united-states-ambassadors-to-russia-and-the-soviet-union

"At the time, the CIA was directed by William Burns, a mild-mannered former ambassador to Russia who had served as deputy secretary of state in the Obama Administration. Burns quickly authorized an Agency working group ... the source explained, “There was no longer a legal requirement to report the operation to Congress. All they had to do now is just do it..." ...The Agency working group members had no direct contact with the White House, and were eager to find out if the President meant what he’d said—that is, if the mission was now a go. The source recalled, “Bill Burns comes back and says, ‘Do it.’”"

"Sen. Ted Cruz has held up President Biden’s nomination of William Burns for director of the Central Intelligence Agency until the administration acts tougher to stop a liquid natural gas pipeline from Russia to Germany... “I’ll release my hold when the Biden [administration] meets its legal obligation to report and sanction the ships and companies building [Russian President Vladimir] Putin’s pipeline,” Mr. Cruz said when announcing the hold. Intelligence Committee Chairman Mark Warner, Virginia Democrat, blasted Mr. Cruz’s efforts on Monday, saying the “country needs a Senate-confirmed CIA director.” “Ambassador Burns’ nomination came out of the Intelligence Committee with unanimous bipartisan support and there is no rational reason to delay his confirmation,” Mr. Warner told The Washington Times."

"Early on in his Kremlin tenure, Putin had tested, with President George W. Bush, a form of partnership suited to his view of Russian interests and prerogatives. He imagined a common front in the post-9/11 War on Terror, in return for acceptance of Russia’s special influence in the former Soviet Union, with no encroachment by NATO beyond the Baltics and no interference in Russia’s domestic politics. But this kind of transaction was never in the cards.... Obama struggled to stay connected to Putin, whose suspicions never really eased.... We managed a string of tangible accomplishments: a new nuclear-arms-reduction treaty; a military transit agreement for Afghanistan; a partnership on the Iranian nuclear issue. But the upheavals of the Arab Spring unnerved Putin; he reportedly watched the grisly video of the demise of the Libyan leader Muammar Qaddafi—caught hiding in a drainage pipe and killed by Western-backed rebels—over and over again."

"President Barack Obama first met with Putin in Moscow in July 2009, and I accompanied him... En route to Putin’s dacha... I suggested that Obama open the meeting with a question. Why not ask Putin for his candid assessment of what he thought had gone right, and what had gone wrong, in Russian-American relations over the past decade? Putin liked being asked his opinion... Maybe letting him get some things off his chest would set a good tone. The president nodded. Obama’s initial question produced an unbroken 55-minute monologue filled with grievances, sharp asides, and acerbic commentary."

"[His response to a question about his concerns regarding the “militarization” of foreign policy] We all ought to be concerned. Defense and military leaders are not shy about highlighting the debilitating tendency— across administrations of both parties—to invert the roles of force and diplomacy. We’ve all quoted Secretary of Defense Bob Gates’ line about the military having more musicians than we have Foreign Service officers, and Jim Mattis’ point about needing to “buy more ammunition” if we continue to underinvest in diplomacy. But that hasn’t made much of a dent, I’m afraid. Of course, we ought to ensure that our military is stronger than anyone else’s, that our tool of last resort is potent and durable. And of course, force or the threat of force has an important role to play in the conduct of diplomacy. We’ve all benefited from having the U.S. military focus the minds of those who sat across the table from us... But time and time again, we’ve seen how overreliance on military tools can lead us into policy quicksand. Time and time again, we’ve fallen into the trap of overusing—or prematurely using—force. That comes at much greater cost in American blood and treasure, and tends to make diplomacy a distorted and under-resourced afterthought. In the forever wars of the post-9/11 era, the “great inversion” [of force and diplomacy] also tended to thrust State Department professionals into nation-building roles that are beyond the capacity of American diplomats, or any other external power. While our colleagues served with courage and ingenuity, the fact remains that we’re the American Foreign Service, not the British Colonial Service."

