1) Matlock, US ambassador in Moscow when the Wall fell.
2) Ray McGovern, ex CIA.
3) Lavrov, Foreign Affairs, Russia, 2014.
See also: http://xevolutie.blogspot.nl/2014/11/399-gorbachov-on-nato-going-east-what.html
Jack F. Matlock Jr., ambassador to the U.S.S.R. from 1987 to 1991, is the author of “Reagan and Gorbachev: How the Cold War Ended.”
One afternoon in September 1987, Secretary of State George Shultz settled in a chair across the table from Soviet Foreign Minister Eduard Shevardnadze in a New York conference room. Both were in the city for the United Nations General Assembly.
As he habitually did at the start of such meetings , Shultz handed Shevardnadze a list of reported human rights abuses in the Soviet Union. Shevardnadze’s predecessor, Andrei Gromyko, had always received such lists grudgingly and would lecture us for interfering in Soviet internal affairs.
This time, though, Shevardnadze looked Shultz in the eye and said through his interpreter: “George, I will check this out, and if your information is correct, I will do what I can to correct the problem. But I want you to know one thing: I am not doing this because you ask me to; I am doing it because it is what my country needs to do.”
Shultz replied: “Eduard, that’s the only reason either of us should do something. Let me assure you that I will never ask you to do something that I believe is not in your country’s interest.”
They stood and shook hands. As I watched the scene, with as much emotion as amazement, it dawned on me that the Cold War was over. The job of American ambassador in Moscow was going to be a lot easier for me than it had been for my predecessors.
I thought back to that moment as talks between Secretary of State John Kerry and Russia’s top diplomat this past week failed to resolve the crisis in Ukraine. It’s striking that the language being used publicly now is so much more strident than our language, public or private, was then. “It can get ugly fast if the wrong choices are made,” Kerry declared Wednesday, threatening sanctions.
I don’t believe that we are witnessing a renewal of the Cold War. The tensions between Russia and the West are based more on misunderstandings, misrepresentations and posturing for domestic audiences than on any real clash of ideologies or national interests. And the issues are far fewer and much less dangerous than those we dealt with during the Cold War.
But a failure to appreciate how the Cold War ended has had a profound impact on Russian and Western attitudes — and helps explain what we are seeing now.
The common assumption that the West forced the collapse of the Soviet Union and thus won the Cold War is wrong . The fact is that the Cold War ended by negotiation to the advantage of both sides.
At the December 1989 Malta summit, Mikhail Gorbachev and President George H.W. Bush confirmed that the ideological basis for the war was gone, stating that the two nations no longer regarded each other as enemies . Over the next two years, we worked more closely with the Soviets than with even some of our allies. Together, we halted the arms race, banned chemical weapons and agreed to drastically reduce nuclear weapons. I also witnessed the raising of the Iron Curtain, the liberation of Eastern Europe and the voluntary abandonment of communist ideology by the Soviet leader. Without an arms race ruining the Soviet economy and perpetuating totalitarianism, Gorbachev was freed to focus on internal reforms.
Because the collapse of the Soviet Union happened so soon afterward, people often confuse it with the end of the Cold War. But they were separate events, and the former was not an inevitable outcome of the latter.
Moreover, the breakup of the U.S.S.R. into 15 separate countries was not something the United States caused or wanted. We hoped that Gorbachev would forge a voluntary union of Soviet republics, minus the three Baltic countries. Bush made this clear in August 1991 when he urged the non-Russian Soviet republics to adopt the union treaty Gorbachev had proposed and warned against “suicidal nationalism.” Russians who regret the collapse of the Soviet Union should remember that it was the elected leader of Russia, Boris Yeltsin, who conspired with his Ukrainian and Belarusian counterparts to replace the U.S.S.R. with a loose and powerless “commonwealth.”
Even after the U.S.S.R. ceased to exist, Gorbachev maintained that “the end of the Cold War is our common victory.” Yet the United States insisted on treating Russia as the loser.
“By the grace of God, America won the Cold War,” Bush said during his 1992 State of the Union address. That rhetoric would not have been particularly damaging on its own. But it was reinforced by actions taken under the next three presidents.
President Bill Clinton supported NATO’s bombing of Serbia without U.N. Security Council approval and the expansion of NATO to include former Warsaw Pact countries. Those moves seemed to violate the understanding that the United States would not take advantage of the Soviet retreat from Eastern Europe. The effect on Russians’ trust in the United States was devastating. In 1991, polls indicated that about 80 percent of Russian citizens had a favorable view of the United States; in 1999, nearly the same percentage had an unfavorable view.
