The Good Friday Agreement, which was signed that year and put Northern Ireland on the path toward peace, was a triumph of diplomacy, especially for Bill and George Mitchell, who did so much to bring the parties together. Most of all, though, it was a testament to the courage of the people of Northern Ireland. It felt like one of those moments when “hope and history rhyme,” in the words of the great Irish poet Seamus Heaney. Implementation would be bumpy, but peace began to bring benefits. Unemployment fell, home values rose, and the number of American companies investing in Northern Ireland increased.
By the time I returned as Secretary of State in 2009, the global financial crisis had taken a heavy toll on the celebrated “Celtic Tiger.” Roadblocks and barbed wire were gone from the streets, but the process of disarmament and “devolution,” which was supposed to grant increasing autonomy to Northern Ireland, was in danger of stalling. Many Catholics and Protestants still lived segregated lives, in separate neighborhoods, some still divided by actual walls—which had the Orwellian name “peace walls.”
In March 2009, two British soldiers were killed in County Antrim and a policeman was killed in County Armagh. Rather than sparking violence, the murders had the opposite effect. Catholics and Protestants marched together in vigils, attended interfaith services, and declared with one voice their refusal to go back to the old ways. The killings could have been the start of a backward slide. Instead they proved how far Northern Ireland had come. On a visit in October 2009 and in frequent phone calls to Northern Ireland’s First Minister Peter Robinson, Deputy First Minister Martin McGuinness, and other leaders, I urged them to continue disarmament by paramilitary groups and take the final steps of devolution, especially on putting the vital areas of policing and justice under the control of the Northern Irish government.
Addressing a full session of the Northern Ireland Assembly, I reminded them, “There have been many moments in Northern Ireland’s peace journey when progress seemed difficult, when every route forward was blocked, and there seemed to be nowhere to go. But you have always found a way to do what you believed was right for the people of Northern Ireland.” Because of this perseverance, “Northern Ireland stands as an example to the world of how even the staunchest adversaries can overcome differences to work together for the common and greater good. So I encourage you to move forward now with that same spirit of unstoppable grit and resolve. And I pledge that the United States will be behind you all the way, as you work toward peace and stability that lasts.”
Just weeks after my visit, a car bomb seriously injured another policeman, and it again seemed as if the carefully stitched fabric of peace might unravel. But once again it held. In February 2010, the parties reached a new deal on policing powers, called the Hillsborough Agreement. Progress toward a lasting peace was back on track, despite the best efforts of extremists on both sides to derail the process. In June 2012, we saw the most remarkable sign of change yet: Queen Elizabeth visited Northern Ireland and shook hands with Martin McGuinness. It was a gesture that would have been unimaginable just a few years before.
In December 2012, seventeen years since my first visit to Belfast, I was back there and I ran into an old friend, Sharon Haughey. In 1995, when she was just fourteen years old, she sent Bill a deeply moving letter about the future she dreamed of for herself and for Northern Ireland. He read an excerpt at the Christmas tree lighting in Belfast. “Both sides have been hurt. Both sides will have to forgive,” she wrote. When Sharon got a little older, she worked as an intern in my Senate office, helping serve New York, with its large and proud Irish American community. She learned a lot in Washington, and when she went home she ran for office and was elected Lord Mayor of Armagh. When she showed up at that lunch in 2012, she was wearing her ceremonial chain of office and told me she had plans to be married later that month. I thought about the family Sharon would start and about all the children growing up in Northern Ireland after the Good Friday Agreement. They had a chance at lives uncolored by the pain of the Troubles. I hoped they would never turn back and that their peace and progress would be an inspiration for the rest of Europe and the world.
