Stupid Americans? Send Them to China | china/divide

by C. Custer on April 2, 2010

So says President Obama, who is working with Chinese officials to ensure that the US sends 100,000 students to China over the next four years. The number of Americans studying in China has been rising steadily on its own, but what is the point of this? That’s a vast generalization, of course, but take it from someone who spends all day every day with American kids — they know nothing about the world outside the US.

When I say “nothing” I want you to understand exactly what I mean, so here are some examples. I asked my students what language they speak in Australia. Less than half of them knew for sure, several thought “Australian”, and one of them said French. I asked them what continent China was on, and only around half of them got it right. Several of them wrote “China”. I could go on, but you’ve heard these statistics before. That’s because they are true. American students are woefully, woefully ignorant of the world outside their iPods.

As some of you know, I teach Chinese and History at a boarding school in New England, so my students tend to be privileged. They have grown up with more and better access to education than the average American. Many of them have traveled abroad with their parents before. By all accounts, they ought to be performing better than the average American on simple questions like the ones I asked them, which makes their abject failure even more worrisome. Obviously, my “study” was not at all scientific and my sample size far too small, but this is a blog, so I’m going to make the point anyway: Americans don’t know anything about other countries.

More worrisome than that, though (after all, as a teacher, isn’t that kind of my fault) is that at least among my students, I believe there is a complete lack of empathy for those outside the US’s borders, especially those in faraway places like Asia. Students act as though historical events were plot points in a movie, and their writing further betrays that conceptually speaking, they do not perceive the places we are talking about as real.

I probably don’t have to explain why that’s a problem in the long term. Now, maybe kids are all like this, or have always been like this. I wouldn’t know. But I do think I understand why Obama wants to send 100,000 Americans to China. They aren’t all going to come back speaking Chinese fluently, ready to join the CIA’s China analysts pushing desks in Virginia. But they are all going to come back with a real sense that there is a world outside the US. They’re going to come back with friends, business contacts, and experiences — real life experiences, not classroom knowledge — that turn the Sino-American policy debate into something that seems real and important. Say what you will about Obama, but at least when it comes to China, it seems like he’s not planning to throw the whole “mutual understanding” thing under the bus.

But I am extremely tired, and it’s possible this line of reasoning makes no sense, so, what do you think?

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Hillary Clinton After Mideast Trip: Diplomacy Success? - TIME

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It was Halloween night in Jerusalem, and Benjamin Netanyahu came dressed as a peacemaker. "We're prepared to start peace talks immediately," the notoriously reluctant Israeli Prime Minister proclaimed, with U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton standing at his side, poker-faced. "I think we should ... get on it and get with it."

It was a ploy, of course. The Palestinians were tangled up in themselves, yet again. They had elections looming, and their leader, Mahmoud Abbas, had to hang tough: he was demanding a total freeze to Israeli settlement-building on the West Bank — which was precisely what the Obama Administration had previously said it favored. Netanyahu was offering a partial freeze, not including new settlements in East Jerusalem, the desired capital of a future Palestinian state. This was a nonstarter for the Palestinians, but it had the holographic glow of a step forward. It was an "unprecedented" offer, Netanyahu trumpeted, with the joy of a chess master springing a trap.(See pictures from 60 years of Israel.)

It was a tough moment for Clinton, playing second fiddle at the Bibi-does-Gandhi show. President Barack Obama had softened his language on the settlements a few weeks earlier: instead of a total freeze, he had talked about Israeli "restraint" in settlement-building. And now Clinton seemed to cement the Administration's retreat, agreeing that Netanyahu's proposal was, indeed, "unprecedented," even though the U.S. still favored a total freeze. The most important thing, she added, was for the parties to get to the table as quickly as possible. The onus was back on the Palestinians — and the Palestinians quickly expressed outrage at the Obama Administration's retreat. Their Arab neighbors soon joined in, causing Clinton to backtrack two days later, telling reporters the Israeli plan "falls far short" of U.S. expectations, although she still insisted on calling it "unprecedented," which was neither diplomatic nor wise. (See pictures of Hillary Clinton behind the scenes.)

Suddenly the Obama Administration seemed wobbly on the Middle East; clearly, Clinton had been too bullish on Netanyahu's proposal (which had been negotiated over months with Middle East envoy George Mitchell and was seen, privately, by the Americans as real progress). But the Administration's mission was to get the parties into peace talks without preconditions. The Israelis were now in favor of talks. The Palestinians were setting preconditions. And Clinton had violated an essential rule of her job: boring is almost always better.(See pictures of former Secretary of State Madeleine Albright.)

Clinton's Three Qualities
For the past 40 years, the awkward Middle East press conference has helped define the job of Secretary of State. You go to Jerusalem or Ramallah; you stand there "guardedly optimistic" in public; in private, you try to move a comma, but the Israelis or Palestinians move a semicolon to block your comma. The result is almost always the same: gridlock. The breakthroughs, when they come, emanate from others. Walter Cronkite asks Anwar Sadat if he'd be willing to go to Jerusalem ... and Sadat, to everyone's surprise, says yes. The Israelis and Palestinians hold secret meetings in Oslo and reach what appears to be a breakthrough — they're talking! — which then becomes another dead end.

The job of Secretary of State is more thankless than glamorous; in some ways, the Department of State, a noble antique, is still trying to come to terms with the invention of the telephone. In an era when Twitter haiku-messaging rules, diplomacy moves at the speed, and requires the nuanced complexity, of literature. Power has drifted from State to the National Security Council and the Pentagon, especially in wartime. Only a few of Clinton's recent predecessors have distinguished themselves. Henry Kissinger, a National Security Adviser who belatedly became Secretary of State, was Richard Nixon's schizophrenic alter ego; George Shultz was a strong policy voice in the Reagan Administration; James Baker had clout because he was George H.W. Bush's best friend and a world-class dealmaker. Most of the others have been frustrated or forgettable. And yet this is Hillary Clinton we're talking about — the second most popular American in the world, an eternally compelling and supremely talented character, the subject of constant speculation, a walking headline. Her very presence in the job makes it crucial once more.

