And hes written a terrific book on the end of the cold war the bri principal author of the 9 11 Commission Report and hes writing a book on decisions for war in ways that illuminate old crises and old decisions like going to war in 1898 or wilson going to war, reassessing these decisions so were looking forward to phillips next book. At the same time hes doing about a dozen other things none of us can keep track of and sometimes we dont know about. So phillip. Thank you. Thank you. Im sorry to say we need to wait for james wilson to show up and so hes probably out there somewhere having a good conversation. If we can send the search party out. The state department is always late to the table. [ laughter ] one of the messages of this. So far its been a great panel. [ laughter ] its rather intimidating when youre sitting next to somebody who can refer to his book. We had grandchildren here they could sit on it. [ laughter ] oh, here he is. Glad you could join us. Thank you. All right, lets go ahead and get started then. This is a panel thats just covering the period only of the great second crisis phase of the cold war in the early 1980s extending to the end of the cold war itself into the beginning of the early 1990s and the disintegration of the soviet union. And with a perspective on u. S. And russia relations, well start, actually, with a perspective from the point of view of the Reagan Administration with james wilson. James . Thank you, philip. Shall i go up to the sure. Well, thank you so much, phillip, and i was looking through a few files the other day and came upon a quote that i think might apply to the subject at hand and that is the problems that bedevil American Foreign policy are not like headaches. With those, you take a powder and they are gone. Instead, they are like the pain of earning a living. They will stay with us until death. We have got to understand that all our lives the danger, the uncertainty, the need for alertness, for effort, for discipline will be upon us. But we are in for it. And the only real question is whether we shall know it soon enough. Now i think that that line as dean acheson said in june, 1946 at the harvard club of boston applied very well to that moment. It applied very much in 1998 when strobe talbot, deputy secretary talbot, sent it on to secretary Madeleine Albright and it very much applies to the topic weve been discussing. Incidental incidentally, it probably also applies to mel lefler and me, or his perception of me 12 years ago when i walked into his office and then six years ago trying to finish up at the university of virginia in the history department, was living at his house with no potential Firm Prospect of employment but its all worked out, im extremely grateful to the uva history department, to my dear and beleaguered adviser and to the Miller Center for having me and for having me back. Now, to the point that jeremy said about common knowledge, i think that what the Miller Center does in terms of the president ial projects, the recordings, the oral history, is tremendously important in this era where it is genuinely difficult to figure out what is real and what is not, what is authentic history, what is fake news. Im extremely fortunate to work with my colleagues in the office of the historian and particularly my colleague Elizabeth Charles with whom i work very closely on the u. S. soviet volumes in the Foreign Relations of the United States series to be working on a similar project that puts forward i would say about 90 of the top level conversations and internal memoranda of u. S. Policymakers from 1917 to 1991 when it comes to u. S. And russia. I should say that the views expressed here are my own and do not necessarily reflect those of the department of state or the u. S. Government and with that i think i would pick up on the heroic factor that vlad zubok and others have raised in the last day and to talk a little bit about what i think the lessons potential lessons are of Ronald Reagan and the soviet union when it comes to u. S. russia today and in the future and simply put, i would say dont wait for a gorbachev. Reagan didnt. Theres a common misperception at the time later and even today that reagan came into office focusing entirely on building up u. S. And allies strength, deferred negotiations until a new type of soviet leader emerged. In fact reagan attempted early on to engage with brezhnev and his successors Yuri Andropov and constantine chinyenko. And given the role of history in well, the role of history in the lives of the russians he was dealing with later he wrote to chinye in,ko in february of 1984 i have reflected at something length on the tragedy and scale of those losses. Surely they must affect your thinking today. Neither i nor the American People hold any offensive intentions toward you or the soviet people when it came to policy decisions, i think reagan put out on the table zero option on intermediate Nuclear Forces treat y treaty. He put that out in 1981 and there was a wide perception that it was purely cynical because the u. S. And nato did not have pershing two. A lot of people around him and nato allies whose leaders put their political careers on the line were not so excited to go forward with gorbachev. Chernen he put together a much more Ambitious Program when it came to the cold war to the much more destabilizing missiles, icbms and submarine launched ballistic missiles. In march of 83 when reagan announced the Strategic Defense Initiative he said he called upon the Scientific Community to turn their great talents to the cause of mankind in world peace to give us the means of rendering these Nuclear Weapons impotent and obsolete. This one big idea that went against conventional thinking throughout the cold war set the terms for the big debates between u. S. And soviet leaders, even before gorbachev came to office. Now in the summer of 1984 when and this is a moment that applies to today where i think its fair to say theres a pessimistic view of the next ten years with the russians but in the fall of 84 when there was no strategic arms negotiations going on, the soviets walked out of geneva the fall before, theres a wonderful memo that i discovered to George Schulz about the prospects for arms control in the second term and it was written by a magnificent Public Servant named james timby and he started out by saying it is unreasonable to expect consensus to emerge with the u. S. Arms control and National Security field and for that to happen simultaneously with a consensus to emerge in the soviet arms control and National Security field therefore what we need to do is to set the terms for what we would like to see five or ten years down the road with a sense of realism about what is possible. But if youre simply just waiting for both sides to grind through the bureaucratic process, even with the best staffers, thats not going to suffice. As we know in march of 85, gorbachev comes in just before that. The nuclear and space arms talks had commenced in geneva and they persisted throughout the gorbachev era and just to the b clear, we dont forget about the arms reduction achievements during this period, you have inf in 87, you have the Nuclear Risk Reduction center has completed, you have an upgrade to the hotline, you have the strategic arms reduction treaty, the open skies treaty, stark two, the conventional forces in europe treaty, the chemical weapons convention. Two very important president ial Nuclear Initiatives that are understudied and then start two. So its an extraordinary period that really gets launched during the middle of the 1980s and i think that one moment that really crystal sizes what reagan is trying to achieve after he starts to engage with gorbachev and begins to think that i can trust this guy to uphold his end of the bargain and to the great surprise of some of the people around him, theres