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| Speakers: | Strobe Talbott, president, Brookings Institution |
|---|---|
| William Taubman, professor of political science, Amherst University | |
| Moderator: | Stephen Sestanovich, senior fellow, Council on Foreign Relations |
March 4, 2003
Council on Foreign Relations
New York, NY
Stephen Sestanovich [SS]: Thank you, Nancy. A colleague of mine was lamenting a couple of days ago that you just can’t get a good crowd anymore to listen to a discussion of Russia. (Laughter) You might think we were back in business here. (Laughter) I am Steve Sestanovich…I’m a senior fellow at the Council. And today we have - I’m happy to say two marquee idols in the Russian field…the post-Soviet field. Two people who have the place in their bones…and who are among other things authors of two of the most eagerly anticipated books on Russian affairs to appear in recent years. Strobe Talbott is known to you now as the president of the Brookings Institution…former Deputy Secretary of State…author of The Russian Hand…his recollections and reflections on eight years of Russian/American relations in the Clinton administration. Bill Taubman is professor of political science at Amherst College. Author of many books, most recently…is it out yet? If so…pick it up. (Laughter) Most recently…Khrushchev: the Man and his Era. I’ve been try to find some formula to connect the two. I decided it’s the Russia hand and the Russia mouth. (Laughter) Maybe the Russia foot ...
Strobe Talbott [ST]: In the Russian mouth ...
SS: Yeah. (Laughter) Exactly. I think this update…this is called Russia Update I believe…and it comes at a particularly timely moment. We are three years into President Putin’s term. And if one judges this as an event…as a moment in Russian/American relations…I think it’s fair to say we’re probably facing the most important test yet of the new relationship that President Bush and President Putin have tried to date. They called it an alliance…expectations have been very high. I think one question we want to get at today is whether the substance of that relationship is ebbing a little bit. I think there’s similar questions on the domestic front. Not so long ago Putin was touted as a great Westernizer. But many analysts now see those reforms…his commitment to reform has stalled. One explanation is excess prosperity. Another is the onset of elections. Another’s the deep resistance of people who don’t see that they’re going to benefit from having reforms go forward. I hope we can kind of…we can try to understand…some of these events…and developments through the lens of Strobe’s and Bill’s books. Let me remind you that this is not one of those Council events where I have to describe the tortured rules…this is on the record. And we are going to spend…just a word about format…we’re going to spend a little bit of time of up here in a…what I hope will be a free-for-all. And then turn…open the discussion up for an even freer for-all. Bill, if I could start with you…both Khrushchev and Putin were…you know, about as unexpected as leaders can be to, you know, climb the greasy pole. Three years into Khrushchev’s reign…tenure…we knew what he was going to be. He’d given the secret speech. He had made clear he was going to be a kind of dismantler of the Stalinist system. And it was already clear how hard and dangerous that was going to be. And before long some of the instability that was engendered by his approach led him to pull back. Can looking at this…at Putin with that memory in mind help us understand what he’s trying to do. What is he after and what are the obstacles that he faces?
William Taubman [BT]: Well, I have a stake in thinking that this is just the right way to think about Russia (Laughter)…that is historically.
SS: What could be better?
BT: And biographically…and what I thought I would try to do at the start is quickly compare the two periods. Both from the point of view of talking about the changes that are underway…and then in particular the role of the personality of the two men in shaping those changes. In the case of Khrushchev…I think if you want a one word summary of what was going on it was de-Stalinization. And it was very, very difficult. And it really defeated him in the end rather than he succeeding at it. And if you have any doubt about how difficult it is, it’s still needed today. I read a report in the press which reported a poll of Russian people’s attitudes…and according to this, 36 percent of those polled…or 39 percent thought that the good that Stalin did out-weighed the bad…26 thought that the bad out-weighed the good…and I hope it’s going to add up to a hundred. (Laughter) Thirty-six had trouble seeing. Well, if they still think this way you can see what a tough time it was. That is to change the way of thinking and to reorient the foreign policy…try to ease the Cold War. That’s what Khrushchev was trying to do. And in my view his personality was absolutely central to the way this went. Take the two most important things that he did in his years in power. One, the secret speech attacking Stalin and the other is the decision to put missiles in Cuba. In my view they were both uniquely his decisions…nobody else in the Soviet leadership would have done them. They’re both a puzzle because Khrushchev had…as he said toward the end of his life…blood up to his elbows. And yet he denounced the man whose accomplice he had been in the secret speech. And Khrushchev was trying to ease the Cold War…and yet in Cuba he produced the worst crisis of the Cold War. So that’s the puzzle. And I think the solution is…as I looked at it in my work…it’s personality. And I…my book is 896 pages (Laughter)…and I don’t know that much about Putin was in sum…I think Khrushchev had a deep sense of guilt about Stalin. And in addition to all the other political realpolitik considerations…I think he denounced Stalin because he had a sense of guilt. Just one thing about that. I found a woman in Danyet(?)…in Ukraine…who remembered a conversation that Khrushchev had with her father in 1940…long, long before ’56 in which he confessed his guilt. So that’s the secret of that one. And then the Cuban Missile Crisis…I think Khrushchev’s position was beginning to come apart at the seams…and this was his way of trying to solve it in one swell foop…so to speak.