Vladimir Putin was elected in 2000 and initially followed a pro-Western orientation. When terrorists attacked the United States on Sept. 11, 2001, he was the first foreign leader to call and offer support. He cooperated with the United States when it invaded Afghanistan, and he voluntarily removed Russian bases from Cuba and Cam Ranh Bay in Vietnam.
What did he get in return? Some meaningless praise from President George W. Bush, who then delivered the diplomatic equivalent of swift kicks to the groin: further expansion of NATO in the Baltics and the Balkans, and plans for American bases there; withdrawal from the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty; invasion of Iraq without U.N. Security Council approval; overt participation in the “color revolutions” in Ukraine, Georgia and Kyrgyzstan; and then, probing some of the firmest red lines any Russian leader would draw, talk of taking Georgia and Ukraine into NATO. Americans, heritors of the Monroe Doctrine, should have understood that Russia would be hypersensitive to foreign-dominated military alliances approaching or touching its borders.
President Obama famously attempted a “reset” of relations with Russia, with some success: The New START treaty was an important achievement, and there was increased quiet cooperation on a number of regional issues. But then Congress’s penchant for minding other people’s business when it cannot cope with its own began to take its toll.The Magnitsky Act , which singled out Russia for human rights violations as if there were none of comparable gravity elsewhere, infuriated Russia’s rulers and confirmed with the broader public the image of the United States as an implacable enemy.
The sad fact is that the cycle of dismissive actions by the United States met by overreactions by Russia has so poisoned the relationship that the sort of quiet diplomacy used to end the Cold War was impossible when the crisis in Ukraine burst upon the world’s consciousness. It’s why 43 percent of Russians are ready to believe that Western actions are behind the crisis and that Russia is under siege.
Putin’s military occupation of Crimea has exacerbated the situation. If it leads to the incorporation of Crimea in the Russian Federation , it may well result in a period of mutual recrimination and economic sanctions reminiscent of the Cold War. In that scenario, there would be no winners, only losers: most of all Ukraine itself, which may not survive in its present form, and Russia, which would become more isolated. Russia may also see a rise in terrorist acts from anti-Russian extremists on its periphery and more resistance from neighboring governments to membership in the economic union it is promoting.
Meanwhile, the United States and Europe would lose to the extent that a resentful Russia would make it even more difficult to address global and regional issues such as the Iranian nuclear program, North Korea and the Syrian civil war, to name a few. Russian policy in these areas has not always been all the United States desired, but it has been more helpful than many Americans realize. And encouraging a more obstructive Russia is not in anyone’s interest.
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2) How NATO Jabs Russia on
Ukraine
The U.S. mainstream media portrays the Ukraine crisis as a case of Russian “imperialism,” but the reality is that Moscow has been reacting to aggressive moves by Washington to expand NATO to Russia’s border in violation of a post-Cold War pledge, writes ex-CIA analyst Ray McGovern.
By Ray McGovern
The U.S. mainstream media portrays the Ukraine crisis as a case of Russian “imperialism,” but the reality is that Moscow has been reacting to aggressive moves by Washington to expand NATO to Russia’s border in violation of a post-Cold War pledge, writes ex-CIA analyst Ray McGovern.
By Ray McGovern
May 15 2014 "ICH" - "Consortium News"
- Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov used Wednesday’s interview with
Bloomberg News to address the overriding issue regarding the future of Ukraine,
at least from Moscow’s perspective. Speaking in fluent English, he said Russia
would be “categorically against” Ukraine joining NATO.
( You can see the interview below. JV.)
Lavrov said he welcomed the interviewer’s question
regarding whether Ukraine can be part of NATO, recognizing it as a chance to
shoehorn background information into the interview. It was an opportunity
to explain Moscow’s position to a wide English-speaking international audience
– first and foremost Americans. His comments seemed partly aimed at those
so malnourished on “mainstream media” that they might be learning the history
of NATO enlargement for the first time. Lavrov said:
“In my view, it all started … back in the 1990s, when
in spite of all the pronouncements about how the Cold War was over and that
there should be no winners – yet, NATO looked upon itself as a winner.”