a very evocative saturday morning meeting in january of 1986 where i think eric edelman may even have been there where there was a sense among the people around reagan, well, at geneva and their encounter he was talking about this fusion sharing technology and bush said, well, look, maybe hes just trying to get this out of his system, lets let him do this and, his ambitions were far beyond that. The letter he sends in july of 86 to gorbachev laid out this threephase agreement for the ultimate illumination of nuclear weapo weapons, even after he signs the inf treaty in december of 87 he says to his team lets go for the gold, i want to start agreement before the end of 1988 and ill just close by saying that i think theres a very theres a kind of way of looking at these individuals reagan, gorbachev, bush, shevardnadze, yeltsin through the heroic factor. And thats not to say that to acknowledge the strengths of particular ones at particular moments denigrates the contributions of others at other moments. And ill just close by something that really has fascinated me and thats the last interaction with shevardnadze and reagan in september of 1988 where reagan says look, i know i said tear down the wall at this in front of the berlin wall. I understand it had been perhaps unrealistic to have suggested that the berlin wall be torn down in its entirely. He understood that the division of germany and of berlin was a product of world war ii and the feeling on the part of the soviet union and many others that germany should never again be allowed to be the strongest and most dominant power in Central Europe and if you had said to reagan after that meeting after shevardnadze had left that, you know what, in two and a half years were going to have a reunified germany in nato i think he would have laughed and smiled and said that would be great but he also thought that would have been something that could happen in maybe 25 or 30 years. [ applause ] thank you, james. I, too, would like to join the chorus in thanking the organizers of this conference. I know that the hope of the organizers had been that we would not only recount history but try to derive some lessons for the future, for the present. Actually, ive derived some legs from the discussion about the history itself and, indeed, the subject of my book, gorbachev and his relations with the United States. So some of what im going say is diverging from my paper in order to take account of what ive heard here and how it has affected my thinking. Now usually in talking about gorbachev i begin with a famous quote from the british historian thomas carlisle, that history is but the biography of great men. And we know immediately theres something wrong with that. The word man or men. But not only that we know there are social movements and International Conditions and economic circumstances, but i think gorbachev is a classic example of a individual leader who makes a decisive impact on history and whose biography helps to explain that decisive impact. And this is partly because he had the power to have such an impact as the leader of the soviet union, of a still totalitarian or perhaps posttotalitarian society, regime in 1985. But it also has something to do with his uniqueness in the sense that he did not do what other soviet leaders in his peer group would have done. If he had, we could say that they that he was reflecting the values that they all shared or we could say that he was reacting to the demands of a situation which they all faced but, no, he acted in his own idiosyncratic way and, indeed, there were only three members of that politburo who stayed with him almost to the very end. Edward shevardnadze, not quite to the end because he did resign, his closest ally from who he grew estranged and vadim medvedev. So he was exceptional and thats what i want to underline in light of the conference so far because what struck me about many of the papers is how much continuity the papergivers have discerned in the 100 years between 1917 and 2017. Of course there have been differences. Toll lynn is not putin, communist ideology is not putins return to the trinity of the czars autocracy, nationality. There are many differents, detente was different than kruschev. But there are interesting parallels from which gorbachev and to some degree yeltsin is the exception to list a few of them ive heard mentioned here. The search of the soviet union and russia under putin for a sphere of well, we called it by different names, influence, dominan dominance, first in Eastern Europe as was talked about after the war and now in the near abroad. Several papers talk about how the soviet union and russia over and over again have seen the United States as hypocritical, proclaiming its adherence, fealty, to ideals and then ignoring them in its Foreign Policy practice. We heard several times about how the soviets and putin himself wants to be treated as an equal of the United States. Weve heard about how the liberal International Order is promoted and defended by the United States, had been a kind of obstacle to the soviets and the russians achieving what they wanted to achieve. We heard just before lunch about the parallels as well as the differences between Mika Brzezinski they ha brezhnev a putin. So it strikes me even more that gorbachev is and yeltsin to some extent to be determine in the next half of this panel is the great exception, truly exceptional, both at home in his determination to try to democratize his country and abroad in his determination to end the cold war and help to build a new world order, postcold war order which would be based as much as possible on the nonuse of force. So if he is such an exception, the question is how did the United States react to him in the person of president s reagan and bush . To what extent did it understand the exception that he was . To what extent did it try to meet him and help him as he pursued his goals . To what extent did it not do so in a way that might have hindered his efforts to obtain these exceptional goals . And in my book and to some extent in my paper i talk first about reagan and then about george bush and i describe reagan as ironically an almost perfect partner for gorbachev, strange as that seemed at the time and in retrospect after all he was an arch conservative president and gorbachev was a communist leader. Reagan talked about the evil empire. Reagan talked about Strategic Defense Initiative in the hope that that would scare the russians and yet and even when they met at geneva, when you read the transcripts of their discussions you see for the most part theyre talking past each other and theyre impatient with each other, its really rather sterile conversations and yet they both feel by the time geneva in november 1985 is over that they have made a break through and it turns out they have because a few months later at reykjavik in 1986 they come very close to an agreement we have to define what it means, they didnt define what it means but an agreement to abolish Nuclear Weapons. And in that near agreement, we see their kpcompatibility. We see the fact that they would like to get rid of Nuclear Weapons if they can. Unlike a lot of their colleagues in their governments who have come to the conclusion that Nuclear Weapons keep the peace, as horrible as their consequences would be if they were ever used. And then, of course, when reagan goes to moscow in the summer of 1988 and he is standing in the shadow of the kremlin and he is asked what about that evil empire that you used to talk about . And he says that was another time, another era. And then in december, 1988 when reagan and push and gorbachev meet at Governors Island in new york bush sounds to gash chorbas if he is going to pick up where reagan left off and even jokes to gorbachev if he doesnt do this reagan will be on the phone from california pushing him to