Vladimir Putin will offer the next American president a frail olive branch in the person of Dmitry Medvedev next Sunday when Russian voters dutifully go to the polls to ratify Medvedev as Putin's chosen successor.
Leadership changes in Moscow and Washington this year will provide an opening for a halt in the withering erosion of U.S.-Russian relations, as well as in the war of words that the Russian president has been waging against the West. But three things need to happen:
Medvedev must turn out to be the liberal reformer that Putin now allows him to say he is. A new U.S. president will need to quickly return to the cooperative relationship with Russia on nuclear arms reductions and strategic stability that the Bush administration has largely abandoned. Finally, in their twilight months Presidents Bush and Putin will need to manage their tangled relationship with a skill and restraint lacking thus far.
Putin -- who intends to continue wielding power as Medvedev's prime minister after a two-month transition -- is offering only an option, not a commitment, by putting forward the charismatically challenged Medvedev to deal ceremonially with foreign leaders.
Medvedev, 42, has used his position as a Kremlin administrator to win Putin's complete trust, if former KGB officers possess such a thing. When Medvedev visited Washington a few years ago, his reserve and self-effacement made officials here wonder why he had made the trip -- a sentiment I shared after questioning him over the course of a dinner held by the Nixon Center.
But like Claudius under Caligula, or Anwar Sadat under Gamal Abdel Nasser, Medvedev survived by underreaching while others perished by grasping for too much too soon.
As recently as a year ago, Sergei Ivanov, then Putin's defense minister, was the clear front-runner for the presidency. When Putin launched a scathing broadside at Bush at last year's Munich security conference, Ivanov played the contrasting good cop, delivering statesman-like oratory promising global harmony. But his manifest impatience became politically fatal, Russian analysts say.
Putin saved Russian provinces the trouble and expense of having primaries, which were all held in Putin's mind. With his encouragement, Medvedev has given "campaign" speeches that promise respect for the rule of law, more personal freedoms, a much-reduced state role in the economy and cooperation with other countries, including the United States.
Were Medvedev to carry out these promises, he would have to uproot the siloviki, the ex-KGB officers Putin has installed both in the Kremlin and in corporate jobs where they have raked off fortunes. He would also reverse Russia's march away from democracy that has created much of the recent tension between Washington and Moscow.
Putin, of course, may be playing a cynical, short-term game by extending such promises through Medvedev. He is warning the siloviki that they can be tossed to the anti-corruption wolves of public opinion if they ever cross him. Internationally, a more moderate stance by Russia as a new U.S. president is being chosen may be an effort to coax the acknowledgment of Russia's return as a global power that Putin craves.
Some support for this idea comes from Putin's relatively mild public reaction to Kosovo's Feb. 17 declaration of independence and immediate Western recognition of the former Serbian province. Visiting Washington a few days later, Dmitry Peskov, Putin's spokesman, played down Kosovo as a point of U.S.-Russian conflict by saying the United Nations should determine what happens next.
Putin had already signaled that Moscow would swallow Kosovo's independence when he agreed recently to attend a NATO-Russia Council summit in Bucharest. His agreement came after months of strong attacks by Putin on decisions by Romania, a former Soviet satellite, to join the alliance and host U.S. bases.
NATO's 27 members will meet with Putin after holding their own summit in early April, where the focus should be on the alliance's deepening problems in Afghanistan. Bush will need to maintain alliance unity on that issue rather than risk new divisions by pushing for military agreements with Ukraine and Georgia, as some at the White House want.
"Putin wants to be preoccupied with domestic business," Peskov told me, portraying the Bucharest meeting as something of a swan song on the international scene for his boss.
Who knows? It could be true -- even if Putin doesn't mean it to be. The examples of Claudius, Sadat and others show that underestimating understudies can be dangerous. Come to think of it, I guess Putin didn't bother to see "All About Eve" when it was shown at the KGB's intelligence training school during his student days in 1985, according to another graduate of that institution.
Jim Hoagland