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Russia: Reset and Regression
Hard men present hard choices—none more so than Vladimir Putin, the President of Russia. Putin’s worldview is shaped by his admiration for the powerful czars of Russian history, Russia’s long-standing interest in controlling the nations on its borders, and his personal determination that his country never again appear weak or at the mercy of the West, as he believes it was after the collapse of the Soviet Union. He wants to reassert Russia’s power by dominating its neighbors and controlling their access to energy. He also wants to play a larger role in the Middle East to increase Moscow’s influence in that region and reduce the threat from restive Muslims within and beyond Russia’s southern borders. To achieve these goals, he seeks to reduce the influence of the United States in Central and Eastern Europe and other areas that he considers part of Russia’s sphere, and to counter or at least mute our efforts in the countries roiled by the Arab Spring.
All of that helps explain why Putin first pressured Ukrainian President Viktor Yanukovych to walk away from closer ties with the European Union in late 2013, and why, after Yanukovych’s government disintegrated, Putin invaded and annexed Crimea. If Putin is restrained and doesn’t push beyond Crimea into eastern Ukraine, it will not be because he has lost his appetite for more power, territory, and influence.
Putin sees geopolitics as a zero-sum game in which, if someone is winning, then someone else has to be losing. That’s an outdated but still dangerous concept, one that requires the United States to show both strength and patience. To manage our relationship with the Russians, we should work with them on specific issues when possible, and rally other nations to work with us to prevent or limit their negative behavior when needed. That’s a difficult but essential balance to strike, as I found over my four years as Secretary.
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Winston Churchill observed, “In a true unity of Europe, Russia must have her part,” and in 1991, when the Soviet Union collapsed, there was great hope that it would happen. I remember the thrill of watching Boris Yeltsin standing on a tank in Moscow as he turned back a coup by old Soviet hard-liners that threatened Russia’s new democracy. Yeltsin was willing to quit pointing nuclear weapons toward American cities, destroy fifty tons of plutonium, and sign a cooperation pact with NATO. But he faced stiff opposition to his policies at home from those who wanted to keep their distance from Europe and the United States, keep as much control over their neighbors as possible, and keep the unruly force of Russian democracy at bay.
After Yeltsin underwent heart surgery in 1996, he never regained the energy and powers of concentration required to manage the unruly Russian political system. He unexpectedly retired on New Year’s Eve in 1999, six months before his term expired, clearing the way for his chosen successor, a little-known former KGB officer from St. Petersburg named Vladimir Putin.
Most people assumed that Putin was chosen because he would be loyal, protecting Yeltsin and his family, and because he would govern more vigorously than Yeltsin had. He was disciplined and fit, a practitioner of judo, and he inspired hope and confidence among Russians still reeling from so much political change and economic adversity. But he also proved over time to be thin-skinned and autocratic, resenting criticism and eventually cracking down on dissent and debate, including from a free press and NGOs.
In June 2001, when President Bush met Putin for the first time, he famously said, “I was able to get a sense of his soul.” The two leaders made common cause in the “Global War on Terror,” as Putin found it useful to align his brutal campaign in the restive Muslim-majority republic of Chechnya with America’s fight against al Qaeda. But it didn’t take long for relations to sour. The Iraq War, Putin’s increasingly authoritarian behavior at home, and Russia’s invasion of Georgia in Au
gust 2008 increased tension.
As Russia’s economy grew, driven by oil and gas revenues, Putin allowed the wealth to concentrate in the hands of politically connected oligarchs rather than investing broadly in the talents of the Russian people and the country’s infrastructure. He pursued an aggressive vision of a “Greater Russia” that unnerved his neighbors and conjured up bad memories of Soviet expansionism. And he used Russia’s natural gas exports to intimidate Ukrainians and others in January 2006 and again in January 2009 by cutting off supplies and raising prices.
Among the most egregious developments in the new Russia were the attacks on the press. Newspapers, television stations, and bloggers faced intense pressure to toe the Kremlin line. Since 2000, Russia has been the fourth most dangerous place in the world to be a journalist—not as bad as Iraq but worse than Somalia or Pakistan. Between 2000 and 2009 nearly twenty journalists were killed in Russia, and in only one case was the killer convicted.
