Real Live Redbaiters
Next week, George W. Bush and Vladimir Putin will meet for the last time as the presidents of the United States and Russia. Simultaneous, the three potential Bush successors are preparing to establish relations with Moscow independently. To find out more about future Russian-American relations, Kommersant special correspondent Mikhail Zygar and RIA Novosti journalist Nargiz Asadova met the foreign policy advisers of the three main candidates for U.S. president – Madeleine Albright, Zbigniew Brzezinski and James Woolsey, all of whom in Russia are considered Russophobes.
You Have to Let Them Be Russians
“Let me tell you about my brooches. I always wear a brooch with a meaning. For example, when I went for negotiations with Saddam Hussein, I wore a snake brooch. Because Saddam called me snake,” Madeline Albright scans the audience with her eyes. The former secretary of state now works as a professor at Georgetown University in Washington. But she has not left politics completely.
“As you see, I'm wearing a turtle pin now. I just met with the foreign minister of Israel. The turtle is a sign of the speed with which Middle Eastern negotiations are proceeding.”
The audience smiles and applauds. Albright is standing on a special stand that allows her to reach the microphone at the university, and she reads from her new book Memo to the President Elect. Everyone can guess whom she had in mind when she wrote the book. The former secretary of state in the Clinton administration is now the moan foreign policy advisor to presidential candidate Hillary Clinton.
Albright's entire book is dedicated to “how to restore America's reputation and world leadership.” Hillary Clinton's advisor and old friend thinks the Bush administration has caused a catastrophe in U.S. foreign policy. “If Europeans in former times associated the words United States of America' with freedom and the Marshall Plan, now it's Abu Ghraib prison and Guantanamo Bay naval base,” she says. Therefore, the first point of the Albright plan is to withdraw the forces from Iraq as soon as possible. Unlike her friend Hillary Clinton, who voted for the beginning of the military operation in the Senate in 2002, Albright has been opposed to the war from the very beginning.
Albright does not pay a lot of attention to Russia. It is important to her that Russia cooperate with the U.S. on key points – Iran, North Korea, the war on terrorism. If there are no problems with that, on all the rest, Albright all but admits, the U.S. is ready to close its eyes.
“That is, you think Russia shouldn't be criticized for its domestic policy, for violations of human rights, for instance?” we ask at the end of her presentation.
“Of course, I think our relations should be sincere and open. We should tell each other what we think directly. We should have no secrets or innuendos that would interfere with our common business – the war on terrorism or nuclear nonproliferation.”
In her book, Albright recalls the words spoken half a century ago by secretary of state George Kennan that “Give them time; let them be Russians; let them work out their internal problems in their own manner… There is nothing less understandable to foreigners, nothing in which foreign interference can do less good.”
“I never wanted to follow that advice, but it seems to me that Kennan, who had a very low opinion of America's ability to transform others, was somehow right,” Albright says.
The former secretary of state speaks evasive about the expansion of NATO. “Back in the 90s, I spent a lot of time convincing President Yeltsin that the world had changed and NATO too. Today's NATO does not pose a threat to Russia. On the contrary, the alliance could be its partner. Russia could become a member of NATO itself, if it wanted. Somehow it was possible to convince Boris Yeltsin that we are sincere when we say that. But it doesn't sink in with Vladimir Putin.”
“What do you think, should Georgia and Ukraine become NATO members in the near future?”
“NATO is a political organization, not a charitable organization. Naturally, I think I think the countries that are ready to, that want to, in which there is no internal conflict over it, should join NATO. And I am sure that the Russians should not have any right to a veto. The decision on the admission of any country to the alliance should be made by NATO and the country itself.”
Albright is skeptical about the creation of a missile defense system and states openly that the plan should be reconsidered when there is a new president. Russia, in her opinion, “is not a friend and not an enemy of the U.S. It is a unique power that deserves respect, but it cannot be trusted fully, because one of the strongest instincts of the Russians is not to trust the Americans.”
In May of this year, Albright turns 71, so she is unlikely to return to the office of secretary of state, even if her friend Hillary Clinton returns to the White House. However, her influence in American politics is growing, she has practically no doubt about it.
“See you soon,” she says on departure, winking flirtatiously.
Criticism Should Not Be Excessive
“We have 15 minutes. How may questions do you have?” Zbigniew Brzezinski begins the conversation abruptly. His assistant warned us that the 80-year-old former national security advisor in the Jimmy Carter administration had his working day planned to the last minute.
“Dr. Brzezinski, you are so well known in Russia that we have a great number of questions for you.”
“All the same, how many questions do you have?” he asks relentlessly.
“Well, let's say a dozen.”
“Excellent. We'll make it. I don't like long answers,” Brzezinski answers, popping a hard candy into his mouth. “ I caught a cold on one of my trips and lozenges help me control the coughing fits.”
Brzezinski, in spite of his age, continues to travel extensively. He is a counselor and trustee of the influential Center for Strategic and International Studies and he lectures at Johns Hopkins University. In addition, he sometimes accompanies presidential candidate Barack Obama in his travels around the country.