do what he promised gorbachev he is going to do. Now, by the time 199 1 rolls around bush, i would argue, has become in some ways an even better partner for gorbachev. I think gorbachev felt more comfortable with bush. He felt as if he was dealing with a more sophisticated, experienced, intelligence politician. You cant read the conversations that took place in their summits without seeing the warmth between them. You can read people talking about how striking and startling and stunning was the connection between them and yet when you look back at 1989 when bush comes in and then you look at bush and gorbachev in 90 and 91, from gorbachevs point of view, bush is not measuring up to what reagan had been. Now, ive begun to talk about this a little bit with philip before and i talked to james about what might have been involved in achieving gorbachevs goal which was to sign a start treaty in 1989 rather than in 1991 and i realized this is very complicated but and i think in our conversation with my conversation with phillip he even didnt like the use of the word pause which is often used, the pause in the Bush Administrations dealings with gorbachev to reassess reagan and what he and schultz had accomplished with gorbachev. From gorbachevs point of view this was really damaging, frustrating, he couldnt understand it and as i look back and i expect that bob wont agree with me as phillip did not, but when i look back at it it seems to me to have been a big mistake to the extent that it actually happened and you gentlemen may decide that it didnt but when i look back and i read Brent Scowcrofts memoirs, for example, i see him saying that gorbachev was trying to smother us with kindness or that gorbachev i would find these words if i opened the door that he was more dangerous than his predecessors because he was lulling our vigilance by seeming to be so reasonable. Now, you have to remember that by this time gorbachev had transformed the soviet system, im thinking about the 19party conference in 1988 which set the stage for the mostly free elections of 89. He had discarded the ideological underpinnings of soviet Foreign Policy, he had sign one disarmament treaty inf and moved toward another, start. He announced a drastic cut in soviet conventional forces in europe. He had begun to withdraw from afghanistan although i realize hes not entirely out until the spring of 1989. He had recognized universal human rights and yet in what i understand to be the sort of summary of the fourpart strategy for coping with the gorbachev phenomenon and with the soviet union in early 189, i understand it to be first to appear confident about our purposes and agenda, this is the bush strategy, second to signal that relations with our allies with or first priority. Third, to place a higher priority on relations with Eastern Europe than with russia and fourth to promote regional stability in a place like Central America and in my paper i wrote notably absent from this list was helping gorbachev to transform his country and close out the cold war. Now i look forward to hearing, bob, your version of this and i understand there were reasons for choosing to do it this way but it seems to me in 1989, unlike 90 and 91, gorbachev was riding high and doing well and very popular and to be further strengthened by the Bush Administrations picking up where reagan had left off would have been a wonderful thing for him and in the long run who knows how it might have affected his fate. Then we get to 90 and 91, its a different world, its a different issue, germany in particular. Gorbachev amazingly, quickly accepts the reunification of germany and its membership of reunified germany in nato and he hopes that this will be part of a kind of sea change in europe in which nato and warsaw pact will lose their military nature and eventually disappear and europe will come together in what he calls a common european home, which sounds like a propaganda device but which he believed in very seriously. He even thinks that secretary of state baker on february 10, 1990, has told him that nato will not expand one inch to the east and those are bakers words but, again, theres debate about exactly what they meant. Gorbachev, i think, took it to mean that broadly that nato would not expand and yet we know that it did so against all of this background, i guess i want to bring up the words of Margaret Thatcher who posed a kind of alternative in 1991. No longer Prime Minister she urged ambassador matlock, ambassador ambassador to the soviet union, she said to tell weve got to help mikail. She says to matlock. She wishes bush had led the way the way reagan had. This is thatcher. Just a few years back, ron and i would have given the world to get what has already happened here. If the west did not come to gorbachevs aid, she added, history will not forgive us. So i guess id like to end with two questions, one about that time and one about our time and the future, was there really no chance . What could we have done . Could we have done more to help gorbachev either in 1989 when i think it might have really made a difference or in 90 and 91 when i think probably it was too late because things were coming apart in the soviet union and then going back to the conference there was talk about how someday, we dont know when, probably not soop, another heroic leader or different set of circumstances might come about when we have another chance to deal with a russian leader who wants to do things differently and then theyve been done for the most part in the last 100 years. What might we do then . How might we be prepared to help them in a way we couldnt or didnt or wouldnt back in 1989 and 1991 . So those are the two questions id like to leave to be discussed and meanwhile, i welcome our next peeker who may not agree with me. [ applause ] well, i want to join us a of those that are complimenting mel and will and the Miller Center for organizing this conversation. I personally find the ability or opportunity to try to connect some historical reflections with insights for policy is a fascinating area. For phil and me its what we try to do in our careers so i think this is a great venture and appreciate the invitation and for the historians, you may not recognize this but since i know many of you from your books, its a treat to have a chance to be here with you and i told professor taubman, im enjoying his biography of gorbachev but just to show the irony of life as i was flying back from paris yesterday i just finished 1988 so i have a feeling of where hes going in 89 and for those of you that havent read it, its a masterpiece, an extraordinary piece of work. James and i first met when i reviewed his book for the Financial Times and that perhaps is a cautionary tale. That when historians edge into the policy area, be careful, the reviewers may not be other historian bus pos but policymak. When i think of what james and his colleagues are doing in the state department, i know it will be a resource going forward. I will highlight five points today. One, economic strength and dynamism is the foundations of power. Even today at this conference weve had discussion of arms control agreements discussions of summits. I think in the connection of domestic and international linked into the economic issue and its not that im a marxist determinist, i just think economics becomes important in this story. Recall during the 1970s it was very common to read stories about the death of capitalism. Oil shocks, stagflation, loss of confidence and rather than review that in detail i want to draw attention to four particular elements. One, the revival of the western market economies was not due just to reagan and thatcher. While they obviously played major roles if you look at what japan did after the oil shocks with energy efficiency, its transformative the. If you look at what west germany is able to