It is a cliché to say that by naming Clinton, Obama brought his most popular potential opponent into the tent. The conventional wisdom, too cynical by half, is that he thereby succeeded in neutering her, a theory bolstered by Clinton's reticence during her first nine months on the job, with special envoys like Mitchell and Richard Holbrooke doing the heavy lifting of diplomacy. But by naming Clinton, Obama also gave her great power, which cuts both ways: if she becomes dissatisfied with her role or the Administration's policies, she can become a torpedo aimed at the Oval Office. Colin Powell had similar power and a real gripe — the Iraq war — but never used it. Clinton has no such gripe, but as the Obama Administration settles in and policy differences begin to emerge among the key players, the Powell conundrum looms: How will Clinton choose to use her power? How will Obama react if and when she does?

Traditionally, the Secretary of State is judged on his or her ability to formulate policy, negotiate deals and manage the striped-pants bureaucracy. Clinton has no history as a global strategist, although her performance in the 2008 campaign indicates that she is a bit more conservative than the President, more the foreign policy realist than the Wilsonian idealist. It is also too early to judge her skill as a manager or negotiator — although her performance in Jerusalem indicates that she needs a few lessons in Middle East Haggling 101.

There are, however, three qualities that could make her a memorable Secretary of State. She brings a vision of departmental reform — the need to elevate foreign aid programs to the same status and rigorous scrutiny as diplomacy — that could change striped pants into chinos in the developing world. She is also the first elected politician to hold the office since Edmund Muskie briefly did during the Carter Administration, which has enabled her to better understand and interact with the politicians who run places like Afghanistan and Pakistan. But most important, she is an international celebrity with a much higher profile than any of her recent predecessors and the ability — second only to the President's — to change negative attitudes about the U.S. abroad.

She has the potential to become the most powerful public diplomat the U.S. has fielded in quite some time, although her performance so far, at home and abroad, has occasionally been perplexing. At home, she has often seemed tentative and deferential. In a conversation with Secretary of Defense Robert Gates aired by CNN in early October, Clinton's cautious formality took a backseat to Gates' brisk, humorous confidence on policy issues. Abroad, she seems far more confident, at times to the point of recklessness, as in Jerusalem. (See pictures of the last days of Hillary Clinton's presidential campaign.)

Independence and Candor

In the last week of October, Secretary Clinton moved squarely to the center of the world stage, attempting, at the behest of her special envoys, to improve the rocky alliance with Pakistan and nudge the Middle East pugilists into talks. In the course of the trip, there were the first stray wisps of a hint that Clinton wanted to begin asserting her independence, as the Administration, facing roadblocks across the world, struggled for a firmer foreign policy tone after an opening nine months that might be called the Rodney King — "Can't we all just get along?" — phase.

During her three days in Pakistan, she ran a gauntlet of town-hall meetings and media interviews that may have been unprecedented, to use the word of the week, for a U.S. Secretary of State. The trip, planned by Holbrooke and Pakistan specialist Vali Nasr, offered an unusually subtle itinerary for a U.S. diplomatic mission. A visit to a Sufi mosque that had been bombed by Sunni extremists, for example, sent a powerful message to Pakistan's moderate Islamic majority. "We saw her praying there," an academic named Shala Aziz told me, "and, for the first time, I'm thinking, The Americans have hearts."(See pictures of the suicide bombings in Islamabad.)

The big news was that Clinton allowed herself to be hammered with hostile questions from students, talk-show hosts and Pashtun elders — and that, on occasion, she pushed back, raising incredibly sensitive issues, like why no one in the Pakistani government knew where Osama bin Laden was, even though he had been in the country since 2002. Press accounts either emphasized the embarrassment of a Secretary of State's getting pummeled or fixed on Clinton's undiplomatic bluntness. But they missed the point: her candor, her willingness to listen to and acknowledge criticism, had begun to undermine the prevailing Pakistani image of the U.S. as arrogant and bossy, more interested in having the Pakistani military fight its war against al-Qaeda and the Taliban than in having a true strategic partnership. The contrast was especially sharp after George W. Bush's eight years of unqualified support for the military dictatorship of Pervez Musharraf. "In the past, when the Americans came, they would talk to the generals and go home," said Farahnaz Ispahani, a government spokeswoman and Member of Parliament. "Clinton's willingness to meet with everyone, hostile or not, has made a big impression — and because she's Hillary Clinton, with a real history of affinity for this country, it means so much more."

Transformative Experience
There are no toasts at state dinners in Pakistan, because there is no alcohol. There are opening statements, though, and Clinton's — delivered impromptu on the first night of her trip after tossing aside her notes — was surprisingly emotional. Earlier in the day, President Asif Ali Zardari, the widower of Benazir Bhutto, had presented the Secretary with an album of photos from her first visit to Pakistan, in 1995, and a framed photo of Bhutto and her two sons with Clinton and daughter Chelsea. "It did bring tears to my eyes," Clinton said at the state dinner in her honor at the presidential palace, "because I so admired your wife. She gave her life ..." She faltered then, choking up, but quickly pulled herself together, talking about the "reasons why we do what we do — to provide opportunities for all."

Clinton's first trip to Pakistan as First Lady in 1995 had been a transformative experience for her — the beginning, I believe, of the process that made her a plausible candidate for Secretary of State. I traveled with her on that trip; when we set off, she seemed depressed and even more private than usual. The Democrats had cratered in the 1994 congressional elections, and she had been trounced in her efforts to enact a universal health care plan. It was a very personal defeat; as Clinton traveled the country trying to sell the plan, crowds shouted her down and cursed her. Privately she admitted she was shocked by the hatred. The trip to South Asia seemed a bit of a vacation — it was Chelsea's spring break — but also a retreat to a more demure, First Lady–like role after two years as health care policy czar, although it proceeded in a decidedly wonky, Hillarian fashion. Jackie Kennedy had gone to India and famously ridden an elephant; Hillary Clinton traveled to five countries and packed her schedule with visits to NGOs.

"That was the greatest trip, just unbelievable," Clinton says now. We were sitting in her hotel suite the day after her Jerusalem gaffe, the Secretary in an electric-blue shift rather than her usual formal jacket and pants. She was wearing glasses and appeared rather freckly without her makeup. "I guess that trip has animated and informed everything I've done since," she said. She emerged from the trip reinvigorated, with a new mission. By the end of 1995, at the U.N. Conference on Women in Beijing, the First Lady had propounded a new Clinton Doctrine: "Women's rights are human rights."(See pictures of Beijing's changing skyline.)