When I visited Moscow in October 2009, I thought it important to speak out in support of press freedoms and against the official campaign of intimidation. At a reception at Spaso House, the stately home of American Ambassadors to Russia since 1933, I met with journalists, lawyers, and other civil society leaders, including one activist who told me that he had been badly beaten by unidentified thugs. These Russians had seen friends and colleagues harassed, intimidated, even killed, yet they went on working, writing, and speaking, refusing to be silenced. I assured them that the United States would publicly and privately raise human rights concerns with the Russian government.
Where you say something can be as important as what you say. I could talk with activists in Spaso House all I wanted, but most Russians would never hear my words. So I asked the embassy if they could find an independent broadcaster who would host me. One possibility, a radio station called Ekho Moskvy, or “Echo of Moscow,” sounded more like an awkwardly named propaganda outlet than a bastion of a free press. But our diplomats on the ground assured me that the station was one of the most independent, fair-minded, and hard-hitting in Russia.
In my live interview, I was asked about some of the pressing issues in the U.S.-Russia relationship, including Georgia and Iran, and then we turned to the question of human rights inside Russia. “I have no doubt in my mind that democracy is in Russia’s best interests,” I said, “and that respecting human rights, an independent judiciary, a free media are in the interests of building a strong, stable political system that provides a platform for broadly shared prosperity. We will continue to say that and we will continue to support those who also stand for those values.” We talked about the imprisonment, beatings, and killings of journalists. “I think people want their government to stand up and say this is wrong, and they’re going to try to prevent it and they’re going to make sure the people are brought to justice who are engaged in such behavior,” I said. The station remains on the air and continues to maintain its independence. Unfortunately, during the crackdown on dissent surrounding the invasion of Crimea in 2014, the radio station’s website was temporarily blocked. It appears the Kremlin is moving to further stamp out all dissenting voices.
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After eight years as President, Putin faced constitutionally mandated term limits, leading him in 2008 to swap jobs with his Prime Minister, Dmitry Medvedev. At first the switch seemed like a farce, a way for Putin to keep a hold on power from a different perch, and there was certainly an element of that. But Medvedev surprised many by bringing a new tone to the Kremlin. He seemed more open to dissenting views at home, more conciliatory abroad, and more interested in diversifying Russia’s economy beyond oil, gas, and other commodities.
I came into office skeptical of Russia’s leadership duet but hopeful that we could find areas where we could work together. As a Senator I had been a frequent critic of Putin’s rule, but I knew it was counterproductive for us to see Russia only as a threat when there were issues we needed to pursue with them.
The question of nations working together on some issues while clashing on others is part of a classic debate within foreign policy circles. Should the United States stop negotiating on arms control or trade because we objected to Russia’s aggression in Georgia? Or should issues proceed on parallel tracks? Straight up transactional diplomacy isn’t always pretty, but often it’s necessary.
In 2009, President Obama and I thought we could achieve key U.S. national interests with Russia through an approach with three elements: finding specific areas for cooperation where our interests aligned, standing firm where our interests diverged, and engaging consistently with the Russian people themselves. This approach became known as “the reset.”
As we formulated this approach at State, Bill Burns, who had served three years as U.S. Ambassador to Russia, led our planning, offering insights into the opaque machinations of the Kremlin’s personalities. Medvedev was a young leader who had come to power without excessive Cold War baggage. Putin, by contrast, had cut his teeth in the KGB in the 1970s and 1980s, the ultimate Cold War résumé. In my view, despite the office shuffle, Putin remained a formidable power who would make attempts at expanding cooperation more difficult. If there were opportunities to do so—and I thought there were—it would be because both sides made a clear-eyed assessment of shared interests.
