During that first meeting with the Russians, the two Presidents broached the idea of a new treaty to cut the number of nuclear weapons on both sides and managed to find common ground on Afghanistan, terrorism, trade, and even Iran, despite disagreements on missile defense and Georgia. Medvedev said that Russia’s experience in Afghanistan in the 1980s had been “pitiful” and that they were willing to allow the United States to transport lethal cargo across their territory to supply our troops. That was important because it would give us leverage with Pakistan, which otherwise controlled the only route for troops and equipment into Afghanistan. Medvedev also acknowledged, to my surprise, that Russia had underestimated Iran’s growing nuclear capacity. “Turns out you were right,” he said. Russia had a complicated relationship with Iran. It was selling Tehran weapons and even helping it build a nuclear power plant, but the Russians did not want to see nuclear proliferation or instability on their already volatile southern flank. As you’ll read later, Medvedev’s comment opened a door for stronger cooperation on Iran and eventually led to a landmark vote at the UN to impose tough new sanctions. He did not, however, alter his opposition to our plans for missile defense in Europe, despite the fact that, as we said many times, it was designed to protect against potential threats from Iran rather than from Russia.
President Obama emphasized the positive and promised a quick follow-up on a new nuclear arms treaty, as well as deeper cooperation regarding Afghanistan, terrorism, and Russia’s entry into the World Trade Organization. All in all, it was a thorough, candid discussion of difficult issues—what we came to expect from Medvedev. The reset seemed to be on track.
A team of State Department negotiators, led by Under Secretary Ellen Tauscher and Assistant Secretary Rose Gottemoeller, worked for a year with their Russian counterparts to iron out every detail of the New Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty, or New START, which set limits on numbers of Russian and American nuclear warheads on missiles and bombers. After President Obama and Medvedev signed the treaty in April 2010, I began making the case to persuade my former Senate colleagues to ratify it, working closely with my Assistant Secretary for Legislative Affairs Rich Verma, a longtime aide to Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid and an astute student of Capitol Hill’s often impenetrable ways. I called key Senate Republicans, who told me they didn’t trust the Russians and worried the United States would not be able to verify compliance. I explained that the treaty gave us mechanisms to do just that and if the Russians didn’t live up to their word, we could always withdraw. I reminded them that even President Reagan, with his philosophy of “trust but verify,” had signed disarmament agreements with the Soviets. And I stressed that time was of the essence; the old START had expired, so for nearly a year we hadn’t had any weapons inspectors on the ground in Russia checking what was happening in their missile silos. That was a dangerous lapse we couldn’t let continue.
In the weeks leading up to the vote, I spoke with eighteen Senators, nearly all of them Republicans. As Secretary of State I worked with Congress on many matters, especially the Department’s budget, but this was my first experience twisting arms on behalf of the White House since leaving the Senate myself. It was helpful to call on my relationships with former colleagues built over eight years of reaching across the aisle to write legislation and consult on committees. We also had on our side a master Senate operator, Vice President Biden, and the bipartisan tag-team at the helm of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, Chairman John Kerry of Massachusetts and Ranking Member Richard Lugar of Indiana.
We kept getting closer to the two-thirds majority of the Senate required under the Constitution to ratify a treaty, but the final votes were hard to find. Our prospects dimmed after the midterm elections in November 2010, when Republicans took control of the House, winning sixty-three more seats, and narrowed the Democratic majority in the Senate, picking up six seats. Despite that setback, Senator Lugar urged me to come up to the Hill in person to make the final sale. With the outlook for passage grim, I kept working the phones and visited the Capitol again just before Christmas to make a final appeal. That night the Senate voted successfully to end debate, and the next day the treaty passed 71 to 26. It was a victory for bipartisanship, U.S.-Russia relations, and a safer world.
