← History As It Happens
History As It Happens
3 Years of War: Russia in the World
01:04:31
This is the second episode in a 3-part series marking the third anniversary of Russia's invasion of Ukraine on Feb. 24, 2022. Thirty-five years ago, a better world seemed possible. The Cold War ended, Soviet Communism collapsed, and Russia seemed on...
Loading summary
Transcript81 lines
- [00:01]
Yrefi Representative
In history. It's the decisions made today that shape tomorrow. So don't wait. Invest in why refi today? You can grow your wealth without the volatility of the stock market or the influence of political shifts. Yrefi offers a secure investment opportunity with up to a 10.25% fixed rate of return. No fees, just steady growth. Take control of your financial Future today. Visit investyrefi.com that's invest Y-R-E-F-Y.com or call 87780 invest to get started.
- [00:36]
GoDaddy Representative
History is defined by the names that stand the test of time. Names that inspire, unite and lead. Now it's your turn to create a lasting legacy with a dot vote domain. Whether you're running for office, driving change or rallying support, a dot vote domain ensures your name is as memorable as those in the history books. Visit GoDaddy.com type in your name. Vote and secure a web address that stands out. Claim your place in history with dot.
- [01:03]
News Anchor
Vote history as it happens February 25, 20253 years of war Russia in the world, one man is seen to be.
- [01:14]
Historian or Political Analyst
Responsible for the vast and at one time unimaginable changes. Mikhail Gorbachev after six and a half years in power, Mikhail Gorbachev confirmed his resignation on television tonight. The tricolor banner of the Russian Republic now flies over the Kremlin.
- [01:30]
NATO Official or Political Commentator
Every can take pride in this victory. The purpose of the Partnership for Peace is to open the possibility of NATO's enlargement. Russia is not the enemy of the United States.
- [01:42]
US Secretary of State or Defense
That's why I committed to resetting the relationship between our two nations.
- [01:45]
News Anchor
The ousted president is wanted for mass.
- [01:47]
Historian or Political Analyst
Murder and on the run in the south, probably Crimea overnight.
- [01:51]
News Anchor
It appears the country's ousted president is now in Russia. Large groups of pro Russia troops surrounding Ukrainian bases.
- [01:59]
Martin DeCaro
A Russian invasion of Ukraine. Russian troops spreading out throughout the strategic Crimean Peninsula.
- [02:04]
News Anchor
Make no mistake, the imposition of these sweeping and coordinated measures will inflict great damage on those who must be held accountable. As the Cold War ended and Soviet communism collapsed, a better world really did seem possible. 35 years later, the Russian Federation is a fully authoritarian police state ruled by one man for a quarter century, at war with its neighbors. Left outside the Western club it once tried and failed to join, the road to war was paved with some good intentions. That's next as we report history as it happens.
- [02:43]
Martin DeCaro
I'm Martin DeCaro with the Wisdom of hindsight. How heady those years were. Those days were we thought of the skies. We thought of bringing Russia into the family of Civilized nations as was the synonym of the west at the time. And many people, including some people who are now around Putin, were idealists at the time least had some romantic moment at the time. They thought it was possible to build democracy in Russia.
- [03:14]
Political Analyst or Historian
But I don't believe anyone could ever have doubted that there would be obstacles on Russia's road to a vibrant economy and a strong democracy.
- [03:25]
News Anchor
Two weeks ago, at the meeting of the Ukraine Defense Contact Group, Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth informed US Allies that the liberation of all Russian occupied Ukrainian territory is an unrealistic objective. As for Ukraine and NATO, not going to happen. The United States does not believe that NATO membership for Ukraine is a realistic outcome of a negotiated settlement. Hegseth so infuriated European leaders that he held a news conference the next day to walk back his remarks about what Ukraine would have to concede to Russia in upcoming peace negotiations. Somewhat lost in the uproar was the long running improbability that Ukraine would ever join NATO, which is one piece of an important story story explaining why Ukraine and Russia, the west and Russia are at war today. You know, it may be hard to remember, but after the Cold war, throughout the 1990s and even into the first years of Putin's rule, the US and Russia tried to link arms, tried to create some kind of new European security order based on trust and cooperation to face the new challenges of the post Cold War period. Take the Partnership for Peace, announced by President Bill Clinton in early 1994.
- [04:38]
NATO Official or Political Commentator
Ultimately, the partnership will lead to the enlargement of NATO and help us to build a security based not on Europe's divisions, but on the potential of its integration.
- [04:48]
News Anchor
As historian Mary Elise Serrate writes in her essential book, Not One Inch, the Partnership for Peace offered an inspired alternative to immediate NATO enlargement. It built on the idea of phased expansion. Policymakers had as their goal the creation of a peacekeeping organization that simultaneously offered a contingent form of affiliation with NATO. They were strong supporters of military to military cooperation as a practical way to build bridges among former enemies, including Russia. But Serate goes on to say the early success of 1994 proved to be all too brief. The Partnership was doomed by a combination of missteps by Russian President Boris Yeltsin and aggressive maneuvering by the Partnership's opponents during its implementation. Moscow, to Washington's intense dismay, she writes, began aggressively insisting on a special status for Russia within the Partnership for Peace. Yeltsin and his advisors felt, not unreasonably, that as a nuclear power and member of the UN Security Council, Russia deserved some kind of premier partnership. It was galling to them that Estonia was among the first countries to join the Partnership for Peace while Moscow was still far back in line, not least because Russia and Estonia were still negotiating the withdrawal of former Soviet troops. Again, that is Mary Elise Serrate writing in Not One Inch. So the Partnership for Peace had a purpose. Avoid drawing a new dividing line in Europe.
- [06:17]
NATO Official or Political Commentator
I say to all those in Europe and the United States who would simply have us draw a new line in Europe further East, that we should not foreclose the possibility of the best possible future for Europe, which is a democracy everywhere, a market economy everywhere, people cooperating everywhere.