Clinton is not an easy interview. She is preternaturally cautious, a consequence of her Methodist propriety and 20 years of insane public scrutiny. She does not like to talk about herself, but she did tell me one interesting story about Bhutto. When her husband was governor of Arkansas, she and Bill and Chelsea visited London and stood on the sidewalk outside Bhutto's hotel, waiting for the then Pakistani Prime Minister to arrive. "She was wearing a yellow embroidered shalwar kameez with a chiffon scarf. I was just a fan, standing on the sidewalk with everyone else. It was the only time I ever did anything like that," Clinton says.

When Clinton and Bhutto met formally, on the first day of the 1995 trip, they hit it off immediately, in part because Bhutto was also obsessed with the impact the Islamist tide was having on women and children. I remember asking Bhutto that day what the biggest change in her country had been over the past 25 years, and she said, "I used to be able to walk down the street wearing jeans, without a headscarf. Now I can't." When I asked her why, she said — bluntly — "The Saudis," who had been aggressively funding religious schools. Of course, Bhutto's acquiescence to, and participation in, the general corruption of the Pakistani government was part of the reason public schools were so inadequate and madrasahs became popular. (See pictures from the aftermath of Benazir Bhutto's assassination.)

Ironically, the rise of Sunni extremist groups like al-Qaeda has brought Clinton's interests — microfinance, education and health care — to the center of national-security policy for the first time. The impetus came not from the State Department but from the military, where counterinsurgency doctrine demanded that social services in war zones — schools, justice, economic development — reinforce the military's efforts to secure the population. As a result, there was immediate chemistry between Clinton and General David Petraeus, author of the Army's counterinsurgency manual, who became one of her prime military mentors when she served on the Senate Armed Services Committee. At one point, well before Obama made his presidential intentions known, I asked Petraeus if there was any potential Democratic candidate who understood how his mind worked, and he said, "You mean, aside from Hillary?"

It was Clinton who brought together Petraeus and Holbrooke ("my two alpha males," she calls them) for the first time — at her home in Washington on the Friday before the Obama Inauguration. The affection and respect she gained for the military while serving in the Senate has helped make the relationship between State and the Pentagon less fraught than usual — although Defense Secretary Gates' insistence on the need for bigger State Department budgets hasn't hurt. In fact, relations with the Pentagon have gone smoother, at times, than Clinton's relationship with the White House staff. Clinton was particularly irritated by the ridiculously strict vetting process that thwarted her favored candidate for USAID director, Paul Farmer, from getting the job. "It was all sorts of niggling things," says a Clinton adviser, "like, Farmer had at one point brought more than $10,000 in cash into Haiti. The money was for a needle-exchange program, but the amount was illegal."

Another of Clinton's military mentors, retired General Jack Keane, once told me, "I'm a Republican. I disagree with her about practically everything, but she'd make a hell of a Commander in Chief." There is a palpable toughness to the woman, a hard edge that contrasts with the President's instinctive impulse toward conciliation. One of the sharpest exchanges of the presidential campaign came when Obama accused Clinton of echoing the "bluster" of George W. Bush after she said the U.S. would be able to "obliterate" Iran if it used nuclear weapons against Israel. Clinton's edgier tone has been evident from the start of the Administration: she took a sharper position than the President on an Israeli settlement freeze by claiming, in May, that Obama wanted "to see a stop to settlements. Not some settlements, not outposts, not natural-growth exceptions." And then, in Jerusalem, her use of the word unprecedented seemed a rhetorical leap beyond the No Drama ground rules.(Read "Clinton's Collateral Damage.")

The White House was not entirely thrilled with either statement. But then the White House staff is several steps removed from a negotiating process. The Palestinians are weak and divided. The Israelis have been difficult, as always: whenever Mitchell raises East Jerusalem in talks with the Israeli Foreign Minister, the Israeli stands up and walks out of the room. Despite Netanyahu's momentary, tactical enthusiasm for peace talks, his Likud Party has always favored the de facto incorporation of Palestinian lands into the state of Israel.

Hillary's Choice
The tensions between the White House and State raise a fascinating question going forward. Obama and Clinton are in substantive agreement on the President's diplomacy-first philosophy and on most policy issues — although neither is willing to disclose the content of their private conversations — but style often predicts substance in foreign policy; neither Obama's gauziness nor Clinton's inconsistent bluntness overseas seems particularly solid. There is a growing perception that the Administration's policies have been thwarted across the board: Afghanistan is a mess, Iran seems ready to scuttle the nuclear negotiations, there's no progress in the Middle East, the Syrians and North Koreans remain recalcitrant, the Russians have been offered a freebie on missile defense, and the Chinese have been given a pass on human rights with no apparent quid pro quos.

The White House argues that some progress has been made: Iran is on the defensive, and North Korea has said it will return to the six-party talks. Clinton argues, correctly, about the need for "strategic patience." But the only thing Obama really has to show for his efforts so far is a Nobel Prize for Potential and — no small thing — the wisdom to have refrained from doing anything so wildly stupid as invading Iraq. The President has been willing to use military force — the Predator drones that have decimated al-Qaeda's leadership testify to his lack of squeamishness — but this Administration is supposed to be about the efficacy of using subtler expressions of U.S. power. That doesn't happen overnight, but for Obama's policies to be considered a success, it has to happen sooner or later, in a way that can be explained to the public.

There is also a growing sense that the President's inexperience is beginning to show — not in his overall policy, which represents the views of a broad, moderate national-security consensus ranging from Brent Scowcroft to John Kerry, but in his execution of the details. The Afghan strategy review has been too public and taken too long; the Middle East peace hunt has become a wild goose chase. A letter to Iran's Supreme Leader is a productive gesture only if it gets a response; if it doesn't, it seems weak and supplicatory. A call for the Israelis to freeze settlements is effective only if it is accompanied by the credible threat of a reduction in aid. "You can't be seen pushing countries around — demanding [that] Israel freeze settlements, demanding that Hamid Karzai reform his government — and not get results," says Leslie H. Gelb, author of Power Rules. "The leaders of these countries are tough, successful politicians, and they'll begin to take you less seriously." (See pictures of the 1979 revolution in Iran.)

Clinton is unwilling to acknowledge these problems, and her staff is loath to admit her occasional mistakes. Her praise for the President is fulsome, and aides say the relationship with Obama really — really — is strong. But there are also burblings and emanations from Clinton's staff and friends, Foggy Bottom body language, that suggest there is a need for the Administration to produce a second act after the Rodney King phase. And the White House is perplexed by the uncharacteristic lack of discipline indicated by Clinton's occasional overseas gaffes.