"Even as Burns and his agency try to outmaneuver the Kremlin, the CIA director continues to believe China is the greater long-term geopolitical threat to the United States. The Asian giant, led by Xi Jinping, is “in many ways the most profound test that CIA has ever faced,” Burns told an audience at Georgia Tech in April. The communist-led country’s advances in artificial intelligence, economic entanglement with the United States and cyber activity that, among other things, has threatened U.S. federal employee data, are just some of the many reasons the CIA is racing to counter Beijing. It’s harder than ever; the CIA has reportedly seen Beijing identify many of its undercover operatives, on top of earlier executing many of its sources in China."

"Burns’ reverence for public service came in part from his father, a two-star Army general and director of the U.S. Arms Control and Disarmament Agency. In his memoir, Burns mentions how his father once wrote to him: “Nothing can make you prouder than serving your country with honor.” ... Burns, who has degrees from La Salle and Oxford universities, has more diplomatic experience than the current secretary of State, Antony Blinken. But the two have similar temperaments and get along well, people who know them say, brushing off whispers of Burns being a 'shadow secretary of State.' “They are legitimate friends. They’re not just Washington friends,” a senior Biden administration official said. It often makes more sense for Burns instead of Blinken to act as the president’s envoy, U.S. officials say. The CIA director’s travel is usually secret, whereas Blinken almost always takes reporters with him."

"Putin’s intimidating aura is often reinforced by his controlled mannerisms, modulated tone, and steady gaze. But he can get quite animated if he wants to drive home a point, his eyes flashing and his voice rising in pitch... “You Americans need to listen more,” President Putin said as I handed him my credentials as ambassador, before I had gotten a word out of my mouth. “You can’t have everything your way anymore. We can have effective relations, but not just on your terms.” It was 2005, and in the ensuing years I would hear that message again and again, as unsubtle and defiantly charmless as the man himself...Putin... seemed in many ways the anti-Yeltsin—younger, sober, fiercely competent, hardworking and hard-faced... he was determined to show that Russia would no longer be the potted plant of major-power politics."

"The overarching challenge for U.S. foreign policy today, it seems to me, is to adapt to an international landscape in which American dominance is fading. To put it bluntly, America is no longer the only big kid on the geopolitical block. That’s not meant to be a declinist argument. In fact, I’m still bullish about America’s place in the century unfolding before us. We can’t turn the clock back to the post–Cold War unipolar moment... There’s a compelling case for American diplomacy as our tool of first resort in this new and more competitive era, a case that can win more respect and support from our fellow citizens and attract a new generation of the best that our society has to offer."

"Few American diplomats have had as distinguished and varied a career as has Burns. His lucid and panoramic memoir draws a sharp contrast between what he sees as the peak of U.S. diplomatic success during the George H. W. Bush administration and the more confused and discouraging scenes of recent years. Back then, the triumphal conclusion of the Cold War, the extraordinary success of U.S. military force and diplomacy in the Persian Gulf War, and the hope of a future of peaceful democratic progress gave the United States a prestige and influence that no nation can command today. The book describes the serial failures by Democratic and Republican presidents that, in Burns’ judgment, contributed to the United States’ current distress. A final, forward-looking chapter offers Burns’ thoughts about rebuilding U.S. diplomacy. His suggestions, including pruning back what he sees as an overgrown National Security Council and building public support for diplomacy, deserve careful attention."

"Can the crisis be resolved by the application of common sense? Yes, after all, what Putin is demanding is eminently reasonable. He is not demanding the exit of any NATO member and he is threatening none. By any common sense standard it is in the interest of the United States to promote peace, not conflict. To try to detach Ukraine from Russian influence — the avowed aim of those who agitated for the “color revolutions” — was a fool’s errand, and a dangerous one. Have we so soon forgotten the lesson of the Cuban Missile Crisis? Now, to say that approving Putin’s demands is in the objective interest of the United States does not mean that it will be easy to do. The leaders of both the Democratic and Republican parties have developed such a Russo-phobic stance that it will take great political skill to navigate such treacherous political waters and achieve a rational outcome. President Biden has made it clear that the United States will not intervene with its own troops if Russia invades Ukraine. So why move them into Eastern Europe? Just to show hawks in Congress that he is standing firm? Maybe the subsequent negotiations between Washington and the Kremlin will find a way to allay Russian concerns and defuse the crisis. And maybe then Congress will start dealing with the growing problems we have at home instead of making them worse."

