Duty: Memoirs of a Secretary at War

by Gates, Robert M

  Throughout my career, as I said, I had been characterized as a hard-liner on the Soviet Union. Guilty as charged. Many of the problems between post-Soviet Russia and the United States grew out of Russian leaders’ efforts to seek domestic political advantage by portraying the United States, NATO, and the West more broadly as a continuing threat to Russia; bullying their neighbors, particularly those that had once been part of the Soviet Union; using oil and gas supplies as a means of politically pressuring and extorting money from the nations on their periphery and in Europe; crudely abusing human and political rights at home; and continuing to support a number of thuggish regimes around the world. But during the Cold War, to avoid military conflict between us, we had to take Soviet interests into account, maneuvering carefully wherever those interests were affected. When Russia was weak in the 1990s and beyond, we did not take Russian interests seriously. We did a poor job of seeing the world from their point of view, and of managing the relationship for the long term. All that said, I was now President Bush’s secretary of defense, and I dutifully supported the effort to bring Georgia and Ukraine into NATO (with few pangs of conscience because by 2007 it was clear the French and Germans would not allow it). On missile defense, however, I did look for ways to accommodate Russian interests and persuade them to become partners. Still, I was always clear that we would move ahead, with or without them.

  The relationship between the United States and Russia during my time as secretary under George W. Bush would be dominated by the president’s decision to emplace missile defenses against Iran in eastern Europe, U.S. efforts to expand NATO to include Georgia and Ukraine, and Russia’s invasion of Georgia. Our commitment to missile defenses in Europe would also dominate U.S.-Russian relations during Obama’s first term.

  Russian opposition to the United States developing missile defense capabilities has deep roots. During the first strategic arms limitation talks under President Nixon, the Soviets ultimately sought to prohibit only the development and deployment of missile defenses, which they believed the United States could build and they couldn’t—thus giving us a significant advantage in the strategic nuclear relationship. The result was the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty signed in 1972, along with an agreement limiting offensive strategic weapons essentially to the programs both countries already had planned. President Reagan’s Strategic Defense Initiative (SDI), announced in 1983 and calling for a nationwide missile defense using very sophisticated technology, both angered and, I believe, terrified the Soviets. As I joked at the time, there appeared to be only two people on the planet who actually thought SDI would work—Reagan and Mikhail Gorbachev. The Soviets were under enormous economic pressure by that time and knew they could not compete with such a system.

  President Bush’s 2002 abrogation of the 1972 ABM treaty (thereby allowing the United States to develop any kind of missile defenses it wanted), and our subsequent development of ground-based interceptors and radars based in Alaska and California, our efforts to bring Georgia and Ukraine into NATO, and our support for the independence of Kosovo (which the Russians strongly opposed), taken together with Russian opposition to the United States in Iraq and elsewhere, all had brought the bilateral relationship to the low point of Putin’s February 2007 tirade in Munich. The personal relationship between Bush and Putin, however, remained civil.

  I made a difficult situation with Russia worse by signing off—the day after I was sworn in as secretary in December 2006—on a recommendation to the president that the United States locate ten long-range missile defense interceptors in Poland and an associated radar installation in the Czech Republic. Construction would, we hoped, begin in the second half of 2008. The system would provide significant protection from Iranian missiles for the United States and many of our European allies, although I acknowledged that the negotiations could be difficult: Poland would want significantly greater military assistance, and the makeup of the Czech government was uncertain. The Russians saw the proposed deployments as putting their nuclear deterrent at risk and as a further step in the “encirclement” of their country. The president approved my recommendation a few weeks later.

  I took up the invitation to visit Russia and landed at Moscow’s Sheremetyevo Airport on a Monday morning in April. My first meeting was with the new Russian minister of defense, Anatoly Serdyukov, who had been in the furniture business, had run the Russian tax service, and was personally and politically well connected. The meeting was at the Russian Ministry of Defense, a massive building with no distinguishing features, characteristic of Soviet architecture. The conference room was also nondescript. Serdyukov knew little about defense matters and had been brought in to reform the Russian military—a daunting, even dangerous, proposition. In our meetings, he was tightly scripted and chaperoned by the chief of the Russian general staff, General Yuri Baluyevskiy. Our meeting, like the others I would have in Moscow, focused almost entirely on missile defense.

  Reading from a script, Serdyukov immediately said that our proposed system would diminish Russia’s nuclear deterrent and have a negative effect on world peace. We had said the system was a counter to Iran and North Korea, but he contended that neither country had missiles capable of reaching Europe or the United States; nor was that likely in the foreseeable future. Russia, he said, was very concerned that our system could intercept Russia’s ballistic missiles. I responded that the concerns of both sides needed to be taken into account, that the opportunities for cooperation between us were unprecedented, and that we both needed to think ten or twenty years into the future. My undersecretary for policy, Eric Edelman, reassured the Russians that the radar in the Czech Republic would be too close to get a fix on missiles launched from Russia; the system had no capability again Russian ICBMs; and debris from the missiles would burn up in the atmosphere. The Russian military experts seemed increasingly intrigued and interested. We repeated a long list of potential areas for cooperation previously mentioned to the Russians, including working together on research and development, sharing data gathered by the system’s radar, jointly testing the system’s components, and possibly using a Soviet-era radar in Azerbaijan. I invited the Russians to visit our missile defense sites in Alaska and California and suggested that, with the permission of the Polish and Czech governments, the Russians would be allowed to routinely inspect missile defense installations in those countries. What I put on the table went well beyond anything presented previously to the Russians. The Russians’ real worry was clearly not about the current system we were describing but about the possibility that at some point in the future we might introduce additional capabilities that would threaten their deterrent. While Serdyukov and Baluyevskiy were unyielding, they agreed to further discussions among technical experts from both sides.