Brzezinski has supported Obama since last summer. He stated that the senator from Illinois was the only candidate who stood for a radical change in U.S. foreign policy, the military campaign in Iraq first and foremost.
The Illinois senator and the author of The Grand Chessboard first appeared together in September 2007 in Iowa. Brzezinski introduced Obama to the audience, and then Obama spoke about his foreign policy program. His main position is the complete withdrawal of American forces from Iraq by the end of 2009. His main long-range policy is a rejection of military force in favor of “soft power,” the economic and cultural influence of the U.S. on the rest of the world.
Although Brzezinski is considered in Russia practically the main Russophobe among the American political elite, in the U.S., he is not considered a specialist on Russia. Rather, his area of expertise is U.S. geopolitical strategy. As national security advisor to Jimmy Carter, Brzezinski was simultaneously busy normalizing relations with China and preparing the Camp David Accords between Egypt and Israel and the agreement under which the U.S. relinquished control of the Panama Canal.
Be that as it may, the last article Brzezinski wrote was called “Putin and Beyond,” published in The Washington Quarterly.
"The West's strategy should not be built upon making things pleasant or convenient for Russia. Making Russia a partner at any cost is not what the West needs today,” he states, summing up his article.
Brzezinski said he does not believe that there will be liberalization soon in Russia under President Dmitry Medvedev. He compares that power structure in Russia as it has taken shape since the March 2 election with that of Fascist Italy.
“The head of state was nominally the king, but Mussolini set policy. Putin is also considered the national leader. He chose Medvedev himself. The logical conclusion is that Putin will be on top in the near future, and Medvedev will do what he tells him to do.”
Brzezinski considers criticizing Russia completely useless, however.
“I think that, if the future president of the United States makes any critical remarks, the criticism should be moderate. It should not be excessive, it should not be rhetorical.
Brzezinski is an opponent of the missile defense system in Europe. “A Democratic government will be much more skeptical of the creation of any elements of a missile defense system. I think they will reconsider that position or look at it more carefully,” he said. Brzezinski, like all Democrats, is opposed to a military solution to the Iran crisis, and so protection from Iranian ballistic missiles for Europe seems counterproductive.
Hearing that he is called a Russophobe in Russia and thought to be the developer of a plan to divide the country into parts, Brzezinski's eyes flash with annoyance. “Show me the place in any of my books where I wrote about that,” he snaps.
Brzezinski calls himself an optimist in Russian-American relations and says the younger generation of Russian and Americans will find much in common as soon as “the dinosaurs of the Cold War” die out.
The chief specialist on Russian-American relations in the Brzezinski family, and also on the Obama staff, is Brzezisnki's oldest son Mark. In 1999 and 2000, Mark Brzezinski was director for Russia and Eurasia of the national security council under president Bill Clinton. "It's possible that Putinism may be the last gasp of the old regime, and it may well be the case that within the next decade, the Putin-Medvedev government might be replaced by a new generation of Russians, many of them who are trained in the west…who are not products of the KGB and more open to the West." Mark Brzezinski said recently. He will most likely occupy a high-profile post in the administration, if Obama is elected president.
Engaged in our conversation, Brzezinski completely forgets about our 15-minute time limit.
“Don't you think the younger generation of Russians has a much warmer attitude toward American?” he asked toward the end of the conversation.
“No, it seems to us that the young have an even worse attitude toward America than those over 30.”
“That can't be. I hope you are wrong. Write me, please, later and tell me what the reaction to this interview is, okay?”
Russians Don't Plan to Give Their Lives for Their Ideology
“Do you know when the Col War ended? It was at the end of the 50s, after the XX Congress of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union. Even then there wasn't a single person in the Soviet leadership who believed fanatically in the ideals of communism and was ready to die for them. In the 70s and 80s, I took part in strategic arms limitation talks with the Russians. It was about then that I understood that they were bureaucrats with whom you could talk to calmly over a bottle of Chablis in Vienna or Geneva and barter over mutual concessions. They did not plan to give up their lives for their ideology.”
We are in one of the buildings of the U.S. Senate. James Woolsey, CIA director in the Clinton administration, is speaking to analysts, diplomats and generals in a small auditorium. In the same building, several floors lower, is Vice President Dick Cheney's office, as well as those of all the presidential candidates. Woolsey is the closest advisor to Republican candidate John McCain. He has been the top consultant on foreign policy on the McCain staff for two years now.
Woolsey says the Soviet Union stopped posing a mortal threat to humanity after it lost faith in it ideology. He reasons that a new cold war is impossible, because today's Russia has no ideology that it can spread in the world. Nor does China have it. Only Iran does, and Woolsey considers that the main threat to America.
“In Iran, there is one Ayatollah Mesbah-Yazdi, a mentor to President Ahmadinejad. His views are well known. He is a fanatic. He thinks that, if you killed about third of the people on the Earth, and another third dies as a consequence, the pain of the world will be enough to bring on the Final Judgment. Then the hidden 12th Imam Mahdi will return to his place with his helper Jesus Christ and hold court. Many Americans, who are used to looking at things practically, say, no normal person could believe that. If a small group of crazy people believe that, why pay attention to them? I have an answer for those people. It's just two words: Mein Kampf. If Churchill had read Hitler's book in time, He would have understood that it was the ideological basis for the extermination of the Jews. Therefore, we should take ideology seriously.”