"The problems with Russia are not just NATO expansion. There were also a process that began with the second Bush administration of withdrawing from all of the arms control — almost all of the arms control agreements that we had concluded with the Soviet Union, the very agreements that had brought the first Cold War to an end.... In effect, what the United States did after the end of the Cold War was they reversed the diplomacy that we had used to end the Cold War, and started sort of doing anything, everything the opposite way. We started, in effect, trying to control other countries, to bring them into what we called the “new world order,” but it was not very orderly. And we also sort of asserted the right to use military whenever we wished. We bombed Serbia in the ’90s without the approval of the U.N. Later, we invaded Iraq, citing false evidence and without any U.N. approval and against the advice not only of Russia but of Germany and France, our allies. So, the United States — I could name a number of others — itself was not careful in abiding by the international laws that we had supported."

"We begin today’s show looking at the roots of the crisis with a former American diplomat who served as the last [sic] U.S. ambassador to the Soviet Union prior to the collapse of the USSR. Ambassador Jack Matlock held the post from 1987 to 1991. He was first stationed in Moscow in the early 1960s and was there during the Cuban Missile Crisis in 1962. Matlock has written extensively about U.S.-Russian relations... His latest article is headlined “I was there: NATO and the origins of the Ukraine crisis.” ... Ambassador Matlock writes about testifying before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee a quarter of a century ago and about the possible expansion of NATO.... “I consider the administration’s recommendation to take new members into NATO at this time misguided. If it should be approved... it may well go down in history as the most profound strategic blunder made since the end of the Cold War. Far from improving the security of the United States, its Allies, and the nations that wish to enter the Alliance, it could well encourage a chain of events that could produce the most serious security threat to this nation since the Soviet Union collapsed.” Ambassador Matlock’s words."

"...maybe the greatest threat that nuclear weapons possess today is that though it may be irrational for any government actually to use them because it could bring about a suicidal effect, if they get into the hands of terrorists, of nonstate actors, they can be used with perhaps impunity. And at the end of the Cold War, we had cooperative agreements with the Russians to secure their nuclear weapons, in what we call the Nunn — Sam Nunn and other senators sponsored this. These have all broken down now... And what worries me is there could be a creeping up of another nuclear arms race, because if the Russian government, if President Putin feels he is being pressed and his security threatened — rightly or wrongly, because it’s perceptions that count — then what’s to keep him, since we have walked out of most of the other agreements, from putting, say, intermediate-range missiles in Kaliningrad or bringing them close to the border? Then what are we going to do? So, to get into another insane arms race, when we have so many other common problems we need to deal with, I think, is extraordinarily unwise."

"After the fall of the Soviet Union, I told the Senate that expansion would lead us to where we are today... Today we face an avoidable crisis between the United States and Russia that was predictable, willfully precipitated, but can easily be resolved by the application of common sense. But how did we get to this point? Allow me, as someone who participated in the negotiations that ended the Cold War, to bring some history to bear on the current crisis. We are being told each day that war may be imminent in Ukraine. Russian troops, we are told, are massing at Ukraine’s borders and could attack at any time. American citizens are being advised to leave Ukraine and dependents of the American Embassy staff are being evacuated. Meanwhile, the Ukrainian president has advised against panic and made clear that he does not consider a Russian invasion imminent. Vladimir Putin has denied that he has any intention of invading Ukraine. His demand is that the process of adding new members to NATO cease and that Russia has assurance that Ukraine and Georgia will never be members."

"I speak in general. I think that Putin does not understand that criticizing power can help this power. How do we fight corruption in the United States? There are two forces - independent media and powerful opposition party."

"There is a big academic literature on under what conditions sanctions work and don’t work, on when they can change the behavior of targeted countries. And most times, they don’t work. That’s what the literature says."

