| Photo by Jane Scherr |
Michael Nacht Interview: Conversations with History; Institute of International Studies, UC Berkeley
| Photo by Jane Scherr |
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In government you worked on the problem of the nuclear arsenal of Russia after the end of the Cold War, and the whole set of problems related to making sure those weapons were dismantled, secured. So in a way you were dealing with a problem that the political system didn't in its entirety understand until after 9/11. Is there anything in particular that we should talk about with regard to the frustrations of trying to carry the ball on a problem, building coalitions across institutions, among like-minded people, as you just described, that was involved in that work?
Sure. That's a great question and a really tough subject. After the Cold War was over and before 9/11, which was the time I served in government, it was a period where we were in some ways searching for a new center of gravity for our foreign policy. We knew that it was important to get rid of this material, to secure it, because Russia clearly had all kinds of issues there. They had scientists who weren't being paid properly, and facilities that were not being guarded properly, and all the rest. Some people said, "That's not important." You know: "Who cares?" Now, ultimately, because of Senators Nunn and Lugar, a lot of funding, in relative terms, was provided for this. But that just gave us the chance to try to work on the problem. Even if you could escape Washington with a mandate to do something, it was another thing to persuade the Russian government to do something.
The Russian government had many reasons why they didn't want to cooperate, even though you might think, "Here the Americans are coming over with their own money to help the Russians secure their own weapons." But, you know, the Russians felt terrible after the Cold War ended. It was a sense of a defeated nation. I was in Moscow in the early and mid-nineties, and it had this tremendous sense. I bet it must have been a bit like Weimar, Germany, after World War I. Not a shot had been fired, but they were defeated. The last thing they wanted was the upstart, cocky, full-of-themselves Americans coming over with their cash and saying, "We're going to help you solve your problem, even though you don't know you have a problem." So there was a lot of resistance.
There was also concern in Russia that it was a big intelligence operation -- we're just there to find out exactly what they had. There were also questions of protection of bureaucratic turf. The major organization, Minatom, which is sort of equivalent to our Atomic Energy Commission, is hugely powerful in Russia, and controls a lot of the nuclear materials. And they were very uncooperative with our efforts.
So it was very, very difficult. I can't find English language words to emphasize enough how hard it was to do this. But things were done, material was put in safe places. All the nuclear weapons of the other former Soviet states were removed, from Kazakhstan, Ukraine, and Belarus. And I can go on. A number of things were accomplished. But no step was easy; every step was tough. And then after 9/11, we see that, of course, for those who want to use weapons of mass destruction, this is a tremendous inventory, it's a tremendous playground. And it's even more vital than ever before, as you say, to get this stuff under control.
One other aspect of your work in government I want to touch on before we talk more about 9/11 and that is you were involved in the preparations for a number of the summits between Clinton and Yeltsin, and then also setting up the first summit between Clinton and the Chinese president [Jiang Zemin]. And I'm curious about that as a learning process for leaders either on our side or on the other side, but also as a way to get decisions made that shake up the system, so that you get a mobilization both in the other country and here. Talk a little about that.
Well, first of all, of course, it's a great thrill and a great honor to be involved in a presidential summit. Not many folks get to do that, to meet with the president, to meet with his counterpart. But it's a very tough process in preparation, because whoever the president is, the White House controls the process; but they need input. They need input from the other major Executive branch agencies. Now, of course, it also depends. Some summit meetings are very short and telescoped on one or two issues. In a number of the summits I was personally associated with, and especially reflecting President Clinton's style of wanting to deal with many, many issues, there were several major issues on the table. So just to get your input into the papers, just to get your all in the water, so to speak, was not an easy task. It took a lot of working the system. There's a process, but then there are ways to try to work around the process to get your voice heard. Sometimes it can't be your voice, but it can be somebody else's voice who is articulating the view that you support. So ultimately what's put together is a briefing book and a set of talking points for the president.
Often what happens in these summits, too, and it happened, I saw in firsthand experience, [is that] a number of negotiations for key agreements are done not by the president. Because the two presidents can't sit there and negotiate twelve or fourteen different agreements, it's just not feasible. They don't want to do it, they're not really that knowledgeable about all these issues, they have a big-picture view. So I was engaged in a number of the negotiations at lower levels with the foreign minister of Russia, to iron out things which ultimately the two presidents would claim as an agreed presidential statement. But it's a fascinating experience, and it's one of the things I treasure most about my time in government, just actually being a part of it.
I remember one of the early ones, which combined a couple of things: the Clinton - Yeltsin summit held at Hyde Park, Franklin Roosevelt's home. So it had not only the electricity of a Yeltsin - Clinton meeting, but in this incredibly important historical site. It was a beautiful fall day, and it was actually not long after I had joined government. It was a very special experience for me to be there.
Tell us a little about Clinton as a leader who would grasp issues of great complexity in a short timeframe. Was that the case with him?
Yes. Yes. I think even his deepest opponents -- and he had many, many, many, and we really felt it in the government -- would acknowledged that he was a very smart man, who was, to use the phrase, a quick study; who could grasp the key essence of an issue and know what to emphasize and what to deemphasize. Because there's limited time in these meetings, it's not a casual conversation. You go there to meet with the head of state of another country -- you want to get certain things done, that person wants to get certain things done; they have an agenda, you have an agenda. You can't spent twenty-seven hours there talking about soccer scores or other things, it just doesn't happen that way. There's a certain amount of socialization, fraternization, just to sort of warm up, sometimes more than with others. For example, Yeltsin and Clinton happened to hit it off well, and they became kind of drinking buddies. My impression of the Clinton - Jiang Zemin relationship was it was very formal, and there was none of that.
So Clinton was able to do that. He's extremely forceful across a negotiating table. First of all, he's a big man. He's a big man, so, with a big head, with a big head of hair. He looks right at you, as is widely known. And he's just very articulate. When he gives this presentation he has tremendous command of the material. I think this is really an honest appraisal when I was in the administration. You may or may not like what he was trying to do, but the notion that he had command, I think, was seen by all.
So as a Dean of Public Policy, if you were to grade him, I guess what I'm hearing you saying is that he combined the analytic skills that would be the ideal product of an education at the Goldman School, with the political instincts for moving it all forward, whatever was on the table.
Right, I would agree with all that. If I had to offer two caveats to his A grade in this area, I would offer these: one is that his attention span was short. He wasn't gripped, to my knowledge, with any one or two or three issues in international affairs, or maybe even in all of public policy. So, therefore, he hopscotched, I think, excessively. He gave insufficient time to a few issues. He didn't prioritize enough. And interrelated to that, but somewhat distinct from it is that he wasn't sure, especially in this post - Cold War era, precisely where to put the chips, what the priorities were. He came in with a clear idea. He had been told, I don't think he had been persuaded, in the post - Cold War world, international economics was the future of international relations. The role of force was now declining; military affairs were not that important; alliances, all these classical issues of power politics, were no longer where it was at. But then he found a necessity to use force is Bosnia and Kosovo, in Haiti and Somalia, sometimes with good effects, sometimes with disastrous effects. Gunboat diplomacy in the Taiwan crisis, concern about North Korean missiles in '98, confrontation with the Chinese.
So he learned over the course of his presidency that that conception was not accurate. Of course, international economics is important, and it was in its ascendancy. But at the same time, military issues of a different form were taking shape. And, of course, what was looming on the horizon, but we really didn't fully appreciate it until 9/11, was the role of the transnational group, the international terrorist organization that could not just put a hole in a U.S. ship in Yemen and kill seventeen sailors, which is bad enough, or blow up some embassies in East Africa, but could kill thousands of Americans in their workplace.
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