do to continue to expand to be the end of europe, mitterrand changes his approach in policy towards economics. The one other european figure that worked with us was jacques delure of the European Commission and it was clearly a magnet for the rest of europe. So in some we saw adaptability of market economies of different types and thats what i think partly drives the story of the soviet union because the soviet union is not able to adapt. Two, and critical for the reference to today, the domestic economic revivals were combined with International Adaptations in the 1980s. Without taking the detail, let me mention these took place in trade, they take place in Monetary Policy and exchange rates, g7 policy coordination, developing country debt and reforms and so this economic revival was not based an a Narrow Economic nationalism or it also wasnt based on another idea that was current and faded in history which is the new International Economic order which is the International Economic planning model. The geopolitical analysis who now move into the economic sphere Pay Attention to economic strength but what they have a hard time recognizing is theres a dynamic element to the power and part of it is a systemic ability to adapt and to change. Third, the ussr could not adapt. It was dependent on Energy Resources and prices. Thats still true today and i note in the paper, my rough recollection its about 20 of their gdp, 50 of their budget and maybe 80 of their exports so its a huge dominance for the overall economy. Four, the traditional focus on bush 41 is obviously his Foreign Policy and i hope historians will go back and look a little bit at some of his economic and domestic aspects because, for example, the budget deal he does at great political cost he does, frankly, because hes worried about a domestic conflict going into the gulf war but if you take that budget deal and the one that clinton did, basically youve got the foundations for a very Strong Economy over the course of the 90s. He finished the nafta negotiation which clinton passed. He almost finishs the uruguay round which creates the wto which clinton finished and passed and i might add, little recognized, passes landmark americans for disability air act, landmark Clean Air Act amendments, not bad for a first term but you rarely find somebody who comments that this was part of bushs legacy. The question today is whether the u. S. Is deconstructing this International Economic system that it led in creating and if so i think there will be very big cost to Foreign Policy and National Security. May not show up immediately, but in the world in which i operate may not show up immediately, but this the worlds that i am operating, you are feeling it. Second, the security negotiations require leverage. The euromissile debate was a fierce mix of antipacifism and so one of the things that you need to understand as you have detail ed ined in the book of s the the things taking place is what they saw. What they saw in the course of the sort of the euro missile debate and others is that the soviet union was different and challenging the system, and as i believe that gorbachev acknowledges, the ability of the western countries to maintain the cohesion was one of the things that led the soviet union to move on to the imf treaty. This is also with applications today. In context of rush sharks it suggests the need of the United States and nato to respond with seriously and real capabilities of the russian probes whether in the baltics or Eastern Europe r or elsewhere. And firmness does not require belligerence. In the case of yu krarngs i believe that putins in the case of yu krarnukraine, i beli putins aggression will be stopped by the cost. And then, allies first which has a historic and current applicability. This is interesting little aspect to this conference which i was mentioning to phil as he came through, and not surprising if you people who specialized in the soviet union and russia they focus on the u. S. russian relations, but if you are in the government, you might also focus on thele alliance relations, and so you can see the tepgs of those who put the priorities to Eastern Europe, and so there was truly a focus on this alliance after the marshall plan. And i would say that john f. N kennedy moves out of this view with berlin, but very much focused on moscow, and i dont know the view today, but the book that he did after bush 41 sort of said that bush made a mistake by focusing too much on coal and a little bit on your set of thesis. You can see it in jack matlocks writings, and the idea of well, should the u. S. Have put a priority to gorbachev or to coal in germany. Without getting into too much of the pause, i think that what you will encounter is a difficulty of the people who were there, and there is clearly a desire by bush to demonstrate that he is going to have his own team. And partly, there is a shock to some of the i reagan people that they dont get to stay in auchs, and there is all of the studies that are commissioned, but frankly, those studies were busy work, okay. And from day one, people were not pausing, but trying to figure out u how the deal with the world that we inherited in 1989, and just as in the budget there was the clean up of the s ls and there was plenty of things to clean up. Our allies were not wildly excited about the romantic view of doing away with the nuke lee weapons. This is a troubling look of everybody from thatcher to kohl, and then for the germans of the day, this meant that the shorter the missiles, the deader the missiles, and what is most striking is that there is almost no attention to the histories to bushs conventional forces proposal that he does in late may and he has been in office for three or ofour month, and this is a bold effort to move the short missiles off of the agenda by saying that if the justification was sort of a three the to one conventional s symmetry, equalize and go to much lower level, and the importance of this is that number one, it is, as i said, moves the short range missiles off of the agenda where there is great conflict with the soviet union or with germany, and it moves the idea of the politics moving away from Nuclear Negotiations to the conventional force, and you will hear the discussions today and other days focus on the strategic arm of the sole determinant of the soviet relations, and this is going back to the history of the cold war which is the soviet occupation of the cold war, and so if you could get the forces to leave Eastern Europe, that could affect the politics. It also aligned the United States closely with germany, but it did have the benefit of being a real Cost Reduction for the soviet union as well. And the other benefit of this that takes place is that it clearly establishes bush as the alliance leader. Margaret thatcher did not like this proposal and a conflict that needed to be resolved and bush had to make the decision over thatchers preference, so you can comparet with the administration, but within the first four r or five months you have extremely bold conventional initiatives that changes the focus of the alliance. In addition, i was very much involved in the Central American negotiations which baker starts sort of in february and so it is the first month. This is a way of also testing seriousness of the soviets of whether, an frankly frd frankly the economic point of view if the soviets were going the continue to put money into cuba and move it away from nicaragua and how could you do that. So in september, baker and shefrnadzi makes progress. And we have the economic reform on the plane out. And then in is the summer, bush visits poland and he is welcomed, and competing with gorbachev in terms of public diplomacy, and in a way, throughout much of the cold war, the soviet agenda is moving from everything to conventional force forces to the division