These tensions are well within the boundaries of normal, creative policymaking. There is absolutely no indication that the Secretary is frustrated to the point of jumping ship — or returning to politics as a candidate for governor of New York, as has been rumored. Quite the contrary, she seems intent on making history as Secretary of State. To do that, though, she will have to have the same authority at home as she has abroad. She will have to become the President's primary foreign policy voice. Over the first nine months of the Obama Administration, seven different Obama officials have spoken on the Sunday talk shows about foreign policy. Clinton has been on each of the Sunday shows once. "Either you have one person sending the foreign policy message, with the clear approval of the President," says a former Republican Secretary of State, "or there is no message."(See pictures from eight months of Obama diplomacy.)

Aides to Obama say they would like to see her on the Sunday shows more often. (Indeed, Clinton's staff acknowledged that she was asked to appear two additional times but was traveling and unable to do so.) Ultimately, though, television is a metaphor for the larger questions that need to be resolved: How much can these former rivals — both extremely guarded and private people — really trust each other; and, if not Clinton, who will emerge as the President's alter ego on foreign policy? At this point, the strongest member of Obama's national-security team is Gates — but he's a Republican and an unlikely spokesman or presidential confidant on anything beyond Pentagon issues. General Jim Jones has settled in as National Security Adviser, but he's not a political animal — and every President needs a close foreign policy adviser who understands the intersection of long-term strategy, politics and diplomatic chess.

Clinton's value to the Administration was clear in Pakistan. She wowed a public so skeptical that it had been questioning the $7.5 billion in purely economic and humanitarian aid the Administration had promised. "How much damage control have you been able to do on this trip?" asked Meher Bokhari, a television-news-show host, at the end of Clinton's meeting with Pakistani women. The Secretary seemed nonplussed by the bluntness of the question. "I don't know," she said. "I hope some."

Afterward, I asked Bokhari to answer her own question. "Well, this trip was long overdue," she said. "The Pakistani people really needed to talk to an American about our concerns — the strings attached to aid programs, the drone attacks, their history of support for the military dictatorship. And it needs to be followed up. But if you ask me about the damage control" — she paused, thinking it through — "I'd have to say a lot. She accomplished a lot." (See pictures of Clinton meeting Michelle Obama.)

In the end, though, Clinton's success will be determined by whether she can expand her role beyond public diplomat. She will have to become a more sure-handed negotiator and, most important, a trusted adviser to a President who knows where he wants to go in the world but hasn't quite figured out how to get there.

Gorbachev on 1989 - Nation

Image by cliff1066™ via Flickr

On September 23, Nation editor Katrina vanden Heuvel and her husband, Stephen F. Cohen, a contributing editor, interviewed former Soviet President Mikhail Gorbachev at his foundation in Moscow. With the twentieth anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall approaching, we believed that the leader most responsible for that historic event should be heard, on his own terms, in the United States. As readers will see, the discussion became much more wide-ranging. --The Editors

KVH/SFC: Historic events quickly generate historical myths. In the United States it is said that the fall of the Berlin Wall and the end of a divided Europe was caused by a democratic revolution in Eastern Europe or by American power, or both. What is your response?

MG: Those developments were the result of perestroika in the Soviet Union, where democratic changes had reached the point by March 1989 that for the first time in Russia's history democratic, competitive elections took place. You remember how enthusiastically people participated in those elections for a new Soviet Congress. And as a result thirty-five regional Communist Party secretaries were defeated. By the way, of the deputies elected, 84 percent were Communists, because there were a lot of ordinary people in the party--workers and intellectuals.

On the day after the elections, I met with the Politburo, and said, "I congratulate you!" They were very upset. Several replied, "For what?" I explained, "This is a victory for perestroika. We are touching the lives of people. Things are difficult for them now, but nonetheless they voted for Communists." Suddenly one Politburo member replied, "And what kind of Communists are they!" Those elections were very important. They meant that movement was under way toward democracy, glasnost and pluralism.

Analogous processes were also under way in Eastern and Central Europe. On the day I became Soviet leader, in March 1985, I had a special meeting with the leaders of the Warsaw Pact countries, and told them: "You are independent, and we are independent. You are responsible for your policies, we are responsible for ours. We will not intervene in your affairs, I promise you." And we did not intervene, not once, not even when they later asked us to. Under the influence of perestroika, their societies began to take action. Perestroika was a democratic transformation, which the Soviet Union needed. And my policy of nonintervention in Central and Eastern Europe was crucial. Just imagine, in East Germany alone there were more than 300,000 Soviet troops armed to the teeth--elite troops, specially selected! And yet, a process of change began there, and in the other countries, too. People began to make choices, which was their natural right.

But the problem of a divided Germany remained. The German people perceived the situation as abnormal, and I shared their attitude. Both in West and East Germany new governments were formed and new relations between them established. I think if the East German leader Erich Honecker had not been so stubborn--we all suffer from this illness, including the person you are interviewing--he would have introduced democratic changes. But the East German leaders did not initiate their own perestroika. Thus a struggle broke out in their country.

The Germans are a very capable nation. Even after what they had experienced under Hitler and later, they demonstrated that they could build a new democratic country. If Honecker had taken advantage of his people's capabilities, democratic and economic reforms could have been introduced that might have led to a different outcome.

I saw this myself. On October 7, 1989, I was reviewing a parade in East Germany with Honecker and other representatives of the Warsaw Pact countries. Groups from twenty-eight different regions of East Germany were marching by with torches, slogans on banners, shouts and songs. The former prime minister of Poland, Mieczyslaw Rakowski, asked me if I understood German. "Enough to read what's written on the banners. They're talking about perestroika. They're talking about democracy and change. They're saying, 'Gorbachev, stay in our country!'" Then Rakowski remarked, "If it's true that these are representatives of people from twenty-eight regions of the country, it means the end." I said, "I think you're right."

KVH/SFC: That is, after the Soviet elections in March 1989, the fall of the Berlin Wall was inevitable?

MG: Absolutely!

KVH/SFC: Did you already foresee the outcome?

