Big power politics gets personal

It was an unusual image in the history of Moscow-Washington ties, even given that Khrushchev thing with his shoe.

There was George W. Bush, in faded jeans, driving his white Ford pickup, with ex-KGB man Vladimir Putin riding shotgun. Wives and translator sat in the back, rounding out the James Dean tableau.

It was the start of Mr. Putin's visit to the president's 1,600-acre Texas ranch and another installment in the two world leaders' trying to get to know each other.

Over 24 hours, the two men ate beef tenderloin and catfish and tapped their feet to a country swing band.

"Usually you only invite a good friend to your home, and that is clearly the case here," Mr. Bush said. Putin responded that it was the first time he had ever visited the home of a world leader, calling it "hugely symbolic" that it was the US president's.

In the history of US-Russia relations, personal chemistry has sometimes made the difference between crisis and

confidence. Bush and Putin, in just a few meetings, are establishing a genuine personal relationship.

Yet analysts note that, fundamentally, it is the national interests of each country, and not personal ties, that drive leaders together or split them apart - particularly when it comes to former superpower adversaries.

Further, they warn, Bush needs to be mindful not to get too starry-eyed over his new partner. That was the mistake of his predecessor, Bill Clinton, who so badly wanted to support the budding democracy of "my friend Boris" that, critics say, he threw good money into a corrupt system and was too soft on Russian human rights abuses in Chechnya.

"Personal relationships are completely ephemeral, depending on much more basic agreements and conflicts between nations," says presidential historian James MacGregor Burns. "This will last only as long as the interests of the two nations coincide."

Its no coincidence that personal ties between the Kremlin and the White House were at their frostiest when the two nations were locked in a war so cold that both sides suffered freezer burn. When President Eisenhower invited Nikita Khrushchev to Camp David in 1959, the Soviet leader was insulted he was not going to the White House, and ordered the KGB to investigate this mysterious "camp." The next year, he delivered his famous shoe-banging speech at the UN, and in 1962, delivered the Cuban missile crisis to John Kennedy - who he mistook for a mere boy easily intimidated.

But a fundamental shift in Soviet ideology and strong mutual interests brought Mikhail Gorbachev and Ronald Reagan together - in spite of the US president's gaffes in private meetings with the leader. At their first Washington summit in 1987 - the first US-Soviet summit in 14 years - both leaders wanted an arms-control deal, and both needed a political victory to shore up sagging support at home. Mr. Gorbachev's historic reforms made it easier for Mr. Reagan to cozy up to him, even if his initial efforts were less than impressive.

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