When I met with EU leaders in March 2009, I urged them to elevate energy as an urgent priority for action. I later worked with the EU’s Cathy Ashton to create the U.S.-EU Energy Council. Teams of U.S. energy experts fanned out across Europe to help countries explore alternatives to Russian gas. When I visited Poland in July 2010, Foreign Minister Sikorski and I announced Polish-American cooperation on a global shale gas initiative to capitalize on new extraction technologies in a safe, environmentally sustainable manner. Exploration has now started there.
America’s own expanding natural gas supplies helped loosen Russia’s grip on Europe’s electricity—not because we started exporting lots of gas, but because we no longer need to import it ourselves. Gas once destined for the United States started finding its way to Europe. Consumers there got cheaper gas, and Gazprom was forced to compete, no longer dictating supply and demand.
These efforts may not have made big news back home, but they were not lost on Putin. By 2013, when Ukraine was negotiating for closer trade ties with the EU, he must have felt Russia’s influence slipping. Putin threatened to increase gas prices if the deal went through. Ukraine’s debt to Russia was already more than $3 billion, and the country’s finances were in shambles. In November, Ukraine’s President Yanukovych abruptly walked away from the nearly completed EU agreement and soon accepted a $15 billion bailout package from the Kremlin.
Many Ukrainians, especially those living in the capital, Kyiv, and the non-Russian-speaking sections of the country, were inflamed by the about-face. They dreamed of living in a prosperous European democracy, and now they faced the prospect of coming once again under Moscow’s thumb. Massive protests broke out and intensified when the government fired on demonstrators. Under pressure, Yanukovych agreed to constitutional reforms and new elections. A deal was brokered between the government and opposition leaders through the mediation of diplomats from Poland, France, and Germany. (The Russians participated in the talks but then refused to sign the agreement.) The crowds in the streets, however, rejected the compromise and demanded Yanukovych’s resignation. Surprisingly he then abandoned his palace and fled Kyiv for the east, ultimately ending up in Russia. In response the Ukrainian Parliament asked opposition leaders to form a new government.
All this unsettled Moscow. Under the guise of protecting Russian citizens and Ukrainians of Russian descent from what he said was anarchy and violence in Ukraine, Putin sent Russian troops to occupy the Black Sea peninsula of Crimea, which had been part of Russia until the 1950s and was still home to many ethnic Russians and major Russian naval installations. Despite warnings from President Obama and European leaders, the Kremlin engineered a rump referendum for secession in Crimea that was largely boycotted by the non-Russian-speaking citizens. The UN General Assembly condemned the referendum in late March by an overwhelming margin.
As of this writing, Ukraine’s future is in jeopardy. The whole world will be watching to see how this plays out, especially other former Soviet states and satellites fearful for their own independence. All our work since 2009 to reinvigorate NATO, restore strained transatlantic relations, and reduce Europe’s dependence on Russian energy has put us in a stronger position to meet this challenge, though Putin has many cards to play, too. And we have to keep working at it.
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I spent time over the years thinking about ways to understand Putin.
On a visit to his dacha outside of Moscow in March 2010, we engaged in a contentious debate about trade and the World Trade Organization that kept going in circles. Putin wasn’t giving an inch. He was hardly even listening. In exasperation, I tried a different tack. I knew that one of his personal passions is wildlife conservation, which I also care about deeply. So out of the blue, I said, “Prime Minister Putin, tell me about what you’re doing to save the tigers in Siberia.” He looked up in surprise. Now I had his attention.
Putin stood and asked me to follow him. Leaving our aides behind, he led me down a long corridor to his private office. We surprised a number of beefy security guards who had been lounging about. They jumped to attention as we passed. Behind an armored door, we reached his desk and a nearby wall containing a large map of Russia. He launched into an animated discourse in English on the fate of the tigers in the east, polar bears in the north, and other endangered species. It was fascinating to see the change in his engagement and bearing. He asked me if my husband wanted to go with him in a few weeks to tag polar bears on Franz Josef Land. I told him I’d ask, and that if he couldn’t go, I’d check my schedule. Putin raised an eyebrow in response. (As it turned out, neither of us went.)
Another memorably unscripted conversation with Putin occurred in September 2012 at the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation meeting he hosted in Vladivostok. President Obama couldn’t attend because of his campaign schedule, so I represented him. Putin and Lavrov resented the President’s absence and my strong criticism of Russia’s support for Bashar al-Assad in Syria. They would not agree to a meeting between Putin and me until fifteen minutes before the dinner started. But, in accordance with protocol, the representative of the United States, as the former host of APEC, would be seated next to that year’s host, which meant Putin and I would sit together.
