09/03/14 – Jack Matlock – The Scott Horton Show

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All right, you guys, welcome back to the show.
I'm Scott Horton.
This is my show, The Scott Horton Show.
Here weekdays from noon to 3 Eastern Time on the Liberty Radio Network, LRN.
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And of course, the full interview archive, more than 3,000 of them now, going back to 2003, can be found at ScottHorton.org.
Our next guest is, oh, our first guest on the show today is Jack Matlock.
He is the second-to-last ambassador to the USSR.
And his website is jackmatlock.com.
There you can find links to his books, Reagan and Gorbachev, How the Cold War Ended, Autopsy on an Empire, and Superpower Illusions.
Welcome back to the show, Jack.
How are you doing?
Glad to be with you.
Good, good.
Very happy to have you here.
Appreciate you joining us on the show again.
So there's a lot to talk about.
I guess if it's okay with you, I'd like to start with the latest news, which is the Russians are announcing that they have the workings of some kind of peace deal, or at least agreed-upon steps toward a ceasefire.
And yet, Yatsenyuk, which I'm not sure what exactly is his position anymore, but a leader, a powerful leader of the Kiev government, is trying to put water on that, apparently, and saying he has no trust in Putin's plan.
I guess I'm just wondering what you think of all that, or what you know about all that.
Well, first of all, I hope that they do have an agreement.
And it doesn't surprise me that maybe the Ukrainians maybe are not totally agreed among themselves.
Presumably, President Poroshenko was dealing with Putin.
Now, Prime Minister Yatsenyuk is—well, he's prime minister.
And one of the problems in the past has been that, you know, Ukrainians are not united on some of these issues.
That's a basic problem.
But let's hope that at least they're making progress toward some agreement and a ceasefire, because the people in the eastern provinces are really hurting.
You know, there are hundreds of thousands of refugees, and the fighting has affected many civilians, and it really is important to bring that to an end.
Yeah, and I'm sorry about that.
The reason I said I wasn't sure his position anymore is because I knew that they had dissolved the parliament in some kind of maneuver, and I didn't know whether that meant—it was pending on who the prime minister was for now.
Well, it may be that he's acting.
Yeah, that's right.
He resigned at one point.
Things got very confused.
Yeah, but I'm certainly confused.
He's acting as prime minister, yes.
Yats, as Ambassador Newland called him.
All right, so, and now about those refugees, it's—according to the United Nations, approximately three-quarters of a million—730,000, 750,000—refugees have already fled.
And then, I guess, the numbers of killed are somewhere approximately 2,300 to 2,600.
Do you know?
Well, you know, I've heard all those figures.
Obviously, I have no way of knowing, you know, how accurate they are, but clearly there has been much more than—well, there shouldn't be any killing at all.
And this is just getting, you know, to be a terrible situation.
All right, well, and before we get to NATO, because we have time, but as far as the current situation goes, I read an article in the Kiev Post, which is, I believe, pretty slanted toward Kiev, but they made no bones or secret about the fact that the Kiev government is sending battalions of neo-Nazis to go and fight in the east.
These guys call themselves the Ukrainian Social Nationalists instead of the National Socialists, but they all are proud to fly the symbols of Nazi Germany, the Iron Cross and SS lightning bolts and the Wolfsengel, which is that kind of weird N-shaped takeoff on the swastika.
This is the government that America is backing there.
What's going on?
Well, I think our government and most of our media has ignored this, but the fact is these are, well, one can say they're maybe reformed Nazis.
They are militant, extreme right-wing, and not all are Ukrainians.
When we talk about Russian intervention, some of these have come over from Poland and Slovakia and other countries bordering on the western provinces of Ukraine.
And we mustn't forget that even before the revolution in February, it was these forces that started taking over government buildings in the west and the center.
It didn't start in the east where there's the fighting now.
It started in the west.
And, of course, what Russia has been objecting to is that these forces are extremely anti-Russian, and they're simply saying it is unacceptable to have them in effect control of a neighboring country, one that used to be part of our country, and which is their avowed aim is to bring Ukraine into NATO.
And the Russian leaders have said for more than a decade, that is a red line, do not cross it, it will not happen.
And we will do whatever necessary to make sure it doesn't happen.
And so that's what we're seeing now.
