In Bush II, interests trump friendships

When Tony Blair stood with President Bush at the White House recently, the British prime minister looked uncharacteristically grim and distracted.

Maybe it was that, despite a jelling accord on poor-country debt relief, Mr. Blair was not getting a lot of what he'd hoped for from his friend. Or maybe he was preoccupied with Europe's political crisis over a failed constitutional process and with what he's going to do about it as the European Union's incoming president.

Whatever the reason, the scene stood as a metaphor for how a Bush White House that early on placed a high level of importance on the president's personal friendships with foreign leaders is now downplaying the role of leader-to-leader chemistry.

In its place is a greater emphasis on a foreign policy based more squarely on national interests and a cooler, depersonalized assessment of what countries can be the most helpful. The criterion is less "who we like" and more "who has interests that match ours."

In this new era, there is less talk of a best "amigo" like Mexico's Vicente Fox, no more rhapsody on seeing into the soul of Russia's Vladimir Putin. Blair remains a friend - though perhaps a disappointed and preoccupied one - because despite differences, the United States and Britain continue to see in largely the same way how democratization and a free-market economy serve the world's and thus their interests.

And in this climate, the US and France have a renewed appreciation for working with each other - not because of any sudden why-didn't-we-feel-this-before warmth between Mr. Bush and President Jacques Chirac, but because both have overriding interests in doing so.

"At the end of the day, it's never so much friendships as national interests that matter," says Andrew Bacevich, director of the Center for International Relations at Boston University.

The fall of the Bush-Fox friendship within the first year of Bush's presidency illustrates that point.

"Bush took office in a peaceful world with the global economy at the top of the agenda, and Mexico and the new president's friend from across the Texas border fit right into that context," says Mr. Bacevich. "But along comes 9/11, security displaces economics as the priority and driving national interest ... and suddenly the focus on Fox as [Bush's] closest and dearest friend goes by the board."

The early Bush emphasis on personal friendships is not unusual among recent presidents - in part because recent White House occupants have been governors with a paucity of foreign-policy experience.

But the reliance on friendship has not always stood the test of interests, analysts say.

"Like many presidents, Bush has sometimes tended to overpersonalize relationships, but that has sometimes led to disappointment," says Max Boot, a foreign-policy analyst at the Council on Foreign Relations in New York. Pointing to US-Russia relations, for example, he says, "[Bush] assumed Putin would respond to his emphasis on democracy and freedom, but it hasn't worked out that way - and as a result the relations have gotten cooler."

For some observers, friendship is a two-way street, and they say that America's current lack of friends in the world should be considered in the context of the Bush administration's disregard for other viewpoints, especially over the Iraq war.

"Blair took a giant risk in supporting President Bush on war in Iraq because first, he held some of the same views, but also because he thought that by sticking by the US there would be some kind of quid pro quo," says Bacevich of Boston University. He cites US stalling on a pet Blair issue - global warming - differences on debt relief, and timid action on the Middle East peace process. "I can't see that he's gotten that quid pro quo," he says.

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