MG: Everyone claims to have foreseen things. In June 1989 I met with West German Chancellor Helmut Kohl and we then held a press conference. Reporters asked if we had discussed the German question. My answer was, "History gave rise to this problem, and history will resolve it. That is my opinion. If you ask Chancellor Kohl, he will tell you it is a problem for the twenty-first century."

I also met with the East German Communist leaders, and told them again, "This is your affair and you have the responsibility to decide." But I also warned them, "What does experience teach us? He who is late loses." If they had taken the road of reform, of gradual change--if there had been some sort of agreement or treaty between the two parts of Germany, some sort of financial agreement, some confederation, a more gradual reunification would have been possible. But in 1989-90, all Germans, both in the East and the West, were saying, "Do it immediately." They were afraid the opportunity would be missed.

KVH/SFC: A closely related question: when did the cold war actually end? In the United States, there are several answers: in 1989, when the Berlin Wall came down; in 1990-91, after the reunification of Germany; and the most popular, even orthodox, answer, is that the cold war ended only when the Soviet Union ended, in December 1991.

MG: No. If President Ronald Reagan and I had not succeeded in signing disarmament agreements and normalizing our relations in 1985-88, the later developments would have been unimaginable. But what happened between Reagan and me would also have been unimaginable if earlier we had not begun perestroika in the Soviet Union. Without perestroika, the cold war simply would not have ended. But the world could not continue developing as it had, with the stark menace of nuclear war ever present.

Sometimes people ask me why I began perestroika. Were the causes basically domestic or foreign? The domestic reasons were undoubtedly the main ones, but the danger of nuclear war was so serious that it was a no less significant factor. Something had to be done before we destroyed each other. Therefore the big changes that occurred with me and Reagan had tremendous importance. But also that George H.W. Bush, who succeeded Reagan, decided to continue the process. And in December 1989, at our meeting in Malta, Bush and I declared that we were no longer enemies or adversaries.

KVH/SFC: So the cold war ended in December 1989?

MG: I think so.

KVH/SFC: Many people disagree, including some American historians.

MG: Let historians think what they want. But without what I have described, nothing would have resulted. Let me tell you something. George Shultz, Reagan's secretary of state, came to see me two or three years ago. We reminisced for a long time--like old soldiers recalling past battles. I have great respect for Shultz, and I asked him: "Tell me, George, if Reagan had not been president, who could have played his role?" Shultz thought for a while, then said: "At that time there was no one else. Reagan's strength was that he had devoted his whole first term to building up America, to getting rid of all the vacillation that had been sown like seeds. America's spirits had revived. But in order to take these steps toward normalizing relations with the Soviet Union and toward reducing nuclear armaments--there was no one else who could have done that then."

By the way, in 1987, after my first visit to the United States, Vice President Bush accompanied me to the airport, and told me: "Reagan is a conservative. An extreme conservative. All the blockheads and dummies are for him, and when he says that something is necessary, they trust him. But if some Democrat had proposed what Reagan did, with you, they might not have trusted him."

By telling you this, I simply want to give Reagan the credit he deserves. I found dealing with him very difficult. The first time we met, in 1985, after we had talked, my people asked me what I thought of him. "A real dinosaur," I replied. And about me Reagan said, "Gorbachev is a diehard Bolshevik!"

KVH/SFC: A dinosaur and a Bolshevik?

MG: And yet these two people came to historic agreements, because some things must be above ideological convictions. No matter how hard it was for us and no matter how much Reagan and I argued in Geneva in 1985, nevertheless in our appeal to the peoples of the world we wrote: "Nuclear war is inadmissible, and in it there can be no victors." And in 1986, in Reykjavik, we even agreed that nuclear weapons should be abolished. This conception speaks to the maturity of the leaders on both sides, not only Reagan but people in the West generally, who reached the correct conclusion that we had to put an end to the cold war.

KVH/SFC: So Americans who say the cold war ended only with the end of the Soviet Union are wrong?

MG: That's because journalists, politicians and historians in your country concluded that the United States won the cold war, but that is a mistake. If the new Soviet leadership and its new foreign policy had not existed, nothing would have happened.

KVH/SFC: In short, Gorbachev, Reagan and the first President Bush ended the cold war?

MG: Yes, in 1989-90. It was not a single action but a process. Bush and I made the declaration at Malta, but Reagan would have had no less grounds for saying that he played a crucial role, because he, together with us, had a fundamental change of attitude. Therefore we were all victors: we all won the cold war because we put a stop to spending $10 trillion on the cold war, on each side.

KVH/SFC: What was most important--the circumstances at that time or the leaders?

MG: The times work through people in history. I'll tell you something else that is very important about what subsequently happened in your country. When people came to the conclusion that they had won the cold war, they concluded that they didn't need to change. Let others change. That point of view is mistaken, and it undermined what we had envisaged for Europe--mutual collective security for everyone and a new world order. All of that was lost because of this muddled thinking in your country, and which has now made it so difficult to work together. World leadership is now understood to mean that America gives the orders.

KVH/SFC: Is that why today, twenty years after you say the cold war ended, the relationship between our two countries is so bad that President Obama says it has to be "reset"? What went wrong?

MG: Even before the end of the cold war, Reagan, Bush and I argued, but we began to eliminate two entire categories of nuclear weapons. We had gone very far, almost to the point when a return to the past was no longer possible. But everything went wrong because perestroika was undermined and there was a change of Russian leadership and a change from our concept of gradual reform to the idea of a sudden leap. For Russian President Boris Yeltsin, ready-made Western recipes were falling into his hands, schemes that supposedly would lead to instant success. He was an adventurist. The fall of the Soviet Union was the key moment that explains everything that happened afterward, including what we have today. As I said, people in your country became dizzy with imagined success: they saw everything as their victory.

In Yeltsin, Washington ended up with a vassal who thought that because of his anticommunism he would be carried in their arms. Delegations came to Russia one after the other, including President Bill Clinton, but then they stopped coming. It turned out no one needed Yeltsin. But by then half of Russia's industries were in ruins, even 60 percent. It was a country with a noncompetitive economy wide open to the world market, and it became slavishly dependent on imports.

How many things were affected! All our plans for a new Europe and a new architecture of mutual security. It all disappeared. Instead, it was proposed that NATO's jurisdiction be extended to the whole world. But then Russia began to revive. The rain of dollars from higher world oil prices opened up new possibilities. Industrial and social problems began to be solved. And Russia began to speak with a firm voice, but Western leaders got angry about that. They had grown accustomed to having Russia just lie there. They thought they could pull the legs right out from under her whenever they wanted.