Lavrov said U.S. and NATO reneged on a series of
commitments: not to enlarge the Alliance; then (after NATO was expanded
contrary to that commitment), not to deploy substantial forces on the
territories of new NATO members; and then not to move NATO infrastructure to
the Russian border.
“All these commitments have been, to one degree or
another, violated,” said Lavrov, adding that “attempts to draw Ukraine into
NATO would have a negative impact on the entire system of European security.”
Lavrov said Russia’s national security interests and 25 years of recent history
make this a key problem, not only for Ukraine and NATO, but also “an issue of
Russia.”
Is Lavrov distorting the history? The answer is
important – the more so inasmuch as the information needed to form cogent
judgments is rarely found in the U.S. “mainstream media.” What happened in the
months immediately before and after the fall of the Berlin Wall on
Nov. 9/10, 1989, is key to understanding Russia’s attitude now.
No Dancing
To his credit, President George H. W. Bush sent a
reassuring message to the Soviets, saying, “I will not dance on the Berlin
wall.” And just three weeks after it fell, Bush flew to Malta for a
two-day summit with Gorbachev.
At a joint press conference on Dec. 3, 1989, Gorbachev
said, “We are at the beginning of a long road to a lasting, peaceful
era. The threat of force, mistrust, psychological and ideological struggle
should all be things of the past.”
In the same vein, Bush spoke of a new future just begun
“right here in Malta” – one of lasting peace and enduring East-West
cooperation. This came just six months after Bush had publicly called in a
major speech in Mainz, West Germany, for “a Europe whole and free.” At the
time it did not seem one had to be Pollyanna to hope that flesh could be pinned
to the bones of that rhetoric.
According to Jack Matlock, then-U.S. ambassador to the
U.S.S.R. who took part in the Malta summit, the most basic agreement involved
(1) Gorbachev’s pledge not to use force in Eastern Europe where the Russians
had 24 divisions (some 350,000 troops) in East Germany alone, and (2) Bush’s
promise not to “take advantage” of a Soviet withdrawal from Eastern Europe.
In early February 1990, Bush sent Secretary of State
James Baker to work out the all-important details directly with Gorbachev and
Foreign Minister Eduard Shevardnadze. Ambassador Matlock again was there and
took careful notes on the negotiations, which focused on German reunification.
From memory, Matlock told me that Baker tried to
convince Gorbachev that it was in Moscow’s interest to let a united Germany
remain in NATO. Matlock recalled that Baker began his argument saying
something like, “Assuming there is no expansion of NATO jurisdiction to
the East, not one inch, what would you prefer, a Germany embedded in
NATO, or one that can go independently in any direction it chooses.” [emphasis
added]
The implication was that Germany might just opt to
acquire nuclear weapons, were it not anchored in NATO. Gorbachev answered
that he took Baker’s argument seriously, and wasted little time in agreeing to
the deal.
Ambassador Matlock, one of the most widely respected
experts on Russia, told me “the language used was absolute, and the entire
negotiation was in the framework of a general agreement that there would be no
use of force by the Soviets and no ‘taking advantage’ by the U.S.”
He added, “I don’t see how anybody could view the
subsequent expansion of NATO as anything but ‘taking advantage,’ particularly
since, by then, the U.S.S.R. was no more and Russia was hardly a credible
threat.”
In his book Superpower Illusions, Matlock
wrote that NATO enlargement was a function
of U.S. domestic politics not of foreign policy strategic thinking. It seems he got that right, too.
of U.S. domestic politics not of foreign policy strategic thinking. It seems he got that right, too.
Tough Guy Clinton
From the campaign trail on Oct. 22, 1996, two weeks
before he defeated Bob Dole for a second term as president, Bill Clinton used
NATO enlargement to advertise his assertiveness in foreign policy and America’s
status as the “world’s indispensable nation.” Clinton bragged about
proposing NATO enlargement at his first NATO summit in 1994, saying it “should
enlarge steadily, deliberately, openly.” He never explained why.
President Clinton, thus, reneged on the pledges made
by Baker to Gorbachev and Shevardnadze. Clinton lamely called upon Russia
to view NATO’s enlargement as an arrangement that will “advance the security of
everyone.”
Clinton’s tough-guy-ism toward Russia was, in part, a
response to even more aggressive NATO plans from Clinton’s Republican opponent
Bob Dole, who had been calling for incorporating Poland, the Czech Republic and
Hungary as full members of NATO and had accused Clinton of “dragging his feet”
on this. Clinton was not about to be out-toughed.
