Is a sound U.S. policy on Russia possible? The full text of the lecture at George Kennan Institute for Russian Studies on November 13, 2012

Four U.S. administrations have been in power since the collapse of communism and the USSR. Not a single one, however, has developed a truly sound Russia policy. I will try to largely substantiate this thesis in my talk.

So let us consider what went wrong in the past and what changes would be needed for the United States to edge toward a truly productive relationship with Russia.  I think we all would be better off if this happened because who would argue that in these difficult and dangerous times it is better to have Russia on our side of the barricades.

Let us start with grading the Russia policy of America's last four US presidents so we know "Кто Виноват” or ” Who to Blame”.  Later on we will discuss "Что Делать” or "What to Do.”

 

George Bush started his term when Gorbachev's Perestroika was entering its crucial and final phase. Gorby was still making noises about his dedication to Leninist principles, but the war in Afghanistan was nearing its end, Soviet troops preparing for withdrawal; the media was getting more and more unfettered; first private enterprises, known at that time as cooperatives, started on their way to a free market economy, and these are just a few of the earth-shattering developments there that were to lead to the collapse of the Soviet Union.

In October 1988 I received, right out of the blue, an invitation from the USSR Academy of Sciences to visit Moscow to discuss an unheard-of venture, publication of Quantum a joint US - Soviet journal on science and mathematics. The proposal was quite unexpected, as only a few months before the Izvestia newspaper denounced me and a few other exiled dissidents as Western agents of the anti-Soviet forces trying to undermine Gorbachev's Perestroika by portraying it as a sinister KGB ruse to fool the naive West.

I must admit I was in two minds about that invitation. On the one hand, I really wanted to go back to Moscow for quite understandable nostalgic reasons. On the other, it was all pretty scary. As some people in this room probably know, there had been quite a spat with Soviet authorities dealing with my family reunification. There might be a chance that it was a ploy to lure me back into Russia and straight into a KGB trap. Still, the temptation was very strong. So Tatiana and I went but, just in case, we asked Tatiana's father, who happened to be a high-ranking Soviet general, to meet us at Sheremetievo airport in his dress uniform with all the decorations he had to prevent a possible kidnapping.

Well, our fears proved to be groundless. It turned out that the subject of publication of a journal was just a pretext. We did have these negotiations and the journal was indeed launched with Soviet content translated into English, a National Science Foundation grant covering the printing costs. However, Academician Yuri Ossipyan, the journal's editor-in-chief, was also Gorbachev's trusted confidant, soon to become his science advisor.  Dr. Ossipyan introduced me to Gorbachev's right-hand man Alexander Yakovlev, and we had a nearly secret meeting at the Oktyabrskaya, now the President Hotel.

Yakovlev did not waste a minute. He went straight to the point right away and asked me what in my opinion could be done to make Americans believe that Perestroika was not a Potemkin show but a very serious process aiming to transform the USSR into a free and democratic society.

Well, I decided to give it to him straight from the shoulder, too. I said frankly that I did not buy their story either. I told Yakovlev and Ossipyan that the reputation of the Communist Party was so bad that no one in their right mind would believe it would voluntarily give up its absolute power and lead Soviet society from dictatorship to freedom.

Still, I told them that I was willing to try, should they allow me to bring over to Moscow a group of American experts, including those with a very strong anti-Soviet bias, like exiled dissidents. These would participate in free and open exchanges with Soviet politicians, intellectuals, the media, students, and so on, without any limitations on the choice of subjects to be discussed.

To my great surprise they agreed to all these stipulations. So in 1989 and 1990 I brought over to Russia many large delegations. These included a dozen or more members of Congress (like Senators Phil Graham and Bob Kasten, Congressmen  Jon Kyl and Henry Hyde); prominent Washington insiders like Paul Weyrich and his team from the Free Congress Foundation;  leading exiled Soviet dissidents Vladimir Bukovsky, Vassily Aksyonov, Alexander Zinovyev, Ernst Neizvestny; former head of the Voice of America and Radio Liberty Frank Shakespeare; businessmen, university presidents, and many, many others, almost a thousand Americans all told.

We had indeed absolutely free access to anyone we wanted; we gave uncensored interviews to the media, met with the Soviet intellectuals and students of Moscow State University, and so on and so forth, the list is endless.  To test the limits of this newfound freedom, I asked Norman Podhorets, editor-in-chief of the "neoconish" Commentary magazine, to denounce Lenin as often as possible and call him one of the most horrible criminals of the 20th century. He did just that with no repercussions, although officially Lenin's name was still untouchable.

We also met with Yeltsin and his team of close associates. They openly told us that the USSR was on the brink of collapse and that they were looking forward to Russia becoming an integral part of the West in every way, including NATO membership.

One of the high points in these proceedings came in April 1989 when during our next meeting at Oktyabrskaya hotel Alexander Yakovlev declared that any East European country that wanted to leave the Soviet bloc was free to do just that.

I cannot speak for all the other Americans then involved, but I personally was convinced that Communism would very soon go straight to the dustbin of history, just as Ronald Reagan had predicted. It was simply impossible to have all those freedoms in a communist society.  No way. At our meetings Yeltsin and his team went even further, stating clearly that the USSR would soon follow the same route as communism did.

One of us, Paul Weyrich, had direct access to President Bush and after one of our joint trips to Moscow sometime in 1990 he went to the White House to hand the president our report on the imminent collapse of the USSR.  Paul urged the president to get ready and develop a plan for Russia's integration with the West, a plan that would be similar to the Marshall plan which had worked so well for Germany and Japan in the wake of World War II.

