The Putin-Berlusconi Duo Worries Americans

The Italian prime minister, Silvio Berlusconi, passing through Sotchi Friday to meet President Dmitry Medvedev, finds himself in Russia at the worst possible time. In the flood of revelations since Sunday from the American diplomatic cables, pried from secrecy by WikiLeaks, the noxious political “couple” he forms with the Russian prime minister, Vladimir Putin, is indeed causing a lot of ink to flow. Aside from depicting a Russia transformed into a “Mafia-state,” the cables from the American diplomats also reveal the rise of a deep anxiety caused by an Italy with a foreign policy perceived to be more and more subservient to Moscow. Berlusconi is described as “Putin’s spokesperson.” This is a source of embarrassment for the Cavalier [Berlusconi], even though he derided these revelations Friday from Sotchi, denying having personally benefited from his links with Moscow. “The revelations from WikiLeaks outline the cynicism of American foreign policy,” thundered Dmitry Mevedev.

“Lavish gifts”

According to a 2009 cable, the American embassy in Rome speaks of an “[Italian] foreign policy designed to deny Russia nothing.” According to the author of the text, Silvio Berlusconi marginalized his foreign affairs minister, Franco Frattini, in order to tie direct links with Vladimir Putin, with whom he is said to be exchanging “lavish gifts.” “The basis of the friendship is hard to determine but many interlocutors have told us that Berlusconi believes that Putin . . . trusts Berlusconi more than any other European leader,” writes American ambassador Ronald Spogli. According to him, the Italian “admires” “the macho and authoritarian” style of his Russian counterpart and sees him as “a tycoon” in his own image, alluding to the private fortune that, according to Washington, the Russian prime minister has accumulated.

The cables also describe a personal relationship based on holidays spent together on Berlusconi’s yacht or at Putin’s villas. Beyond these tasty morsels, the cable betrays the anxiety caused by a Berlusconi who, after irritating Washington by supporting Moscow in 2008 during the war with Georgia, is suspected to put in “overtime” within the EU on Moscow’s behalf, on the NATO question or the anti-missile shield. “His overwhelming desire is to remain in Putin’s good graces, and he has frequently voiced opinions and declarations that have been passed to him directly by Putin,” the cable slams.

The United States is also very worried by the role played by the oil and gas group ENI, linked to the giant Gazprom via the Blue Stream pipeline project, in defining Italian foreign policy. In a cable titled “request for information on the Italian-Russian relations,” Hillary Clinton herself is pondering whether the prism of the interests from Italian companies pushes Rome to act to the detriment of Western policy for energy security.

“A terrible blow”

Since then, anxious to ease tensions, the American Secretary of State has denied her doubts. Washington has no “better friend” than Silvio Berlusconi, she said this week. But no one is fooled. “For people such as myself who have been following these questions for a long time, the publishing of the cables is not interesting in itself, we knew all this already,” the former attorney of imprisoned oil magnate Mikhail Khodorkovski, Bob Amsterdam, who writes an informed blog on energy matters, confided Friday. “What is significant is the gap separating the American public discourse on Russia from what Washington really thinks,” he adds. “The distance is so great that it strikes a terrible blow to the credibility of the policy of renewal of Russian-American relations backed by Obama. It will become very difficult to persuade Congress of its good intentions.”