The Foreign Service Journal, December 2016

72 DECEMBER 2016 | THE FOREIGN SERVICE JOURNAL with other willful and sometimes illegal acts, such as the invasion of Iraq with- out United Nations sanction, convinced most attentive Russians that the United States was determined to treat their country as a defeated enemy. “We won the Cold War!” triumpha- lism particularly rankles Gorbachev. The fact is that every agreement he made with the United States and its NATO allies was in the interest of the USSR, which needed nothing so much as an end to the arms race. Even more distorted is the widespread convic- tion that the Cold War ended with the demise of the Soviet Union. It was over ideologically by the end of 1988, and in most other respects by the end of 1989, the annus mirabilis of East European liberation. The Soviet Union disintegrated despite the end of the Cold War, not because of it. It was not a “Western” victory, though it did demonstrate that the communist rule of the USSR was not viable in a world without external enemies. Eight years ago, after war broke out between Russia and Georgia, Gor- bachev commented, “The reality is that, in recent years, Russia has been confronted with one fait accompli after another: this is what we are doing about Kosovo; now we are withdrawing from the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty and deploying anti-missile systems in your neighboring countries; now we are continuing to endlessly expand NATO. Live with it! …There are calls now for a review of relations with Russia. I think the first thing in need of review is this way of talking down to Russia, ignoring her views and interests.” Well, after a brief respite when the new Barack Obama administration initiated a “reset”—mistranslated by the Secretary of State’s advisers with the Rus- sian word (in Latin characters yet!) for “overload,” the mistranslation proved to be a Freudian slip. The policy combined incompatible elements: efforts to coop- erate when it was in the U.S. interest and policies designed to influence domestic politics in Russia itself. Equally threatening from the Rus- sian standpoint was what seemed to Russians a calculated effort to alienate their most important neighbor, Ukraine, which had been part of the same coun- try for more than two centuries. While the reset had important positive results, the New START treaty in particular, President Obama’s policy was doomed in other respects even before civil war broke out in Ukraine. As Gorbachev points out, Russians have been reacting to what they per- ceive as a persistent American effort to put them down, isolate them and domi- nate the world by exercising a global hegemony. That reaction has been damaging to Russia’s own interests and future; but, Russian patriots will argue, what proud nation, when pressed, will not push back? Gorbachev’s comment highlights a crucial psychological point. A diplomat should understand that nothing is to be gained by publicly humiliating another country or its leaders, even if their policies are problematic. Deal with the policy with at least public respect for the politician. President Ronald Reagan condemned communism, but never made slighting personal remarks about the specific Soviet leaders he dealt with. When he met a Soviet leader, his first words were usually, “We hold the peace of the world in our hands.” They did, and he and Gorbachev achieved a world-transforming feat in reversing the upward spiral of the arms race. Their joint declaration that “a nuclear war cannot be won, and must never be fought, which means there can be no war between us” is as valid today as it was in November 1985, when Reagan and Gorbachev met for the first time. Unfortunately, that important truism seems to be ignored now by the leaders and “policy elite” in both our countries. As we await the inauguration of a new president, our diplomats would be well advised to read Mikhail Gor- bachev’s testimony. They may not agree with everything he writes, but his account will give them insight into the sort of advice they should not be giving our next president. In all of the global challenges we face, Russia is going to be either part of the solution or part of the problem. Mikhail Gorbachev has called atten- tion to those actions and policies by the United States and its allies that have encouraged Russia to be a problem. Gorbachev has also written nostalgi- cally about his relationship with Presi- dents Ronald Reagan and George H.W. Bush. A study of the interaction of those two American presidents with the presi- dent of the Soviet Union would provide important lessons for a diplomacy designed to transcend differences and concentrate on those issues that are vital to the future of both countries. Jack Matlock Jr., FSO-CM, retired, was am- bassador to the USSR from 1987 to 1991, and is now Rubenstein Fellow and Visiting Scholar at Duke University. He first served in Moscow from 1961 to 1963, again from 1974 to 1978, and once more in 1981 as chargé d’affaires before his appointment as ambassador to Czechoslovakia (1981- 1983). During his 35-year career in the Foreign Service, he also served in Vienna,