"In rhetorical terms and broad strokes, in terms of ambition, I think the Biden administration has a fundamentally different approach to Putin than Trump did. I’m using my words very precisely — the Trump administration had a policy towards Russia, but Trump himself had a much more friendly relationship with Putin. There is little gap between President Biden and the Biden administration on that front."

"The last thing I would say is to remind people that there are some things that are very different in this era compared to the Cold War. We should just take them as being different and not shoehorn them into some Cold War battle. I think this is particularly true with China, because we are so much more integrated with the Chinese economy, with Chinese society, even with Chinese students — I assume you have as many Chinese students at Yale as we do here at Stanford. Those are dimensions of great power engagement that we didn’t have during the Cold War. Rather than thinking of them always as threats and feeling the need to disengage and untangle our partnerships, I hope that smart leaders — and it’s your generation that will have to do this, not mine — will think of those as potential assets for American power and American society."

"I guess my preliminary take away is that China is running a brilliant foreign policy right now. They have convinced the Russians that they have a strategic relationship when in fact the most important bilateral relationship for them is with us, and that’s smart; that’s good diplomacy. I don’t know what will happen in the long run, but I think that’s a great position to be in. They fully understand that the management and deepening of their relationship with US is way more important than any other bilateral relationship, including with Russia. Just because trade levels, for economic and security reasons, the bilateral relationship is the most important for them. Russia is peripheral in that respect. Having said that, maintaining good relations with many countries is in the Chinese interest, and that’s what they’re doing."

"If both China and Russia were liberal democracies, I don’t think we would be having conversations about great power competition. So I believe that regime type does matter, and the ideological dimension that comes with that regime type also plays a role in great power competition."

"I hope that from crisis and tragedy comes engagement. Don’t just complain about [an issue], do something about it! Don’t just lament about the current state of affairs, vote!"

"We got to get our democracy in order at home, but we can walk and chew gum at the same time. Two wrongs do not make a right."

"Today, however, Russia and China are united as autocracies. They do have this ideological connection. Both countries have tense relations with the United States and the liberal democratic world, and that brings them together."

"We're not good at point predictions. But we are pretty good at some long-term trajectory things, over hundreds of years, right? Over hundreds of years, there's a pretty strong correlation between the more well-to-do a society is, the more educated it is, the more urban it is, the more income GDP per capita, the more likely there is to be demand for democracy."

"The people working at the White House at the time are friends of mine, and they're friends of mine to this day. I don’t want to trivialize how difficult their decisions were. They did not have good choices."

"Correlation is not causation, as we like to say here at Stanford, and the fact that I arrived in the middle of that had to do with our long confirmation process in America. Nothing to do with Russian politics. But in Russia, that was not the way it was portrayed. In Russia, it was portrayed that I was sent deliberately by President Obama to lead the revolution. And given my background as an academic, I've written about the political transitions and democratization, that was a very easy story."

"It’s incumbent upon all people to believe in the facts and to keep pushing it. You can’t constrain free speech, but you can speak more loudly about what is factual."

"I'm 100 percent for lifting sanctions on Russia, provided they change their behavior for why the sanctions were put in place. It’s just that simple."

"Conferences at the top level are always courteous. Name calling is left to the foreign ministers."

"I firmly believe that any organization, in order to survive and achieve success, must have a sound set of beliefs on which it premises all its policies and actions. Next I believe that the most important single factor in corporate success is faithful adherence to those beliefs. And, finally I believe if an organization is to meet the challenge of a changing world, it must be prepared to change everything about itself except those beliefs as it moves through corporate life. Basic philosophy, spirit and drive of an organization have far more to do with its relative achievements than do technological or economic resources, organizational structure, innovation and timing..."

"If you stand up and be counted, from time to time you may get yourself knocked down. But remember this: A man flattened by an opponent can get up again. A man flattened by conformity stays down for good."

"Machines might give us more time to think but will never do our thinking for us."