- [06:36]
News Anchor
But each time NATO expanded to the east, as it would in 1999, with Poland, Czechoslovakia and Hungary joining the club, well, a new line separating east and west was drawn in a way. And that line kept moving in one direction, closer and closer to Russia. At a news conference with President Clinton In 1998, four years later, Russia's Boris Yeltsin called NATO enlargement a historic mistake.
- [07:01]
Martin DeCaro
That we are against NATO expanding eastwards. We believe this is a blunder, a big mistake, and one day this will be a historic error.
- [07:26]
News Anchor
But amid these tensions, the US and Russia were still cooperating on other fronts. They were testy friends, not enemies. At that Moscow summit in 1998, Clinton and Yeltsin agreed to exchange information on missile launchings and to remove 50 metric tons of plutonium from their country's nuclear weapons stocks. A joint statement reaffirmed their commitments to promote non proliferation of weapons of mass destruction. And other joint statements dealt with implementing the Convention on the Prohibition of Biological Weapons. According to the US State Department's history.
- [07:58]
Political Analyst or Historian
Of this period, we obviously, President Yeltsin and I have a disagreement about whether it was appropriate for NATO to take on new members or not. But I think there is a larger reality here where we are in agreement, and I would like to emphasize it. Russia has made historic commitments in the last few years to essentially redefine its greatness, not in terms of the territorial dominance of its neighbors, but instead of constructive leadership in the region and in the world. The expansion of NATO, therefore, should be seen primarily as nations interested in working together to deal with common security problems, not to be ready to repel expected invasions.
- [08:47]
News Anchor
This is the second episode in a three part series marking the third anniversary of Russia's invasion of Ukraine. And developments are moving quickly. The Trump administration has initiated negotiations with Russia without Ukraine at the table to end the war. A war that has no winners, a European tragedy that would greatly sadden although probably not come as a total surprise if you could travel back in time to say 1990 and inform ordinary Ukrainians and Russians that a dark future awaited. But it wasn't supposed to be this way. Even as late as 2010, with Putin now Prime Minister and Dmitry Medvedev President, the US and Russia signed a nuclear arms treaty in a celebratory atmosphere in the Czech Republic, a former Soviet satellite.
- [09:37]
US Secretary of State or Defense
Today is an important milestone for nuclear security and non proliferation and for U S Russia relations.
- [09:46]
Martin DeCaro
By and large we are satisfied with the work done. The result we have obtained is good.
- [09:54]
News Anchor
Russia never did make it into the Western club and at one point it stopped trying. Neither did Ukraine. Russia would not permit Kyiv to leave its orbit. Vladislav Zubak is a professor of international history with expertise on the Cold War, the Soviet Union, Stalinism and Russia's intellectual history in the 20th century. He teaches at the London School of Economics and Political Science and is the author of Collapse the Fall of the Soviet Union. Vladislav Zubak, welcome back.
- [10:26]
Martin DeCaro
Good to see you again, Martin.
- [10:27]
News Anchor
Well, related to what we're going to discuss today, Vladislav, you have a book coming out soon about the Cold War, right?
- [10:34]
Martin DeCaro
Right. Well, actually the book was written during the two summers after the full scale invasion of Ukraine happened in 2022. So I thought what should I do now? What's project? And came up with this idea. Maybe I should just summarize for myself and for others, what do I really think about the Cold War, why it began, why it lasted for so long, and so on and so forth. I know many books have already been out and many versions, many. But I'm one of very few people who grew up in Russia than the Soviet Union. I have that kind of view of things that should I say bifocal. I can look from one side, I can look from the other side, put myself in the shoes of Soviet leaders a little bit, knowing some documents and growing up there, feeling their feelings of insecurity a little bit. But at the same time I spent the second part of my life in the United States, in the UK so I perfectly understand how and why the west was afraid of the Soviet Union. So that was a book about the Cold War, but also of course colored by current events, above all the current instability caused by the war in Ukraine and a sort of geopolitical trap that we found ourselves in. How to get out of this war, how to shore up European security. All these questions were on my mind as I was finishing the book. So you know, the good way to Periodize. The Cold War was to come up with Roman gods. And I started, of course, with the God of Mars, which means that everybody thought about the next world war from 45 roughly to 1953. Then Stalin died and they began to think about arms race. Then they began to think about detente. So I came up with Janus. If I pronounce it correctly, Janus is a Roman God that turned one face to peace. And doors of peace opened up in the temple of Janus, and he could look in the opposite side and the doors of war could open up. So that's detente for me. And I finished my book with the God Mercury, because that means trade, that means commerce, that means profit. And how it happened that in the years after the Cold War, we learned some lessons from the confrontation between the two superpowers, but we unlearned or didn't learn other lessons. For instance, how did China emerge as such a strategic threat? How we came to the situation in Ukraine. So that's the conclusion. Well, you know, the usual trick is you end one conflict and the 30 years to cover very quickly on very few pages. And events really go so fast, so. But I'm glad I finished that book. Yeah, yeah.
- [13:23]
News Anchor
It's fascinating how current events compel us to reassess the past. Right. If there were no war in Eastern Europe today, it goes without saying we'd have a different view of how the end of the Cold War turned out. So I do look forward to reading your book this spring, because most of the Cold War histories I've read have been written by American or British scholars. So you obviously have a different perspective as a. You were born in the Soviet Union. So my first question to you is, Vlad, let's say it's 1990, 1991. We are sitting in a cafe somewhere in Moscow. Yeltsin is ascendant. Communism is collapsing. And I say to you, Professor Zubak, you know, in 35 years from now, in the year 2025, Russia won't be a democracy. It's going to be a fully authoritarian police state that will have been ruled by one person for 25 years, a former KGB lieutenant colonel. Russia will be at war with its neighbors and desperate to find customers for its cheap or discounted oil and gas. China and India. What might you have said to me as we sat in that cafe in 1990, 1991, about 1990.