And that's why, you know, to continue to think that we're going to deter Russia by threatening action by NATO, you know, it's simply seen as provocative by the Russians.
All right, now, so one thing that's very clear to people who are critics here is that the U.S. and the Europeans have a whole hell of a lot to do with starting this mess, as you kind of referred to there about the use of the Nazis in the coup in February.
But, of course, they forced the all-or-nothing deal on the last president in the first place, which may or may not have been meant to be an offer he couldn't accept, I don't know.
But then they supported this coup and all of this, and yet the narrative on TV and in the newspapers and from all the government officials is that this is all just, you know, Putin's attempt to recreate the Soviet Union.
He's the aggressor here, and there's no such thing as February 2014.
You don't need to worry about any of that.
This is the Russians have started everything, and it's the Russian-backed separatists who are trying to tear Ukraine apart.
And I guess my question for you is, is the policy in D.C., do you think, made based on what they know the truth is, or is it actually based on their own ridiculous narrative that this is all just, you know, America trying to protect poor little Ukraine from Russian aggression here?
Because if they start really making their policy on their own false narrative they're trying to fool us with, then they're going to be making some really severe mistakes, you know?
I really cannot explain some of the reasons for our policy, but I would say that nothing I've ever said is a justification for what the Russians have done.
I think they have intervened more directly than anybody else, and I think they've done so in ways that are going to be very costly to them.
But I do think that somehow Washington and much of our media has latched on to a narrative which is quite distorted.
And the fact that they have has acted as a provocation to the Russians.
And, you know, I think the fact that Vladimir Putin has raised his approval rating from something like 49 percent to over 85 percent among Russians should tell us something.
I mean, it's not just Putin.
We're getting at a really serious, I would say, disaffection of the Russians with much of our post-Cold War policy.
And, of course, the big issue for them has been the expansion of NATO to the east and the increasing attempts in their eyes to encircle Russia and bring it to heel.
And so they read such things as spreading democracy, as simply using subversive tactics to bring down governments we don't like, and so on.
And so I do have to wonder, you know, what's going on in Washington.
Now, the president...
I'm sorry.
I'm sorry, Ambassador.
I'll have to interrupt you right there.
We have to stop and take this break.
But when we get back, everybody, we'll be talking with Ambassador Jack Matlock, the second-to-last ambassador to the Soviet Union under George H.W. Bush, about America's current NATO policy, the upcoming meeting, the Rapid Reaction Force, Ukraine, and the rest in just a minute.
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All right, you guys, welcome back to the show.
I'm Scott Horton, and I'm on the phone with Ambassador Jack Matlock, almost the last ambassador to the Soviet Union.
Jackmatlock.com is his website.
Reagan and Gorbachev, Autopsy on an Empire, and Superpower Illusions are his books.
And sorry for having to leave you on hold through that break there, Ambassador, but very happy to have you on the show today.
And so I almost can't believe it, but the Wall Street Journal is reporting that NATO, not only are they creating a new Rapid Reaction Force, which they say is to be used in some sort of context against Russia.
I don't know exactly what they think they're talking about there, but then also they're going to have exercises, according to the Wall Street Journal, starting on September 13th in Ukraine.
I guess whether or not we have a ceasefire by then, they're going to have NATO exercises in Ukraine.
What are they talking about?
What are they doing?
Who's in charge of this thing?
Well, you know, first of all, I don't think a Rapid Reaction Force is necessary for any of our NATO allies.
Obviously, we're going to protect them.
Russia is not threatening them.
But Ukraine is not a member of NATO.
What is driving the Russian aggression there, and it is aggression, is the fear that it will be.
So having NATO exercises in Ukraine simply exacerbates the problem.
In fact, you know, I would say it is not only unwise, it's getting close to insane.
Yeah, it sure seems like it.
Presumably they do it, you know, in cooperation with the current government, but the current government doesn't represent the whole country, to put it mildly, and is involved in effecting a civil war.
And why you bring NATO into that, when the big issue, as far as Russia is concerned, is Ukraine's relationship to NATO, something that is a total red line.
You know, I would think it's to hide of irresponsibility to plan any sort of joint military exercise within the territory of Ukraine.
I mean, if they want to have a Rapid Reaction Force for the Baltic, well, okay, I don't think it's necessary, because the Baltics, they are NATO allies, and yes, we are committed to defend them if they are threatened.