of europe, to sort of economic reform. And keep in mind that if this is a limitation or not, what will the decisionmakers have in their mind and 1968 in their mind, and this is also very important for the historians to look at one area. We had june 1989 in our mind. We had come back from the conventional forces success and then there was Tiananmen Square. And to say this is a straight path, it did not look that way at that point. It was a sort of the warning of the cautions. And another way of saying this is that i think that in 1989, the u. S. Recognized in europe the question would be as much a german question as a russian questi question. This came up a little bit kind of in the earlier discussion, you know, the prospect of what would happen with germany does not only a matter of russia, but a matter for Eastern Europe and western europe, and so i think that if you feel over eight or nine months that that set of actions is a pause, then i dont know how you compare it with anything else in recent political history, and what else have the governments done in the first year that matches that level. So in a sense by november which is so within the first eight or nine or ten months, you have the u. S. Well positioned on nato, germany, and ucec relationships. And to compare it today, we have a world where trump is am b ambivalent for alliance, and trump will hold him in line, but trump prefers transactional policy, and stronger leaders of an authoritarian nature which is easier for him tole deal with. And one of the questions going back to discussion of the will se willsonnian period, and whether we will maneuver the great powers if the system does not continue. Fourth point, prudence and respect. Bush and baker were not triumphant, and bush was preserved when the berlin wall came down the as the most obvious example of it, and they both tried to listen and understand the perspectives, and an important part of diplomacy that works and sometimes doesnt is to help to create explanations for this. When bush has gorbachev to accept nato, he does it on the basis of the principles, because gorbachev had embraced the necc and they had a principle to prove your own alliance, and if you were consistent with the principles how could you deny that possibility. And there is also the nine points where basically we had been putting out ideas to help the soviets, and we were not sure that they had sort of internalized them, and so we refrained them in a different way. You can see this in the handling of the baltics and bush was cautious about the recognition, and baker was as a good lawyer trying to differentiate and to talk about how they have their ability for independence. You will see it in bushs caution about the breakup of the soviet union. It was sort of fitting the model of dealing with this prudently, and also. I think that this is again, reasonable people will look at this, but jou you have to asses what the u. S. Can and cannot do. And then after recognizing with tr trillions of dollars that we have not been able to remake afghanistan or iraq and how con confi dent to remake russia . And so you to, again, for todays contrast is to as opposed to prudence and respect, trump seeks confrontation and creates uncertainty, and he is going to the act, and he is going to be acting impulses ziv as part of the dealmaking, and so it is an issue nfor the unitd states again. And so coming back to the idea of what one believes that the u. S. Could do. I always had the idea that russias future is in the hands of the russian, and while you can help and sup r port jushgs to be careful not to assume that you can remake their world for them. Aga again, from the historical perspective, we were trying to avoid what we called the versailles victory, but it applied to germany as much as russia. We wanted germany to be unified in a way that the sovereignty was clear a sopd th and so yo would not have some future german generation to say why were we singled out. In terms of the german and the u. S. Partnership, we saw it in not only in terms of the old alliance obligation, but in the few chur of europe, and we believed that germany would become the most dominant country in europe, and i believe that germany is the most powerful n country in europe, and the partter inship has tended to slip away for various reasons. We wanted an opportunity for the soviet union and russia, too, but the assess. To reality is that the soviet economy was in much worse shape than the central and the Eastern European economy. A key lesson of the reform, and the Economic Development which i know from my world banning days is that if the locals dont own it, it wont work. Frankly, so far from what i have read in the book, i have the sense that neither gorbachev or yeltsin either grasped market econom economics and i certainly had this when i was engaged with meetings with them in the people, and the technocrats were far weaker than those in poland and not a question of money, and although money helps, and remember in the 90s, russia gets big money from the International Bank and the saw disand othersch and you have two issues issues. One is the Macro Economic policy. And the microeconomic issues such as property rights, rule of law, and contracts and co competition, and those are more difficult, and fra cli, russia is struggling with that 25 years later, and again, you have to be careful about these comparisoco but you have to be deeply involved with the poland transactions, and this is a near run thing, and the politics almost fractured with the strength of the solidarity coalition. I noticed that end of the paper and in the book, you note that, the u. S. Probably didnt miss a chance to save gorbachev and democracy, but then you use this Margaret Thatcher quote to set out what might have been. And from the practical policymakers perspective, i would suggest that frankly, Margaret Thatcher might have spent time more effectively focusing on britains relationship with europe which was also a question posed by the 89 90 issue, and we have seen britains failure to deal with that. It is an issue where of course, i think that what one has the to as one has to as a policymaker as a dreamer and hope that that he could save democracy is a nice thought, but in 1988 when i am reading the book, he has internal problem wills u way beyond our capacity to deal with. And the lesson for the russians today is that putin has clearly chose anne different path from gorbachevs cooperation or the yeltsin integration with the west. At first putin was willing to negotiate the convergence, but now the preference is to have a policy driven by the idea of russia being at great power and a mull i ti power of order, and he is going to act opportunistically, and he is going to try to subvert d democracy, and the ruthless pragmatist is where both terms apply. He had a different value system where yeltsin or the United States, but he is going to calculate costs. If you come back to the five principles, i would suggest that the u. S. Should work from the economic strength and including in the dynamic and international 178, and work with the allies and meet aggression firmly, and including a price for subvers n subversion, and one issue that i think in recent years, dont diminish or insult russia, and russia is going to be a player in the system, and regardless, and remain open to opportunities. As i think that one of the other panelists mentioned that, ar ne mentioned it, but overtime, and history is marked by sharp discontinuous event, and with russia, the important thing is to recognize that russia is going to continue to change, and that change has the tended to be associated with transitions, and you know, i cant predict the putin transition will will work, and so far, russias governance has not transitioned that very well and so it may be an area that we may have going forward. Thank you, bob. I