- [14:37]
Martin DeCaro
There were very few cafes in Moscow to begin with. And I was not a professor, so I was a young man. Well, not already sort of in the high 20s. So let me tell you how I felt at the time and how most of my colleagues felt at the time. We felt we just lived through a miraculous emancipation from the past. Just a few years before Gorbachev came to power. I remember my conversations full of gloom and doom and sense of that it would last forever. And actually, Brezhnev, Leonid Brezhnev, did not stay in power for 25 years, but it's sort of long enough for us to remember that was a period of stagnation with no end in sight.
- [15:20]
News Anchor
Here's a zombie for part of that. Yeah.
- [15:23]
Martin DeCaro
We thought the same about the Cold War, by the way, until Gorbachev came to power. And then Gorbachev started making changes and things began to develop very fast. And of course, I understand with the wisdom of hindsight, how heady those years were. Those days were we thought of the skies, we thought of bringing Russia into the family of civilized nations, as was the synonym of the west at the time. And many people, including some people who are now around Putin, were idealists at the time, or at least had some romantic moment at the time. They thought it was possible to build democracy in Russia. I'm talking about the elites, but there were enough people who thought like that. So the idea was, however, it was clear how to change the identity, Russian identity, because for a long, long time, the Soviet Union and Russia before inculcated in its citizens, citizens, the idea of greatness, the idea of a great power. The word empire was used under the czars. It was never used under the Soviets because we were building, according to Lenin and Marx, a society that was an anti empire, was anti imperialist. From my youth, I remember those slogans, we'll fight against Western imperialism. We'll help national liberation movements everywhere across the globe. So that was an idea of the time. And I thought, we're done with this wrong ideology and we're on the path of integration into the West. At some point, it looked like that integrationist ideology. I can't even talk about the mythology of integration, because people operate in mythology. They have ideals, they have values, they have great dreams about the future. For instance, American dream, and so on and so forth. At that point in 91, 92, it looked like that dream might replace the idea of the imperial greatness, of subjugation of fathers, greatness through force, greatness through strength, that is. But things began to change gradually, above all by the changes after the end of the Cold War, after the collapse of the Soviet Union, there's an enormous sense of humiliation and humiliation is always a bad thing. It makes people resent neighbors, it makes people resent each other. It makes people yearn for an iron hand to come and bring order to their land. Russia in the 1990s was a big, big mess, as we all remember. And at that point, I think some kind of missed opportunity can be registered missed opportunity on the part of Western partners of Russia to somehow give more hope of that integration. The only way to replace humiliation with something positive. I mean, many European countries after 45 were humiliated, right? Germany, Italy and France was also humiliated. But their humiliation was replace with grandiose idea of European integration. Moving to a liberal democracy and all that. That didn't work in Russia. And to this day there's a big discussion why it didn't work out. Most of people justifiably, I think, speak about the burden of the past. Russia is huge. Russia is unruly. Russia doesn't have the tradition of the rule of the law and democracy and all that stuff. But I remember very, very clearly how millions of people, and of course including people I knew very well at the time of all kinds of walks of life in 92, 93 wanted and hoped that finally Russia would live by the rule of law. And in 1993, unfortunately, the first constitutional crisis happened that ended up in the destruction of the Soviet Russian parliament. It was called Soviet because Soviet and Russian means council. The word Soviet is not always bad in Russian.
- [19:23]
News Anchor
This is when Yeltsin fired on, had the tank.
- [19:25]
Martin DeCaro
When Yeltsin fired. When Yeltsin basically paid the tank drivers to shell at the Russian White House. The Russian parliament. After that, after that event, which was a pivotal event, I think people realized that like for many, many times in the past, it is might that makes right. It's not about the constitution, it's not about the division of power. It's again one man, that is Yeltsin, who claims he's a democrat, uses force to repress his opposition and calling his opposition Red Browns a bunch of communists and fascists, which were not really true. They were of course Nazis and they were of course non reconstructed Stalinists. But the opposition was much more complex and broad than what Yeltsin demanded and what. But also people noticed at the time, and it's shockingly early right in the 90s, that's 93 for you that the United States and Western countries totally sided with Yeltsin.
- [20:25]
News Anchor
I have a quote from Clinton praising Yeltsin.
- [20:28]
NATO Official or Political Commentator
We very much regret the loss of life in Moscow. But it is clear that the opposition forces started the conflict and that President Yeltsin had no other alternative than to.
- [20:40]
News Anchor
Try to restore the premise of this episode. The reason I wanted to have you on here, Russia in the world today, because I'm looking at the situation now, whether Russia, quote unquote, wins or doesn't win the ongoing war in Ukraine, whether it continues to occupy 20% of Ukrainian territory or not. Whatever the case, we can take a step back and look at what Russia has become and compare it to those hopes and visions that you discussed in 1990, 91 in my imaginary meeting in one of the few cafes that may have been open in Moscow at the time. Because I look at this and I'm saying, my gosh, what does Russia have to offer the world today other than, as you say, might makes right and discounted gas and oil to countries like India and China?
- [21:26]
Martin DeCaro
Well, it's. To offer the world is a strange formula for a country that has hundreds of years of being part of Europe and giving so much in cultural terms to, to European culture and being one of the powers that defeated Nazism. At least on this, Putin is right. And that was really so 25 million.
- [21:54]
News Anchor
People died fighting the Nazis.
- [21:56]
Martin DeCaro
Right. What it can offer for me is strange. What does the modern United Kingdom can offer the world? What can the modern France offer?
- [22:06]
News Anchor
Let me put it this way then. Let me put it this way then, because it's often said, oh, Russia's a regional power, we can isolate it, we need to punish it, we need to humiliate it. But I'm looking at this and saying Russia is too large and important a country for a stable and peaceful world. We need a stable and peaceful Russia. It just can't be ignored or humiliated.
- [22:27]
Martin DeCaro
And those who keep saying that Russia needs to be humiliated, they sort of profess a philosophy of repentance of the sinners, that the sinner must be punished first and Russia reforms its ways and ultimately would join Europe. However, if you scratch the surface of this philosophy, there's kind of non circuitry there for many people, the unspoken assumptions for many people, and I would say, particularly those who are Russia's neighbors or were part of the Soviet Union, the unspoken assumption that Russia will never mend its ways. Because some of them, quite shockingly for me, because it's racist connotations. They, they use the expression imperialism and chauvinism are in Russian genes. So that makes it quite hopeless case for us. I do not believe that there's special Russian genes that prevent it from changing the ways. You know, there was a lot of talk in the past about A German special way or Sonderweg. But Germans, under certain conditions, change their way.