SS: Is Putin…does he see his job as de-Yeltsinization?
BT: Well, that’s what I was going to say…when it comes time to figure out what Putin’s doing…one possibility is de-Yeltsinization.
SS: And what does that mean?
BT: Well, that means trying to create steadiness, coherence, where there was chaos and zigzags in east/west relations. It means reaching out in a kind of sensible decisive way toward the west as opposed to the blowing hot and cold that Strobe had to encounter first hand over and over again I guess. But I don’t think…it’s not quite clear that de-Yeltsinization is the only possibility. There are two others. One is that he’s really trying to finish the job of de-Sovietizing Russia…creating a free market and moving toward a democracy. And the other possibility is that he is moving toward a new kind of authoritarianism. And I would finish by saying as I look at his personality it’s key to these as well. Because he has the personality to do de-Yeltsinization. He’s better educated than Khrushchev. He came from Petersburg not a village in the Ukraine. He’s sort of calm and steady by temperament. He practiced judo instead of bluster and bluff. And so for simply steadying the ship of state he’s got the right personality. And I think he’s succeeding. But if his…if what he said for himself is the task of de-Sovietizing Russia…then it’s probably bigger than he is…and it’s beyond his capabilities. And if he set the task for himself…or maybe he’s doing it without setting the task…of creating a new kind of authoritarianism…I think there is a streak to his personality which he talks about in his autobiography. And the line is “I hate people who betray me.” (Laughs) I was going to pull it out but I won’t. His elementary school teacher…asked about him says, “He hates people who betray him.” And later on in the book he himself says it. So that worries me.
SS: Strobe, if we had met a year ago…I think our expectations for Putin would have been far more positive than those that any of us at the end of the Clinton administration could have had for him. We would have thought of him as much more…someone carrying forward the hopes for real Russian/American cooperation. It seems to me that there’s been some change in that expectation. And at a minimum that the relationship is facing a kind of test. How far back have things slid and why?
Strobe Talbott [ST]: Well, Steve, look I hope at some point…particularly in the spirit of your injunction coming from our President less to have some real disagreement…we can get back into this issue of de-Yeltsinization and whether that’s a proper description of what Putin is up to…but that’s not responsive to the question at hand…so let me take a crack at that.
The…I think that there’s no question that September 11th, 2001 gave Putin an opportunity that he sees with extraordinary alacrity and skill…including psychological skill in dealing with our president…to accelerate a process that was already underway. Namely, the de-Sovietization of Russia’s foreign policy. And the integration of Russia into the community of nations of which the United States is…to put it mildly…a leader. But that was a matter of accelerating something that was already very much entrained. And in fact I think it has its roots in your guy, Bill. (Laughter) Nikita Khrushchev. At least in so far as he introduced the concept of peaceful coexistence into the vocabulary of the relationship when he wasn’t bringing us to the brink of nuclear war. (Laughter) But there was some degree of continuity between Khrushchev and certainly Gorbachev…with the long Brezhnev interlude in between. And then a high degree of continuity between Gorbachev and Yeltsin…much more than either of those bitter enemies would ever admit. And then Putin picked up on that. I think for fairly simple and pragmatic reasons. He genuinely and sincerely wants to be a successful president of Russia. And he understands that that can only happen if Russia gets the benefit of a great deal of economic assistance and investment from the west. And that can only happen if he is some fundamental way throws in his lot with the west. And that means first and foremost the United States. And I think that’s what triggered this extraordinarily quick reaction he had on September 11th, 2001…when he called President Bush within an hour of seeing the first plane hit the first tower. And not only said all of the supportive things that President Bush wanted to hear from him…but more as well. And then of course in the months that followed…and in the face of some resistance from his own political…and even his pal…his buddy…Sergei Ivanov…the minister of defense…did what would have been unthinkable long before…opening up or giving a green light to the stationing of American troops in Central Asia. And rolling over almost without a peep for the United States…his decision to pull out of the ABM Treaty and many other examples. Now, what’s happened in the last several weeks I think can be…over a rock can be explained fairly simply. Never mind a year ago. I think if this group had gotten together even a month ago the consensus probably would have been that President Bush not only made up his mind to have this war in the month of March…but that he was going to have the Security Council with him in some sense. We might have had a lot of interesting disagreement over that was the right course and so forth and so on…but that was certainly more than the conventional wisdom. And I think Putin subscribed to that quite simply. He thought this was a done deal…it was going to happen…there was no point in fighting it. And he certainly wasn’t going to in any way stake Russia’s credibility on the survival of the Saddam regime. He had long since sold all of Russia’s stock in Iraq…although retained all the IOUs…hoping to collect the debt in due course. And that’s what’s changed in the last several weeks. The United States as everybody knows has run into very serious problems. Not with the Russian federation in the first instance…but with Germany and particularly with France. And just to stay (Overlap) with for a second…and I think what Putin wants to preserve is European options as well as his American option…and see how this thing plays out. And if George W. Bush can bring Sharaq(?) on board…this juggernaut that is clearly under way…Putin will be right there with him.