Over time, President Obama and President Medvedev developed a personal relationship that offered further opportunities for cooperation. At a long meeting I had with Medvedev outside Moscow in October 2009, he raised his plan to build a high-tech corridor in Russia modeled after our own Silicon Valley. When I suggested that he visit the original in California, he turned to his staff and told them to follow up. He included a stop there on his 2010 visit to the United States, and, by all accounts, was impressed with what he saw. That could have been the start of realizing Medvedev’s vision for a diversified Russian economy—if Putin had permitted it.
The reset led to a number of early successes, including imposing strong sanctions on Iran and North Korea, opening a northern supply route to equip our troops in Afghanistan, bringing Russia into the World Trade Organization, winning UN backing for the no-fly zone in Libya, and expanding counterterrorism cooperation. But the tone began to shift in late 2011. In September Medvedev announced that he would not run for reelection; instead Putin would reclaim his old job in 2012. This shuffle confirmed what I had said four years before: that Medvedev was just keeping Putin’s chair warm.
Then, in December, Russia’s Parliamentary elections were marred by widespread reports of fraud. Independent political parties were denied the right to register, and there were reported attempts to stuff ballot boxes, manipulate voter lists, and other blatant irregularities. Independent Russian election observers were harassed, and their websites faced cyber attacks. At an international conference in Lithuania, I expressed serious concerns about these reports. “The Russian people, like people everywhere, deserve the right to have their voices heard and their votes counted,” I said, “and that means they deserve fair, free, transparent elections and leaders who are accountable to them.” Tens of thousands of Russian citizens reached the same conclusion and took to the streets to protest. When chants of “Putin is a thief” filled the air, Putin lashed out—directly at me. “She set the tone for some actors in our country and gave them a signal,” he claimed. If only I had such power! The next time I saw President Putin, I chided him about his remarks: “I can just see people in Moscow waking up and saying Hillary Clinton wants us to go demonstrate. That’s not how it works, Mr. President.” Still, if I had helped even a few people find the courage to speak out for real democracy, then it was all to the good.
In May 2012, Putin formally reclaimed the title of President and shortly afterward declined President Obama’s invitation to a G-8 summit at Camp David. A cool wind was blowing from the east. In June, I sent a memo to President Obama outlining my views. He was no longer dealing with Medvedev and needed to be ready to take a harder line. Putin was “deeply resentful of the U.S. and suspicious of our actions,” I argued, and intent on reclaiming lost Russian influence in its neighborhood, from Eastern Europe to Central Asia. He might call his project “regional integration,” but that was code for rebuilding a lost empire. I was with President Obama when he sat down with Putin for the first time as two heads of state on the sidelines of a G-20 meeting in Los Cabos, Mexico. “Bargain hard,” I advised, because Putin will “give no gifts.”
Russia soon took a less constructive approach on many key issues, especially the conflict in Syria, where it propped up the Assad regime in its brutal war and blocked all attempts at the United Nations to organize a strong international response. The Kremlin cracked down hard on dissidents, NGOs, and LGBT citizens at home and went back to bullying its neighbors.
For those who expected the reset to open a new era of goodwill between Russia and the United States, it proved to be a bitter disappointment. For those of us who had more modest expectations—that de-linking tough issues and toning down rhetoric on both sides could create s
pace for progress on specific priorities—the reset delivered. Later, after the invasion of Crimea in 2014, some in Congress blamed the reset for emboldening Putin. I think this view misunderstands both Putin and the reset. After all, he had invaded Georgia in 2008 and faced few consequences, from the United States or others. Putin invaded Georgia and Crimea for his own reasons, on his own timetable, in response to events on the ground. Neither the Bush Administration’s tough rhetoric and doctrine of preemptive war nor the Obama Administration’s focus on pragmatic cooperation on core interests deterred or invited these acts of aggression. The reset was not a reward; it was a recognition that America has many important strategic and security interests, and we need to make progress where we can. That remains true today.
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To understand the complexities of our relationship with Russia during the reset and what we were trying to achieve, consider just one example: Central Asia and the challenge of supplying our troops in Afghanistan.
