THE BIG ISSUE that came up in almost all Baker’s discussions in Moscow was that of relations between the center and the republics. The new minister of defense, Yevgenii Shaposhnikov, asked Baker, “Please do not be in a hurry to recognize all these new republics.” Baker was not. With no clear strategy enunciated by the Bush White House, he was free to conduct his own policy. Baker’s talks in Moscow and St. Petersburg seemed to confirm his earlier assumption that the democrats were concentrated in the center; helping the center therefore meant helping democracy. Baker told everyone in the Soviet Union who would listen that some arrangement had to be made between the center and the republics so that the West would know with whom to deal on economic reform and humanitarian aid.
Baker managed to host a dinner for the prime ministers of the republics. It was a striking difference from March 1991, when the initiative of the US ambassador, Jack Matlock, to gather the leaders of the republics for a meeting at his embassy had been torpedoed by Gorbachev and his people. Now Baker was the only political leader trusted by the heads of the republics to be an honest broker. He used the occasion to smooth over contradictions and alleviate tension and distrust between the new cohorts of Soviet leaders. He acted as a go-between for the center and the republican leaders. By assuring Prime Minister Vitold Fokin of Ukraine that humanitarian aid would be distributed to all the republics, Baker obtained his commitment that Ukraine would sign the economic treaty with Russia and the other post-Soviet republics.24
What Baker did in Moscow vis-à-vis the republics had the full support of the president. George Bush did almost everything diplomatically possible to keep the Soviet Union alive. It was no easy task. He got an opportunity to assess the dimensions of the problem on September 25, when he welcomed his former Kyiv host, Leonid Kravchuk, the head of the Ukrainian parliament, to the White House. Three days earlier, five thousand demonstrators representing local Ukrainian American organizations had gathered in Lafayette Park, across from the White House, to manifest their support for Ukrainian independence and urge Bush, then still under attack for his “Chicken Kiev” speech, to change his attitude toward independence for the Soviet republics. “You were last with the Baltics. Be first with Ukraine,” read one of the demonstrators’ signs.
Bush found Kravchuk more self-confident and much less agreeable than he had been in Kyiv less than two months earlier. During Bush’s visit, Kravchuk had agreed with him on the need to resist what the American president called “suicidal nationalism.” Bush was still in the same frame of mind, opposing independence for every Soviet republic except the Baltics, but Kravchuk had clearly shifted position. His support for Ukrainian independence had become something more than a tactical move by a party apparatchik threatened by the democratic victory in Moscow. “Independence is forged by the people. And on December 1 [[the date of the impending referendum]] the people will confirm our independence and we will begin building a new nation—Ukraine,” he told the North American media.25
Having embarked on selling the idea of Ukrainian independence to the world, Kravchuk used his invitation to the White House as an opportunity to make his case to the world’s most powerful political leader. His verdict on the Soviet Union was not the one that Bush and his advisers wanted to hear: “The Soviet Union is virtually disintegrating. There is no national government. There is no Supreme Soviet of the Soviet Union.” Kravchuk concluded his presentation by stating, “The Union cannot exist in any serious form. There is a struggle for power there, and we cannot be part of a union in which there are some members more powerful than others.” His reference was clearly to the Gorbachev-Yeltsin alliance and the role that Russia aspired to play in the new Union. Kravchuk requested support for Ukrainian democracy, which he understood as the drive for national independence. He also wanted direct diplomatic ties, the opening of a Ukrainian trade mission in the United States, and eventually the recognition of Ukrainian independence. Kravchuk did not come only to ask for favors. He had also something to offer: Ukraine, he said, aspired to be a nuclear-free country.
Bush was not impressed. In his memoirs he wrote that Kravchuk “did not seem to grasp the implications and complexities of what he was proposing.” On the previous day Bush had met with the Soviet foreign minister, Boris Pankin, who assured him that while the immediate postcoup period had seen a rush for independence by the republics, in the last few weeks republican leaders had realized that they had to work together. That was not the impression one would get from talking to Kravchuk. According to Bush’s memoirs, the Ukrainian leader gave him “a taste of the dissatisfaction the republics felt for the Union.” Bush promised Kravchuk support for democracy and economic reform, as well as food and humanitarian assistance. He also gave him what was by now the standard American line on center-republic relations: the United States did not presume to shape the changes taking place in the Soviet Union but wanted political clarity there. It also wanted a viable economic plan. Recognition of Ukraine, unlike that of the Baltic states, would have to await the results of the referendum.