The moral of the story--and in the West morals are everything--is this: under my leadership, a country began reforms that opened up the possibility of sustained democracy, of escaping from the threat of nuclear war, and more. That country needed aid and support, but it didn't get any. Instead, when things went bad for us, the United States applauded. Once again, this was a calculated attempt to hold Russia back. I am speaking heatedly, but I am telling you what happened.

KVH/SFC: But now Washington is turning to Moscow for help, most urgently perhaps in Afghanistan. Exactly twenty years ago, you ended the Soviet war in Afghanistan. What lessons did you learn that President Obama should heed in making his decisions about Afghanistan?

MG: One was that problems there could not be solved with the use of force. Such attempts inside someone else's country end badly. But even more, it is not acceptable to impose one's own idea of order on another country without taking into account the opinion of the population of that country. My predecessors tried to build socialism in Afghanistan, where everything was in the hands of tribal and clan leaders, or of religious leaders, and where the central government was very weak. What kind of socialism could that have been? It only spoiled our relationship with a country where we had excellent relations during the previous twenty years.

Even today, I am criticized that it took three years for us to withdraw, but we tried to solve the problem through dialogue--with America, with India, with Iran and with both sides in Afghanistan, and we attended an international conference. We didn't simply hitch up our trousers and run for it, but tried to solve the problem politically, with the idea of making Afghanistan a neutral, peaceful country. By the way, when we were getting ready to pull out our troops and were preparing a treaty of withdrawal, what did the Americans do? They supported the idea of giving religious training to young Afghans--that is, the Taliban. As a result, now they are fighting against them. Today, again, not just America and Russia can be involved in solving this problem. All of Afghanistan's neighbors must be involved. Iran cannot be ignored, and it's ill-advised for America not to be on good terms with Iran.

KVH/SFC: Finally, a question about your intellectual-political biography. One author called you "the man who changed the world." Who or what most changed your own thinking?

MG: Gorbachev never had a guru. I've been involved in politics since 1955, after I finished university, when there was still hunger in my country as a result of World War II. I was formed by those times and by my participation in politics. In addition, I am an intellectually curious person by nature and I understood that many changes were necessary, and that it was necessary to think about them, even if it caused me discomfort. I began to carry out my own inner, spiritual perestroika--a perestroika in my personal views. Along the way, Russian literature and, in fact, all literature, European and American too, had a big influence on me. I was drawn especially to philosophy. And my wife, Raisa, who had read more philosophy than I had, was always there alongside me. I didn't just learn historical facts but tried to put them in a philosophical or conceptual framework.

I began to understand that society needed a new vision--that we must view the world with our eyes open, not just through our personal or private interests. That's how our new thinking of the 1980s began, when we understood that our old viewpoints were not working out. During the nuclear arms race, I was given a gift by an American, a little figure of a goose in flight. I still have it at my dacha. It is a goose that lives in the north of Russia in the summer and in the winter migrates to America. It does that every year regardless of what's happening, on the ground, between you and us. That was the point of this gift and that's why I'm telling you about it.

KVH/SFC: Listening to you, it seems that you became a political heretic in your country.

MG: I think that is true. I want to add that I know America well now, having given speeches to large audiences there regularly. Three years ago I was speaking in the Midwest, and an American asked me this question: "The situation in the United States is developing in a way that alarms us greatly. What would you advise us to do?" I said, "Giving advice, especially to Americans, is not for me." But I did say one general thing: that it seems to me that America needs its own American perestroika. Not ours. We needed ours, but you need yours. The entire audience stood and clapped for five minutes.

KVH/SFC: And do you think President Obama will be the leader of such an American perestroika?

MG: As far as I know, Americans did not make a mistake in electing him. Barack Obama is capable of leading your society on a very high level and of understanding it better than any political figure I know. He is an educated person with a highly developed capacity for dialogue, and that too is very important. So I congratulate you.

About Katrina vanden Heuvel

Katrina vanden Heuvel is Editor and Publisher of The Nation.

She is the co-editor of Taking Back America--And Taking Down The Radical Right (NationBooks, 2004).

She is also co-editor (with Stephen F. Cohen) of Voices of Glasnost: Interviews with Gorbachev's Reformers (Norton, 1989) and editor of The Nation: 1865-1990, and the collection A Just Response: The Nation on Terrorism, Democracy and September 11, 2001.

more...

About Stephen F. Cohen

Stephen F. Cohen, professor of Russian studies at New York University, is the author (with Katrina vanden Heuvel) of Voices of Glasnost: Conversations With Gorbachev's Reformers, Failed Crusade: America and the Tragedy of Post-Communist Russia (both Norton) and, most recently, Soviet Fates and Lost Alternatives: From Stalinism to the New Cold War (Columbia)

Ukraine-Russia Tensions Evident in Crimea - washingtonpost.com

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By Philip P. Pan
Washington Post Foreign Service
Tuesday, October 6, 2009

SEVASTOPOL, Ukraine -- On maps, Crimea is Ukrainian territory, and this naval citadel on its southern coast is a Ukrainian city. But when court bailiffs tried to serve papers at a lighthouse here in August, they suddenly found themselves surrounded by armed troops from Russia's Black Sea Fleet who delivered them to police as if they were trespassing teenagers.

The humiliating episode underscored Russia's continuing influence in the storied peninsula on the Black Sea nearly two decades after the fall of the Soviet Union -- and the potential for trouble here ahead of Ukraine's first presidential vote since the 2005 Orange Revolution.

Huge crowds of protesters defied Moscow in that peaceful uprising and swept a pro-Western government into power. Now, the Kremlin is working to undo that defeat, ratcheting up pressure on this former Soviet republic to elect a leader more amenable to Russia's interests in January.

Russian President Dmitry Medvedev issued a letter in August demanding policy reversals from a new Ukrainian government, including an end to its bid to join NATO. He also introduced a bill authorizing the use of troops to protect Russian citizens and Russian speakers abroad, a measure that some interpreted as targeting Crimea.

A group of prominent Ukrainians, including the country's first president, responded with a letter urging President Obama to prevent a "possible military intervention" by Russia that would "bring back the division of Europe." Ukraine gave up the nuclear arsenal it inherited from the Soviet Union in exchange for security guarantees from the United States and other world powers, they noted.