Woolsey is one of the most authoritative of the American hawks. He is one of the neoconservatives, who are convinced that America should bring freedom to the world, whether the world wants it or not. The “neocons” are extremely influential in the Bush administration, and may remain so after him. If McCain becomes the next president, Woolsey has a chance of becoming secretary of state. Another high-profile advisor to McCain is the famous Henry Kissinger, secretary of state in the Nixon and Ford administrations. He was one of the first to support the Republican candidate and sometimes accompanies him on the campaign trail. Unlike Woolsey, Kissinger is an adherent of the principle of Realpolitik, “realistic policy,” the essence of which is cooperation with influential powers in the world in a pragmatic approach to reaching the important geopolitical goals of the U.S., leaving ethical principles aside.
“As Sen. McCain says, the use of force against Iran is the worst case scenario of developments in the region, but there is one that is worse. That is appearance of nuclear weapons in Iran!” Woolsey exclaims. The audience nods knowingly. Practically all of McCain' supporters are convinced that a military operation against Iran is unavoidable, and the latest American intelligence report, indicating that Iran closed down its military nuclear program in 2003, is no argument for them. “They haven't stopped their uranium enrichment program. That is the main thing. When they complete that work, they will be within months of creating nuclear warheads,” Woolsey says.
The conservative elite gathered there in the Senate building think that Iran will not attack the U.S., but rather its allies Israel and Europe. Therefore, the missile defense system in Europe is a key element of their policy.
We ask Woolsey how he sees future relations between the U.S. and Russia. It appears he assesses them exclusively in light of the future war with Iran.
“So far, Russia has not shown its willingness to cooperate with us on the Iran question,” he says. “I don't see any successes in negotiations with Putin on Iran. But if Condoleezza Rice says that Russia is constructive, maybe there's something we don't know. Maybe in private conversations Putin says some things that he can't say publicly. So far Russia has behaved constructively.”
In closing, Woolsey said, “I would like to remind you that the U.S. has faced five empires in the 20th century – the German in the First World War, the Axis countries in the Second, the Soviet Union in the Cold War – and where are they now? They've disappeared. And we're still here.”
The American elite has almost never been in such accord in relation to Russia. Whatever other disagreements there are between the Democrats and the Republicans, they almost all say that Russia is not a friend and not an enemy. They do not seem to want to teach Russia anything, first because they see it is useless, and second because the have better things to do.
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The urgings of the Brzezinskis and Albrights
Russian politicans have responded to the redbaiters moire than once
Dmitry Rogozin, chairman of the State Duma Committee on Foreign Affairs*: “If I were a Ukrainian citizen, and my wife is Ukrainian, and I lived in Kiev and spoke Ukrainian in childhood at some time, I can say that, if some frail old woman came and started to teach me how to live, I may reaction would have to be censored.” ( March 24, 2002, answering a question from the Ukrainian television channel Inter on Madeleine Albright's visit to Ukraine).
Vladimir Zhirinovsky, leader of the LDPR: “Albright has some nerve. She is a pensioner. But no, she interferes; Ukraine concerns her. I am not a pensioner. I am the leader of a political party, a parliamentary party, a constitutional status, I can express my positions. But she's retired. Who is she? And she says, I am concerned, we will give money…' She openly says that they will give bribes. She thinks that, as a citizen of the United States, she has the right to do that. But I have the right to expose such actions tied to bribery and threats.” ( October 22, 2004, at a press conference in Kiev).
Vladislav Surkov, deputy chief of the Russian presidential executive staff: “I am not talking about Orange Revolutions and the activism of humanitarian institutions. Everyone knows that Freedom House is headed by Woolsey, who was once head of the CIA. Probably only an idiot could believe in the humanitarian mission of such an agency.” ( May 17, 2005, speaking at a closed session of the general council of Business Russia).
Yury Luzhkov, mayor of Moscow: “In answer to the urgings of the Brzezinskis and Albrights to divide Russia, we should preserve the population and improve conditions for its existence, strengthen the country, give people hope.” ( September 27, 2005, at a meeting of the Moscow branch of United Russia).
Vladimir Putin, President of Russia: “You talk about public opinion. Public opinion in Russia is in favor of increasing our security. Where did you get a public opinion that we should fully disarm and then, according to some theoreticians, such as Brzezinski, divide our territory into three or four states? If there is such a public opinion, I would disagree with it.” ( June 4, 2007, in an interview with foreign journalists).
Vladimir Putin, President of Russia: “I am unfamiliar with that statement by Ms. Albright, but I know that some politicians have ideas like that in their heads. In my view, it is political erotica, which may bring pleasure to some people, but is unlikely to have any positive result.” ( October 18, 2007, during a live question-and-answer broadcast, commenting on alleged statements by Albright that it was “unfair” for Russia to have the natural resources of Siberia).
*Politicians' posts are indicated as of the time of their statements.
Mikhail Zygar, Nargiz Asadova
All the Article in Russian as of Mar. 24, 2008
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