SS: Well, some Russians say that the new opportunity that this discord in the Atlantic alliance has created for Putin is that he gets to be the mediator. He can kind of play a role in between the two. Not simply standing outside and exploiting or choosing one side or the other…but actually promoting a restoration of unity in the Atlantic alliance. Frankly, my view is that’s a little beyond Putin and beyond Russia’s capabilities. But where do you…how do you see their view of what’s happening in the west? Are they horrified…gratified ...
ST: With regard to Iraq ...
SS: With regard to their own interests…more broadly than just Iraq.
ST: Well, I think ...
SS: Or isn’t it broad?
ST: Well, I think there’s the following ambivalence. On the one hand, this Russian leader, as his predecessors, does not like the idea of what they call unipolarity... the United States not just as a superpower…but as I think (Inaudible) cites that not long ago…a super-dooper-power. (Laughter) Who just is the boss of the world. And by the way the Russians aren’t the only folks out there who have a little trouble adjusting to this. So insofar as the outcome in Iraq brings the United States back into a framework that is genuinely multilateral…that vindicates the prerogatives of the Security Council on which Russia is a permanent member…fine. But I do not think that Putin probably would welcome either a crisis in the west…or the isolation of the United States. And I think he’s basically keeping his options open.
BT: You know what strikes me about this, Steve, is in effect of what we have now is what the Soviets wished for but never got throughout the Cold War. It’s their dream come true…but they’re not Soviets anymore. (Laughter) To sort of take advantage of it…what they dreamed for was a split between the United States and its main allies in Europe. In which somebody like you could actually imagine them being a mediator. That would have been heaven. It didn’t happen in part because the Soviets were there. And it’s happening now in parts because the Russians are no longer Soviet. But nonetheless, Putin…who lived under the Soviets and worked for the KGB under the Soviets…as he looks at this situation…must in part of his should be thinking…my God, this is something. But now he has to handle it without the Soviet animus and deep suspiciousness toward us that was part of the old regime.
SS: Well, a lot of those national security institutions that haven’t been de-Sovietized are full of people whose idea is exactly an old one…which is try to exploit this. And you have a…you know, you have other people saying…wait a second…we have other interests with the United States that go beyond what we can get from the Europeans in weakening the U.S. But I think that the temptation of the first group is very powerful.
BT: Well, I think Putin himself would be very tempted…because in a sense…it’s not just his Communist past…it’s his judo training…in reading his autobiography…I read again and again…these people marveled at how he sort of turned the tables on enemies in a sort of…in a lightning moment…who were threatening him. And I think…he also prides himself on planning and being very careful. Unlike Khrushchev, he plans. I think Khrushchev reacted. Unlike Khrushchev, he thinks about consequences. Khrushchev let his instincts take him wherever they would. So I think in a sense…if he could, Putin would love to play upon this. The reason he isn’t is that he’s decided that the long run interests of his country required this new partnership however qualified with the west.
SS: Let me come back just for a sec to this question of whether Putin has any illusion that he can play a mediating role. I suspect he has no such allusion with regard to what’s going on in the west. And he like a lot of people is probably counting on Tony Blair as the only non-American leader who has an iota of influence over President Bush. And who might conceivably…particularly if it were in concert with a couple of other voices…perhaps including the Secretary of State. Perhaps including the Senior President Bush…could get the current President Bush to back off in some sense. At least on the time table. But where I think Putin may feel he has an iota of influence is in Baghdad. And Yvgeny Primakov…a well known figure to all of us who’s kind of (Overlap) always…well, we could talk about that. (Laughter) Who’s been there of course for decades…and is as well known as a guy who gets on the plane and flies to cities that the United States is about to bomb. (Laughter) In fact, a Russian parliamentarian was in my office the other day and said, you know, we say in Moscow about Yafgani Maxium(?)…which that is Primakov…that if he shows up in your town head for the bomb shelters. (Laughter) He played this role of course in Baghdad in ’91…and then in Belgrade in ’99. And when President Putin sent Mr. Primakov to Baghdad this past week…there was a kind of knee jerk interpretation of that…there he goes again…same old, same old. I’m not sure. I saw at least one report out of Moscow just in the last day or so…that Primakov’s assignment…whether he succeeds in it or not…was to persuade Saddam Hussein to step down and to go into exile. Now the plausibility we can all be very skeptical about. But if that in fact was the assignment I think that suggest probably not a profound transformation of Mr. Primakov…but it could…I do think it suggests a difference between the way Russia is handling this crisis and the way that it…that the Gorbachev administration handled the one in ’99. And indeed the Yeltsin administration handled the crisis over Kosovo. Mainly, Primakov would be trying to bring about an outcome that would be in some ways the best possible for everybody…including President Bush and the United States. If all of this pressure that President Bush has put together…focused on Saddam…were to call Saddam actually to leave power and leave Iraq…that would be a good outcome (Overlap)…and Russia would be pushing for that.