will take advantage of a brief opportunity to comment on bills argument. Indirectly, it is also a comment on reagan. The, because didnt you have to ask yourself, what is the substance of the agenda . Bill makes the comment that we really wish that bush would pick up where reagan left off, and so where we end up with the issues of Central America, and gets the process of diplomacy going there, and cfe, and short range Nuclear Forces and the attitude towards the European Community and the vision of the europe and poland free, and the assistance of across the iron curtain since the marshall plan, and the speech on the soviet relations to go beyond containment and invites agreement of the mutual transparency of both of the countries to open air el yell reconnaissance. That is all done by may. And so, you know, it gets going in the third week of march after conde and i and bob black well, and we are figuring out how the get the office badges the to fit, and we are six or seven weeks in, and recite all that and then the folks come back to say, well, it sounds like a pause to me. And my reaction a little bit is that, this is a tough crowd. But ilessened i listened very carefully to bob, and what is being yearned for in the dynamic of the relationship is so what kaymerical and not one of them were on the Reagan Administration. Not in any way were they giving into the soviet proposals to get cfe to work which i can detail at some point if anyone is interested. So then it is kind of like, well, lets wrap up the start agreement which reagan could not wind up, because of reasons on both sides and not done until late 1991, but s. T. A. R. T. Is what helps gorbachev survive, and by the way, cfe, and the conventional forces are vastly more expensive than the nuclear force, and if you want to release the resources, it is all cfe, folks. It turns out that is politically destabilizing the soviet union in the way that the bill odomes described. But the way that bill put it, and i quote because it is worth studying this quote, help gorbachev how he helps the country, and then close to war. Close quote. So break it out, and what would have helped the gorbachev change the country in 1981, and one, did the Reagan Administration end with such an agenda . It did not. Did Margaret Thatcher have such an agenda . She did no. And one of the responsibilities at the white house is Margaret Thatcher, and so i was privy to the contents of every meeting, letterer and phone call of bush and thatcher for more than two year, and i never heard her make a substantive proposal of how the help Mikhail Gorbachev to remake the soviet union, and nor when gorbachev was the toast of the world, and george w. Bush was not, there was no thought to be how to help that. So it is a substantive issue that should have been proposed, should have been discussed and so to think through that and what the soviets wished specifically we would have talked about is not exactly an easy question to answer in 1989. The second half of that closeout of the cold war is actually interesting, but a y because you know what . Margaret thatcher thought that the cold war was done and she said it publicly in 1988 that the cold war was over. November 1988, and George Schultz agreed with her. Think about that. That is europe divided, germany the most militarized piece of real estate on planet earth and yet the cold war is over, and it has been closed out, because you see we stood up to them in the test of strength, and we have gotten the modus to relax that the tension, and put a bow on it, and say, cold war over. Then the issue is that if you have a different vision of how the end the cold war, it is all about ale policy to end europe which circles back to bob zelics shrewd observation which is a strong tendency, and in people who focus on the u. S. Russian relations to treat the rest of europe as instrumental, and to the achievement of u. S. russian happiness and as you can the tell from what bob said and my view, we did not think of europe as instrumental in this mat, and in fact, europe was the central focus of where you would go about ending the cold war and the policies towards that. And so that is in a way, more of a comment than a question, but the comment that it does signal, the question to which is relevant today is notice that it raises the issue of how do you define an end to the cold war concretely. Concretely. And to carry that to the present day, and by the way, how would you define it today . Concretely. If you want ed ted the to relax tensions, what would that mean substantively to attain your objective, and what would success look like for reagan in 1989, since he has not abolished the nuclear weapon, and what does success look like for Margaret Thatcher in 1988 and then to pose that question in the present day, and so in fairness, i need to give james and bill a chance to respond to that before we throw it open to the audience. Well, those are very good arguments delivered in an elegantly lawyerly way. You are checking off all the boxes. I guess what i would say is that when it came to soviet american relations, specially in gorbachevs eyes, it wasnt so much a matter of checking all the boxes. It was the overall atmosphere. It was the sense that he had in washington a partner. Thats what he was trying to create. He thought he was creating it. You may say that what he says in scowcrofts memoirs at the time is not decisive, but if we look at what he says, the notion that gorbachev is more dangerous than his predecessors and that he is smothi inering us with kindnesss not sound like the end of cold war to me. And you are right by the way about that. And gates, too. Scowcroft is personally ambivalent, and uncertain. He is uncertain as to whether to say, we are all set now. This is good. He is suspicious. Baker, less so. I understand that. I guess what gorbachev would have liked is a summit sooner than 1989 and expected one sooner, and reagan after all had one in december 87 and june of 88 and december of 88 tha. That is what a Partnership Looks Like even ap bart from tart fro specific tas ys that you accomp so in that sense and will start always loom very large and in a way your comment or bobs that we dont pay enough attention to cfe and conventional weapons only underlines the fact that that is the way we operate . We do Pay Attention to strategic Nuclear Weapons. A start agreement if it had been reached in 89 would have been very big. James and i talked the other day about what the obstacles were to that on both sides. I am not an expert on that. I concede it. I guess it was very difficult. Again, leaving aside what thatcher did or didnt do, what he is saying is the big point. Thats the big point of my presentation. This guy was exceptional. This guy broke with stalin, brezhnev, putin. He was ready for a transformed world beyond the cold war. Against the background of that possibility, which we also have to worry about him being able to sustain at home, maybe yeltsin was also pushing for. Even if he was, it is a few short years. Against the possibility of that kind of outcome, i think that Central America pales, and some of the other things with the relations of allies that shaky or fragile that repairing them had to be put ahead of the possibility of this kind of outcome. Maybe im a romantic, a fantasist along with gorbachev and reagan, but i just wonder if we couldnt have done more. I think thats an elegant statement of the other side of the case. Well, there is a little bit of a lesson of historical method, because bill properly points out the gates position, and scowcroft. And this is where written sources, and it is just a challenge for the historians, because as i told you separately, baker had to crush gates a couple of times on this, okay. But it tells you something, okay. Where gates wanted to give a speech that pointed out some of the cautionary