President George W. Bush and Russian President Vladimir Putin speak during a visit to Crawford High School in Crawford, Texas, on November 15, 2001. The appearance covered a summit of the newly elected presidents. election in Texas.
Image Ronald Martinez / Getty
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President George W. Bush and Russian President Vladimir Putin speak during a visit to Crawford High School in Crawford, Texas, on November 15, 2001. The appearance covered a summit of the newly elected presidents. election in Texas.
Image Ronald Martinez / Getty
Russia’s Brutal invasion of Ukraine makes it difficult to remember – or even imagine – that in the early years of his presidency, two decades ago, Vladimir Putin launched a charm offensive with the West. He earns respect from other world leaders, especially in Europe and the US, and offers hope of a new opening for Russians at home.
A notable moment in the campaign to seduce Putin took place in November 2001 in rural Crawford, Texas, a small town in the center of the state with a population at the time of 705. Count President George W. Bush among them. He owns a farm just outside of town – he named the property Prairie Chapel – and he and first lady Laura Bush invited the Russian leader and his wife Lyudmila to spend the night.
The two leaders had the job – remember, this was just two months after the 9/11 terrorist attacks – with a discussion of global threats and how the United States and Russia can work together against back terrorism.
But there is also time to socialize, eat, and entertain. The next morning, the two presidents visited nearby Crawford High School.
“We had a great dinner last night,” Bush told the cheering group of students gathered in the school gymnasium, with a banner reading “Welcome to the President & President.” Wearing a brown fabric work jacket, Bush appeared to be a very proud host, adding, “We had a little Texas barbecue, a pie, a little Texas music. And I thought. that the president really enjoyed himself.” Putin, wearing a dark blazer over an open-collared black shirt, stood to Bush’s right with a wide smile.
A woman holds up a T-shirt that says “The Russians are coming” at The Brown Bag gift shop in anticipation of Putin’s visit to Crawford, Texas.
Image Ronald Martinez / Getty
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Image Ronald Martinez / Getty
Bush talked about how Putin was the first world leader to call him on September 11, and Bush described his Russian counterpart as a strong partner in the war on terror.
Speaking through an interpreter, Putin used his remarks to highlight the two leaders’ friendship and cooperation. He also cited the warm greetings from the students that morning, and the role of citizens in the partnership between these countries.
“Being here, I can feel the will of these people, the will to cooperate with the Russian Federation, the will to cooperate with Russia,” Putin said, and then continued: “And I can assure you that the Russian people fully share this commitment, and are also committed to full cooperation with the American people.”
Bush and Putin also asked questions, and one solved the problem of Afghanistan. The US-led war there only started last month. A student wanted to know how the impending fall of the Taliban government would affect women’s rights. Bush encouraged Putin to answer that question, saying that like himself, the Russian president had a “deep desire” to liberate Afghan women. Putin replied that disrespect for women and human rights in Afghanistan had “taken a form of extremism.”
Putin also had a warning to the Taliban then still in power, saying bluntly: “We should not allow any atrocities or violations of human rights.”
It is a far cry from today, at a time when headlines around the world are about Russian atrocities in Ukraine.
Bush and Putin at Crawford High School.
Paul Morse / Bush White House
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Paul Morse / Bush White House
Another student who spoke at the meeting that day was Amanda Lemons, a senior.
She passed her question to Bush: “Have you decided whether you are going to Russia or not?” Bush then made some news with his reply, saying, “Well – the president invited me and I accepted.”
Today Amanda Lemons is Amanda Buckner, and she lives about an hour outside of Crawford. She said she always looks back on that moment with some pride. But she said that the most memorable part was not asking a question, but afterwards when the two presidents left the stage to greet members of the audience who approached. Buckner shook Putin’s hand and said that when she did everything seemed to slow down.
More than 20 years later, it’s all still very much alive, she said. “I remember the color of his eyes, they were dark, uh, deep blue. I was like, I know he has blue eyes.”
And she clearly remembers the feel of Putin’s hands.
“They were just, they were cold like, you know, they were cold to them or something,” she said. “You know, maybe [it was] cold in the auditorium or, you know, or wherever he was, you know, at first, they were just, they were cold. “
Buckner is 38 today and says that when she turned on the television and watched all the horrible images of death and suffering and devastation from the war in Ukraine, it shocked her. But shocking her was the fact that Putin – one man she shook hands with, one looked her in the eye – was behind it all.
“Did I actually sit there and meet a man who bombed innocent women and children?” she speaks. Her sentences start and stop as she talks about it. “I can’t… like I’m really next to you, and I feel… I really feel so overwhelmed.”
Bush and Putin shake hands with students after speaking at Crawford High School.
Luke Frazza / AFP via Getty Images
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Luke Frazza / AFP via Getty Images
Just south of Crawford, at the University of Texas, Robert Moser is a longtime professor of Russian politics and history. He recalled the so-called Crawford Summit and the questions he and his students asked at the time about Putin, who had been in office at the time for less than a year and a half.
“Is he a KGB guy, or is he a reformer who can allow freedoms to exist and focus on economic reform?” he called back.
Moser says we now know the path Putin has chosen. “There was genuine interest and hope that there could be a better relationship between the United States and Russia, but that didn’t work out.”
In retrospect, the Bush-Putin summit was a high point of US-Russian relations this century, says Mary Elise Sarotte, a Russia expert at Johns Hopkins University’s School of Advanced International Studies. But she also warned that it was an overstatement to describe the collaboration displayed at the time as truly collective.
“Both sides get what they want from the summit, which is not the same as collectivism,” she said. “And I think that we in America, in a sense, have confused that with a deeper collectivity that isn’t actually there.”
For Putin, it is seen as equal. For Bush, it was helping to organize the global effort to confront terrorism and groups like al-Qaida.
But Sarotte points out that moments of friendship between adversaries, the thaw in cold relationships, are often fleeting. And the camaraderie displayed in the school gymnasium in Crawford had completely vanished within a few short years.
Will a moment like the one seen in Crawford ever return?
Sarotte says history can certainly surprise. She said the unexpected swiftness of the fall of the Berlin Wall. But on US-Russian relations, and in the midst of the war in Ukraine, she said that any future moment of cooperation seems very distant.