SS: Strobe, you’re saying that our relations with Russia are not going to be any worse than with the French…which is I suppose ...
ST: Could there be such a thing? (Laughter)
SS: Don’t we have a lot of other festering problems with the Russians that the administration in its desire to kind of turn Putin into a junior Tony Blair…has sort of ignored ...
ST: Yes.
SS: Chechnya…Iran…North Korea…where we ...
ST: And civil society, democracy and free media ...
SS: Yeah.
ST:…inside of Russia itself.
SS: Given that the United States now is ceased of the idea that there’s just a huge strategic opportunity with the Russians…how do you keep those issues on the agenda? How do you keep from letting them disappear. Because I would say the administration…they have a sort of grown up…real point of view…look, we can’t do everything…we’re not going to do those things.
ST: Well, the Bush administration’s version of realpolitik is among other things the view that generally speaking…what happens within the borders of a country is that country’s business…and not the United States’ and not the international communities. That puts it in marked contrast to…not just to media predecessors…but I think many others as well…who think that we’ve passed that point. And in the way in which governments treat their own people is a legitimate issue for the international community to take up. And I think that’s now been not only accepted by the United Nations in various resolutions with regard to Haiti and the Balkans…but also put into action. But in any event, this administration came into office wanting to get more realpolitik in the sense of not making as much an issue out of the media doesn’t the treatment of the media in Russia…and democracy. And even Chechnya…than before. How do you do it? How do you put these issues back on the agenda? Well, in the way that some…even in this administration are trying to do. Not to get any one in trouble by…but I will just point out that our ambassador in Moscow…Sandy Vershbow…has actually given some quite powerful public statements about both Chechnya and particularly about the issue of the media. But there hasn’t been much said out of Washington. The…you know, we ought to have learned a lesson it seems to me from the Cold War. And that is that if you look at virtually all the issues in the world through the prism of one preoccupation…however legitimate and important that preoccupation…whether it’s the global struggle against Communism and the Cold War…or the global struggle against terrorism now…you are going to give short shrift to a lot of other issues that can get out of hand and come back and bite you in lots of ways.
BT: Steve, I think if you take the issue of Chechnya…there’s an irony here. Because we’ve been speaking as if it is a sore point between Russia and the United States…and it is. But to quote again from Putin’s autobiography which I was reading last night…the thing…the subject he talks about with more passion than anything else in that book is the way his battle in Chechnya is designed to keep Russia from falling apart. It is to hold the state together. And if this is the case…he says something like this is my mission…more than anything else this is my mission…if this is the case, sure, the disagreements we have are a sore point. On the other hand this partly explains the reach toward the west. I mean, the war against terror as he see it…is one which can help him fight what he sees as terrorists in Chechnya. So in that sense I think the sore points…the complains we may make…loud or sort of voce about human rights violations in Chechnya…which we should make…I suspect for him are just a kind of irritant…whereas the main thing we now have in common a fight against terror…which he sees as helping him to do the thing which he wants more than anything else to do…which is to crush this rebellion and hold the Russian state together.
SS: He’s not able to do it. And, you know, so the war goes on. And I want to ask you, Bill, a last question before we turn to the broader discussion. And that is…you hear a lot of people talk about the kind of possibility for Putin’s future trajectory…you know, new authoritarianism. Aren’t we seeing something different right now…which is Putin looking weaker…but it will turn out that it isn’t his so-called personality that’s so important…or his, you know, determination to de-anything-ize…but that he’s sort of…he’s the not very effective mediator of a lot of interests that are more in control…more influential than he. And nothing much is…but he’s not a powerful figure at all in Russia.
BT: To the extent that that’s true ...
SS:…as popular as he is.
BT: And I think it is. It’s not necessarily because he’s decided to go easy…or to pull back…or to restrain himself. I think if he looks weak it’s because of what he’s up against. Especially if you see him tempting de-Sovietization rather than simple de-Yeltsinization. He’s up against the legacy of Communism…and he’s up against Russia itself. And if I may be permitted (Laughs) to quote from my own book…actually I’m quoting Khrushchev…talking about what it means to be up against Russia itself…he’s talking to Fidel Castro in 1963. He says, “You think I as first secretary could change anything in this country…like hell I can. No matter what changes I propose and carry out…everything stays the same. Russia’s like a tub full of dough. You put your hand in it…down to the bottom and you think you master the situation. When you first pull out your hand, a little hole remains. But then before your very eyes, the dough expands into a spongy, puffy, mass. That’s what Russia is like.” (Laughter)
SS: We’re going to turn to (Laughter)…Putin, the Pillsbury doughboy. (Laughter) I want to open up the floor for questions. And I’m going to recognize anybody who has a hand up. But I’m especially hoping that somebody is going to give Strobe a chance to come back and growl about de-Yeltsinization. (Laughter) Questions…yeah. And let me ask you to identify yourselves when you get the microphone.