The way Paul described this meeting, Bush listened attentively until Condoleezza Rice had walked into the room and practically dismissed this report. She said that Yeltsin's people had duped us all. According to the information she had, supposedly more reliable than our own, we were all wrong.

What happened afterwards is only too well known.

On August 1, 1991 Bush went to Ukraine and made his famous "Chicken Kiev” speech, saying that "we will maintain the strongest possible relationship with the Soviet Government of President Gorbachev.”  Less than five months later Soviet Union was no more and as we all know the United States was not prepared for that and was not sure what to do.

To sum up: Bush made a terrible mistake and shattered our dreams by losing a historic, one-in-a-century chance to bring Russia into the Western fold, making an ally of it. On the positive side, Bush pledged to Gorbachev not to expand NATO eastward and after the collapse of the USSR he declared his vision of the new security arc from Vancouver to Vladivostok.

 

That administration was marked by hundreds of American advisers who rushed to Moscow to "help” the Yeltsin team to perform a miracle of transforming Russia’s inherited from USSR planned economy to market.  The results of their advices were so devastating in its effect, that they lead Russia to an economic collapse and the financial default of 1998. 

If you think that I am too harsh on Clinton read the special report by Members of US Congress commissioned by the Speaker of the House Dennis Hastert and titled "RUSSIA'S ROAD TO CORRUPTION, or How the Clinton Administration Exported Government Instead of Free Enterprise and Failed the Russian People." There is not too much one can add to this report.

In the not so distant past one could also find it on one of the official Congressional sites but somehow it mysteriously disappeared, unless my search engines are not doing a good job.  

Another crucial feature of Clinton's Russia policy was breaking Bush's pledge not to expand NATO. He started a process which none other than George Kennan denounced as a tragic mistake and the start of a new Cold War.

I wish to apologize for a long quote from The New York Times but, as we are assembled in the Institute which bears Kennan’s name, I might be forgiven for showing my great respect for this extraordinary man, also known as Mr. X.

''I think it is the beginning of a new cold war,'' said Mr. Kennan from his Princeton home. ''I think the Russians will gradually react quite adversely and it will affect their policies. I think it is a tragic mistake. There was no reason for this whatsoever. No one was threatening anybody else. This expansion would make the Founding Fathers of this country turn over in their graves. We have signed up to protect a whole series of countries, even though we have neither the resources nor the intention to do so in any serious way. [NATO expansion] was simply a light-hearted action by a Senate that has no real interest in foreign affairs.''

To start with, after 9/11 George W. Bush got everything he had asked from Putin in terms of aiding US and NATO invasion in Afghanistan. Well, he repaid Putin quite ungratefully by unilaterally abrogating the ABM treaty; promoting so-called color revolutions in post-Soviet space; pushing for further NATO expansion, including Ukraine and Georgia; falsely accusing Russia of starting war with Georgia when he definitely knew who the aggressor was.

Bush’s democracy promotion crusade became a laughable stock, excluding those, of course, who received generous grants to do that.  "We want to promote democracy since democratic nations do not go to war”, - said Bush many times before and after invading Iraq.  

 

Obama’s Reset was certainly an improvement from the era of his predecessors and some positive results have been achieved but the total picture is mixed.

The nuclear weapons agreement START 3 was signed despite strong objections from Republicans in Congress.

The plans for anti-missile defense installations (AMD) in Poland and the Czech Republic were cancelled but these or more advanced AMD elements will be moved to new locations which are still close to the Russian borders.

US helped Russia to join WTO but the obsolete Jackson-Vanik Amendment (JVA) is still on the books. Some of you probably know that I and my friend, former Reagan administration official Anthony Salvia, filed a law suit against Obama claiming that he has the authority to graduate Russia from JVA without Congressional resolution. Obama lawyers did not dispute that but asked the judge to dismiss the case anyway on the basis of no existence of such precedents in the past. We did not have enough money to appeal but Tony and I feel that we won this suit at least on the moral ground and the great irony is that JVA now hurts not Russia but US business interests.

Washington official line on NATO membership for Ukraine and Georgia is still the same.

No progress on joint missile defense negotiations despite NATO’s pledge to move in this direction at their session in Lisbon.

The first and most important issue on the table re Obama's policy towards Russia is obviously the Missile Defense.  I think he should tell his advisors to refresh their memory about the Lisbon NATO session where the decision was made to work with Russia on developing a joint ABM system. Although speeches on the subject recurrently continue to be made by the officials on both sides, no actual progress has been made in this area - it's all just talk.

Obama should also honor his most famous whispers in Medvedev's ear about being more flexible on ABM after the elections. This pledge was not a betrayal of U.S. security interests, as some keep repeating endlessly. On the contrary, it is a step in the right direction.  If Obama meant to seriously follow up on Lisbon agreements, this kind of joint ABM effort would be a win-win situation for everyone. With the exception of those, of course, who want the future ABM to be aimed specifically at Russia and China, and who still think in terms of securing America's supreme position worldwide without any regard for other countries' legitimate concerns.

This is not to say that Russia's policy in this sphere is ideal. It has some problems, too. During negotiations the Russian side often behaves as stubbornly as the American one, or worse. However, one way or another, we need some real progress in this area. If this is achieved, all other remaining issues could be much easier to settle, especially if we follow Thomas Jefferson advice and here is the direct quote: "We wish not to meddle with the internal affairs of any country...”

It is interesting that I found a similar quote in George Bush, Sr.  "Chicken Kiev” speech. "Our former President [Theodore Roosevelt] said [that] we will work for the good of both of us, which means that we will not meddle in your internal affairs”, - declared Bush in Kiev on August 1, 1991. After discovering this quote I think I should upgrade George Bush, Sr. from C- to C.