The conversation, scheduled for forty-five minutes, had now lasted an hour and a half, and Bush signaled that time was running out. Kravchuk rushed to make his final plea—one that took Bush by surprise. Thanking him for the offer of food and humanitarian aid, Kravchuk said that Ukraine needed investment and technology instead. This was very different from what Bush and Baker heard from the representatives of the Soviet center, who were begging for food supplies. “We have a difficult situation,” said Kravchuk. “The Soviet Union has received food assistance, but Ukraine has not. Now we must pay these [[all-Union]] debts. While the Soviet Union was getting assistance, we were sending 60,000 tons of meat and milk to the Soviet Union [[at nominal prices]]. . . . Our request is that you give us credits. We’ll buy technology. We’ll invite businessmen to invest in Ukraine. We’ll work.” Kravchuk’s statement reflected the simple fact that Ukraine was a food-producing republic, not a food-importing one, and its interests differed from those of other republics. Commerce and investment, not food aid, was Ukraine’s highest priority.
Drawing aside the veil of American impartiality with regard to relations between the center and the republics, Bush asked Kravchuk a direct question that revealed the underlying premise of American policy at the time: “Do you see that there must be an economic union with the center or not? We think that is a necessary step to encourage investment.” “I would be glad to have that if the center could do something,” responded Kravchuk. “But the center is incapable of doing anything. We’re losing time. The Soviet Union is a huge country. It is impossible to pursue economic reform at a rapid pace in the entire country.”
The two leaders parted ways without reaching an understanding. The Ukrainian visitor sought to be as gracious as possible in his subsequent comments to the press, which accused Bush of being completely in Gorbachev’s corner. “I am convinced that President George Bush is beginning to change his way of thinking,” he told the press. Later, Kravchuk summed up Bush’s position as follows: he wanted the Soviet Union to go on. The security of the nuclear arsenals was always at the top of his agenda. Kravchuk respected that position, as he believed that it corresponded to the interests of those who had elected Bush to govern their country.26
GEORGE H. W. BUSH indeed wanted the Soviet Union to survive. It was essential to his security agenda, which remained focused on Soviet nuclear weapons, just as it had been at the height of the Cold War. By the time the president met with the increasingly difficult Kravchuk, Dick Cheney and his experts at the Department of Defense had prepared the proposal for nuclear disarmament that Bush had requested at the NSC meeting three weeks earlier. It was immediately sent to American allies in Western Europe and to Gorbachev in Moscow. On September 27, Bush called Prime Minister John Major of Britain, President François Mitterrand of France, and Chancellor Helmut Kohl of Germany to explain his initiative and ask for support. He also called Gorbachev. At first glance, the proposal constituted a unilateral off
er by the United States to reduce its nuclear arsenal by removing tactical nuclear weapons and getting rid of multiple independently targeted reentry vehicles (MIRVs) on intercontinental ballistic missiles (ICBMs). In reality, the proposal was designed as an invitation to the USSR to do the same. As Scowcroft told the secretary-general of NATO, Manfred Woerner, “We are not planning negotiations. This is a unilateral move. Of course, if the Soviets reject our proposals, we may have to reconsider.”27
Ultimately, the success of the proposal depended on the Soviet response. In his telephone conversation with Gorbachev on September 27, Bush told the Soviet leader, “We’ll spell out what we do. In some categories, we’ll spell out how the Soviet Union could take similar steps. For example, we cancel ICBMs except for single warheads, and would like to say that the Soviet Union is doing the same thing.”