My first meeting with Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov was in March 2009. Richard Holbrooke, who had known him when they both served as Ambassadors at the UN in the late 1990s, told me Lavrov was the consummate diplomat, serving his masters in Moscow with intellect, energy, and no small amount of arrogance. (Coming from Richard, that was really saying something!) Lavrov, perpetually tanned and well-tailored, spoke fluent English and had a taste for fine whiskey and the poetry of Pushkin. He had a turbulent relationship with my predecessor, Condoleezza Rice, especially (and for good reason) after Russia invaded Georgia. Those tensions had not disappeared, but if we wanted progress on nuclear arms control, sanctions on Iran, or access to Afghanistan’s northern border, we needed to cooperate. Perhaps a joke could break the ice.
In politics a sense of humor is essential. There are countless reasons why you have to be able to laugh at yourself. How many times, as Senator from New York, did I go on David Letterman’s show to deliver a pantsuit joke? (The answer is three.) During the 2008 campaign I made a surprise appearance on Saturday Night Live alongside Amy Poehler, who had perfected a hilarious “Hillary Clinton” with a memorably boisterous laugh. In diplomacy, with its carefully scripted conversations across language and cultural divides, there’s less room for humor. But occasionally it comes in handy. This felt like one of those times.
In a speech at the Munich Security Conference in February, Vice President Biden had said, “It is time to press the reset button and to revisit the many areas where we can and should be working together with Russia.” I liked the idea of a “reset”—not as a way of ignoring our real disagreements but to embed them in a broader agenda alongside areas of common interest. Talking it over with my team in the run-up to meeting Lavrov in Geneva, Switzerland, we hit on an idea. Why not present Lavrov with an actual reset button? It might get people laughing—including Lavrov—and ensure that our commitment to a fresh start, not our disagreements, made the headlines. A little unconventional, maybe, but worth a try.
Lavrov and I met in the InterContinental Hotel’s Salon Panorama, named for its panoramic view of Geneva. Before we sat down, I presented him with a small green box, complete with a ribbon. While the cameras snapped away, I opened it and pulled out a bright red button on a yellow base that had been pulled off the whirlpool in the hotel. It was labeled with the Russian word peregruzka. We both laughed and pushed the button together. “We worked hard to get the right Russian word. Do you think we got it?” I asked. The Foreign Minister took a closer look. The other Americans in the room, especially the Russian-speaking ones who had chosen the word, held their breath. “You got it wrong,” he said. Was this light moment ab
out to become an international incident? I just kept laughing. Then so did Lavrov, and everyone relaxed. “It should be perezagruzka,” he explained. “This means overcharged.” “Well,” I responded, “we won’t let you do that to us, I promise.”
It was not the finest hour for American linguistic skills. But if our goal had been to break the ice and make sure no one would ever forget the “reset,” then our translation error had certainly done that. Lavrov said he would take the button home and keep it on his desk. Later that night, Philippe Reines, who had helped dream up the joke in the first place, made a last-ditch effort to correct the spelling error. He approached the Russian Ambassador to Switzerland, who was holding the button, and asked to replace the label. “I don’t think I can do that until I talk with my minister,” the cautious Ambassador replied. “Well, if your minister doesn’t give that back to us, my minister is going to send me to Siberia!” Philippe exclaimed. I must admit, it was a tempting thought.
At President Obama’s first meeting with Medvedev, in London in April 2009, the American and Russian delegations faced each other across the formal dining table at Winfield House, the residence of our U.S. Ambassador. I was the only woman on either side of the table. This was President Obama’s first overseas trip since taking office, a strategic swing through Europe to attend a G-20 meeting, a NATO summit, and visits to key allies, and I was glad to be by his side. Our time on the road together over the years, from that first visit to London all the way to our historic final trip to Burma in late 2012, gave us a chance to consult and strategize far away from the daily hubbub of Washington. Before one of our meetings in Prague, on that same April trip, he pulled me aside and said, “Hillary, I need to talk to you.” He put his arm around me and walked me over toward a window. I wondered what sensitive policy matter he wanted to discuss. Instead he whispered in my ear, “You’ve got something in your teeth.” It was embarrassing, to be sure, but also the kind of thing only a friend would say and a sign that we were going to have each other’s backs.
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