- [23:38]
News Anchor
So do you mean this idea that Russians need to have a strong man government? Is that what you're referring to?
- [23:45]
Martin DeCaro
No. Well, you know, in the past, there was so much in Europe about Teutonic militarism and Germanic penchant for authoritarianism, which when Hitler happened and then Germany became Nazi, people said, oh, well, this is German special way, because Germany is ill suited for democracy. We need to destroy some classes of the society. We need to reform Germany in a profound way. In fact, of course, Germany was occupied, humiliated, and then reformed, divided in two parts and reformed. But ultimately we see that West Germany part successfully reformed itself as a liberal democracy to this day. Right. So in my view, Russia, under certain conditions, and with better geopolitical, political and economic and psychological conditions, may be redirected from that fatal dependence on an iron hand or one man to something more promising. By the way, the idea of regional power you mentioned, Martin, was often viewed as a panacea because Russia is too big, right? Russia is too big. And because the chances of democratizing Russia, federalizing Russia, making it less threatening, are so slim, particularly in the eyes of those who suffered from Russia's imperialism. Before, in Russia's occupation, they always adopted a line of reducing Russian power and making it a regional power to an extent that it would not have capabilities, above all military capabilities to threaten its neighbors. The problem, of course, with this logic is that Russia is a nuclear power. And of course, Russia has a huge military industrial complex. It's smaller than the Soviet complex, but still inherited two thirds from the Soviet Union. That makes possible for Putin today to produce more munitions in three months than the entire Europe does in a year, as one participant at the Munich Conference said recently. So how to demilitarize this country without occupation? How to make this country truly regional and harmless without a military defeat? We encountering catch 22 problem here, Vlad, simply cannot imagine it.
- [26:12]
News Anchor
My next question to you was going to be, is Russia a great power today? It's more than a regional power. You remember Barack Obama's famous words, I don't know, around the time of the annexation of Crimea, who said, russia is a regional power, threatening some of its neighbors, in a way dismissing or deriding Putin's aim of restoring Russian national greatness.
- [26:35]
US Secretary of State or Defense
Russia is a regional power that is threatening some of its immediate neighbors not out of strength, but out of weakness. Ukraine has been a country in which Russia had enormous influence for decades, since the breakup of the Soviet Union. And we have considerable influence on our neighbors. We generally don't need to invade them in order to have a strong cooperative relationship with them.
- [27:10]
News Anchor
Yet here we are three years into this war, now entering its fourth year, and Russia still hasn't conquered the entirety of the Donbass. So it's not a great power, but it's not a weak country. It's hard to describe it. Putin's goal, though, was restoring Russia's status as a great power.
- [27:27]
Martin DeCaro
Well, as somebody said, the two mistakes you can do about Russia, it's exaggerating its power and it's underestimating its power. So it's kind of a hybrid form of power in the state. But also when we speak about great powers, it's all in the eyes of the beholder. Right? When you look at today's debates, recent debates at the Munich conference and around it, if you're the Balt, if you're the Ukrainians, if you're Zelensky, then you hear that Russian troops will be tomorrow in Tallinn, Estonia, the day after tomorrow in Warsaw and maybe in Berlin. And it doesn't rhyme with, as you said, with the actual performance because the counter Russian army is not a Red Army. It's not a Red Army. So it's way below the capability of Russia to really threaten a combination of countries in NATO. But at the same time, underestimating Russian capabilities is also quite risky because Russia is a hybrid power. Russia has nuclear weapons. Russia has, has a full fledged military industrial complex that it can mobilize. It has huge number of well educated people that can cause harm to the west through, I don't know, hybrid warfare by interfering with Internet and all kinds of other things. So there's a real dilemma. It's no question that the red thread in Russia's behavior even before Putin, from the very start, is that Russia wanted to box above its weight, wanted to be in the top league, even when Russia was definitely lying on the back asking, begging for Western financial assistance and so forth, that, if not genetic in Russia's behavior, definitely deeply entrenched in Russian psyche. So this is why I mentioned an opportunity, perhaps fleeting, brief opportunity in the 90s that, that this kind of long tradition of being respected and feared that Russians imbibed for decades and centuries could have been replaced with a different mythology of integrating into something bigger, of participating in great European project. And we know that Yeltsin wanted it. We know even that some documents, when the Russian tycoons, business leaders, some military addressed their Western counterparts in Brussels and said, please, please take us into NATO in the EU before it's too late. And before it's too late meant for them the timing, the window of opportunity was fleeting, that this window of opportunity might be closed. Because if this humiliating period of weakness of Russia continues, then that would be the same kind of effect as happened to Germany after its defeat in World War I. The Weimar Germany and this country would be again seeking for solutions, let's say, in the wrong places, with wrong people. So the expression Weimar Russia, like Weimar Germany, was widely used by many commentators and inside Russia among the elites in the early 90s. And unfortunately, well, let's say fortunately we didn't have a full fledged Nazi fascist movement, but unfortunately we had something hybrid that smothered democratic liberal trends and started sort of selective terror and selective repression of the opposition.
- [31:05]
News Anchor
Boris and Bill tried even as Yeltsin protested eastward enlargement of NATO. The first big expansion was 1997, the Visagrad countries, Hungary, Czechoslovakia, which is now two countries, and Poland. And then in 2004, you get the next round of NATO expansion. But even at this point, despite Russian protestations about NATO expanding to the east, as you say, they were still trying, the idea of integrating Russia wasn't lost yet. But back to Russia today. What are its internal adhesives? What keeps the Russian state and society together? Because as you said, the 1990s and the experiment with shock therapy, capitalism and democracy didn't last very long. Was it that Putin or Putinism was predicated on a bargain with the people after the horrible 1990s, we'll grow a middle class here. We'll have a middle class lifestyle for educated Russians, as long as you keep quiet about the lack of civil and political liberties. Is that the adhesive that keeps this society together today?
