland and permitting the Soviet Union to swallow up Latvia and its Baltic neighbors. . . .

"A senior administration official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity, said Bush's team designed the trip 'not to fall into the Russian trap about the past' and 'go to a World War II commemoration on Red Square in front of Lenin's tomb celebrating something that was not liberation for a lot of Europe. A lot of people, not just the Balts, see it as trading one dictatorship for another.' So 'we tried to refine the trip to talk about important matters for the 21st century.' "

Baker notes that President Clinton attended 50th anniversary festivities in 1995, but boycotted the military parade to protest the Russian war in Chechnya.

Peter Wallsten writes in the Los Angeles Times: "The centerpiece of Bush's five-day trip will come Monday, when he joins Russian President Vladimir V. Putin at a military parade honoring Russia's role in defeating the Nazis 60 years ago. . . .

"The mix of images and agendas reflects the obstacles facing Bush as he pursues a foreign policy that, experts say, is proving far more nuanced than the lofty language he used in his Jan. 20 inaugural address, when he declared it U.S. policy to spread democracy with 'the ultimate goal of ending tyranny in our world.' "

Richard Wolffe and Holly Bailey write in Newsweek.com that Bush's mounting a stage to watch the military parade in Red Square "was meant to be the central focus of Bush's trip to Europe later this week. Instead, it looks increasingly like the photo op the White House would like to forget. . . .

"The White House hopes the images of such a Soviet-laden day will be forgotten once Bush arrives at his next stop, in Tbilisi, Georgia, the following day. There, Bush's aides are hoping for a crowd of 100,000 in Freedom Square to hear Bush talk about democracy on the march. There are only two problems. First, the crowd's response needs to be better than it was in Bratislava. There, Bush's democracy-heavy speech was greeted with silence or polite applause. That is, until Bush started talking about improving access to U.S. visas, when the crowd cheered wildly."

Here's the transcript of national security adviser Stephen Hadley's on-the-record, on-camera briefing on the upcoming trip, which includes stops in Latvia and the Netherlands, as well as Russia and Georgia.