Those three countries joined NATO in 1999, starting a
trend. By April 2009, nine more countries became members, bringing the
post-Cold War additions to 12 – equal to the number of the original 12 NATO
states.
Clinton made what quintessential Russian specialist
Ambassador George Kennan called a “fateful error.” Writing in the New York
Times on Feb. 5, 1997, Kennan asserted: “Expanding NATO would be the most
fateful error of American policy in the entire post-cold-war era.”
“Such a decision may be expected to inflame the
nationalistic, anti-Western and militaristic tendencies in Russian opinion; to
have an adverse effect on the development of Russian democracy; to restore the
atmosphere of the cold war to East-West relations, and to impel Russian foreign
policy in directions decidedly not to our liking.”
If you are the “sole indispensable” country in the
world, though, you are sorely tempted not to heed the worrywarts.
Seeds of a Crisis
On Wednesday, Lavrov said the seeds of the current
Ukraine crisis were sown in April 2008 during the NATO summit in Bucharest when
NATO leaders stated in a declaration that “Georgia and Ukraine will be in
NATO.”
Were Lavrov not the consummate diplomat, he might have
also told his interviewer that, two months before the Bucharest summit, he had
warned U.S. Ambassador to Russia William J. Burns to anticipate a strong
Russian reaction to including Ukraine and Georgia in NATO. But diplomats
don’t generally permit themselves an “I told you so.”
Thanks to Pvt. Chelsea (formerly Bradley) Manning and
WikiLeaks, we have the text of a State Department cable dated Feb. 1, 2008,
from the U.S. Embassy in Moscow bearing the unusual title: “NYET MEANS
NYET: RUSSIA’S NATO ENLARGEMENT REDLINES.”
The IMMEDIATE precedence that the cable bears shows
that Ambassador Burns (now Deputy Secretary of State) was addressing a priority
issue under active consideration in Washington. Though it was six years
ago, Burns interlocutor was the same Russian Foreign Minister Sergei
Lavrov. Here is Burns’s introductory summary of his discussions with
Lavrov:
“Summary. Following a muted first reaction to
Ukraine’s intent to seek a NATO membership action plan at the [upcoming]
Bucharest summit, Foreign Minister Lavrov and other senior officials have
reiterated strong opposition, stressing that Russia would view further eastward
expansion as a potential military threat. NATO enlargement, particularly
to Ukraine, remains ‘an emotional and neuralgic’ issue for Russia, but
strategic policy considerations also underlie strong opposition to NATO membership
for Ukraine and Georgia.
“In Ukraine, these include fears that the issue could
potentially split the country in two, leading to violence or even, some claim,
civil war, which would force Russia to decide whether to intervene.”
Ambassador Burns continued: “Russia has made it clear
that it would have to ‘seriously review’ its entire relationship with Ukraine
and Georgia in the event of NATO inviting them to join. This could include
major impacts on energy, economic, and political-military engagement, with
possible repercussions throughout the region and into Central and Western
Europe.”
Burns’s closing comment: “Russia’s opposition to
NATO membership for Ukraine and Georgia is both emotional and based on
perceived strategic concerns about the impact on Russia’s interest in the
region. … While Russian opposition to the first round of NATO enlargement in
the mid-1990s was strong, Russia now feels itself able to respond more
forcefully to what it perceives as actions contrary to its national interests.”
We don’t know whether Secretary of State Condoleezza
Rice read Burns’s prescient remarks, but Lavrov’s warning clearly fell on deaf
ears. On April 3, 2008, the NATO summit in Bucharest issued a formal
declaration that “NATO welcomes Ukraine’s and Georgia’s Euro-Atlantic
aspirations for membership in NATO. We agreed today that these countries
will become members of NATO.”
Now, with events quickly spinning out of control in
Ukraine, some policymakers need to tell President Obama that there can be even
bigger trouble ahead, if Russia’s national security interests are not taken
into account.
Ray McGovern works with Tell the Word, a publishing
arm of the ecumenical Church of the Saviour in inner-city
Washington. During his 27-year career as a CIA analyst, he was chief of
the Soviet Foreign Policy Branch and was posted briefly to the Soviet
Union. He is co-founder of Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity
(VIPS).
© 2014 Consortium News
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3)
Lavrov: very good and clear interview. ( MC Govern refers to this interview)
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