Speech
before the Los Angeles World Affairs Council on March 23, 2001:
Dimitri Simes
President, The Nixon Center
“A Russia Policy Agenda for the New
Administration”
Diane [Glazer], thank you so much for that wonderful
introduction. I’m very grateful
to Curtis Mack and his colleagues at the World Affairs Council for making this
luncheon possible.
Let me mention something about Nixon’s attitudes towards Russia. It is
absolutely true, Diane, as you said, that Nixon surprised a lot of people by
becoming quite supportive of Yeltsin and the Russian democratic experiment and
speaking very publicly, very vigorously, in favor of American engagement in
Russia. He even criticized past
President Bush--Bush I-- for not doing enough to promote Russia’s transition
to democracy. Having said that,
Nixon was in favor of supporting Russia and Boris Yeltsin with open eyes,
without illusions, and without sacrificing important American principles.
John Taylor remembers this very well: when we were with President Nixon
in Moscow in 1991- this was my first trip with President Nixon; John was with
President Nixon in 1986, meeting with Gorbachev--but in 1991 we went together.
As we decided to go to the Soviet Union there was
immediately a question: “Who
would President Nixon ask to see and where would he go?” And as you can imagine, for political rehabilitation of
President Nixon, for his image in the United States as a senior foreign policy
statesman, it was very important for him to have a meeting with Gorbachev.
If he went to the Soviet Union and did not see Gorbachev, a lot of people
would say, “Well, Nixon was snubbed. He’s
not taken seriously.” At the same
time Nixon had already met with Gorbachev and he really was interested in Boris
Yeltsin, because Americans at that time needed to get a relationship with
Yeltsin. It was more important than to get into a relation with
Gorbachev, who was more or less a known quantity.
In addition to that, there were new Soviet republics that were asking for
independence, who were fighting the Soviet regime, and it was essential to
establish what these republics wanted and whether they had a chance to
accomplish it.
Accordingly, President Nixon wanted to go to
Lithuania and to Georgia, which were at that time the two probably most
assertive Soviet republics, assertive in terms of demanding their independence.
From literally the first moment when we arrived in Moscow we were told
that going to these republics and seeing Yeltsin could be damaging to Nixon’s
chances to see Gorbachev. Actually,
the message was delivered by my former boss at the Institute of World Economy
and International Relations, Yevgeny Primakov, who at that time was
Gorbachev’s National Security Advisor. I
do remember President Nixon’s response. He
talked to John, to me, to a couple of others in our group, and, of course, he
was concerned, because he wanted to see Gorbachev, both for substantive reasons
and for symbolic reasons. But there
was never the slightest hint that President Nixon would modify his program to
please Gorbachev. He went to the
Soviet Union to see things firsthand and to offer his relationship to the
American leadership, to the Congress, to President Bush, and that was what he
was determined to do. The meeting
with Gorbachev was announced literally on the last day of the visit, after
several rather nerve wracking experiences.
But President Nixon stayed on course.
In 1994, we were not so lucky.
This time President Nixon wanted to see members of the Russian
opposition, opposition to Yeltsin, people who were just released from jai.
Again, we were little nervous about how it would affect President
Nixon’s chances to see Yeltsin, and we tried to take necessary precautions and
we kind of thought that perhaps Yeltsin would be a little upset that President
Nixon would have these meetings, but somehow we would do it without too much
damage to his chances to see President Yeltsin.
What we did not anticipate was that while John and I were talking to the
Russian officials and President Nixon himself was talking to senior Russian
officials and Tom Pickering, then Ambassador to Russia, was helping us in this
regard, that President Yeltsin was very busy doing other things more important
to his modus operandi in Moscow. He
was celebrating International Women’s Day and he was drinking a lot with his
security guard and barber named Boris, and they were out of Moscow at Boris
Yeltsin’s dacha and they made it very clear that President Yeltsin was
indisposed to talk to any of his advisors.
He did not want to be bothered.
So all of John’s and my efforts to prepare the
ground went away because these people we’re talking to have no access to
Yeltsin and Yeltsin got the news about President Nixon’s meetings with
opposition leaders from watching Russian TV.