- [32:08]
Martin DeCaro
Well, at some point, real adhesive began to revolve around the idea of Russia's separateness from the west. Because the period of the 90s that I described was filled with those perhaps illusions, perhaps unrealizable expectations about Russia joining NATO, Russia joining the eu. And when people in Brussels looked at the map, they could not imagine Russia becoming for all kinds of historical, cultural and geographical reasons to join those organizations, as many kinds of. It's another unspoken assumption. How would Europe feel if it would border China? What would it mean for a bigger Europe, from sort of Portugal to Vladivostok to the Pacific? Right. So people lacked geographical imagination. But also, I think there was an assumption in the west that Russia simply was not ready for it. And from the late 90s on, a new idea reared its hand which, which revolved around that mythology of special Russian civilization. Geographically expressed as a Eurasian civilization. It does have certain traditions and Russian nationalism, Russian nationalist thought. At first people dismissed that because I remember when this idea was raised, people would say, it's ridiculous. Our fate is. Our destiny is with the West. We must still, despite everything, despite all the hiccups and crisis, continue to try to be part of Europe and the West. It's our culture since Christianization of our country, gradually, because NATO expansion continued, because frictions between Russia and the west continued over Serbia. And particularly important event was in 1999, the US Air Force bombed Yugoslavia, that is Serbia at the time. And many Russian nationalists went bananas over it. The public opinion began to change in favor of that Eurasian special civilization. And the underlying thought was, okay, they don't want us to be a full fledged member of their club. I remind you that in 1997 there was special agreement between NATO and Russia. But NATO and Russia. So NATO is a separate club, right? That kept including new members, including the Bolts later. And Russia and Russia always was separate from that NATO club. So Russia, Russian at least began to think along the way, okay, they have their separate club. They want us to be, of course, their partners. But it's not enough. It means that we would be one against many. We need to organize our own club.
- [35:07]
News Anchor
Well, here's part of a news conference from late 1994 in Hungary. First you're going to hear Bill Clinton and then Boris Yeltsin. Yeltsin says NATO's eastward expansion is causing a rift with Russia. We have to remember that in 1994, that is when Bill Clinton proposed the Partnership for Peace. That was designed to build trust between the United States, NATO and the former Soviet bloc and Russia itself.
- [35:32]
NATO Official or Political Commentator
In the 20th century, conflict and distrust have ruled Europe. The steps we are taking today will help to ensure that in the 21st century, peace and prosperity reign. The forces that tore Europe apart have been defeated. But neither peace nor democracy's triumph is assured. The end of the Cold War presents us with the opportunity to fulfill the promise of democracy and freedom. And it is our responsibility, working together to seize it, to build a new security framework for the era ahead.
- [36:11]
Historian or Political Analyst
NATO was created in the time of the Cold War. Today, not without difficulty, it is seeking its place in the new Europe. It's important that this quest should not give rise to new zones of demarcation, but should rather consolidate European unity. This logic, in our view, is contradicted by NATO's plans for expansion. Why sow the seeds of mistrust? After all, we are no longer enemies.
- [36:39]
Martin DeCaro
And by the way, who invented the idea of a Eurasian Union? It was not a Russian philosopher or nationalist or Alexander Dugin. It was the Kazakhstan leader, Nursultan Nazarbayev. He suggested that, let's organize a new group of countries that would carry big weight and would increase our potential bargaining with the eu, potential bargaining with the United States and of course China. So that idea grew up and became gradually the foundation of Putinist ideology. So we are a special civilization in which Russia occupies an absolute, absolute central place. So the idea of Russian centrality is back against the promise of regionality from Obama, from the Americans. So we, you know, it's very, very dear to Russian heart to be central to something. And then, you know, they are entitled to something like a soft sphere of influence, which again, they tried under Yeltsin and in the 90s to suggest to Clinton, to suggest later to Bush. But every time Americans said, no, no, no, no, no, there's no way for you Russia to have a special sphere of influence. It's basically only NATO in the eu. It's a sphere of democracy, which by the way, has an open door as it keeps expanding. And you Russians just have to adjust to this. So that created another important adhesive, I think, the anti NATO, the anti NATO fear in Russia, which of course rhymed with the old Soviet days. NATO was always something threatening, something militarist. That was part of Soviet propaganda, and it returned.
- [38:25]
News Anchor
And a state can be held together through terror. And there is some of that in Russia today. Obedience, police, state.
- [38:32]
Martin DeCaro
You know, if you build your separate club, if you're not allowed to be member of a member of the Western club, that means you have to be prepared. And that's another trick, Martin. You have to be prepared to box above your weight, above your real natural capacities. What does it mean? Historically, Russia had always did that, always did it, because in terms of territory and population, it looked big. But in terms of human capital, in terms of finances, in terms of military power, Russia always lag behind the West. It means we need. We in Russia needs to again tighten up the belt. We need to delegate more and more authority to the center. We need to have, you know, to revive our military industrial complex because, hey, nobody loves us. The only ally we can rely upon is our navy, our army, and, you know, ourselves.
- [39:30]
News Anchor
You mentioned Nursultan Nazarbayev. He was Kazakhstan's president from the end of The Cold War, 1991-2019, changed the rules so he can continue to be the president of that country.
- [39:46]
Martin DeCaro
He was A Kazakh Putin.
- [39:48]
News Anchor
Exactly.
- [39:49]
Martin DeCaro
He lived in different geopolitical realities. He always had to look up north where the big neighbor was the big and threatening neighbor. So he had to play totally different game. Kazakhstan looks big on the map, but the population of Kazakhstan is puny.
