My spring 1992 visit to the United States coincided with the presidential election campaign which, this time, in addition to the two main party candidates, President and Republican George Bush and Democrat Bill Clinton, included a third candidate, multimillionaire Ross Perot. One journalist even asked me, no doubt in jest, whether I might stand as vice-president on Perot’s ticket. I told him I had higher ambitions than that, having already been a president.
More seriously, the first election campaign in the new circumstances showed that Americans expected their politicians to focus mainly on domestic social and economic issues rather than foreign policy. I was often asked, though, for my thoughts on Russia’s role in the world now that the Cold War had ended. My answer was that America should not try to play the role of global policeman. I detected that, in any case, American people were disinclined to support any such behaviour, but added that the role of the United States in the new world order could be even greater than before if they joined in multilateral efforts to promote the values of democracy and global problems that affect all mankind.
The opinion polls were suggesting George Bush was lagging behind Bill Clinton. That may be why, in the final stages of the campaign, he rather went over the top and, in a bid for votes, started talking about how the United States had won the Cold War. It did not help him to win the election.
I expressed my view on this subject unambiguously: the ending of the Cold War had not been a victory for one side or the other. It had been our shared victory, a victory for common sense. If one side was going to declare itself the winner, if the opinion took root that America was always right, that her democracy was the most democratic and her ideals the most ideal, and if she decided to promote her ideals through the use of force as the most effective argument in international affairs, disaster would be sure to follow. The only proper way, I stressed again and again, was cooperation and partnership based on the principles of international law.
Bill Clinton won the 1992 election. He had no international experience and at first focused, with considerable success, on America’s domestic problems. Economic growth resumed, education, science and new technology were given significant support, and that served to ensure that four years later he was re-elected with a substantial majority. As far as his foreign policy was concerned, as I told him bluntly when I got to know him better after his presidency, there was much I disagreed with strongly.
The US political elite, having claimed victory in the Cold War, drew the ‘appropriate conclusions’ from this delusion. Overconfident about its power, it embarked not only on military intervention in the Yugoslav conflict, but launched missile strikes against Iraq. Its ‘victory complex’ did nothing for relations with Russia.
On the surface, everything seemed to be going on satisfactorily. A regular exchange of visits took place, like a well-rehearsed stage production, with hugs and mutual praises, but this became an irritant. There was no sense of genuine equality, no real sense of partnership, and when, in the second half of the 1990s, the US Ambassador in Moscow asked me what advice I would give President Clinton, who was about to visit Russia, I said it would be best not to pat Russia on the back. Compliments on the policy of shock therapy, I told him, which had weakened Russia and plunged huge numbers of our citizens into poverty, would only annoy people who were beginning to wonder if a weak, half-strangled Russia was what America wanted.
Behind the facade of amity, American policy took no notice of Russia’s interests. This was apparent not only in the decision to press ahead with expanding NATO. An attempt to isolate Russia from the new states of the former Soviet Union was increasingly obvious. Anti-Russian sentiment and behaviour were encouraged in Ukraine; there was an anti-Russian tinge to the US flirtation with the president of Uzbekistan; negotiations over oil in the Caspian Sea region excluded Russia completely. Russia’s weakness was exploited in order to exclude her from influence in global politics. In the late 1990s , a respected Russia analyst delivered a paper with the title, ‘World Without Russia’.[6] Politicians, he claimed, might have to get used to the idea that the world’s major issues would have to be resolved with little or no Russian involvement.
I spoke against this possibility. In my speeches while travelling around the United States, in articles and interviews, I argued that Russia would revive. In her history there had been times of troubles and severe ordeal, but she had always emerged from them to became a strong, influential power, a nation without which no world order was imaginable.
‘America needs its own Perestroika’
In the final stages of his presidency, Bill Clinton seemed to have understood that a foreign policy of unilateral interventions was, in the long run, unsustainable. At the 1999 Istanbul summit of the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe, he recalled the Charter of Paris for a New Europe and spoke of the need for mutual consideration of the interests of all countries. The baton was, however, already passing to a new president, George Bush Junior.
What course of global action would the new president choose? What kind of relations would he develop with Russia? It was impossible to know the answer in advance. On the one hand, he was saying US foreign policy should be more humble and modest. As secretary of state he appointed Colin Powell, whom I knew well as a politician whose thinking was realistic and balanced. One could hope that George W. Bush had inherited the gene for moderation from his father. On the other hand, it was known that he was susceptible to the influence of neo-conservatives, supporters of an aggressive foreign policy, of whom there were many in his entourage. Chief among them was the vice-president, Dick Cheney, whom I well remembered from his role in the administration of George Bush Senior as someone who thought in Cold War categories.
In April 2001, I was on one of my trips to the United States, crossing the country from north to south and east to west. I was told that the State Department and the White House were interested in talking to me. Needless to say, I did not decline the invitations, the more so because this was before the first meeting between George W. Bush and Vladimir Putin.
My talk with Colin Powell was thorough and detailed, and certainly not limited to reminiscing about our joint efforts to end the Cold War and nuclear arms race. In respect of relations with Russia, Powell seemed to me to be thinking constructively, emphasizing opportunities for working together to resolve regional problems, particularly in the Middle East. The secretary of state very much wanted his term in office to culminate in a settlement of the Israel–Palestine conflict, but subsequently he found himself drawn into quite other matters.
My visit to the White House, which I had not entered since 1992, began with a conversation with Condoleezza Rice, who had been appointed national security adviser to the president. She had begun her career in national politics in the administration of George Bush Senior, taking part in the negotiations on disarmament. Bush and his adviser on national security matters, Brent Scowcroft, had a high opinion of her. The newspapers wrote that she had claims to great influence on the president.
Some time after the beginning of our conversation, President Bush, Vice-President Cheney and White House Chief of Staff Andrew Card came in. Such an august delegation was a signal in itself, and our meaningful conversation was no mere diplomatic nicety. Bush said he understood the importance of Russia and her role in the world and was minded to cooperate with her. There needed to be a meeting with President Putin as soon as possible, he said, and hoped there would shortly be an announcement about it.
6
Thomas Graham, Jr, ‘World without Russia’, Jamestown Foundation Conference, Washington, DC, 9 June 1999; http://carnegieendowment.org/1999/06/09/worldwithout-russia. Accessed 26 July 2015.