In the aftermath of 9/11, as the United States prepared to invade Afghanistan, the Bush Administration leased former Soviet air bases in two remote but strategically located Central Asian countries, Uzbekistan and Kyrgyzstan. They were used to fly soldiers and supplies into the Afghan theater. Given the extraordinary international dynamics at the time, Russia did not object, despite the fact that it viewed these underdeveloped former Soviet republics as within its sphere of influence. But soon the Kremlin was encouraging the Uzbek and Kyrgyz governments to make sure the Americans did not stay permanently. For Putin, Central Asia was Russia’s backyard. He was wary of both growing Chinese economic influence and an American military presence.
By 2009, President Obama was in the early stages of planning a troop surge into Afghanistan, to be followed by a phased withdrawal beginning in 2011. That meant the U.S. military once again needed to move large amounts of troops and matériel into and out of the mountainous, landlocked country. The most direct supply line into Afghanistan was through Pakistan, but this route was vulnerable to attacks by Taliban insurgents and temper tantrums by Pakistani officials. Pentagon planners wanted a second land route, even if it was longer and more expensive, to ensure that our troops were never cut off. The natural place to look was Central Asia. Cargo could be off-loaded at ports in the Baltic Sea and then shipped thousands of miles by rail through Russia, to Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan, and finally across Afghanistan’s northern border. Meanwhile troops could be flown in through the still-open air base in Kyrgyzstan. The Northern Distribution Network, as it came to be known, would provide lavish revenues to corrupt regimes, but it would also significantly aid the war effort. It was one of those classic compromises of foreign policy. But before it could get going, we had to get Russia to agree to let us transport military equipment across its territory.
In President Obama’s first meeting with Medvedev, he emphasized that, as part of the reset, the Northern Distribution Network would be a top priority for us. In response, Medvedev said that Russia was open to cooperating (and profiting from the transit fees). In July 2009, when President Obama visited Moscow, an agreement was formally signed to allow the transport of lethal military equipment through Russia to Afghanistan.
Medvedev’s agreement on lethal transit masked another agenda, however. For the Kremlin, influence in Central Asia was still turf to be guarded, jealously. So even as Russia allowed U.S. cargo to move through its territory, it worked to expand its own military footprint across Central Asia, using our presence as its excuse to increase control over the region’s regimes and undermine their growing ties with Washington. It was like a modern-day version of the “Great Game,” the elaborate 19th-century diplomatic contest between Russia and Britain for supremacy in Central Asia—except that America had a narrowly focused interest in the region and was not seeking dominance.
In early December 2010, I traveled to Kyrgyzstan, Kazakhstan, and Uzbekistan, meeting with leaders to keep things on track. In a town hall meeting with students and journalists in Bishkek, I answered questions about relations with Moscow. “Where does Kyrgyzstan come in your reset with Russia?” one young man asked. I explained that while our countries disagreed on many topics—I mentioned Georgia and human rights in particular—our goal was to work together on a positive agenda and overcome a long legacy of mistrust.
One of the journalists followed up with a question about whether the reset would come at the cost of Kyrgyzstan and Central Asia: “Is there any rivalry going on between Russia and the U.S., I mean, in the region, particularly in Kyrgyzstan?” I replied that we were trying to avoid such a scenario and that the goal of the reset was to reduce tensions between Washington and Moscow, which should help countries like Kyrgyzstan that sometimes feel trapped in the middle. But, I added, it was true that Kyrgyzstan was a fledgling democracy in a region of autocracies. Democracy was in retreat in Russia. It was nonexistent in China, the other big player in the region. So this was not going to be easy. “I think it’s important for you to have relations with many, but not be dependent on any,” I said. “Try to balance off all the different relations you have, and get the best help you can.”
When Putin was preparing to take back the presidency in Moscow, he published an essay in the fall of 2011 in a Russian newspaper announcing plans to regain lost influence among former Soviet republics and create “a powerful supra-national union capable of becoming a pole in the modern world.” Putin said that this new Eurasian Union would “change the geopolitical and geo-economic configuration of the entire continent.” Some dismissed these words as campaign bluster, but I thought they revealed Putin’s true agenda, which was effectively to “re-Sovietize” Russia’s periphery. An expanded customs union would be just the first step.
