Russia and Nixon’s advice to Clinton

It was the month of February 1993, when Bill Clinton took his first steps in front of the White House. Being president of the United States at that moment in history conferred the status of the most powerful person on Earth. At the end of the Cold War, the US appeared as a colossus. Never since the times of the Roman Empire did a single state maintain a similar military advantage over the other players in the system. While since the height of the British Empire no nation had exercised greater dominance in the global economy.

But the “New World Order” announced by his predecessor George HW Bush was not without its dangers. Installed in the Oval Office, Clinton would occupy a good part of his agenda in containing the situation in Russia. Because in the months that followed the dissolution of the Soviet Union In 1991, the Russian Federation would experience dizzying times like no other nation of its size has experienced in recent history.

Overnight, price controls had been repealed, triggering a violent inflationary surge that pulverized the population’s income and savings. And Russia became the most extreme case of the shock doctrine. To the point that Yegor Gaidar – the “architect” of the Yeltsin-era economic reforms – described the experience of taking control of the Russian economy in 1992 as that of someone who enters the cockpit of an airplane at 10,000 meters and he discovers that there is no one at the controls.

Meanwhile, a threat hung over the entire system. Preventing the atomization of the Soviet nuclear arsenal became a crucial priority. New states like the Ukraine or Kazakhstan were too weak in the face of the urgent need to prevent a risky proliferation.

However, the end of bipolarity had led to a festival of optimism in which one would come to dream of the “end of ideologies” and the promise of a clear path for universal democracy and the market economy.

Without catching that enthusiasm, Richard Nixon had warned in a memo sent to Bush that remember that Russia was heir to a tradition of pride and heroism and that the collapse of the Soviet Union had been a devastating blow to their national pride.” The former president recommended that the government “make clear in word and deed that it considers Russia a suitable partner in world affairs, with legitimate interests regarding its security.”

It was then that the young and pragmatic Clinton sought the advice of the former president whom twenty years earlier he had loathed over the Watergate scandal. A rehabilitated Nixon returned to the White House, where he was greeted by Clinton and his wife Hillary, eager to hear from whom he had elevated himself to the status of “Elder Statesman.” The one who advocated the need to prop up the incipient Russian opening. while warned that if Yeltsin failed, he would surely be replaced by a new nationalism and in that case Washington should forget about the dividends of peace.

After listening to Nixon, Clinton held her first meeting with Yeltsin in Vancouver (Canada), where they renewed their vows for the promotion of democracy, security and peace. Other ads had less rhetorical content. The US granted credits for 1.6 trillion dollars and a high-level permanent commission was formed, made up of Vice President Al Gore and Prime Minister Viktor Chernomyrdin, who in Russia was known as “Mr. Fifteen Percent.”

At the G-7 summit in Tokyo, they would meet again. And other billion dollar aid package it would come to Moscow in exchange for a program of reforms and privatizations. A policy that would arouse criticism. Leslie Gelb warned in the New York Times that “throwing money at an economy that is sinking into political anarchy, waste and corruption does not seem like a bright idea”.

For in the midst of domestic difficulties, Russia was by then experiencing the trauma of the change in international status that followed the loss of its empire. While she resisted accepting a new geopolitical reality in which a role of second-order power was reserved for her.

The expansion of NATO throughout the territories that once belonged to the Warsaw Pact would become the axis of the differences between Moscow and the West. Freed from the communist yoke, the nations of Eastern Europe would embrace “Euro-Atlanticism,” inevitably raising concerns in the Kremlin. As Vaclav Havel himself would explain in his work “Summer Meditations”. When he warned that from a military and strategic point of view, no country wants to be surrounded by a powerful alliance to which it does not have access.

For a time, Yeltsin thought he was avoiding NATO expansion, but after 1996, he would feel “betrayed.” After all, on February 9, 1990, Secretary of State James Baker III had assured Mikhail Gorbachev that German unification would not mean NATO would extend “not one step” to the East.

But evoking the old saying that there is no greater distance in this world than that offered by a misunderstanding, the dispute would have decisive consequences that can be seen in the conflict that engulfs Russia and the West today. Because Despite the assurances offered, in January 1994, Clinton would acknowledge that “the question is not to know if NATO will have new members, but when and how that will happen”. Even in September of that year, on a visit to the White House, Yeltsin would hear from Clinton that Russia was “eligible” for NATO membership.

The facts, those true tyrants of history, showed that 90s optimism was overdone. Today, the western values ​​of freedom, open economies and respect for human rights appear threatened once again, by external factors and by the mistakes of their leaders.

Already in 2014, in the midst of the crisis over the annexation of Crimea, Ian Bremmer reflected that Russia could not force Ukraine to remain forever in Moscow’s orbit. But at the same time he admitted that no power, not even the most powerful of all, could stop the Russians from trying. The founder of the Eurasia Group anticipated that the sanctions could do damage in the long term but they will not change the way of thinking of Vladimir Putin.

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