If a crisis is ahead, it is likely to involve Crimea, a peninsula of rolling steppe and sandy beaches about the size of Maryland. The region was once part of Russia, and it is the only place in Ukraine where ethnic Russians are the majority. In the mid-1990s, it elected a secessionist leader who nearly sparked a civil war.

Crimea is also home to Russia's Black Sea Fleet, which is based in Sevastopol under a deal with Ukraine that expires in 2017. Russia wants to extend the lease, but Ukraine's current government insists it must go.

"It would be easy for Russia to inspire a crisis or conflict in Crimea if it continues to lose influence in Ukraine," said Grigory Perepelitsa, director of the Foreign Policy Institute in the Ukrainian Diplomatic Academy. "That's the message they're sending to any future president."

Russia's state-controlled media, widely available and popular in Crimea, have hammered the authorities in Kiev as irredeemably anti-Russian, and prominent Russian politicians have been calling for reunification with Crimea.

But five years of policies in Kiev aimed at drawing Ukraine closer to Europe and the United States and at promoting Ukrainian language and history have also alienated the region. Ukraine's president, Viktor Yushchenko, the hero of the Orange Revolution, won only 6 percent of the vote here.

"He tried to force his ideology on us, and he failed," said Valeriy Saratov, chairman of the Sevastopol city council. "We don't feel we were conquered by Russia, but by Europe. We fought the Italians, the Germans, the French, the British. . . . We would never take sides against Russia."

Vladimir Struchkov, a pro-Russia activist and leader of a parents' organization in Sevastopol, said residents are especially upset about a new regulation requiring students to take college entrance exams in Ukrainian, eliminating a Russian option.

While Kiev is playing identity politics, he argued, Moscow has been investing in Sevastopol, building schools, apartments and pools, repairing monuments and even opening a branch of Moscow State University.

The result has been a sharp shift in Crimean attitudes. In 2006, about 74 percent of Crimean residents regarded Ukraine as their motherland, but by last year, that figure had fallen to 40 percent, according to a survey by the Razumkov Center, a top research institute in Kiev.

Crimea became part of the Russian empire in 1783 after a long period of rule by Crimean Tatars, an indigenous Turkic people. During World War II, Germany captured the peninsula. After the war, the Soviet Union's Joseph Stalin accused the Tatars of Nazi collaboration and ordered their mass deportation. The Communists then sought to resettle the peninsula with politically reliable families, mostly Russians with ties to the military or the party apparatus.

When the Soviet Union collapsed, these people suddenly found themselves living in Ukraine instead of Russia, because Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev had transferred Crimea to Ukraine in 1954 in a move that had little impact at the time.

Today, about 60 percent of the region's 2.3 million residents are Russian and 25 percent are Ukrainian. But the two ethnic groups are thoroughly intertwined. Opinion polls show majorities of both want the Black Sea Fleet to stay and support reunification with Russia, though there is similar support for greater autonomy for Crimea within Ukraine.

Crimean Tatars, who were allowed to return in the 1980s, make up about 10 percent of the population and are largely opposed to a return to Russian rule.

Refat Chubarov, a leader of the main Crimean Tatar political organization, said Russian media have vilified his people as criminals, playing on fears of Islam and their efforts to reclaim lost homes. But even among the Tatars, frustration with Kiev is rising.

"We are the strongest supporters of Ukrainian sovereignty in Crimea," Chubarov said. "But the disappointment is growing because the authorities have not done enough to provide land and other compensation to returning families."

Volodymyr Pritula, a veteran journalist and political analyst in Crimea, said the Kremlin has been trying to provoke ethnic conflict in the region, both to undermine the Ukrainian government and provide an excuse for intervention.

Three years ago, Vladimir Putin, then Russia's president, offered to help resolve tensions in Crimea after a clash between Russians and Tatars and suggested that the Russian fleet should stay to "guarantee stability," Pritula noted.

In recent months, he added, the Kremlin has stepped up its activities, with Russian nationalist groups staging protests on Ukrainian holidays and media outlets resuming the attacks on Tatars after a pause last year.

Emotions have been running high since Russia's war last year with another pro-Western neighbor, Georgia. The Black Sea Fleet participated in the conflict, and Ukrainian officials infuriated Russia by suggesting its ships might not be allowed to return to Sevastopol.

Tensions flared again this summer when Ukrainian police stopped Russian trucks three times for transporting missiles in Sevastopol without advance notice. Then came the episode with the bailiffs at Kherson Lighthouse, one of dozens of navigational markers along the Crimean coast that both Ukraine and the Russian fleet claim to own.

Judges have tried to order the fleet to hand over various facilities before, with the Russians routinely refusing and bailiffs departing without incident. But this time, the fleet accused Ukraine of "penetrating the territory of a Russian military unit" and warned of "possible tragic consequences to such actions."

Vladimir Kazarin, the city's deputy mayor, said the bailiffs stepped past a gate because no sentries were posted but quickly found the commanding officer, who asked them to wait while he sought instructions. Five minutes later, he returned with the soldiers who detained the bailiffs.

"Relations with the fleet have generally been good," Kazarin said. "But this just shows that people in Moscow are trying to find any excuse for conflict."

WPR - Terrorist's Death Calms Indonesia-Malaysia Relations

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Luke Hunt | 30 Sep 2009

KUALA LUMPUR -- If timing matters in the art of diplomacy, then those responsible for the death of Noordin Mohammad Top did the foreign services of Indonesia and Malaysia a big favor.

The killing of Southeast Asia's most wanted terrorist came as neighborly relations were sliding rapidly into a political abyss amid declarations of a "cultural war." Opportunists on the fringe were even calling for the real thing as the foreign ministers from both countries tried to mend a few broken fences torn apart over the historic origins of a traditional dance.

"As for Noordin M Top, while Indonesians were happy to see the end of him, the fact that he was a Malaysian was another complaint they had about their neighbors," said Keith Loveard, a Jakarta-based security analyst with Concord Consulting. According to Loveard, the general attitude in Indonesia was that not only did Malaysians steal Indonesian culture, they exported terrorism too. "It's a pretty childish argument, but it was the way many people felt."