Gorbachev seemed interested but avoided any specific commitment. “George, thank you for those clarifications,” he told the US president. “Since you’re urging that we take steps, I can only give an answer in principle—since there is much that must be clarified—and that answer is a positive one.” Bush said that he understood and asked whether he could announce that Gorbachev’s initial reaction was positive. Gorbachev gave his consent.28
Gorbachev spoke to Bush in the presence of top Soviet military officers with whom he had just finished studying the text of the American proposal. General Vladimir Lobov, the new chief of the Soviet army General Staff, was more than skeptical. According to Scowcroft, the proposal to remove tactical nuclear weapons served immediate American interests in more than one way. In Germany, American weapons of that class had been rendered obsolete by German unification: if fired, they would now hit the eastern territories taken over by Bonn. In South Korea, the Seoul government wanted such weapons out in order to engage North Korea on the diplomatic level. Elsewhere in the Pacific, the governments of Japan and New Zealand objected to nuclear-armed American ships in their ports. Given the American offer to remove tactical nuclear weapons unilaterally, problems associated with long negotiations and subsequent verification were eliminated.
According to Gorbachev’s foreign policy adviser, Anatolii Cherniaev, who was present during the telephone call, “[[General]] Lobov tried to ‘exert pressure’: it was supposedly disadvantageous to us; they will deceive us; I see no reciprocity, and so on—even though Mikhail Sergeevich pointed a finger at Bush’s text, arguing the opposite.” After his conversation with Bush, Gorbachev entertained the generals by sharing his impressions of a play that he and his wife had seen a few days earlier. It was based on Thornton Wilder’s 1948 novel The Ides of March. Gorbachev told the surprised generals that he saw analogies between the last days of the Roman Republic and the times they were living in. “There is in him a mixture of artlessness and a clever pretense of credulity with the new generals,” noted Cherniaev in his diary. One way or another, Gorbachev eventually convinced his new military chiefs to go along. They turned out to be much more agreeable than their predecessors.
Boris Pankin wrote in his memoirs that “after the putsch of August 1991, many of the military were embarrassed by their own tacit sympathy for its aims, if not active support. So the quiescence of the Soviet military made it easier for us to be imaginative.” In that vein, Cherniaev credited Bush’s proposal to the international influence of Gorbachev’s “new thinking,” which he himself had helped shape. “Do you not see in this any emergence of a new US policy, new relations with us, results of new thinking?” he asked the ever suspicious generals after the Bush-Gorbachev teleconference. Apparently they did not. Cherniaev’s statement would come as a surprise to the Americans as well, but not to Gorbachev. He kept believing in his transformative influence on the very nature of international politics.
Eight days later, on October 5, Gorbachev called Bush not only to accept the challenge but also to invite him to go further down the road to nuclear disarmament. He proposed a one-year ban on nuclear testing and an invitation to other nuclear powers to join the United States and the Soviet Union in reducing their nuclear arsenals. The Soviets would get rid of their tactical nuclear weapons, negotiate on the MIRVs, and unilaterally cut their ground forces by seven hundred thousand. It was now the Americans’ turn to be surprised and check the new proposals with their generals. “There were some differences in our positions,” recalled Bush, “but on balance it was very positive and forthcoming.” Bush’s gamble had worked. While the Soviets, like the Americans, were of course trying to make a virtue of necessity in cutting their military budgets, there is no question that both countries benefited, as did the world at large. Their agreement in the fall of 1991 created a basis for the START II treaty, which Bush and Yeltsin would sign in January 1993.29
A few days later, when Bush again called the National Security Council into session, there was good news to share. The plan to reduce nuclear arsenals that they had discussed at the previous meeting was now working. Nevertheless, the course of developments in the Soviet Union was as murky as ever, and the dilemma of whom to support, the center or the republics, was no closer to a solution. As discussion of these problems resumed, Dick Cheney again sought to change the existing strategy of supporting the center. “It was still Cheney against the field,” remembered Robert Gates, who took part in the meeting. Despite general agreement on the need to support democracy and economic reform, there was no consensus on how best to do so. “Support for the center puts us on the wrong side of reform,” argued Cheney. James Baker disagreed: “The guys in the center are reformers.” Baker summed up his argument by stating, “We should not establish the policy of supporting the breakup of the Soviet Union into twelve republics. We should support what they want, subject to our principles.” The meeting ended with no clear decision, which meant a continuation of the balancing act between the center and the republics, Gorbachev and Yeltsin.30
11
THE RUSSIAN ARK
“THANK YOU FROM THE BOTTOM OF MY HEART,” said Boris Yeltsin to George Bush before putting down the receiver. The American president had called to ask about his health and offer medical assistance. It was September 25, early afternoon in Russia. A few days earlier, Yeltsin, still exhausted after his August brush with destiny, had felt chest pains. The brief vacation he had taken a few weeks earlier did not alleviate his condition. He needed more rest. “I have been reading in the papers that you may require some medical attention,” said Bush when he heard Yeltsin’s voice on the other end of the line. “I would like to offer you the best hospital facilities in Washington, D.C. if that would have any appeal to you.”