But, you know, I do think that acting as if the problem is one of them that can be solved by military force, or that the threat of military force is going to cause Russia to back down.
I mean, Russia has almost as many, just about as many nuclear weapons as we do.
If being a nuclear power makes you a superpower, they are a superpower, and you do not fiddle with the security of nuclear powers.
I mean, if we learned anything during the Cold War, we should have learned that.
Well, it seems like maybe the idea is, well, if we give them a war guarantee, then that would be our kind of red line, that says as long as you're under our nuclear umbrella, the Russians will never mess with you.
Only you're saying the Russians are saying over their dead body, no, you cannot have...
They're not going to do that, and as Putin said, you know, I can occupy Kiev in two weeks, which is probably true if there is a real invasion, I mean, of the Russian army, they can defeat Ukraine immediately, you know, and are we going to threaten nuclear weapons over that?
I mean, that would be absolutely insane.
You know, that sort of reasoning is precisely the sort of reasoning that got Europe involved in the First World War, when you look at all the mistakes.
And, you know, it's hard to believe that, you know, the leaders we have today, and in Europe, I must say, with one or two exceptions, they're quite mediocre.
You know, we don't have any more, the Churchills are there, and some of the others that Europe had in the past.
But anyway, to militarize this thing is the opposite of what we need to be doing, because Ukraine is not in NATO.
Two-thirds of the Ukrainians didn't want to be in NATO, and, you know, pushing it on the part of those in the West was one of the most divisive things they have done, not only to offend Russia, but to offend much of the rest of the country.
And so, that's a, this idea of threatening that we will bring them under NATO protection is precisely the thing that is driving the Russians crazy, and causing them to do things which I think is not in their interest.
I don't approve what they're doing, but, you know, this militarizing everything, when they feel that we're using our military superiority in the world to surround them, and, in effect, to create hegemony in the world which doesn't include them, well, you know, they're going to do anything they can to break out of that.
And that's what we're seeing.
So, you know, I hope we come off that.
And I do hope that, you know, they have started moving toward some sort of agreement, because in the long run, Ukraine will only be able to keep their country unified and developing.
They haven't been developing all that well.
They're still suffering from their Soviet heritage and the communist heritage.
But they're going to be able to do that only if they do it with Russia's acquiescence.
Could you imagine if we had a hostile government in Mexico or Canada, how we would react to that?
If some major country started trying to bring them into an anti-American military alliance, would we stop at anything to stop that?
Oh, we wouldn't.
You know, we know that.
And while we don't understand that with Russia, I just don't understand.
Well, you know, I read an interesting article by Peter Hitchens the other day, where he said, you know, all this rhetoric about Putin is Stalin or Putin is Hitler and all these comparisons, Hillary Clinton even compared him to Hitler.
Hitchens said, well, wait a minute, you know, what if he's the last of the guys before the Russian Hitler?
And what if you got your metaphors and analogies all wrong, and really the fall of the Soviet Union could be compared to the Versailles Treaty, basically.
And so right now is when we're supposed to be a good sport about what's happened to the former Soviet Empire instead of rubbing their face in it and making matters worse and worse and worse.
When we did this to the Germans after the First World War, it led to the rise of the right-wing fanatics.
So are you sure, you know, Putin isn't basically just a Republican compared to the kind of people who might come after him?
Well, you know, I don't like a lot of those analogies because I think the situation is quite different.
One thing, we didn't bring down the Soviet Union.
They did.
And it was the elected leader of Russia that led the breakup of the Soviet Union.
We didn't set these boundaries.
They did.
I mean, the boundaries of Ukraine were set during the Soviet Union, and they're very artificial in some respects.
And to treat this as if somehow it was a united country that is being pressed upon by a more powerful neighbor gets a lot of things just plain wrong.
And the thing is, we ended the Cold War by negotiation, and it was in the interest of both sides.
We all won the Cold War.
And then communism was defeated by Gorbachev within the Communist Party.
We didn't defeat him.
He moved the country off communism, and he was the only one who could have done it because he was a leader of the Communist Party who started reforming the country and acting in the country's interest rather than the party's interest.
We didn't force that.
That was done, and it wouldn't have happened if we hadn't ended the Cold War beforehand.