  I then moved on to the Kremlin to meet with Putin. I had last entered the Kremlin in 1992 as CIA director, and driving through the gate then, in the U.S. ambassador’s limousine with American flags flying on the front of the car, had felt like a victory lap. By 2007 the world had moved on, and so had I. Putin and I encountered each other at a table in his ornate, very large office with plentiful gold leaf and spectacular chandeliers—all courtesy of the tsars and preservation efforts by the Communists. As I reported to President Bush, the meeting with Putin was cordial, far different in tone from Munich. He blessed the idea of the experts meeting on missile defense and invited me to return to Russia. He recited a litany of woes besetting Russia, which he blamed on the West. His talking points were predictable: We have a similar view of threats and challenges; many in the United States don’t think Russia is a partner; why are you putting bases near our borders?; North Korea and Iran will not have missiles that are threatening anytime soon; why is the United States supporting “separatists” in Georgia?; tensions are not surprising given that we have “looked at each other through the barrel of a shotgun”; we want to be partners, even strategic allies. The issue that really stuck in his craw was the conventional forces in Europe treaty, which
he called the “colonial” treaty, “imposed on Russia.” I tried to put a positive spin on the potential to work together.

  With fifteen minutes to go in the meeting, an aide came in and whispered something in Putin’s ear. He abruptly, but not impolitely, concluded the meeting, and I was ushered out of his office. Former Russian president Boris Yeltsin had died.

  Later that afternoon I met again with Sergei Ivanov, in his new deputy prime minister’s office in the Russian White House. We covered much of the same ground, although Ivanov added some candor about Iran. “You know, the Iranians don’t need a missile to get a nuclear weapon into Russia,” he said, clearly prepared to ratchet up the sanctions pressure on Iran if Tehran didn’t suspend uranium enrichment.

  While the press reported that I had received a “cool” reception in Moscow, I told President Bush that my meetings had been warm, businesslike, and surprisingly constructive. I can see now that our two countries were just kicking the can down the road on missile defense, playing for time. The Russians recognized that they were being presented with a fait accompli, and that our offers of cooperation were more like take it or leave it. They hoped they could build enough opposition in Europe to stop the project. We wanted Russian participation, but we would not let their opposition slow our plans, though I would spend four more years working on this problem.

  On my way home, I stopped in both Warsaw and Berlin to brief those governments on my meetings in Moscow. President Lech Kaczynski in Warsaw made clear he wanted to move fast on missile defense, concluding negotiations well before Poland’s 2009 election. His defense minister, Aleksander Szczyglo, was standoffish, saying that the U.S. proposal (to emplace ten long-range interceptor missiles in Poland) would be “carefully considered” and that we shouldn’t “prejudge the negotiations.” In a refrain I would hear repeatedly for years, he said that for any plan to be accepted, it must increase Poland’s security.

  After the trip, I reported to the president that both Poland and the Czech Republic had domestic political problems associated with the proposed system, with two of the governing coalition parties in Poland opposed to missile defense and the Czech government faced with a hung parliament and elections in the offing. Polls showed that more than half of the Czechs were against deployment of the missile defense radar on their soil. In Poland, one poll had 57 percent opposed. Secretary Rice, in Moscow in mid-May, and the president soon afterward at his ranch in Crawford and during visits to Poland and the Czech Republic, both underscored U.S. resolve to go forward. Putin by then had offered data sharing from the Russian radar in Azerbaijan as an alternative. At a NATO defense ministers meeting in Brussels in June, in the presence of Russian defense minister Serdyukov, I stated explicitly that we would go forward with the missile defense project despite Putin’s offer.

  On October 12, 2007, Condi and I met in Moscow with our counterparts—a “two plus two” meeting—as well as with Putin. We came bearing proposals even more attractive to the Russians than those I had put forward the previous April, including the possibility that the interceptors might not be made operational until there was a demonstrated Iranian nuclear-armed ballistic missile capability.

  Putin invited us to his dacha outside Moscow. En route, we passed through some very swanky new estates and shopping centers, with stores like those in a high-end shopping center in a wealthy American suburb or in a fashionable part of London, Paris, or Rome. Life was clearly good for at least some Russians, especially those who lived in Putin’s neighborhood. His dacha was large and perfectly nice, but it seemed very utilitarian to me, more like a corporate guesthouse. He kept us waiting for about twenty minutes, which the U.S. press played up as a slight to us both. When he came in, he apologized, explaining that he had been on the telephone with Israeli prime minister Ehud Olmert, talking about the Iranian nuclear threat.