Audience: (Inaudible)…professor at Columbia University. A queston for both the speakers. The way I look at The Russia Hand was that there was enormous chemistry between the two presidents…as when Clinton and President Yeltsin…in having enormous chemistry between the two of them. And in having a common goal of weakening…if not destorying the Soviet plan…economy and the authoritarian political system. It seems to me that under Putin there is a re-thinking both in style and substance of this process…which Putin thinks was a bit destructive. I remember in a very recent statement he said that of course talking about Stalin…that Stalin did horrible things…but Stalin industrialized the Soviet Union. And Stalin won the Second World War. So I do not remember Yeltsin ever talking like that. About the Soviet Communist past…or about Stalin in particular. Maybe in that sense it is a step back…a bit of de-Yeltsinization.
SS: There you go Strobe…(Laughter) ...
ST: Well, I’ll start with the phrase de-Yeltsin…the only problem I have with that phrase is it suggest I think much more of a conscious break with the basic policies associated with the Yeltsin presidency than in fact was the case. Obviously there have been more than just stylistic differences. You know, the judo blackbelt replaces the sumo wrestler. You know, the tee-totaller or near tee-totaller replaces somebody who was not a tee-totaller (Laughter) and so forth. But I think that what those stylistic differences tend to obscure is the overall direction in which Russia has continued to move. Of which I would argue making lots of allowances for ups and downs and zigs and zags…is it a direction that we in the Russians should want to see. But another thing that President Putin has done…partly by the way through his style of leadership…but also because the economy has turned around a bit…is that he has administered a massive dose…sort of a regular drip dose of Valium to the Russian body politics. Which during the years that Steve and I were working on that country was undergoing a more or less non-stop nervous breakdown. And that was hard on us who had to deal with them…but it was a whole lot harder or Russians who lived in that country. And I think this concept of what the Russians call normalist or normalcy…which is a kind of a modest sounding noun in English…but means a lot to Russians who’d been living through all of the turmoil there. But there is an important difference between Putin and Yeltsin…and that is that Yeltsin was expelled from the leadership. And turned out and sent out into the wilderness by Gorbachev. So when he came back he was an anti-Communist…and wanted…if he did nothing else during his time in the Kremlin…in the White House and in the Kremlin…it was going to be to drive a stake through the Communist Party of the Russian Federation. Putin’s career trajectory has been rather seamless and uni-directional and never had that kind of trauma. And he’s much more comfortable with sort of making the best of those vestiges of the old regime that are still around.
BT: Steve, can I just ...
SS: Quickly, Bill…and then let’s ...
BT: What I wanted to say is that Khrushchev acted vis a vis the west as if his policy was be my friend or I’ll break your neck. That’s something Adam Gulan once described it as. When Yeltsin came in he in many ways acted the same way. He was very difficult for you to cope with, Strobe…I say this based on reading your book. And I think one of the big differences was that Clinton was able…since the Cold War was over…to be as patient with Yeltsin as Eisenhower and Kennedy were not with Khrushchev. And what Putin has done…who’s come in and by this opening tour of the west…has sort of changed the name of the game. You don’t have to decide whether you’re going to be patient or not patient…because he’s reached out in a much more radical way. Even if he ends up making difficulties for us over Iraq.
SS: Over here.
Audience: Pranay Gupte from Present Tense magazine. In the light of the dismantling of the Soviet Union…whatever happened to the old time allies of the Soviet Union. Those countries in the developing world. Particularly those countries in which the Russians…the Soviet (Inaudible)…movements of terrorism, for example. Clearly, those movements are still alive in parts of India for example. Pakistan…Indonesia. Whatever happened to those relationships. And how do you think Putin is handling them.
ST: I can’t help but recall an interview I had with a member of the Polit Bureau named Puliter Dimochev…I was interviewing him about Khrushchev. And when we were finished he said may I interview you. And I was puzzled but I said sure. And he said what I want to know is…why did you try to destroy us when we were saving you from the hordes of the east. It was a kind of racist remark. But it cast a light…a different light on which you’re referring to…that effort of the Soviets in their time to reach out and make alliances with third world countries…particularly left leaning ones…nationalist ones…revolutionary minded ones. And what he said was what we were really doing was keeping these people busy. Keeping them under control. Those we were most closely allied with. Even when there might have been terrorists we were able to exert some control over them. And so my…this isn’t a full answer to your question…but it’s really my reaction to it. It’s to point to the ways in which the change from Soviet to post-Soviet has, you know, a way of removed what was a kind of restraining…what you might see as a kind of restraining influence in some part of that world as exercised from Moscow during the years when we thought it was anything but restraining. In fact, it was.