"Thinking things through is hard work and it sometimes seems safer to follow the crowd. That blind adherence to such group thinking is, in the long run, far more dangerous than independently thinking things through"

"Here's a reminder on accepting Christmas gifts from vendors: don't."

"Follow the path of the unsafe, independent thinker. Expose your ideas to the dangers of controversy. Speak your mind and fear less the label of 'crackpot' than the stigma of conformity."

"Fold him in his country's stars, Roll the drum and fire the volley! What to him are all our wars, What but death bemocking folly?"

"Love is that orbit of the restless soul Whose circle grazes the confines of space, Bounding within the limits of its race Utmost extremes."

"Lovers are Like walking ghosts, they always haunt the spot Of their misdeeds."

"Freedom!" their battle-cry,— "Freedom! or leave to die!"

"The Great Siberian Road has been feelingly described by Mr. Kennan."

"Concerned about Communism on the global level, and about the stability of Europe and the future of Germany, the Americans, both government and public, did not intend to repeat their interwar isolationism when they had not responded to the expansion of Nazi Germany and, without getting the blame, had, in practice, been prominent among the appeasers. Containment as a concept that was to be applied in American political and military strategy received its intellectual rationale in 1947 from George Kennan, the acting head of the American diplomatic mission in Moscow. The emphasis on inherent Soviet antagonism under Stalin in Kennan’s ‘long telegram’ of 22 February 1946 had an impact in Washington and elsewhere. Kennan’s thesis was understood as advocating containment, a view also taken by the Canadian Escott Reid. Kennan followed up with a ‘Mr X’ article, drawing on the ‘long telegram’, in Foreign Affairs in April 1947, an article that made much use of the word containment. In 1947, Kennan, who argued that the division of Europe was reversible, became Director of Policy Planning in the State Department. The concept of containment was developed with the Truman government advancing the idea of America’s perimeter of vital interests. The perimeter was to be consolidated by the establishment of regional security pacts, notably the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation (NATO), created in 1949."

"[His ideas] were misinterpreted both by those who shared them as well as by those who rejected them."

"Heroism is endurance for one moment more."

"Surely one of the reasons for our continued failures throughout these areas [Asia and the Middle East] has been our inability to understand how profound, how irrational, and how erratic has been the reaction generally of the respective peoples to the ideas and impulses that have come to them from the West in recent decades. This applies particularly to the intellectuals who play so prominent a part in political leadership and in the molding of public opinion. To ascertain the reasons for the intensely anti-American attitudes manifested by these people would be to delve deeply into psychological reactions and the origins of various forms of neuroses. I have thoughts about these matters, but will not take up your time with them here. Only one thing I would emphasize. The respective reactions are obviously emotional and subconscious, and not likely to be altered by any attempts on our part to meet them by any verbal appeal to rational processes."

"It was his enormous curiosity that kept him alive so long. He had an enormous interest in the world, and I remember, even toward the end, he would get so angry at the paper, angry at the TV."

"The hagiography of George Kennan’s foreign policy acumen omits some blemishes on his record. For all of his conceptual clarity, Kennan erred in many of his predictions. He opposed the creation of NATO, the most successful alliance in world history. By the early 1990s, when he wrote Around the Cragged Hill, he clearly believed the United States was doomed to decline. Asserting that the United States was devoid of “any sort of discriminating administration,” he proposed several democracy-restricting measures. And the less said about Kennan’s view of non-WASPs, the better. While Kennan was a brilliant analyst of the Soviet Union, he evinced little understanding of his own country."

"I am like a person who has placed poison in one of two glasses before a person he loves—and looks back upon his act with horror and incredulity—but still does not know from which glass the person will drink."

"My own position is somewhere in between. I am not sure that the economic arguments for an early step toward real union are very compelling. I have deep feelings, however, about the political necessity of creating in Western Europe an international framework which would bridge national sovereignties to such a degree as to give a different aspect to the German question by providing a home for the German people other than the national home and thus lifting German horizons beyond those national limits with which the Germans have shown themselves so incapable of coping."

"I have never been any good at training children or dogs; that is why I am no good at training myself."