  We met in a plain, medium-size conference room, dominated by a large oval table. Each of us was provided with mineral water, coffee, and a little plate of pastries. Condi and I were accompanied by our very able ambassador, Bill Burns, and an interpreter. Putin was joined by the foreign minister, Sergei Lavrov; the defense minister, Serdyukov; the chief of the general staff, General Baluyevskiy; and an interpreter. We had no sooner sat down than the room was flooded with press, shoving and pushing. Putin’s press audience in place, he harangued us for nearly ten minutes, mainly about missile defense. He was sarcastic: “We may decide someday to put missile defense systems on the moon, but before we get to that, we may lose a chance for agreement because of you implementing your own plans.” He warned us against “forcing forward your previous agreements with Eastern European countries.” Condi and I weren’t too happy about being used as stage props but kept our game faces and, in the brief moment we were allowed to respond before the Russians shooed out the press, tried to put a positive spin on the opportunities to work together. After the press left, the secretary of state and I looked at each other and just rolled our eyes. Putin’s dacha, Putin’s show.

  When we got down to business, Putin continued to insist that our plans were aimed at Russia because Iran was not a near-term threat to either the United States or Europe. He shared with us a map featuring circles that showed the ranges of different Iranian missiles and the few countries they could reach. He said the circles, which appeared to be hand-drawn with a grammar school compass and colored pencils, represented the best estimates of Russian intelligence. I flippantly told him he needed a new intelligence service. He was not amused. As prearranged with Condi, I then laid out our new offerings, meant to persuade the Russians that the Polish and Czech sites were no threat to them, and to get them to work with us. We offered a new proposal for joint cooperation in developing a missile defense architecture that would defend the United States, Europe, and Russia; accepted Putin’s offer for radar information sharing, with a view to creating an integrated command and control of U.S. and Russian missile defenses; proposed transparency measures, including personnel exchanges that would allow the Russians to monitor our system and for us to participate in their system; and, as I said, suggested the possibility of tying our missile defense deployments in Europe to development of the Iranian missile threat, including joint monitoring of Iranian developments and a commitment to make our system operational only when warranted by the evolving threat. Putin seemed genuinely interested in these ideas and acknowledged that we had made some interesting proposals. Indeed, all the Russian officials except for General Baluyevskiy seemed convinced that the United States was sincerely interested in cooperating with Russia, and we agreed that experts would meet to flesh out our ideas.

  During the meeting with Putin, I wrote a note to Condi that Baluyevskiy reminded me of “the good old days,” and she wrote back, “He was once considered a forward-leaning moderate. Shows how much has changed.” After several hours of meetings with our counterparts later that same day, I wrote Condi another note: “I don’t have the patience for diplomacy. I’d forgotten how much I really don’t like these guys.” A little later Condi, Ambassador Burns and his wife, and I were hosted for dinner by Sergei Ivanov and his wife. After dinner I told Condi, “Well, I do like some of them.”

  The next morning I gave a speech at the General Staff Academy, another monument of Stalinist architecture, to several hundred Russian officers. From the moment I walked into the room, I knew this would be a tough event. The general in charge was an old bull out of Red Army central casting, and the pale, frowning faces in the audience radiated skepticism and resentment. I talked about reform efforts under way in both our militaries and the opportunities for cooperation in the future. These officers were not buying what I was selling: they were deeply suspicious of the United States, our military, and me, and they probably hated the reform efforts in their own military. During the question-and-answer period, a colonel asked me why the United States wanted to take over Siberia. After years of handling off-the-wall questions from members of Congress, I thought I was pretty quick on my feet, but that que
stion really threw me. So I simply said that there was no truth to that idea. Bill Burns told me later that Madeleine Albright had given a speech a few weeks before in which she posed the question of how Russia could develop Siberia as it became depopulated and Russia’s overall population continued to shrink. That the colonel and others had reached the conclusion they did based on her question was, to me, a measure of Russian paranoia.

  Like Sisyphus trying to roll that rock uphill, we kept at it with the Russians on missile defense in 2008. The Russians felt that the written version of what Condi and I had offered at Putin’s dacha “diluted” what we had said. The only change made in the written version was to note that the presence of Russian officers at our sites in Poland and the Czech Republic would, of course, require the consent of those governments. Nonetheless I told Ivanov at the Munich Security Conference in February that we had been thinking about how to achieve progress on missile defense and strategic arms control before President Bush left office. If an outline of agreements on these issues could be achieved, I said, Condi and I would be willing to move up the next “two plus two” meeting and come to Moscow again. The two presidents subsequently talked, and on March 12 Bush sent Putin a letter laying out opportunities for agreement and progress in the bilateral relationship before his term ended. Our ace in the hole was that Putin desperately wanted Bush to visit Sochi, future site of the Olympics, after the NATO summit in Bucharest in early April. Bush made no commitments, waiting to see how Putin would behave in Bucharest.