stuff, and baker, we first watered it down and then basically said, look, i dont want this speech delivered at all, okay. Brent, by nature, was cautious on this. I remember many times where baker would come back and say these guys just dont know what my friend wants and here he is referring to the president. My friend, gorbachev . His friend, bush. His meaning is bush is a very competitive man. He is a gentlemen. He is an extremely competitive man. He did not want to be seen as standing on the sidelines while gorbachev was framing the global context. You asked, is europe important . It really does come down, as phil framed it nicely, there was a view in the schultz state department, which ridgeway represented, that a divided europe was fine. Yes, the Bush Administration really did feel, and i can give you an example of this. In february of 89, we were thinking about german unification at the start of 89. You could see the forces that were breaking into it. So, frankly, if you are concerned about the german question, how they get unified peacefully and democratically with a stable security order, you do have to Pay Attention to europe. Remember, when that moment struck, germany didnt have many friends in europe. To the audience, first, matt frakes and then eric manila. I wonder if you could all speak to the opportunities that were available in the late 80s and the early 90s for cooperation and partnership. Im thinking for moments of crisis or anything else. This was a time of immense change and there were possibilities open that i dont think were imaginable before. I am wondering if you could talk a bit to these opportunities whether lost or otherwise and what that means for the handling of the u. S. soviet relationship at the time and also for today. I think thats what we were talking about in a sense. Im not sure of what i would add. I think there was a chance to do more. Although, i understand the fact that a lot was already done and that there were obstacles to doing more. It may be that this was a situation in which there was no way to go where in an ideal world we would have gone. The Economic System into the soviet union, with the gulf war or other crises at the time when the United States could have partnered with the soviets or did partner with them. This is always one of the challenges of history. We know how it turned out. In some ways, this supports some of bills caution here. I have a hard time explaining to people who didnt grow up in the cold war the fear and anxiety of the soviet union. I friday to make reference to 56 and 68. Those are just years. I think probably for the people who were of professional age in 1985 if you would ask, who are in this room, if you would ask them, do you expect the soviet union will withdraw from Eastern Europe or break up, you wouldnt have found one hand. This goes to the point of thinking about discontinuous events. I think policymakers have to think in probable terms. They have to keep open to the opportunities and prepare against down side risks. And again, the reason i used Tiananmen Square is that we thought that things were going one way in china, and then all of the sudden, bloom. So sit is the same year. Same year. So the anxiety of being a reversal was high. In a sense, bills book supports this. If you read about those debates going on in 87 and 88, they werent all in agreement. He adds one other element which was this thought of is gorbachev really just trying to remake the soviet union into a stronger opponent or is he trying to make it into Something Different . There was, i think, in your paper or one of the points, is he trying to make communism work . You can see gorbachev struggling with this. My view of gorbachev, he is a combination heroic tragic figure. He knows he wants to change. At least from what i observed and what i read and what i have read so far, he didnt really know what he wanted. He had launched some process of change but it wasnt clear where it was going to end up. So if you are representing the United States, you cant just say, ah, well, this is a wonderful dream. Well give up this. Well give up nato and so on and so forth. You have to be prepared for different evantualities. And i continue to feel, and strobe just left, but this is one of the interesting questions that i feel what could have been done on the economic side. I discuss ed this with phil to the give you a personal sense, i was very early in the process looking at the nature of the soviet economy and the reform process, so i was kind of digging into this, and got the know some of the reform figures and so on and so forth, and this is one of the stories of u. S. Bureaucracy. I was at the state department, once this became a topic that the Treasury Department wanted to move in, and the person who was point on this at the Treasury Department david mulford, who was banking background wanted to focus on the investment. That is what bankers do. I remember getting frustrated because i was trying to work with some of the reformers to deal with a much broader question of structural reform. In a way, this story really transitions to the next panel because as i said i still believe the nature of the Structural Reforms in the soviet union for the economy were a huge challenge. I still wouldnt know today exactly what one should do. In fact, vlad made this point. Some of the soviet reformers were looking more for a better model from china or chile than they would have had from gorbachevs democratization. If on top of that you open up the political system, it is never going to work. To come back for the realm of possibilities, i think at least bush and baker were partly of the view to say, look, this is a historic moment. We want to try to sort of maintain or keep up the momentum as much as we can. We need the harvest, the benefits for things we wanted to achieve over the course of 40 years. Then, we also have to be prepared for some of the down sides. You asked about the gulf war. That was a story where many people in this room are probably well aware. Baker was in mongolia. Dennis ross and i were back in moscow with a guy who was very close to shefrnadzy. We arranged for baker to come back and have a statement at the airport about the soviet union and the United States standing up against saddam husseins aggression. What i learned subsequently was that he never got approval for that statement from gorbachev. At least so far i dont see that. That shows again the players, gorbachev was kind of hesitating. Going back to phils question, thats when baker says the cold war ends, when the soviet union and the United States come together to stop aggression. I would go a little earlier. I think it is when Eastern Europe is freed and the unionfication. It is telling for George Schultz and Margaret Thatcher, who said she liked germany so much she wanted two of them, she didnt like all that stuff. Her Foreign Policy assistant, charles pole, is a very good friend. She valued the gorbachev relationship so much, she didnt want germany unification to get in the way. That was a different policy choice. We are running out of time for this session. I want to get a question in and answer this and then we are done with this panel. First of all, thank you. My question is more about things you havent talked about. It did occur to me that much of the conversation to the extent it went beyond the soviet union and United States centered on europe. I am wondering to what extent some events outside of europe in this period of time had an influence on the relationship and the trajectory that you are describing, and the two things that occurred to me, and maybe there are other things that you would want to put on the table, but the two things that occurred to me is the yu ukrainian revolution that led to the soviet invasion of afghanistan, which is ongoing for that period and the reforms in china, which im