He was under the influence and he went bananas and not only did he cancel
his own meeting with President Nixon very publicly in front of TV cameras, but
he said that nobody else in the Russian government would be allowed to see
President Nixon because, he said, it was important to demonstrate that you
cannot just come to Russia and do what you want.
We managed to smooth it over a little bit, and President Nixon was able
to meet with senior Russian officials, but not Yeltsin himself.
The reason I’m telling you this at such length is
to show you that you can be very pro-Russian, very well-disposed towards Russian
democracy, but still do it in a kind of serious and principled way and that is
what I think was lost during the Clinton administration.
As commendable as necessary, support for Russian democracy has turned
into what I thought was a totally unnatural love affair with Boris Yeltsin and
his increasingly corrupt inner circle. Instead
of supporting Russian democratic experiments we became supportive of certain
individuals, some tycoons, some-corrupt oligarchs, and some members of the
Yeltsin political family who really were very unsavory types.
We went so far that we were telling Boris Yeltsin and his senior advisors
whom we wanted to see in the Russian government, and we were promoting people
there whom we called reformers but who were considered the greatest crooks in
Russia.
We are now learning about some of these people.
The story of Denise Rich seems to be just the tip of the iceberg.
For instance, we have just learned from one Russian paper that a very
senior Clinton administration official involved with Russian affairs, was
promoting a particular business group in Russia, that his wife was getting money
from that group and she was working for an investigative agency in Washington
which was investigating President Clinton’s political enemies. The same agency was getting accounts from corrupt Russian
oligarchs and was paid by them. This
was really a very dangerous and poisonous web, which we are only beginning to
learn about. As you can image, it
did not bring us any gratitude of the Russian people, and it could not advance
American interests in Russia.
We also got into a situation when in order to keep
our “friends” in power in Russia, because allegedly they were radical
reformers, in order to help them we had to overlook many unpleasant things
Russia was doing. We got again a
very perverse situation. Instead of
telling the Russians that reforms were in their own best interests and they had
to decide what kind of reforms they were supposed to conduct, instead we were
telling them what they were supposed to do domestically.
As long as they were willing to play ball with us--or rather as long as
they were willing to pretend that they were following American indispensable
guidance--we were willing to overlook their supply of weapons to Iran and Iraq
and their mischief in many areas. We
were paying them for things which supposedly were in their own interests by
overlooking things which were damaging to American interests.
That was the legacy of Clinton’s Russian policy.
And it’s almost symbolic that at the very end of
that administration they arrested Pavel Borodin. You know whom I’m talking about.
Borodin, who is now officially the Executive Secretary of the Russian
Union. What this union means is not
clear to anyone, but it’s suppose to be a fairly high position.
He was the former Kremlin Director of Administration, and very close to
Yeltsin and was very much cultivated by the Clinton administration.
Now they became so disappointed with Mr. Putin that they were looking for
an opportunity to demonstrate their displeasure.
Now, Mr. Borodin was arrested because there was a Swiss arrest warrant,
but I don’t have to tell you that, first of all we don’t automatically honor
other countries’ arrest warrants. Somehow
the United States still has a modicum of sovereignty and usually can protect its
freedom of maneuver in matters like that. There
was a very simple way not to arrest Borodin: not to give him a visa.
To tell the Russians that he’s not supposed to come here.
They did not issue him a diplomatic visa, but they did not tell the
Russians that it would be wrong for him to come using his regular visa.
He came here and he was arrested.
I don’t know why the Clinton administration was so
eager to create this incident with the Russians.
One cynical explanation among some people in the Bush White House is that
that was because Borradin was invited to a couple of inaugural events for
President Bush and perhaps some people around Clinton were interested in
creating a little incident saying, “Well, the Bush campaign was accusing the
Clinton administration of being too soft on Russian corruption and now one of
the most corrupt Russian officials is coming to the Bush inauguration.”
Incidentally, the Clinton administration official whose wife was getting
money from Russian tycoons, was that official who was essential in making this
arrest happen.