BT: And some of those movements are now just sources of enormous hilarity in Moscow. You know, the remaining little groups of Marxists/Leninists…this or that…you know, are in the jungles of this or that part of the world. That is of no interest to them anymore. The old state clients of the Soviet Union are of interest if…they’re prepared to pay some of their old debts. And mostly they’re not…so the Russians have written down…or written off a lot of that debt. Russian policy toward what we used to call the third world is mostly commercial policy now. When some country in Latin America is thinking about buying jet fighters the Russians want to be there. And they’re actually pretty competitive. They usually make it just to the very last stage. And then…although I think they’re actually…they’re now…they were the number two arms seller in the world…they had sold about five billion dollars last year. And their third world markets are what they depend on.
BT: My life work here took me to India for the much of the last couple of weeks. And I was very struck by the extent to which the Cold War is finally over in South Asia. And when the aforementioned Mr. Primakov was promoting the idea several years ago about a sort of strategic triangle that would put Russia, India and China together against the great (Inaudible)…the Indians made pretty clear they had no interest in that. Even thought they had of course during the Cold War had been relegated by our side to some extent to the Soviet side. And as for Pakistan, Moscow is very interested in cultivating relations with that country. And of course President Musharraf has recently been in Moscow. And Moscow’s motive is very clear…they want Pakistan’s help in dealing with the soft underbelly and their Islamic problem.
SS: China and India are 80 percent of Russian arms sales. And they…but the Russians have some interesting partners in these sales. They want to be part of an Israeli awacs sale to India. The kind of sale that the United States blocked when the Israelis wanted to sell to China. The Russians are providing the aircraft and the Israelis are providing the radar. Yeah.
Audience: John Train. I was talking to a Putin associate fairly recently whom I won’t specify on the record. But can tell you if you’re interested…and asked him why if the Russians were seeking good relations they didn’t turn over to us the formulation of the enhanced small pox virus that Biopreparat had developed and may have turned over to the Iraqis. Now his answer was surprising. He said that whole effort was under the control of the military. And the Kremlin didn’t have enough control over the military to make it happen. Would you discuss that…assuming it’s true.
BT: I’ll take a crack at it on the condition that Steve jump into it too. Because one of the vexing issues that worked on together in the government was of course the transfer of lethal Russian technology…particularly to Iran. I can believe there’s some degree of truth to that. But it’s also a question of Putin and other people at the top not wanting to test the proposition too far. Not wanting to push the issue too far internally.
SS: I was in Moscow with a group of Americans talking to Putin’s foreign policy aids. Or (Inaudible) couple months ago. And Judy Miller…who was with us…who’s a fiend on this issue…said, you know, grill them on BW. And he was taking notes (Laughs) avidly…you know, essentially being schooled on the issue. Judy got very interested and was thinking maybe something was going to come of this. And at the end he sort of shrugged his shoulders (Laughs)…I’m not promising you I can do anything on this. There’s a kind of despair among people at the top…or at the center…about their ability to get into those old un-de-Sovietized institutions.
ST: Just one other thought. I mean, there was some conventional wisdom not too long ago that one of the things that we have to worry about with Putin is he’s going to be too strong…that was going to be a kind of a Pinochet figure. I’m not sure about that. I think there’s quite a bit of evidence that there are large parts of that extraordinarily complex establishment that he has not mastered. And may never master. And that he’s got to be very careful about.
SS: Jim ...
Audience: Jim Hoge from the Council. The Bush administration has appeared to be quite startled at how little cooperation they have gotten…or at least they have expected to get from the Chinese on the North Korean problem. But there are press reports that the Chinese at least behind the scenes have been trying to be of some help…or to cool things a bit. But as far as Russia’s concerned…if the press accounts are to be believed…there’s been absolutely no activity at all. If that’s true is it just a measure of how weak Russia is…at least in this part of the world…or is there some other reason why they have stayed…kept such a distance from this particular problem.
BT: Well, Jim, I think the Russian…I believe this is right…I think the Russian deputy foreign minister responsible for the area has been to Pyong Yang since this current crisis got started. But I also think Russian influence over the North Koreans is pretty modest. And whatever influence they have they will probably use. Just as Putin himself went to Pyong Yang before the Okinawa Eight Summit in 2000…in order to try to head off a crisis then. But I don’t…I think the Chinese are just much more important to the North Koreans and the Russians recognize that.
SS: If I can just add one thing to that…the Russian view is…only Americans can solve this problem. They acknowledge the weakness in a way (Laughs)…it’s not a deal that involves us they say. It’s got to involve the Americans. And so why are we bothering. Of course what American policy asks for is that the Russians indicate how serious the consequences would be if there were no serious…if there were no constructive approach to…you know, giving up their nuclear weapons. I think more broadly the Russians don’t actually consider this their problem. They just…whether you want to call that a free rider problem or not they think somehow it’ll either be solved or not without any great contribution one way or the other by them. Yeah.
Audience: David Mopis. I wonder if Strobe in particular would comment on Russia’s outlook in terms of the economy…the economy in rural areas…maybe those concerns that people had of it breaking up in the past…the Russian parties breaking up. In other words how weak is it outside of Moscow and the (Inaudible) ...