- [40:04]
News Anchor
It is a gigantic country, geographically speaking. So this Eurasian idea, Vlad, two part question here. Which lands did it entail? So in the 90s, Yeltsin would say, often we don't want to go to war with Ukraine or whoever. They're not interested in reasserting Russian dominance in the former Eastern Bloc. But when it came to the lands within the new Russian Federation, like Chechnya, Yeltsin and Putin both used massive amounts of violence to put down a separatist movement in Chechnya. Then we had the 08 war in Georgia as well. Right. So which lands are in this Eurasian idea? And secondly, do those places have a say in whether they actually want to be a part of this Russian club?
- [40:51]
Martin DeCaro
Well, the Eurasian idea came from Nazarbaev because in a sense, he wanted to preempt what could have come otherwise from Russia and play a role. And Nazarbaev indeed played a role for many, many years. So I think the members of that club cannot be fully compared to sort of like the Warsaw Pact of the Cold War. Under Stalin, by the way, the Warsaw Pact didn't exist. Stalin just told Eastern European countries what, what to do. But, you know, later on, the Soviets began to change their ways. But the Eurasian club is even more loose in a sense, because the leaders of those countries who are members of this club can afford a lot. They have their sovereignty. The only limitation, I would say, the two limitations I would mention, first, the whole idea of a Eurasian club is to have a big, big trade bloc. It's sort of like a competitor, a smaller, minor competitor, but still of the European Union. So that Russia, Kazakhstan, initially, even Ukraine could have the bigger space portrayed and making profits, that was one thing. The major threat to that idea came in 2013 when the President of Ukraine, Yanukovych, who wanted actually to be part of the Eurasian Union, but his population, Ukrainian population, wanted to be members of European Union. Yanukovych, for a time was stuck between these two ideas, but he was seduced by Putin and chose Eurasian Union. But that, in a sense, did not mean, whatever some people say, complete subjugation of Ukraine. It would have just meant that Ukraine would have had an open border for trade with Russia. Yes, Russian influence would have been substantial, but not a full subjugation. Another important condition was that Those members of the Eurasian Club would not become members of hostile alliances. This is exactly where Putin began to suspect the opposition in. In Ukraine, the opposition that replaced Yanukovych later in 2014, the opposition didn't hide its desire to join NATO. And for Yeltsin, that was a second big threat after the destruction of a common economic space of the Eurasian Union. That was a threat of having Ukraine becoming a member of an alliance that he already considered as inimical.
- [43:28]
News Anchor
Putin, not Yeltsin, Putin. Oh, they were both against NATO expansion.
- [43:32]
Martin DeCaro
But yeah, yeah, by the way, yes, you're absolutely right. Already Yeltsin is known for telling, telling his friend, Bill, Bill, why don't you leave Europe to Europeans? Why should the United States tell us what to do this way, that way, it's our Europe. So even Yeltsin felt that the United States outstayed its invitation to Europe. Of course, he was deeply wrong about the Europeans themselves, particularly the Poles and the bolts and the rest of them. So Clinton responded, I don't think that would be a great idea. And by the way, they wouldn't be supported. But the fact that Yeltsin said it in 1994 and then later in 98, 99, speaks volumes about how the Russians viewed the future.
- [44:18]
News Anchor
As you say, the Western response to this was a country outside of NATO cannot cancel membership for new members of NATO. You know, Russia does not have that authority. It can talk to us about it, and maybe the best way of going about doing this, but you can't preclude other countries from joining the alliance if they wish, and they did. Poland, Hungary, Czechoslovakia, they feared Russia. And then when they saw the Chechen war, there's a reason we want to join NATO. We're afraid of Russia.
- [44:46]
Martin DeCaro
This was the period, the late 90s, the early years, when you could see two different logics, one in Moscow and one in Eastern Europe, developing in parallel from their historical experiences. The countries from the Baltic states all the way down to Romania and Moldova, they have the reasons to see Russia, by the way, democratic or not, because democracies can be quite nationalistic sometimes. They could see Russia of the future as a threat because it was clear that sooner or later Russia economy would rebound, market would start making wonders and all that. And Russia was a big country with resources and could recreate the big military. And that was the logic of the Eastern Europe that essentially overlapped with the logical expansion of NATO. So by accepting those countries, I don't think the Clinton administration, and then later the Bush administration imposed, of course, they didn't impose anything on those countries. Those countries clamored to enter NATO. So it was an empire by invitation, as some historians say. Right. But from the Russian perspective, they faced very negative dynamic. They were not members of the club, full members of the club, even before Chechnya, but definitely after the violence in Chechnya, they understood that they would never become members of NATO, they would never become the members of the eu. So they were left, left to their own devices. And of course, the rhetoric was nice from the west that will deal, you know, we'll trade, you know, you accepted, you know, it's only you behave well, you'll be part of us and all that. But the reality was that there was this NATO that had an open door doctrine. And the NATO grew as a bloc, including all these countries that had historic grievances with Russia. And the idea originally, and Americans told themselves, hey, you know, the only way to assuage those grievances of the polls of the Balts is to take them under protection and make them a member of the club. And then these nationalist grievances with, you know, all these traumas of history would dissipate. And they did not. And they did not because, you know, maybe eventually what they would have done had, had there been, you know, angels, rebels in the Kremlin, and they would have adopted different policies. But in history, these grievances live a long time. They live a long time. So the fact that Poland became part of NATO, the Boers became part of NATO, meant that NATO adopted their geopolitical vision, they adopted their grievances and made it part of the NATO agenda. In other words, the more NATO expanded to the east, the least, least likely was the opportunity that NATO would develop a friendly, harmonious relationship with Russia. I'm not diminishing Russia's agencies at all. You mentioned Chechnya. Brutality of it shocked everyone. Although, by the way, Clinton administration at some point said we have to use force to restore order. It's like they compared this war to the American civil war to disgust of many other people at the time. But, but never mind. Russia made plenty of steps that increased fear of its neighbors. But gradually it began to concern Ukraine because of course, we remember in the 90s and the zeros, the border between Russia and Ukraine was open, there was open trade. It was not formalized, but Russia hoped that Ukraine would ultimately be part of the Eurasian Union and remain neutral. And most of people in Ukraine actually agreed with that at the time. So we are approaching the first Maidan events in 2004, 2005, when most of people in eastern Ukraine did not quite understand why there's so much protest in kf all of a sudden cries to join Europe immediately and distance from Russia as much as possible. The country was split. I mean, Ukraine was split in 2004, 2005. Everything depended on how the new Russian leadership would react to that. And we see very mixed reactions still. Putin was not prepared to act too crudely. He relied on hybrid means, but mostly political manipulation, pouring money, buying Ukrainian oligarchs, trying to use those methods to keep Ukraine more or less within its sphere of influence, I should say. But it didn't work out.