After the collapse of the August coup, George Bush had adopted a practice of calling both Kremlin presidents, Gorbachev and Yeltsin. “We knew that Gorbachev was weakening, we knew that Yeltsin was strengthening, and President Bush began to juggle our relations with Gorbachev and Yeltsin,” recalled Nick Burns, the NSC staffer who was often a note taker on Bush’s calls to Moscow. “We made a very concerted effort to work together with Gorbachev and Yeltsin. So every time that President Bush talked to Gorbachev he would usually follow up with a call to Yeltsin.” Yeltsin was clearly moved by these signs of attention. “Mr. President, thank you,” he said to Bush at the end of their telephone conversation on September 25. “I am very grateful. Thank you for your personal attention to me. I don’t know how to find the words to thank you.” The two presidents agreed not to reveal the substance of their conversation to the press, in order, as Yeltsin said, “not to worry people too much.”1
That day people in Russia read media reports not about Yeltsin’s health but about his diplomatic achievements in the North Caucasus, where he and Nursultan Nazarbayev of Kazakhstan had negotiated a cease-fire between Azerbaijan and Armenia in Nagornyi Karabakh—the site of the first ethnic conflict to erupt in the USSR during the perestroika era. “We had a tough mission to Nagornyo-Karabakh, but we brought the two sides to the table and signed a protocol,” Yeltsin told Bush on the phone. He also let him know that he
was taking another short vacation. That day the presidential spokesman, Pavel Voshchanov, declared that Yeltsin would go on vacation “not for relaxation but so that he can work on his further plans and on a new book in calm surroundings.”
Relaxation and the need for medical treatment were in fact the main reasons for his absence from the capital for the second time in less than a month. Yeltsin vacationed at a government mansion, Bocharov Ruchei, near Sochi on the Black Sea. He made no substantive progress on his new book of memoirs, but he had plenty of time to consider his “further plans” and discuss them with his numerous visitors. His chief bodyguard, Aleksandr Korzhakov, arranged tennis matches and Russian saunas for the president, but rumors reached Moscow that he was drinking heavily. “They say he would get blind drunk,” noted Gorbachev adviser Anatolii Cherniaev in his diary. “And the only ambulance in town stood ready near the dacha.”2
Whether the rumors were true or not (one could hardly expect Gorbachev’s aides to be too kind to Yeltsin), the Russian president’s disappearance from Moscow came at a most unfortunate time for the new Russian government. “It was as if Napoleon had repaired to the Riviera to compose poetry after routing the Austrian and Russian armies at Austerlitz,” commented one of the president’s supporters in the Russian parliament. “The country was heading for collapse,” recalled Yeltsin’s principal adviser at the time, Gennadii Burbulis. With the Union government in shambles and the Russian government not yet in control, no one was in charge. “And that situation of power without power, of responsibility without resources could not continue indefinitely,” argued Burbulis many years later. “One way or another, an effective government had to be established quickly. But Yeltsin took off for Sochi.”3
He left behind three competing centers of power, one around Mikhail Gorbachev and two others within his own government. With Yeltsin out of town, they found themselves at one another’s throats. One part of Yeltsin’s government wanted to embark on a radical course of political and economic reform, which would mean severing economic ties with the other republics. Another wanted to move ahead slowly, coordinating Russia’s efforts with the rest of the former Union. Gorbachev, for his part, wanted to restore the old Union under a new name, with as strong a center as possible. While the central authorities were in disarray, the Union republics stopped transferring taxes to Moscow, using their newly acquired right to issue currency in order to buy industrial products in Russia. Food was becoming more and more an issue in Russia’s industrial centers. October 1991 would become the crucial month in deciding the country’s future course and the prospects of the Soviet Union. Yeltsin had to make a choice. He took his time.4
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