Posted on 03/12/2022 6:16:01 AM PST by Meet the New Boss
Andrei Kozyrev, Yeltsin’s first top diplomat, speaks about Putin’s ‘disastrous’ war in Ukraine and why the revisionist history about NATO enlargement is all wrong...
I ask Kozyrev about a debate that has roiled the American foreign policy establishment in the leadup to this war. Did NATO go too far? On the contrary, he thinks it didn’t go far enough...
Where America erred, Kozyrev insists, was in not investing as a matter of “strategic necessity” in Russia’s nascent and fragile democracy, which he and Yeltsin — at least in the earlier phase of his career — represented....
"We were ready to cut our nukes to the bare minimum and end our strategic doctrine of preparing for a showdown with the West. The window of opportunity existed until 1994. And for America this wasn’t just a moral imperative — to help us. It was an existential one.”
Kozyrev has high praise for President George H.W. Bush and his cabinet, particularly Secretary of State James Baker and Secretary of Defense Richard B. Cheney. “Those guys were Cold Warriors. They understood the enormity of the problem — and also the opportunity. Unfortunately, Bush lost re-election. [Bill] Clinton came in and he was, generally speaking, helpful. But he could not … fully grasp the challenge of solidifying Russian democracy.”
The United States, Kozyrev says, thought of Russia as another France: “a partner, an ally maybe, but a difficult and self-interested one.” Clinton’s Secretary of State Warren Christopher was “a decent guy, but just a bureaucrat from the State Department and a lawyer who handled everything bureaucratically. I didn’t need a professional diplomat as a counterpart. I needed a revolutionary like myself.”...
“This war is a disaster. If they continue, it will be a total and complete disaster.”
(Excerpt) Read more at newlinesmag.com ...
In my experience, Professionals in the world of politics are almost always bad at their job. At all levels. Local, State, Federal. The lawyers and the bureaucrats are there to make sure that nothing gets done, nothing gets fixed. They will never make a bold move unless it is a move to seize personal power.
I’m no fan of Bill Clinton or Warren Christopher, but this statement is ludicrous. Advanced nations with competent leaders in government and business don’t appoint “revolutionaries” to cabinet posts like this.
What these Russians apparently fail to grasp is that without its nuclear arsenal the country just doesn’t matter much on the world stage anymore. Its GDP is comparable to South Korea’s, its per-capita GDP isn’t even ranked among the top 50 countries in the world, and its population is dying off slowly.
Agree.
It was a very deciding time then. Russia was in stage of major changes. Relatively small investments would made huge difference. We should never get the crisis go. But we were worried about the US economy and Hillary’s care.
When it mattered the most, the only help was given by Soros! No wonder it ended up like this.
Democrats will never pass on good crisis within the US borders, but ALWAYS pass on good crisis abroad. Arab spring was the same. The whole Arabic world was ready for a change, and all what Hillary and Kerry got out of it was ISIS!
Finally these forums hear from a Russian who knows how much Putin is lying, and I am sure he could see - if he were here - how much Putin is getting away with his lies, right here in these forums.
Finally these forums hear from a Russian who knows how much Putin is lying, and I am sure he could see - if he were here - how much Putin is getting away with his lies, right here in these forums.
And yet only 5 replies when others much of in support of Putin see dozens. Sad. As is imagining the Democracy itself was the answer which would transform the country. Yet vast corruption existed as in Ukraine.
Well, what we have here are a large number of Putin tools, and an even larger number of self-absorbed people who more-or-less correctly identify an enemy, but fail to recognize that another enemy we thought was vanquished or had transformed itself into a more benign entity has reappeared in ugly form once again. These people may be well intentioned, but fail to learn from the great lessons of history. One of those lessons is that the enemy of my enemy may turn out to be an even more dangerous enemy. Queue up the USSR (just another variant of the Russian model), once the Axis powers were defeated. Some of this is clever deception, as with Putin clothing himself in a sort of conservative Christianity. But no real follower of Christ would ever do 1/100th’s of the things Putin has done.
Then there are the “Monroe Doctrine” types, apparently stuck in the past and not realizing Ukraine is in this century MUCH “closer” to us than, say, Brazil was, in 1823. (In many ways, at the time the Monroe Doctrine was quite boldly expansionist of US power and influence.)
I’d add that ignorance of what has been holding this world from violently decaying into general savagery and destruction, quite possibly the loss of civilization itself, is strong, well, not only here on FR, but, amongst most people. Perhaps they should read more of and take Reagan to heart, as a beginning.
Sadly true.
I don’t think Kozyrev is talking about “revolutionary” in the same sense you are. His analysis of Warren Christopher as inadequate is spot on. What was needed was thinking considerably out of the “typical professional diplomat” box, and a Trump-like will and energy to get it done. In the world of diplomacy, that would be “revolutionary”.
Your point about Russia’s present economic significance is correct, insofar as it goes. But, aside from where Russia could be today if it had developed relatively peacefully at, say, 3/4 the rate of Poland, reality is that Russia does have a very outsize military for its GDP, plus the nukes. It also has considerable leverage through Euro dependency on Russian energy sales. Putin’s Russia has the capacity to create tremendous disruption, and the nukes (and idiotic Western policies) largely shield it from severe consequences. Under such circumstances, it doesn’t take being a major economic power to create a hell of a problem.
IMO, Kozyrev is correct: A system like Russia’s in a country of its size will continue to breed these sorts of problems until Russia either completely collapses and fragments, or it fundamentally evolves or transforms into the modern world, modest economy notwithstanding.
“This war is a disaster. If they continue, it will be a total and complete disaster. A hundred years ago, there was the tsar, the embodiment of God himself in the Russian mentality. Yet when he pushed his country into a disastrous war, exactly like today, he found it impossible to win. Then he signed his resignation as the tsar and became Citizen Romanov. That even someone appointed by God himself could resign peacefully and transfer power should tell you that Vladimir Putin is not invulnerable.”
IMHO, Tsar Romanov was, at least for his time, a lot more decent person than Putin.
“And yet only 5 replies when others much of in support of Putin see dozens. Sad.”
Very sad indeed.
“As is imagining the Democracy itself was the answer which would transform the country. Yet vast corruption existed as in Ukraine.”
If “corruption” was the defining issue vis-a-vis Ukraine, and - as if great corruption does not exist in great degree in our own democracy, the “corruption” would be a legitimate matter vis-a-vis the war Putin is waging. But that is not the case and neither is it the case that Putin’s mobocracy is less corrupt than the institutions of Ukraine. So corruption is not germane to the war Putin is aging against Ukraine, nor to our support for Ukraine.
All that really matters is (a) if the desires of the people of Ukraine, as pertains to their relationship with Russia and their relationships to the rest of Europe, is accurately reflected in the aims of the elected institutions of Ukraine and (b) do the people of Ukraine have a right to those desires, unmolested by Putin. Yes, and yes.
The rest is diversion and tends to suggest and allow that Putin has the moral right to be destroying whole cities in Ukraine. That so many in these forums seem to think Putin has that right demonstrates something about Conservatism among Conservatives has gone off the rails.
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