wondering to what expent they are shaping the entire future of the soviet union. Can i say very quickly, one thing i detect from the Reagan Administration, which i dont think i really appreciated before, is that in the early 1980s this fear that the iranian revolution would become a temporary thing, that it would fall apart and there would be a vacuum of power that would be very inciting to the soviets. That may have, i think, that fear dissipates over the course of a decade, but ive been kind of struck by early on that sense of it. You have to think about the reagan presidency in terms what ultimately brings it to its knees with iran contra. There were some people, who had the sense he needs to do a kissinger to china replication. And i think john poindexter, somewhere in 95, probably regretting turning off bud mcfarlands connection to the home email because it may v have been credible for a lot of that. Can i pull a senatorial trick and yield my time to who has a question. And ill give you my answer later on china. Turn the question into the comment. And then close us out. Okay. Two very quick questions to bob z zellick. It was in 1991, not a policy, but kind of a feeling of getting preference to western europe. You mentioned that. It was like Eastern Europe first. Because when you read the discussions in terms of deliberations before the london g7 meeting before gorbachev came, the u. S. Position was to crack down on those western europeans who wanted to rechannel western aid to the soviet union to gorbachev, and the position of president bush was, no, we have to help Eastern Europe first. You touched on it, but is that too far if we call it Eastern Europe first and soviet union second . And bill, do you believe that gorbachev understood in 1991 that he would never get massive western aid, and if he did, why he continued to behave as if he would. I did hear that. Did he understand in 1991 did gorbachev understand in 1991 that he would going to get western aid . And if he didnt, why did he act as if he did . Well, i guess he understood after a while that he wasnt going to get it. I mean it took a great deal of determination and courage to ask for it in the first place. You know, initially, i think it was other people around him who named numbers and gorbachev put is it more generally like if you spent xbillion in the gulf war, cant you spare anything to change the soviet union in this crucial way was his way of asking for it. But i think that he understood it. And he did not always behave in a way to make it more likely, and his response to the allison yeflinsky gambit. His response to the gambit was to send primakov to washington. He undermined himself in that way and other ways. Your question about Eastern Europe, i guess the best way to answer it is we didnt see europe in categories in boxes, right . It was the whole region through the soviet union. Phil and i keep emphasizing, you know, in some ways because germany worked out okay, we dont see that as a big problem, if we realize in history theres a german question as much as a russian question. That was part tof the issue. With Eastern Europe, that is related to germany. Theyre as anxious about germany as they are about russia and the soviet union, and so i dont recall the particular facts that we had about supporting Eastern Europe as the soviet union, and the reality of the United States is whether you think that it is too narrow of a vision. And remember, that bush did a budget deal with what that time we thought that it was a big deficit and ended up costing him the reelection, and the idea that i remember thinking that in the case of german unification, that we are willing to help do all of the things we didnt feel that we should pay for it. Now we were very sup pportive o the germans paying for it. In the gulf war baker gets the saudis to give additional contribution of funds. And for a minute, he needed to be a better person for the transition on this. You know, they were not small sums of money put in by the imf and the world bank. I continue to believe that money alone, unless you get the fundamentals right wont solve the problem. And again, i very much hoped there would be restructure of forms but as phil said here, we worked with others and primakov, and they kind of walked away. And there was never a good plan to invest in the process. The one last point, coming back to that point, ill switch it to today which is china. This is a question for all of you russian specialists in the room. I still dont quite grasp why putin seems more worried about nato and poland and the baltics and the United States than about china and the area no to to the south. So we can talk about the history of russia, but at some point, somebody has to recognize do you really think that poland and germany and the United States are a threat to russia . Or do you think that maybe some other regions might cause greater anxiety. All right. Lets thank the panel for their hard work. [ applause ] the cspan bus is traveling across the country on the 50 capitals tour, and we stopped in little rock, arkansas, and what is the most important issue in their state. Right fou, there is a huge hispanic population in the high school, and especially in northwest arkansas, and what we are seeing here is that a lot of the hispanics are not coming to the program, and what we have is a program for all High School Students to know that they can come to college, a fond r me, it is important for not only hispanics, but everyone has the opportunity to let them know that, okay, whether i have daca or documentation or whatever it is, and the circumstances, that you can go to college. So that is important right now in arkansas. The Biggest Issue for me in arkansas is animal welfare. Im in Animal Rescue with the arkansas Animal Rescue, and we deal with a lot of abuse, and negligent, and we dont have law are enforcement backing or, and we have laws in arkansas, but they are not enforced and they are not strict. It is a big issue for us, because we deal with the animals and we see what they go through, and we dont have any place for these animals to go, and we dont have the funding for them, and people are not held accountable for the abuse they inflict on animal, and so it is a big issue for me, and it is stricter laws and more enforcement of the laws, and backing the rescues and the shelters to hold people accountable for what they do. I really dont want anybodyb in government doing much of anything. I believe in the states being x experimental units for the government. Try different things, and create different things, and see how they work. Because most of the Big Government ones, if they dont work out very well, it is just very hard on the whole country. That is what i believe the founders wanted us the to do is to use the states for lessons. One of the most important issues i think for citizens of little rock and the state of arkansas and an area that we would dearly love for our representatives in d. C. To take a look at, and this is the Affordable Care act. This is the winter months, and talking about the the intensity of the flu season, and so health care is very important for each and every individual. While education is important, working is important, but without good health care, you cannot perform those to the best of your ability. So i think that it is a major issue for little rock citizens, arkans arkansians. I think that it is support agriculture, and we have an upcoming farm bill where they are passing legislation, and they can pass that to protect our farmers right, and also in the poultry industry and not attach riders it to, and allow the bill to pass without the attachments and protect the farmers. That is the most important thing is to take care of our constituents at home. Voices from the states on cspan. A look now at the
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