Georgetown professors Angela Stent, Harley Balzer and Bruce Parrott led a press briefing Nov. 9 to discuss the importance and possible outcome of this week’s meeting between President George Bush and Russian President Vladimir Putin with members of the media.

The briefing preceded a daylong academic symposium entitled “After September 11: A New Agenda for Politics and Security in Eurasia?”

Two months after the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, Russian President Vladimir Putin flew to Texas Monday to meet with U.S. President George W. Bush at his ranch in Crawford.

While the summit will undoubtedly focus on anti-terrorism strategies, certain issues predating the Sept. 11 attacks will also figure in the discussions, the professors said.

“Putin wants to cooperate with the West, to try to get Russia into international organizations,” Balzer, an associate professor of Russian and East European Studies said. In helping the U.S. fight terrorism, “[Putin is] sticking his neck out, and he expects something in return,” Balzer said. “Russia wants to join [international organizations such as the World Trade Organization] now and work out the details later. In the long run, I’m not sure that’s a good thing.”

“Putin’s overriding objective in the short run is to establish Russian equality with the U.S.,” Parrott, an associate professor in the Russian and East European Studies department said. He said he also agreed that international organizations such as the WTO and the European Union should be cautious about accepting Russia into the fold. “He’s taking economic policy in the right direction, but regarding his policies towards politics, it’s hard to say the same thing.”

During his two years as president of Russia, Vladimir Putin has launched an aggressive campaign to strengthen the power of the central government, such as limiting the authority of regional governors and restricting freedom of the press. Such domestic issues would continue to concern the U.S., but they most likely will not play a large role in the discussions, Stent, director of the Center for Eurasian, Russian and East European Studies said. “Since Sept. 11, in practice, very little has been done about that,” she said. Balzer also predicted that human rights issues would not play a part in the talks. “Chechnya is not bin Laden,” he said, referring to Russia’s controversial military campaign in a breakaway republic.

The professors agreed that a potential problem lies in the possibility that the current war in Afghanistan will expand into Iraq, a country Putin will also visit in the near future. “If we take the [military] campaign further, we could have very serious problems with Russia,” Stent said. “Russia may disagree with us over how soon the U.S. should withdraw . and beyond that, we might not agree about which groups are actually terrorist groups. It would be an extremely hard sell to get them to go along with us.”

Nevertheless, America will be looking for closer cooperation with Russia in fighting terrorism, Parrott said. “Russia is worried that if it is more visible in the war against terrorism, that might increase terrorism at home,” he said. “Putin can do it, though, in an un-public way, to minimize the symbolic impact.”

In addition, Russia has softened its position against the amendment of the 1972 Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty to allow the United States to develop a missile defense shield, according to other news sources. “My sense is that Putin is playing for time with this,” Parrott said. “He doesn’t want it, but he doesn’t want a rupture with the U.S. over this.”

In return for any cooperation, however, Russia will expect the United States to make some reciprocal overtures. “Putin’s got to prove to his government that he got something for going out on a limb,” Stent said. America may look in particular at forgiving Soviet debt, a priority of Putin’s that is nevertheless unpopular with countries such as Germany, which made several loans to the former USSR. Stent foresaw some “restructuring” of the debt and perhaps “partial forgiveness.”

The tone of the talks, the professors noted, would undoubtedly be more cordial than many recent ones in which both sides appeared fairly intractable. “The focus will be on what more can NATO and Russia do together,” Stent said. “This will be a feel-good summit. It will be played on both sides as a success.”