So, it was with this kind of Clinton legacy on Russia
that we at the Nixon Center thought it would be useful to produce a very short
document which is called “What is to be Undone – A Russian Policy Agenda For
The New Administration.” Essentially, what it says are things which in my view
are fairly simple and common sense but common sense does not automatically
prevail in Washington. The first
thing we are saying in this report is that we have to start our policy towards
Russia from ground zero. First of
all, Russia today is a different country. You
just cannot ignore that and I’m not talking about Russia not being communist
anymore, about Russian free market economy, I’m just talking about Russia’s
importance for the United States. Once
the Clinton administration took office, Russia was not quite a superpower but
still a major power. Today, Russia
is an important country, but an important country in deep trouble, with its
gross national product slightly below Spain, with deteriorating armed forces,
and most important it is a country without allies and clients.
The Soviet Union was an empire.
In 1993 when Clinton took office Russia was no longer
an empire but they had just created this commonwealth of independent states and
there was still a thought that Russia could be an important power center.
Russia today stands remarkably alone.
Russia today is not central to many, if not to say most, foreign policy
decisions the new administration should make.
It has nothing to do with drug trafficking in Colombia.
It has very little to do with the Middle East peace and it has next to
nothing to do with essential decisions that the American administration has to
make about global economy. So, it
will be unnatural for the new administration to give Russia the same prominence
as before. That was our point
number one.
Point number two
was that in the past the Clinton administration tended to be preoccupied
with Russian domestic affairs. You
can see from my remarks that I think it was very counterproductive.
But even if it was not counterproductive, reasonable people may disagree
about that, even if it was not counterproductive in the past.
As one senior official in the Bush White House who used to be a
professional diplomat, who used to work for Strobe Talbott before, said to me
recently, “Let’s not argue whether Strobe Talbott was right or wrong.
All of us have to accept that what he tried to do in terms of reforming
Russia did not work and the time for that kind of approach is over.” And I think that on that we all have to agree.
The time when the United States could play a major useful role in
influencing Russian domestic policy is over—if it ever existed.
To put it mildly, the Russians are not interested in American advice;
Russian political leaders are nationalists and President Putin seems to be
popular not despite his KGB background but because of it, not despite his
butchery in Chechnya but because of his brutal campaign in Chechnya.
With that kind of political mood in Moscow, with the Parliament
controlled by people who are even more nationalistic than Putin himself, with
that in mind there is very little the United States can do to teach democracy to
the Russians, to the reluctant Russians.
It doesn’t mean that we shouldn’t support Russian
civil society, it doesn’t mean that we should not continue to support Jim
Billington’s (Librarian of Congress), very important initiative to bring
Russian political leaders to the United States. The Nixon Center has just started a new initiative of
political dialogue with the Russian political establishment. All these things have to be done, but you do things the way
you do it with other normal countries. You
assume that they are mature adults, that they’re making their own choices,
some of those choices you like more, some of the choices you like less.
You obviously want to affect those choices on the margins, but you
obviously don’t build your whole policy toward an important country around
trying to influence their domestic circumstances.
Let’s face it. The Clinton administration officials certainly preferred Mr.
Barak to Mr. Sharon, but even they were smart enough not to try to undermine Mr.
Sharon’s chances. Not only would
that have been inappropriate, it would have been counterproductive.
It would not work. The same is increasingly true in the American-Russian,
relationship and that leads me to the third point.
The third point is that Russia is increasingly a stable country. I’m trying to
use my language carefully—increasingly a stable country.
It’s not quite a stable country. It’s
not quite a normal country, but it has enough of a function in government,
enough of police control over different areas of Russian life for us to worry
less about Russian weakness, for us to worry less about Russian loose nukes, and
to worry more about deliberate actions of the Russian government. Like for instance, I remember vividly how in 1996-1997 senior
Russian officials, when they would come to Washington, would complain bitterly
that they were also against proliferation of Russian weapons and sensitive
technology to Iran, but what could they do?
They could not control Russian military industrial complexes; that
companies were striving for cash and they were not taking orders from Moscow.
Well, they can no longer claim that.
Mr. Putin is exercising much better control of his defense industrial
complex with representatives of the KGB successor agency, the Federal Security
Service. They came back to every enterprise dealing with state
secrets. We have seen what Mr.
Putin is able to do so that tycoons who challenge his interests.
So surely they’re perfectly capable of punishing those who
systematically share sensitive technology with Iran, Iraq and others.
