The insider went on: ‘Some of the policy makers understood a lot, but they understood it from a particular perspective. The real drivers behind Russia policy were people who had been working on European security issues all the way through the 1990s, and the goal was to continue the unfinished business of the 1990s – a Europe free, undivided and peaceful and all the rest of it. And there was a view that if you took in the Russia perspective you were somehow affirming its right to assert certain interests or privileges.’
So Bush’s Russia policy was largely forged by people who were above all concerned with the security of Central and Eastern Europe, who believed the West had ‘won’ the Cold War, and were determined to cement the former Soviet satellites into the free West, including NATO and the European Union – even at the risk of alienating Russia in the process. Poland, the Czech Republic and Hungary had already joined NATO in 1999, and now the alliance was about to embark on a second wave of enlargement, to include Slovakia, Slovenia, Bulgaria and Romania, plus – most controversially as far as Russia was concerned – the Baltic states of Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania, which had once been part of the USSR and stood right on Russia’s present borders.
Dan Fried said in an interview: ‘It was not sustainable to argue that the interests and freedoms of other countries, which suffered under Soviet occupation, should be held hostage to a Russian sense of deprivation of empire. I mean, to some degree the Soviets had achieved a sphere of influence in Europe thanks to Mr Molotov and Mr Ribbentrop, or if you prefer, Hitler and Stalin.’3
Over breakfast in a London hotel I put it to Nick Burns that Russia might have legitimate concerns in seeing NATO expand right up to its doorstep, and America installing new weaponry there. It was, after all, their ‘backyard’. His answer was quite uncompromising: ‘Tough! They lost that right. This was in the American national interest.’4 It was an answer that seemed to me to preclude accommodating even a reformed, ‘democratic’ Russia: it had ‘lost the right’ to influence affairs in its backyard, apparently by having inherited the sins of the Soviet Union, whereas the USA did have the right to influence affairs there because it was ‘in the American national interest’.
He went on: ‘When it came to admitting the Baltic countries into NATO, there were really furious arguments about it – both with the Europeans and within Washington. Even George Tenet [the CIA director], for example, was against it. But many of us had essentially lost hope that we could trust the Russians or integrate them into the West. By 2002, there was a growing suspicion that Putin wasn’t the person they thought he was, that he couldn’t make Russia a reliable ally. We concluded that we wanted a good relationship with Russia, but the most important target in the region, post-Cold War, was the freedom and liberation of Eastern and Central Europe. There was lots of opposition in the US, and we had to fight hard, but we thought we had to be careful about the Russians. We thought it was more important to lock in the one real gain of the fall of the USSR. George W. Bush was a strong believer in that argument.’
The neo-cons believed the policy of putting faith in Russia in the 1990s had failed. ‘I knew Russia would try to become dominant in Europe again, and we had to protect the Eastern and Central Europeans,’ said Burns. ‘Putin is all about bringing power back to Russia. This was becoming clear by late 2002.’5
That phrase was revealing: making Russia powerful again was precisely what Putin wanted – and precisely what many in Washington could not stomach.
The administration’s ‘Russophiles’ found their views echoed in Western Europe, but not in Washington. One of them says: ‘There seemed to be a viewpoint that by understanding and laying out the Russian point of view you were endorsing it and legitimising it. This was not the view you find in Europe. This is why we were at odds with the Germans and even the UK because most of the European interlocutors were trying to factor in what Russia felt about things, because they didn’t want an open confrontation.’
There were many reasons why France and Germany felt closer to the Russians than the Americans. It was not that they underestimated the former Warsaw Pact countries’ longing to join the West’s structures and to protect themselves from the country that had oppressed them for 50 years. Germany, in particular, was still revelling in the joy of reunification after the collapse of the Berlin Wall. Nor was it just a matter of pragmatism and trade, although the latter was important for Germany. Rather, there was an ill-defined sense, especially in European intellectual circles, that Russia ‘belonged’ to Europe, that they shared a history and culture, and the time was right – whatever the shortcomings of Russian democracy – to welcome them ‘home’. Indeed, the argument went, welcoming them home would be precisely the best way to improve democracy there.
President Jacques Chirac of France epitomised this view. He had a strong personal interest in Russia. His parents had had a Russian émigré in their home in the 1930s, and Chirac himself had learned Russian and even translated Pushkin’s novel in verse, Yevgeny Onegin. According to his diplomatic adviser, Maurice Gourdault-Montagne, Chirac felt there was something ‘eternal’ about Russia, that it was neither fully European nor fully oriental. He had got on well with Yeltsin, who gave him the sauna and caviar treatment, and although he was cool towards Putin at first, he was willing to put his reservations aside, even regarding Chechnya.
‘Chirac said everything possible to help Putin and not to criticise him, and to help him appear on the world stage as a responsible leader having to deal with enormous stakes – how to catch up from Soviet times and become a modern country,’ says Gourdault-Montagne. ‘Chirac thought there was no evidence for Russia going back to Soviet times. They had jumped into a new world, but it was a long task, and they had to be supported. And it was in the interest of the West to help the Russians as much as possible because we have common interests. Chirac thought the stability of the continent was on the axis of Paris, Berlin and Moscow – hence all these trilateral meetings we had until 2007. It was fascinating to see how the three got on together.’6
German chancellor Gerhard Schröder, the third in the trio, was like most of his compatriots eternally grateful to Russia for withdrawing its troops without fuss from Eastern Germany. As a gesture of goodwill he later wrote off €6 billion of debt that Moscow owed the former German Democratic Republic.
The relationship, it is true, did not get off to a very good start. During the German election of 1998 Schröder had promised to stop pouring vast amounts of cash into Russia, as his predecessor Helmut Kohl had done. He wanted a pragmatic relationship based on business interests and a certain diplomatic reserve – none of the bear-hugging that Kohl and Yeltsin had indulged in. His foreign minister, Joschka Fischer, almost caused a diplomatic incident during his first meeting with Putin in January 2000 by denouncing his Chechen campaign and demanding an immediate ceasefire. Schröder himself did not shy away from visiting the three Baltic republics (something Kohl had refused to do for fear of offending the Russians) just a week before President Putin’s first visit to Berlin in June 2000.
But the visit itself changed things dramatically. The two men talked for five hours, without an interpreter, thanks to Putin’s command of German. Despite Tony Blair’s attempts to ‘get in there first’, it was clear that Putin regarded Germany as Russia’s paramount European ally. Schröder himself understood that close collaboration with Russia was the best means to encourage democratisation: ‘Russia has always been successful,’ he wrote, ‘when it has opened itself up to Europe, engaged in a lively exchange and linked itself with the economic and intellectual development in the rest of Europe.’7 The two men initiated something unique among the European nations: the St Petersburg Dialogue, an annual Russian–German event which combined intellectual discussion with intergovernmental talks and intensive business-to-business deal-making. Soon Schröder would be drawn into Putin’s sauna-and-vodka circuit. They became close friends, often visiting each other with their families. Putin would even fly out to the chancellor’s home town of Hanover just to celebrate Schröder’s 60th birthday with him. Putin enabled Schröder to adopt two children from St Petersburg. After leaving office Schröder became chairman of Nord Stream, a Gazprom affiliate that would bring natural gas straight from Russia to Germany (which he had supported as chancellor), and dropped all criticism of Putin’s policies. (Chirac, by contrast, turned down Putin’s offer of a highly paid job with Gazprom.)