We discussed his challenges, from Russia’s long border with China in the east to the restive Muslim states inside Russia and across its borders. I told Putin about my recent visit in St. Petersburg to a memorial for the victims of the Nazis’ siege of the city (then called Leningrad), which lasted from 1941 to 1944 and killed more than 600,000 people. That struck a chord with the history-conscious Russian leader. He launched into a story about his parents that I had never heard or read about. During the war Putin’s father came home from the front lines for a short break. When he approached the apartment where he lived with his wife, he saw a pile of bodies stacked in the street and men loading them into a waiting flatbed truck. As he drew nearer, he saw a woman’s legs wearing shoes that he recognized as his wife’s. He ran up and demanded his wife’s body. After an argument the men gave in, and Putin’s father took his wife in his arms and, after examining her, realized she was still alive. He carried her up to their apartment and nursed her back to health. Eight years later, in 1952, their son Vladimir was born.
When I reported this story to our U.S. Ambassador to Russia Mike McFaul, a prominent Russia expert, he said he too had never heard it before. Obviously I have no way to verify Putin’s story, but I’ve thought of it often. For me, it sheds some light on the man he has become and the country he governs. He’s always testing you, always pushing the boundaries.
In January 2013, as I prepared to leave the State Department, I wrote President Obama a final memo about Russia and what he might expect from Putin in the second term. It had been four years since the reset first allowed us to make progress on nuclear arms control, Iranian sanctions, Afghanistan, and other key interests. I still believed it was in America’s long-term national interest to have a constructive working relationship with Russia, if possible. But we had to be realistic about Putin’s intentions and the danger he represented to his neighbors and the global order, and design our policy accordingly. In stark terms, I advised the President that difficult days lay ahead and that our relationship with Moscow would likely get worse before it got better. Medvedev may have cared about improving relations with the West, but Putin was under the mistaken impression that we needed Russia more than Russia needed us. He viewed the United States primarily as a competitor. And he was running scared because of his own resurgent domestic opposition and the collapse of autocracies in the Middle East and elsewhere. This was not a recipe for a positive relationship.
With all this in mind, I suggested we set a new course. The reset had allowed us to pick off the low-hanging fruit in terms of bilateral cooperation. And there was no need to blow up our collaboration on Iran or Afghanistan. But we should hit the pause button on new efforts. Don’t appear too eager to work together. Don’t flatter Putin
with high-level attention. Decline his invitation for a Presidential-level summit in Moscow in September. And make clear that Russian intransigence wouldn’t stop us from pursuing our interests and policies regarding Europe, Central Asia, Syria and other hotspots. Strength and resolve were the only language Putin would understand. We should send him a message that his actions have consequences while reassuring our allies that the United States will stand up for them.
Not everyone at the White House agreed with my relatively harsh analysis. The President accepted Putin’s invitation for a bilateral summit in the fall. But over the summer it became harder to ignore the negative trajectory, especially with Edward Snowden, the contractor who leaked National Security Agency secrets to journalists, given asylum by Putin in Russia. President Obama canceled the Moscow summit and began taking a harder line with Putin. By 2014, and the Ukrainian crisis, relations had plummeted.
Beyond Crimea and other international consequences of Putin’s rule, Russia itself has become a study in squandered potential. Talented people and money are leaving. It doesn’t have to be this way. Russia is blessed not just with vast natural resources but also a well-educated workforce. As I’ve discussed with Putin, Medvedev, and Lavrov over the years, Russia could be charting a peaceful and profitable future as part of Europe rather than as its antagonist. Think of the more expansive trade deals Russia could negotiate with a different attitude. Instead of intimidating Ukraine and other neighbors, it could be engaged in greater scientific cooperation with EU and U.S. partners, expanding innovation and developing advanced technologies, trying to build its own high-tech world-class business center, as Medvedev envisioned. Think also of the long-term strategic interests Russia could pursue if Putin weren’t fixated on reclaiming the Soviet Empire and crushing domestic dissent. He might realize that Russia’s hand in dealing with extremists along its southern border, as well as with China in the east, would be strengthened by closer ties with Europe and the United States. He might see Ukraine as it wants to be seen—as a bridge between Europe and Russia that would increase prosperity and security for all of them. Unfortunately, as of now, Russia under Putin remains frozen between the past they can’t let go of and the future they can’t bring themselves to embrace.
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Latin America: Democrats and Demagogues
Here’s a question whose answer may surprise you: What part of the world is the destination for more than 40 percent of all U.S. exports? It’s not China, which accounts for just 7 percent. It’s not the European Union, at 21 percent. It’s the Americas. In fact the two largest single destinations for our exports are our closest neighbors: Canada and Mexico.