- [49:27]
News Anchor
It's understandable that after the disastrous 1990s, multiple economic crises, a humiliation on the international front, that when Putin takes over in 2000 and wins the election for the presidency, that he begins to consolidate an authoritarian system of government. I mean, he's probably more autocratic today than he was 25 years ago. But he was never, he was never a Democrat, he was never an admirer of Thomas Jefferson, let's put it that way. Even as there were tensions between the US and Russia over say, NATO enlargement in the 90s and the early 2000s, there was still cooperation and signs that the relationship and that Russia's future might turn out differently. Because if we look back on these events from the vantage of today, they can seem inevitable. But we have to remember that after 9 11, Putin called George W. Bush and promised to help help prosecute the war on terror. And there was even cooperation vis a vis Afghanistan. In 2008, Putin actually steps down from the presidency. He becomes the Prime Minister. Some people say he was still running the country, but still there was a new president, Medvedev. He and Barack Obama signed a treaty in 2011, New START. So even there there's still cooperation and maybe some hope that this is going to turn out differently. This is the famous Obama reset. But really, if we're looking for a hinge point here, Vlad, where events take an irretrievable turn for the worse, that's 2014, Maidan revolution, annexation of Crimea, invasion of the Donbas to support the so called separatists there. I mean, there are a lot of hinge points or milestones, but that may be the most important one from our vantage today. Do you agree, Martin?
- [51:09]
Martin DeCaro
I think the most important hinge point was 2007. Here we're comparing Munich speech by Putin and what happened between the year 2001 when you mentioned Putin called Bush and offered his services. The idea is that Putin wanted to establish himself somehow Find a place for himself and Russia in the new global order that was emerging, that the United States was in charge of this global order. United States was clearly the conductor, that global orchestra. And Putin definitely wanted to be part of it somehow. Yet he understood, of course he was led to understand that Russia could not become a full fledged member of NATO. Okay, that's understandable. Then he played this card to build special relationship with the White House, with the United States outside NATO. I'll say NATO, basically saying, I can offer a lot, we're a big country, we have this, we have that, we have resources. So I can offer a lot and I can offer you basis in Central Asia to deal with your problems and world's problems of terrorism in Afghanistan, for instance. So he offered it to Bush and Bush was very grateful. And Putin, as we know, acted against the will of much of the elite because by that time people who by the way are still around, some of them are gone, some of them are in opposition to Putin nowadays. But at that time the chorus was very anti American. Wouldn't be surprised, already in 2001, the chorus was America is stringing us along. We cannot really. What America needs is our resources and doesn't need a strong Russia, does not need a glorious and powerful Russia. And they pointed to America American doctrines of the Cold War times saying where it was written in black on white, that America is interested in turning Russia into a regional power and capable of threatening neighbors, so on, so forth. And then Putin said, no, no, no, no, no, I want to play this game. Maybe, maybe I will succeed. A few years later he realized he was not succeeding, that the west, the United States was engaged in this interminable wars against global terror. And Western Europe continued to build itself and expand on that narrative of values, liberal democracy and open doors. So Putin faced a situation when he sort of promised his elites, hey, I'm an important guy. Bush Jr. Talks to me, I will bring something on the plate that will restore Russia as a great power. And it turned out that actually the United States was not interested in doing it. And all Russia's neighbors were joining NATO, EU like crazy. And being inside the club, sort of looking back to Russia with thinly disguised fear and even contempt. You know, look at this guy, KGB guy, Putin. And as we told so, people said in Eastern Europe they are only capable of building an autocracy. So by 2007, Putin makes this U turn and in his speech attacks American in Germany openly for the first time. And that created a shock and only made it made him more Estranged or more like outcast in the chorus. So that's the, for me, kind of the main, if you like, if before 2007, various leaders of Russia, Yeltsin and Putin, and then, you know, Primakov, who was for a while Minister of Defense, others, they wanted to consummate some kind of special relationship, if not marriage, of course, with the west in 2007, that was a divorce, at least a declaration of divorce.
- [55:04]
News Anchor
You know, most diplomatic speeches are forgotten within hours. That one lives on forever. Munich Security Conference speech of Vladimir Putin where he says, no more unipolarity. That's baloney. J.D. vance. His speech might be the second most famous speech ever delivered at the Munich Security Conference. Two more questions. The first one here, Vlad, briefly, another idea of integrating, if you will, Russia with Europe was Angela Merkel's idea. Nord Stream 2. Russia needs Europe to sell its gas. What did Merkel get wrong there?
- [55:37]
Martin DeCaro
Well, political leaders should not be criticized later on for what they had tried to do in another era under other historical circumstances. That is for me, quite infantile and not really honest, frankly, because Angela Merkel dealt with a different Vladimir Putin, with Vladimir Putin, who tried still to find his way into the Western club by hook or by crook. I don't know. Angela Merkel thought if you develop more economic, mutually advantageous economic ties to Russia, that might make Russia a stakeholder in the European order, in the global liberal order. And indeed, for a while, it looked like. So it was another era when the United States did the same kind of thing to China. And everybody kept saying that if we trade with China, I remember Farid Zaharia speaking that the world is flat, that we have a married China and all these things that people almost forgot today, and China would somehow move to democracy in case of Russia. It might have been too idealistic on Merkel's part. But come on, what Merkel should have done at the time, not to trade with Russia at all, to pull out German businesses out of Russia, not to insist on building pipelines. So of course, one thing that Merkel did, which railed Germany's NATO allies, was insisting on Nord Stream. And Nord Stream, of course, bypassed Poland, bypassed the Baltic states and bypassed Ukraine. And by that time, by the way, because we're dealing already with this kind of period leading to the confrontation, leading to hostilities, you already have a. A faction, a bloc of Eastern European countries quite unhappy with the behavior of Western European countries such as France and particularly Germany, because they believed, based on their historical experience of the past, Pre World War II and so on, and so forth, that those countries would be able to go over their head and make another Munich to Putin. So that was the era when the language of history becomes weaponized, particularly first of all by Eastern Europeans. The whole image of Munich get revivified, that suddenly Putin, who was known as a KGB person and ultimately an authoritarian person, was seen increasingly as. I don't know. Well, if that's Munich, another Hitler.