ST: I remember when I went with…including with a number of Council members to fly to Guadobostok(?) for the first time shortly after it opened up. And this might have been either late 1990 or early ‘91. So it was still a Soviet period. And the one thing…everybody we met in Guadobostok agreed on was that Moscow was worthless and very far away. And what they were interested in…even though ethnically of course that part of Russia is very Slavic and largely Russian…they didn’t seem to have any sense of identity with the central government…they were just eager for any kind of association they could have with South Korea and Japan. I’m told by people who have been out there recently that there’s still…that that is still true. But you don’t see that thing translated in anything that could be called a secessionists movement…so it’s really in the category of kind of grumbling rather than real politics. But I think ...
SS: Bill ...
BT: As a Khrushchev biographer my ears ...
ST: What I would talk about is this issue you raise of relationship between the center and the regions. In fact, I think if you’re looking for one way to describe what Putin is doing domestically…and I think he would use this term too…is strengthening the state…and this fits with de-Yeltsinization. His attitude…and not just his…there are western observers who thought the same thing. Thought that Yeltsin had sort of gone too far in allowing the regions to run amuck. The governors. And what Putin’s been doing is reasserting control by the center over the regions in various ways. The appointment of Prefex(?) who run seven sort of super regions that are over all the rest. The changing of the way in which representatives to the upper house of the Soviet parliament are chosen. Taking away the control over those people by the governors. So Putin is trying in that way to exert control by the center. Whether he’s achieving it though…or whether he’s achieving it to the degree that he’d like to is not quite so clear…which gets us back again to the question of really how strong he is.
SS: Yeah. Now there’s an appropriate questioner. (Laughter)
Audience: Well, I try. The question is ...
SS: You have to identify yourself, Nina (Laughter) ...
Audience: Nina Khruscheva. The question is to both Bill Taubman and Strobe Talbott. Bill, you mentioned that Khrushchev when he was making decisions…he was mostly relying on his intuition…while Putin is more strategic and practical in his behavior. I wanted to refer…and maybe ask you both to compare those instances right after the Moscow hostage crisis this November…Putin almost right after that…Putin was in Europe and he was asked a question about Chechnya and his remark…when I read it first in English I thought it was a mis-translation…I cannot even repeat it…it was something completely unacceptable for a state politician to speak about. It kind of reminded me very much…and probably a lot of other people…the very famous event in 1960…the shoebanging at the United Nations…because that event was obviously seen as something that was an instinct. And this one…by many was thought as an instinct. Although I did a lot of commentaries where the events were compared…and inherently were seen as highly calculated. I would like you comment both…and you to comment on both Khrushchev and Putin…and what does it mean for policies.
BT: I can’t resist since Nina Khrushcheva has asked the question…I can’t resist the opportunity to thank her and indeed the whole Khrushchev family for all the help they gave me…without which I wouldn’t have been able to write the book. And I can’t help pointing to a long, long footnote I have about the shoebanging. (Laughter) Which was partly prompted by Mr. Talbott…who told them ...
SS: (Inaudible) on the shoebanging (Laughter) ...
BT: A short comment on a long footnote. Mr. Talbott told me he was not convinced that the shoe was actually banged. He had words from a source (Inaudible) that it might only have been brandished. So at his urging I found that source in a nursing home in New Jersey (Laughter)…and his wife was not in a nursing home…this is a former Times correspondent…James Feron…who was present in the hall…and he swore to me that the shoe was not banged. It was brandished and it was placed on the table. So if you want to clarify that I refer you to my footnote. (Laughter)
SS: But Putin was really gross about…in Chechnya ...
ST: Well, here I would say that Putin’s grossness is calculated and Khrushchev’s grossness was spontaneous. I think Khrushchev just exploded…and he could be as gross as…I’ve got some grossness in the book too actually (Laughter)…a fair amount of it. But I have the feeling he just exploded when he did so. In Putin’s case I think it’s part of his effort to portray himself in a way that gets votes from the great unwashed of Russia.
SS: I think you just sold a few books, Bill. (Laughter)
BT: I had the chance to deal with Vladimir Putin in I guess three capacities he held before he became the President of Russia. And to put it mildly I didn’t think he’d ever be the President of Russia. But one of the things that struck me was the contrast between his overall cool and control…there was something almost eerie about the smoothness…and I would add the skill with which he played other people. On the one hand…and what happened with him if you said either of two words…Chechnya or Sheverdnadze (Laughter)…he would lose it. And I saw that happen a number of times. It happened in presidential meetings as well. This is more than just a matter of playing to what he knows are hot button issues. In the case of Chechnya because of terrorism…in the case of Shrevardnadze because so many people that he wants to cultivate regard Shreverdnadze not as one of the great figures of the 20th Century…but as one of the killers of the old Soviet Union and a trader. And just one word on Noroffs(?)…the horror in the theater. I do think that while the obvious immediate reaction and effect of that catastrophe was to steal Russians for a long and hard fight…which considered…continued by the way with horrendous veracity in Chechnya today…but it’s Bishop Barkley’s tree falling in the forest that nobody is seeing…including the OSCE…I think that probably will hasten the day when Chechnya will in some sense be cut free from Russia. I do not think that the Russian body politic is going to live with that festering sore forever. And that…call is sad or ironic…or even tragic respect…the 19 young people who committed the takeover…who brought off the takeover of the theater may succeed in what they intended to do.