So instead of being preoccupied with working on the
ground with different Russian companies trying to persuade them not to
proliferate nuclear weapons or weapons of mass destruction, our recommendation
is just to have serious and focused conversations with the Russian leadership
and explain to them where American interests are, where these invisible lines of
dissent are which we do not want them to cross and what the consequences may be
if they disregard American warnings.
To give you an idea that we’re not very tough and
very unrealistic in dealing with Russia without reason I should also point out
that the report says that we should be discriminating in telling the Russians
what they are not entitled to do. If
American vital interests, important interests, are not involved we should
express our preferences but we should act, as President Bush said, as a humble
nation. We should understand that
we don’t possess all the wisdom, and that the Russians have their own
needs--and I am not just talking about Russia domestic circumstances, I am even
talking about supplying weapons to Iran. We
have to accept, unfortunately, that the Russians because of their difficult
economic circumstances have very few things they can sell outside Russia.
Energy is one thing, precious metals are another and, unfortunately,
weapons are another major export.
So to tell the Russians that they are not entitled to
sell anything to so-called “rogue states,” well, it would be a nice-sounding
policy but not a very effective one, because who wants to buy Russian weapons?
Mostly those who cannot buy from the United States and our American
allies. Russian weapons are not known these days for being most
technologically advanced and they’re certainly not known for their
reliability. In order to have
sophisticated weapons what do you do? You
do what we do in the United States. You
develop these weapons and then you supply these weapons to the U.S. military and
then they test these weapons extensively and then, as a result of this testing,
as a result of this experience, mistakes are corrected, improvements are made
and these become the best weapons in the world--or at least one of the best.
In the Russian case, the military cannot buy modern
weapons. They don’t have the
money. So what do they do?
They develop weapons and then before they have a chance to test them, to
supply them to the Russian armed forces, they start selling these weapons to
other countries and then they use money they got from these countries to start
testing these weapons. That is not the best way to develop sophisticated weapons
systems. So those who can afford to
buy sophisticated weapons systems and who are allowed to buy them from the
United States and the American allies they are very unlikely to go to Russia.
That we have to understand, and we have to understand that if the
Russians want to make some money and go to the Iranians and sell them T-52,
T-55, T-72 tanks, it may be disturbing to us but it is not going to make much of
a difference in terms of military and political stability in the Middle East and
the Persian Gulf. That is
unpleasant, but not really detrimental to American interests.
Our recommendation was to make clear to the Russians that we disapproved
of this kind of dealings, but it’s not a priority for the United States.
So, these were our basic recommendations. We
have presented them to the Administration, to members of Congress, and so far I
think we have gotten a good response. You
may ask how this long-term agenda can co-exist with the current spying
scandal. In the spirit of full
disclosure, I learned about this spying scandal in a funny way.
I was having a nice leisurely dinner with the Russian ambassador in a
Spanish restaurant in Washington. I
was suppose to have lunch with him, but we got a phone call from the Russian
embassy and they said that unfortunately the ambassador would not be able to
have lunch. He was summoned to see
Colin Powell. Could we have an
early dinner? I said fine, and, of
course, it occurred to me that the sudden summons to Colin Powell could imply
that there would be these expulsions. At
the same time, I thought that the Secretary of State is perhaps too high a level
to inform the Russian ambassador about these expulsions.
So, when we met for dinner I immediately asked the Ambassador what was
going on, and he said to me that no, the meeting was actually at the
Ambassador’s request. He was
planning to go to Moscow today for consultations and wanted to be sure that he
understood what the administration’s agenda for Russia was before talking to
his superiors in the Russian capital. He
was aware that probably there would be some fallout from the Hanssen affair,
that there would be some expulsions, but he was not entirely sure what was going
to happen.
As we were having this lovely conversation, I got a
phone call on my cell phone and it was difficult to hear what I was told so I
went outside. When I returned I
said, “Mr. Ambassador, it’s my unpleasant duty to inform you that fifty of
your compatriots have been expelled from the United States.
The reason I’m the one to give you this important message is because
they wanted to tell you this officially at the State Department tomorrow at
10:30 a.m., but meanwhile CBS has learned of it.