Noordin was killed in a raid by Indonesian police in central Java on Sept. 17, after eluding an intense manhunt that stretched back to 2002. Born in 1968 in Malaysia's Johor state, he attended lectures at a boarding school set up by regional terrorist group and al-Qaida affiliate Jemaah Islamiyah (JI) in the mid-1990s.

JI advocates jihad to establish an Islamic caliphate ruled by Shariah law in Malaysia, Indonesia, the southern Philippines and southern Thailand.

Noordin quickly rose through the ranks and was linked to the 2002 bombing of a nightclub in Bali that killed 202 people. Three men convicted of the attack -- Amrozi, Imam Samudra and Ali Ghufron -- were executed by firing squad last year.

Since then, Noordin has been a suspect in every major attack on a Western target in Indonesia, including the initial strike on the JW Marriott Hotel in 2003 and the bombing of the Australian embassy the following year.

He then split from JI and was believed responsible for the second suicide strikes on Bali in 2005. He escaped gun battles with the police and was the chief suspect in this year's July 17 attacks at the JW Marriott and Ritz Carlton hotels.

Throughout Noordin's time at large, Indonesia has borne the brunt of the regional spotlight on terrorism, much to the chagrin of officials who note that many of the terrorists were Malay and trained in Malaysia. Analysts said it had become a sore point that festered.

The ill will contributed to relations deteriorating further after Malaysia stood accused of "stealing" a traditional Indonesian dance. The dispute erupted after Malaysia supposedly screened tourism advertisements featuring the traditional "pendet" dance of Indonesia's Hindu-majority Bali island.

The ad was actually a botched promotion for a Discovery Channel program on Malaysia. But the announcements that the Malaysian government was not involved were hardly heard above the din of Indonesian protests.

Underlying the enmity are negative sentiments that date back to the 1960s. At that time, former President Sukarno belligerently played on nationalist sentiment with his "Konfrontasi" campaign leveled at Malaysia, which was emerging from British colonialism and becoming a regional power in its own right.

The resentment lingers, particularly in light of Malaysia's relative economic success.

"This is a complex subject," said Loveard. "In essence it is proof of the old saying, 'Familiarity breeds contempt.' The two countries are, at least at first glance, too much alike and therefore competition becomes the logical outcome. At the same time there is the opportunity to 'steal' resources, particularly intellectual ones, because there is this strong common cultural heritage stemming from a shared ethnicity."

Indonesian media conveniently ignored Discovery Channel's admission of error and subsequent apology, as local newspapers ran a steady stream of perceived Malaysian slights. Protestors burned Malaysian flags and threw rotten eggs at the country's embassy.

Mustar Bonaventura, the coordinator of a Jakarta recruitment drive by nationalist youth group Bendera, added to the volatile mix when he warned that hundreds of volunteers had signed up for war.

Brad Allan, director of the Hong Kong-based security firm Allan & Associates, said relations were ruffled by a small group of Indonesian nationalists, with some politicians jumping on the bandwagon, regardless of how ridiculous the pretext was. "But it is a sign of a working democracy in Indonesia [that] a lunatic fringe can talk nonsense, but the vast majority of Indonesians ignore it," he said.

The death of Noordin was also more revealing for what transpired behind the scenes. Analysts said that regional governments, including Indonesia and Malaysia, have forged much closer ties regarding counterterrorism issues.

This wasn't lost on Indonesian Foreign Minister Hassan Wirajuda, who had just completed bilateral talks with his Malaysian counterpart, Anifah Aman, at the time of Noordin's death. Hassan announced that an understanding had been reached which would help both countries avert a repeat of the alleged stolen dance episode, but that, more importantly, fresh initiatives were undertaken aimed at strengthening counterterrorism and intelligence-sharing.

"We might even run joint operations if they are needed," Hassan said.

Amid the ballyhoo over a dance, the latter point largely escaped the broader media's attention. But the ability of the two countries to overcome petty grievances and focus on issues that matter, like rounding up the remaining members of JI, was encouraging.

"Any Islamic extremist killed, whether Indonesian or Malaysian or Filipino, is a win for everyone," Allan said. "They all have links, some strong and some weak, and all are potential attackers to any country in Southeast Asia."

Luke Hunt is a Hong Kong-based correspondent and a World Politics Review contributing editor.

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Australian Journal of International Affairs, Volume 63 Issue 3 2009

Risk, regulation and new modes of regional governance in the Asia-Pacific

Journal of the Australian Institute of International Affairs

2008 Impact Factor: 0.525

© 2009 Thomson Reuters, Journal Citation Reports®

ISSN: 1465-332X (electronic) 1035-7718 (paper)

Publication Frequency: 4 issues per year

Subjects: Asia Pacific Studies; International Relations Theory;

Publisher: Routledge

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Articles Regulatory regionalism in the Asia-Pacific: drivers, instruments and actors Kanishka Jayasuriya Pages 335 – 347 Abstract | References | Full Text PDF | Full Text HTML | Request Permissions Cited By | Related Articles FREE The region within: RAMSI, the Pacific Plan and new modes of governance in the Southwest Pacific Shahar Hameiri Pages 348 – 360 Abstract | References | Full Text PDF | Full Text HTML | Request Permissions Related Articles FREE Economic surveillance as a new mode of regional governance: contested knowledge and the politics of risk management in East Asia Helen E. S. Nesadurai Pages 361 – 375 Abstract | References | Full Text PDF | Full Text HTML | Request Permissions Related Articles FREE Risk management, neo-liberalism and coercion: the Asian Development Bank's approach to ‘fragile states’ Andrew Rosser Pages 376 – 389 Abstract | References | Full Text PDF | Full Text HTML | Request Permissions Related Articles FREE Losing control? The privatisation of anti-piracy services in Southeast Asia Carolin Liss Pages 390 – 403 Abstract | References | Full Text PDF | Full Text HTML | Request Permissions Related Articles FREE Risky riparianism: cooperative water governance in Central Asia Teresita Cruz-Del Rosario Pages 404 – 415 Abstract | References | Full Text PDF | Full Text HTML | Request Permissions Related Articles FREE Managing risk within international society: hierarchical governance in the Asia-Pacific William Clapton Pages 416 – 429 Abstract | References | Full Text PDF | Full Text HTML | Request Permissions Related Articles FREE Beyond methodological nationalism, but where to for the study of regional governance? Shahar Hameiri Pages 430 – 441 Abstract | References | Full Text PDF | Full Text HTML | Request Permissions Related Articles FREE

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