- [58:19]
News Anchor
That's my biggest problem with the Munich comparison. There's no Adolf Hitler.
- [58:23]
Martin DeCaro
Exactly, exactly. It's self fulfilling prophecy. I mean, you know, you begin to use certain historical metaphors which creates for you a cage of opportunities and fears in which you operate and then it sort of becomes self fulfilling. If it's Munich, then it's Munich.
- [58:39]
News Anchor
Yes, the owl of Minerva would disapprove. I do have one more question for you. I love that owl of Minerva. I mean, you're right. In Germany at the time, it was uncontroversial. And it wasn't just about Russia and politics. This was at the time of the Japanese Fukushima nuclear disaster. So reading from a political article at the time, Merkel decided to reverse her previous decision to extend the life of Germany's nuclear reactors. The German leadership then decided to switch off the country's last nuclear reactor in 2022. And that was a plan which was a mistake. That was a plan that actually had been passed under Gerhard Schroeder and the greens in 2000. So canceling the extension then led Merkel and German industry to ask some important questions. Where are we going to get our energy from? We don't want to do coal. So Russian gas is one alternative to avert an energy crisis. So last question here for you, Vlad. If not a hot war, although we have a hot war right now between Russia and Ukraine, indeed, is some level of hostile relations inevitable between Russia, Ukraine, Russia, the West? As long as Russia is ruled by.
- [59:52]
Martin DeCaro
Autocrats, it doesn't look promising for now. Right. And Putin is not about to step down, liberate ourselves from his presence. So with human power, is it possible to achieve an armistice? Let's be more modest. I mean, we're talking about an armistice after three years of bloody war that cost lives of over 1 million people, lives and health and limbs and so on and so forth. I'm an optimist, actually. I do not belong to the camp that keeps saying nothing can be done until Putin goes from the scene. We're living through a sort of the time of unprecedented developments. I remind you that Putin probably is a different Putin, of course, but I remind you that back in the early zeros, the same man, Putin, much younger, of course, different, not still entrenched in his autocratic ways. The man whom, by the way, Yeltsin introduced to Clinton as a man loyal to democracy. That's right, loyal to Russian democracy. When Clinton asked him, tell me how this guy was, Vladimir Putin, I knew nothing about him. Will he be a good guy? And he also said, oh, yes, I know him. He will be loyal to democracy. So nobody expected Putin to become. It took Putin a decade, if not more, to build his autocracy. Now, once it's built, is there a way for this autocracy to restore peace in that part of the world? Well, first of all, we know that autocracies are not engaged always in endless wars. I would also say that some democracies in not so recent past were engaged in endless and unwinnable wars.
- [61:39]
News Anchor
I think I could name one of those. Let me. Let me guess. Hold on, let me think about that for a second.
- [61:44]
Martin DeCaro
Yes. Shocking. Shocking. Shocking.
- [61:46]
NATO Official or Political Commentator
Our coalition will stay until our work is done, and then we will leave. And we will leave behind a free Iraq.
- [62:01]
Martin DeCaro
So, in my view, we have never to say the word inevitable. We should never say never, but instead realize that Putin is a gambler. He's a cautious gambler. His fatal mistake in 2022 was that he allowed his ambitions overrun his cautious with fatal results. And we've seen these results creating what Ukraine is today and what the European security is today. But Putin remained a person that is attuned to new opportunities. He's an opportunist. So unexpectedly, he receives this gift from the sky, represented by Trump, and I.
- [62:47]
I
Think, I have the power to end this war. And I think it's going very well. But today I heard, oh, well, we weren't invited. Well, you've been there for three years. You should have ended it. Three years. You should have never started it. You could have made a deal. I could have made a deal for Ukraine.
- [63:02]
Martin DeCaro
It's a gift from the sky for him. It would be very difficult for me to imagine him just saying, no, I want to build my Eurasian empire, no matter what. My instinct is that as a. A political animal, he would be quite attuned to participating in this new game. Yes, it's a very dangerous game from all sides. It's dangerous for Ukraine. Above all, it's also dangerous in the sense that Putin might be ridiculed by some nationalists in Russia who would say he was wrong again in trying to keep Ukraine in his sphere of influence. And the west outfoxed him. That's the Russian narrative, by the way, that the west duped duped Russia on Ukraine. So he may be wrong again with Trump. Yet Putin is a gambler and Putin is a gamesman and I think he will participate in this peace game which might, against all expectations, result in an armistice and shockingly soon. So I don't want again, you reminded me of the owl of Minerois will be much, much easier to meet again within a year or so and look back and see how it goes. But I put a different cap of Cassandra right from the same mythology and would say why not? It's entirely possible.
- [64:26]
News Anchor
The owl of Minerva has been perched on my shoulder this entire time, informing my questions to you. Hopefully, the owl of Minerva pays a visit to the Kremlin and speaks sense to Vladimir the Conqueror there. On the next episode of History as it Happens Ukraine story. The country once again finds itself in a sort of no man's land. The NATO alliance to the west, a hostile Russia to the east. During the 20th century, Ukraine was a battleground trampled by the Nazis coming from the west and then dominated by the Soviet Union to the east until nineteen 1991. We'll be joined by the journalist Yaroslav Trofimov to discuss his new novel about Ukrainian history. That is next as we report History as it happens. New episodes every Tuesday and Friday. My newsletter every Friday. Sign up@historyasithappens.com.