It’s going to be on the air momentarily and they want you to know about
this first.”
As you can imagine, the Ambassador was not, to put it
mildly, very pleased with this news, even if it was not entirely unexpected.
But what was interesting to me was that he first said that there would be
symmetrical response, that they were drawing up the list for any number of
people to have a symmetrical expulsion of American diplomats from Russia, but
then he said, “You know, this is all spy business.
We don’t approve what the United States has done in this case.
We think they went overboard a little bit. I’m sure you don’t think that we’re doing what is
right, and probably think our response is excessive, but this is intelligence
business and we accept what the United States has done and what the
administration felt had to be done and you have to accept that we proceed with a
response which is natural for us.”
What is important is to remember that we have to deal
with each other, that there is no choice and we have to shape a new agenda of
the U.S-Russian relationship. That
the fundamental question for us is not how many Russian diplomats are being
expelled, but what kind of relationship the new administration wants to have
with Russia and that, in my view, is a very sensible approach.
What kind of relationship does the new administration want to have with Russia?
Well, it’s not an easy issue. As
I tried to say, Russia is not their main preoccupation--and rightly so.
They’re not going to try to engage in pretense like their predecessors, that
everything’s nice and wonderful inside Russia and the U.S.-Russian
relationship. At the same time,
it’s difficult to disregard Russia completely.
If you are dealing with nuclear proliferation, if you are dealing with
terrorism, if you want to avoid creation of an anti-American backlash involving
countries like China, India--you have to talk to the Russians.
Another problem is that it’s kind of easy for the United States, the
way the United States is today, to disregard preferences of any individual
nation, even Russia. But you cannot ignore all of them together.
There are constraints in terms of American cooperation with China, there
are serious issues in the American-Chinese relationship.
So any responsible administration wants to think what we should do with
Russia. They will be also thinking
about what we should do with China and what kind of visitation we may have with
the Chinese tomorrow. President
Nixon always felt that it was essential for the United States to have a better
relationship with China and Russia than they have with each other. This remains very true today.
So these are difficult choices and the administration is only beginning
to fill positions on sub-Cabinet levels, filling them with people who would be
preparing practical recommendations to the President. The administration and the White House are only beginning to
develop a policy paper on Russia, which then will be distributed to Cabinet
officials.
What encourages me are three things:
What encourages me first is that this administration does accept that we
have to start building a new policy towards Russia, that what was tried by the
Clinton administration clearly did not work.
The second thing that encourages me is that this administration wants to
stand on principle and wants to talk about Russia and to the Russians the way it
considers appropriate in terms of American interests and values.
The third thing which encourages me is that this administration seems to
understand the difference between the rhetoric and policy, between editorial
comments about somebody’s behavior and having real influence over their
behavior. Most important, this
administration seems to accept that policies are judged by results, not by
intentions but by results. If these
three elements come together I think the administration will be able to have a
sensitive policy towards Russia, a sensitive and sensible policy towards Russia.
Today while I was here The Nixon Center with a couple
of other organizations who was hosting a luncheon in Washington for the Chinese
Vice Premier, Qian Qichen and yesterday he met with President Bush and with
Secretary Powell and I understand that he delivered a very interesting speech.
It was a conciliatory speech in a sense that he was making clear that
China wants to work with the Bush administration and they don’t believe that
China and the United States should be enemies.
But it was also a speech which made clear that there are very serious
differences between China and the United States and particularly in Taiwan.
If you’re thinking about American foreign policy, there is only one
major country with which we have a potential for war—it is China.
There is no potential for war with Russia because there are no issues
which would be sufficiently important to both sides which could lead us to war.
With China, it is different and I think that the Bush administration is
absolutely right to try to develop the Russian policy in close coordination with
developing their China policy. That
is the kind of strategic thinking that always was advocated by President Nixon
and the kind of strategic thinking which, unfortunately, we have not seen in
Washington for many years. But as
somebody said to me, a member of The Nixon Center Board of Directors who is also
a liberal Democrat and a former senior official in Democratic administrations,
he said, “I don’t agree with these people around Bush.
Our philosophy is very different.”
But then there was pause and he said, “But, you know, it’s also kind
of nice that at last mature adults came back to town.”
Thank you very much.