Putin’s ambitions weren’t limited to Central Asia. In Europe he used every bit of leverage he had to keep former Soviet republics from building ties to the West, including cutting off gas to Ukraine, banning imports of Moldovan wine, and boycotting Lithuanian dairy products. His acquisitive gaze extended north, to the Arctic Circle, where melting ice was opening up new trade routes and opportunities for oil and gas exploration. In a symbolic move in 2007, a Russian submarine deposited a Russian flag on the floor of the ocean near the North Pole. More ominously, Putin was reopening old Soviet military bases across the Arctic.
President Obama and I discussed Putin’s threats and how to counter them. I also made a point of traveling to countries that felt threatened. In Georgia, which I visited twice, I called on Russia to end its “occupation,” a word that caused some consternation in Moscow, and withdraw from the territories it had seized in 2008.
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For many Americans, the crisis in Ukraine and the Russian invasion of Crimea in early 2014 was a wake-up call. A part of the world that many had not thought much about since the end of the Cold War was suddenly back on the radar. But far from being a surprise, the Ukrainian crisis was in fact the latest reminder of Putin’s long-standing aims. With these ambitions in mind, the Obama Administration and our European allies had quietly begun working for years to reduce Putin’s leverage and counter his machinations.
On January 1, 2009, Gazprom, Russia’s powerful state-owned energy conglomerate, halted natural gas exports to Ukraine. That, in turn, restricted energy flowing to part of Europe. Eleven people froze to death in the first ten days, ten of them in Poland, where temperatures fell below–10 degrees Fahrenheit. It wasn’t the first time this had happened. In fact it had happened exactly three years earlier, in the middle of another cold winter.
Ukraine, which has a sizable ethnic Russian and Russian-speaking minority, has had a close but conflicted relationship with Moscow for centuries. The Orange Revolution, following disputed Ukrainian elections in 2004, brought a pro-Western government to power that sought closer ties with the European Union, angering Putin. Shutting off the gas in 2006 was his way of sending a not-so-subtle message to the independent-minded leaders in Kyiv. In 2009,
he was trying to jack up the prices for Russian energy and remind everyone of his power. The move sent a chill across Europe. Much of the continent relied on Russian gas; if Ukraine could be cut off, so could anyone. After nineteen days a new agreement was signed, and gas began to flow again into Ukraine by the time of President Obama’s inauguration.
In my confirmation testimony before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee that same January, in the middle of the crisis, I talked about the importance of strengthening NATO and the transatlantic alliance and emphasized my intention to give energy security “a much higher priority in our diplomacy.” I cited the problems in Eastern Europe as “only the most recent example of how energy vulnerability constrains our foreign policy options around the world, limiting effectiveness in some cases and forcing our hand in others.”
In my first telephone conversation with Polish Foreign Minister Radosław Sikorski, a week after taking office, we discussed the challenge. “We want a new policy and a new source,” Sikorski told me. He favored a pipeline through the Balkans and Turkey that could give Europe access to natural gas holdings in the Caspian Sea. It had become known as the Southern Corridor pipeline and emerged as one of our most important energy diplomacy initiatives. I appointed Ambassador Richard Morningstar as my special envoy to negotiate the necessary agreements to get the project going. This was complicated by the fact that Azerbaijan, the key source country on the Caspian, had a long-running conflict with its neighbor Armenia. Morningstar developed a constructive working relationship with the President of Azerbaijan, Ilham Aliyev, to the point that I recommended Morningstar be nominated as our ambassador there. I twice visited Azerbaijan to encourage regional peace efforts, promote democratic reforms, and move the pipeline forward, including by meeting industry leaders at the annual Caspian Oil & Gas Show in Baku in 2012. As I left the State Department, deals were falling into place and construction is expected to begin in 2015 with the goal of getting gas flowing by 2019.
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