President George
Bush and his Russian counterpart Vladimir Putin have made
common cause in the war against terror.
Mr Bush
has strongly condemned those responsible for the hostage-taking
in southern Russia, telling Mr Putin that America stands
with the Russian people.
Both leaders, says a White
House spokesman, are working together "to defeat
global terrorism".
This solidarity stems,
in part, from a quite natural human response to the drama
that is unfolding at the school. Many children are among
the hostages, and fearful and anguished parents are waiting
beyond the security perimeter for news.
But inevitably, there is
a good deal of politics as well. In the immediate aftermath
of the attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon
in 2001, President Putin embarked on a significant tilt
in Russian foreign policy.
He determined to stand
alongside the Americans in the face of the terrorist threat.
Indeed, he did not just provide rhetorical support. Russia
played a practical and diplomatic role in helping to facilitate
the US assault on Afghanistan.
'Divided'
Since then, the common
rhetoric has served both leaders well. For Mr Bush, it
emphasises his contention that America really is facing
a global terrorist phenomenon. And for Mr Putin, it enables
him to deflect some of the foreign criticism of Russia's
handling of the Chechen crisis.
There is no doubt that
foreign Islamic fighters have played a role in the Chechen
conflict. The tactic of using suicide bombers appears
to have been imported from outside.
But most experts tend to
see this as a problem of Chechen nationalism, rather than
a close relation of America's fight against al-Qaeda.
Opinion in Washington -
even within the Bush Administration - is increasingly
divided. Mr Bush himself may be sincere in his view that
Russia and the US face essentially the same challenge.
But many US experts believe
that Mr Putin's harsh measures in Chechnya have actually
compounded the problem and that Russia's security forces
are now struggling to cope with the consequences.
They argue that Moscow
has invoked the same language and the same enemies in
order to apply even tougher policies on the ground in
Chechnya and that this policy has largely failed. For
all the sympathy in the face of specific incidents, Russia's
methods inevitably spark controversy in the West.
Nonetheless, the recent
wave of attacks in Russia appears to have created a widespread
sense of insecurity - a public concern about the terrorist
threat very similar to the feeling in the United States
after 9/11.
And, just as the Americans
found out in the aftermath of the war in Afghanistan and
the invasion of Iraq, military measures are only part
of the solution.
Russia may remain Mr Bush's
global partner in the war against terror - at least at
the rhetorical level - but in reality the US-Russia relationship
has largely stagnated in the wake of the Afghan war.
If Mr Bush's chief foreign
policy goals are the fight against terrorism, countering
the spread of weapons of mass destruction and the promotion
of democracy, then experts say that on at least two of
these counts, Russia could do a good deal more.