SS: Just two sentences about Putin’s vocabulary. Even on other subjects he does kind of make a point of sort of studied vulgarity from time to time to show people that he’s not just the junior…or the middle level staffer that he seems.
BT: I think we should also offer…anybody who wants to…we’ll have a little caucus over at the (Inaudible)…we will tell you what this unspeakable thing was that he said after the (Laughter) ...
Audience: You may not want to hear what I’m going to say. I understand that the shoe that…I understand the shoe was not…My name is Cecil Olmstead. I understand that shoe was not Mr. Khrushchev’s shoe…that he borrowed it from one of his aids. (Laughter) Nobody really ever checked the size of the shoe…length and width. (Laughter) But I will turn to something…you’ve been talking about personalities…but I think the subject is Russia. One of you said…or in your earlier remarks…that Russia’s success depended somewhat on foreign investment. As I read what is available in this country regarding that…there are a huge number of books an investor must go through in order to make an investment in Russia. And I wonder if the climate for investment…and particularly the protection of investments and the access to investments…is showing any sign of improvement so that once we come out of the economic bunk we’re in there might be capital available for foreign investments. Thank you.
BT: Not much. Not much. I think there’s a large rule of law issue in Russia…and there’s a very specific rule of law issue in Russia. And that is that they are still a very long way from putting in place the legal and the regulatory structures and the whole economic culture that’s necessary for…if Russia is going to retain capital its own entrepreneurs generate…not to mention attract anything like what they need from the outside. I think it’s a huge challenge. And if they stop riding a boom in oil prices they’re going to come up hard against that.
SS: We had a roundtable at the Council last month…and which the embassy…the energy attached embassy Moscow was asked…is there any success story in energy investment in the whole post-Soviet period if Russia. Answer…no. But that was before BP’s big deal. And I think you’d have to take into account the billions that they decided to put on the table as a sign that under certain circumstances…there’s either always a greater fool…or there’s a readiness on the part of the big companies with big opportunities to get in and ignore some of the rule of law issues…but other than that there has…the investment that has been going into Russia…foreign investment…has been mostly European and it’s been mostly in smaller operations…you know, German food processors and the like. We’ve got time for a couple more very quick ones there.
Audience: Alan Heiman…Columbia Presbyterian. With respect to Iraq…how does Mr. Putin view the calculus of going with or going against our administration?
BT: I think he’s already made that calculus…and he wants in some sense to go with our administration. But not if it means going down with our administration…as it were in the Security Council. (Laughter) His calculus is pretty simple. And he had representatives in Washington not long ago…said we have no ideological stake there whatsoever. We have a commercial stake that’s much more likely to be viable in a post-Saddam regime. So we’re not going to be a problem for you on this. It’s simply a matter of biding the time and see how it plays out in the Security Council…that means keeping an eye on France.
SS: Our last question to Dick Garwin.
Audience: Council on Foreign Relations. Is any problem of the control of the Putin over the institutions…that is over a minatom(?)…in regard to completing the reactor in Iran and building several more…or are we just not satisfied with guarantees that they might give us in repossessing the spent fuel and in preventing the acquisition of bomb materials from these power producing reactors.
SS: Strobe is handing this one off to me (Laughs)…the Russians are in a really interesting moment in their policy toward Iran…because the Iranians are just about to do a North Korea on them. The Russians have said for a long time…oh, you know, this could never happen in Iran. But it clearly is now…and it’s even clear that the Iranians have not actually agreed to give back the spent fuel for the reactors that they’re talking about building. They said they want the full nuclear fuel cycle. And that is going to oblige the Russians to say either you were right all along…or this is a commercial deal we can’t turn down. And it’s unclear which it is. But they are…the embarrassment factor for the Russians has gone way up in the past couple of weeks. Interestingly, it has come at just the time that George Tenet gave the Russians not a clean bill of health…but significantly increased the praise for Russian policies toward Iran in his annual report to the Congress. So two slightly different trends there. Slightly great American satisfaction…tremendous Russian choice ahead.
ST: What would happen though Steve if post-Iraq…assuming that Iraq goes well in some sense…the United States were to kind of go after Iran as one of the other two members of the axis of evil…also presumably going after North Korea…what would that mean for U.S. (Inaudible) ...
SS: Well, a lot of Russians say you haven’t offered us enough on this one. You know? I don’t know how they’re going to choose here…because there’s a lot more at stake for them. They tend to see the relationship with Iran differently from that with Iraq. And they tend to think that the economic stakes are greater for them. So they will not jump on that bandwagon readily. But the Iranians are making it tough for them. Okay…I think we have to call this to a close. I want to thank our two marquee idols for a terrific session.
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