If that’s news to you, you’re not alone. Many of us in the United States have an outdated picture of what’s happening in our hemisphere. We still think of Latin America as a land of coups and crime rather than a region where free markets and free people are thriving, as a source of migrants and drugs rather than a destination for trade and investment.
Our southern neighbors have made remarkable economic and political progress over the past twenty years. Latin America is a region with thirty-six countries and territories (nearly all of them democracies), with about 600 million people, rapidly expanding middle classes, abundant energy supplies, and a combined GDP of more than $5 trillion.
Because of our proximity, the economies of the United States and our neighbors have long been deeply entwined. Supply chains crisscross the region; so do family, social, and cultural networks. Some see those close ties as a threat to sovereignty or identity, but I see our interdependence as a comparative advantage to be embraced, especially at a time when we need to spur more growth at home. There’s a lot we can learn from the story of Latin America’s transformation and what it means for the United States and the world, especially if we are going to make the most of this “power of proximity” in the years ahead.
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Many of our current misconceptions about Latin America have their roots in a century of difficult history. Latin America was a battleground of the ideological competition between the United States and the Soviet Union. Cuba was the most prominent example of a Cold War flash point, but proxy battles raged in one form or another up and down the hemisphere.
The collapse of the Soviet Union and the end of the Cold War helped usher in a new era for the region. Long and brutal civil wars wound down. Elections brought new democratic governments to power. Economic growth began lifting people out of poverty. In 1994 my husband invited all the region’s democracies to the first Summit of the Americas in Miami, where we all committed to meet every four years to continue our economic integration and political cooperation.
The Summit was just one of many efforts the Clinton Administration made to forge a broader partnership with our neighbors. The United States provided crucial assistance to Mexico and Brazil during their financial crises. With bipartisan backing in Congress, we developed and funded Plan Colombia, an ambitious campaign to help defend South America’s oldest democracy from narcotraffickers and guerrilla groups, and in Haiti, helped reverse a coup and restore constitutional democracy. In a sign of how far the region had come, many of Latin America’s other democracies provided troops for the UN mission in Haiti. According to the Pew Research Center, approval of the United States in Latin America reached 63 percent in 2001.
As a Governor of Texas who supported increasing trade and immigration reform, President George W. Bush came in with good standing in the region. He developed strong personal relationships with Mexican President Vicente Fox and his successor, Felipe Calderón. The Bush Administration supported and strengthened Plan Colombia and started the Mérida Initiative to assist Mexico in its fight against drug cartels. The administration’s broader approach to foreign policy, however, did not win many friends in the region. Nor did its tendency to view the hemisphere through a left vs. right ideological lens that was a remnant of the Cold War. By 2008 just 24 percent of Mexicans and 23 percent of Brazilians approved of the United States. The average across the region, according to Gallup, was 35 percent. When the Obama Administration came into office in early 2009, we knew it was time for a new start.
President Obama explained our “equal partnership” approach in a speech in April 2009 at the Summit of the Americas in Trinidad and Tobago. He pledged that there would no longer be a “senior partner and junior partner in our relations”; instead the people of Latin America could expect “engagement based on mutual respect and common interests and shared values.” As he often did, the President reflected on the need to move beyond “stale debates” and “false choices,” in this case between “rigid, state-run economies or unbridled and unregulated capitalism; between blame for right-wing paramilitaries or left-wing insurgents; between sticking to inflexible policies with regard to Cuba or denying the full human rights that are owed to the Cuban people.” On Cuba in particular he promised a new beginning. In a first step to modernize a policy that had “failed to advance liberty or opportunity for the Cuban people,” the United States would begin allowing Cuban Americans to visit the island and send larger amounts of money back to their families there. The President also said he was prepared to engage directly with the Cuban government on a wide range of issues, including implementing democratic reforms and working together on drug trafficking and migration challenges, so long as it led to concrete progress. “I didn’t come here to debate the past,” he said. “I came here to deal with the future.”
It was going to be my job, along with a top-notch group of Latin America experts at the State Department, to put the President’s promise into practice. I decided to begin with a bold gesture to signal that we were serious about a new tone in the hemisphere. The place to do it was Mexico, our closest southern neighbor, which represented so much of both the promise and the peril of a region at a crossroads.
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The United States and Mexico sh
are a border that is nearly two thousand miles long, and our economies and cultures, especially in the areas around that border, are highly integrated. After all, much of the southwestern United States was once part of Mexico, and decades of immigration have only strengthened the familial and cultural ties between our nations. My firsthand experience in this area began in 1972, when the Democratic National Committee sent me to register voters in the Rio Grande Valley of Texas in support of George McGovern’s campaign for President. Some people were understandably wary of a blond girl from Chicago who didn’t speak a word of Spanish, but soon I was welcomed into homes and communities where citizens of Mexican ancestry were eager to participate fully in our democracy.
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