And then the Soviet Union broke up because it had inner tensions, not because there was pressure from abroad.
So the breakup of the Soviet Union was not a victory for the West.
We didn't even want it to happen the way it happened.
And as a matter of fact, George H.W. Bush went to Kiev August 1, 1991, and advised the Ukrainians and the other non-Russian republics to sign Gorbachev's Union Treaty.
We wanted to see them to hold the Soviet Union, other than the three Baltic countries, together in a voluntary union because he was bringing reform to that country.
And actually, it's never been freer than it was that last year of the Soviet Union.
So the idea that the breakup of the Soviet Union was a victory for the West or the United States is absolutely wrong.
They were reforming.
It was not the Soviet Union of old.
And the reforms were coming at that point from Moscow, not from Kiev.
They were coming from Moscow.
And much of the opposition in Kiev was by the Communist Party apparatus that didn't want to give up power.
That apparatus was in the eastern part.
And Bush also, in that speech, warned the Ukrainians against what he called suicidal nationalism.
Okay, you see that suicidal nationalism in these extreme right-wingers who are doing much of the fighting today in Kiev.
So people forget all of that, if they ever knew it, and make all sorts of assumptions which are simply not in accord with what actually happened.
Right.
Well, I mean, aside from the fact of trying to keep Ukraine and Belarus in the Soviet Union, which is a whole other interesting story maybe we could talk about sometime, I mean, I think really the point that Hitchens was trying to make that maybe I didn't say very well was that, you know, the West, the Americans and the British and our friends have basically treated the fall of the Soviet Union like a victory since then.
And with NATO expansion, we've really rubbed their face in it and humiliated them as much as we can.
And as we're talking about, even to the extent of of talking about bringing Ukraine and Georgia, which are these absolute red lines where he you know, I think the point that Hitchens was trying to make was right now, we should be really trying to get along even to a slightly self-sacrificial extent if we need to, to be friends with the Russians, because, you know, things could be much, much worse.
Putin really is not Hitler, no matter how many times they say that.
But if we really make matters worse and worse, he could be replaced by people to the right of him who are very hardcore nationalists and who might very well like to take back as many republics as they think they can.
Well, yeah, that's partly that.
But the other side of it is that, quite frankly, when we look at the big problems in the world that really threaten us, look at ISIS and so on.
Look at the health problems that, say, if Ebola gets out, what a tremendous problem we're going to have worldwide and so on, and organized crime, drugs, all of this stuff.
This is worldwide things where we need Russia helping us deal with these things.
And to get distracted with what is essentially a local fight and a family fight, which really is a large part of what's happening in Ukraine, and to take sides in that the way we have is simply distracting us.
As I often put it, on these big issues, Russia is either going to be part of the problem or part of the solution.
Why don't we act to try to keep them as part of the solution?
Right now we are absolute natural allies in trying to deal with ISIS in Syria and Iraq, and yet we're being distracted and we're almost dealing with it alone when we need and should be getting more Russian support because we get distracted with these other things.
Right.
Yeah, we're right on the verge of maybe a final Iran nuclear deal as well, which we need cooperation on that.
We absolutely do.
We absolutely do.
And let me say that I think this may seem strange, but we have more interests in common with Iran than many people seem to think.
They too are against al-Qaeda and those type of extreme Sunnis.
And they helped us in Afghanistan very quietly in many ways.
They certainly – we did them a great favor in taking out Saddam Hussein, and yet we seem to be unwilling to talk to them about anything but the nuclear issue.
I think if we broaden it, we'll find that there are a lot of things that we can deal with, and that would help us deal with the nuclear issue as well.
But, you know, that's another question.
But on many of these issues, Russia has, in fact, a bigger stake than we do.
You know, both Iran and Iraq, they're much closer to Russia than they are to us.
And our enemies there are the same enemies.
And why we can't find a way to act jointly on some of these things is beyond me.
All right, Ambassador.
Well, I've already kept you over time here into the top of the hour.
Okay, thanks very much.
Thank you so much for your time on the show.
I really do appreciate it.
Okay, surely.
Bye.
All right, so that's Ambassador Jack Matlock, the second-to-last ambassador to the Soviet Union.
His books are Reagan and Gorbachev, Autopsy on an Empire, and Superpower Illusions.
His website is jackmatlock.com.
We'll be right back.
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