Episode 10. Tough Times In Moscow

Episode Transcript:

Amb. McCarthy: [00:00:13] Our podcast brings together senior US diplomats and senior US military leaders in conversations about their partnerships in tackling some of our toughest national security challenges. I am Ambassador Deborah McCarthy, the producer and host of the series. Today our focus will be on Russia. Our guests are Ambassador John Tefft and General Bruce McClintock. Gentlemen, you worked together in Moscow during some difficult times in our bilateral relationship. Ambassador Tefft, you were the US ambassador to Russia from 2014 to 2017. You know Russia very, very well. Having worked in the country since you were a young officer and you were also assigned to our embassy there as the deputy ambassador in the late 90s when President Putin first came into office. You also have a deep knowledge of the countries bordering Russia, as you were also the ambassador to Lithuania, my former place of posting Georgia and Ukraine. The history of these countries are closely tied to Russia as well. General McClintock, you to know Russia well. As an Air Force officer, you worked on the joint staff in the Pentagon and were the chairman special assistant for Russia. You then served in Moscow as a senior defense official and defense attache at the embassy from 2014 to 2016. So I wanted to start with some basics. John is the ambassador. You led and directed our entire relationship with Russia. Bruce is the senior defense official at the embassy. You were charged with advising the ambassador on military matters. How did you work together and what were the key elements of your relationship? How do defense attachés work inside embassies and work for ambassadors?

Amb. Tefft: [00:01:55] Defense attachés have been parts of American embassies since back in the 19th century. In our current day, there's something like 100 different defense attache offices at different embassies. I've had the great fortune, the privilege to be ambassador in four different countries. And in each of those countries, the defense attache was someone who I was able to work with very, very closely to confide in to get his best advice, not just on military matters, but on other things, because I've been fortunate to have had Bruce McClintock in Moscow, also Admiral David Manero, who has just left as the attache, but also some superb officers, usually of the colonel, rank. At my other three posts that you mentioned, Georgia, Lithuania and Ukraine. And in every case, I have to say, I've always been terrifically impressed with the officers who've served with me. And as I said, I consult them on issues sometimes not just military, but to get their judgments because they have a good feel for the country and can help give me a good input to making some of the tough decisions in the gray areas that all ambassadors have to make.

Amb. McCarthy: [00:03:00] Bruce, do you want to comment?

Gen. McClintock: [00:03:01] First of all, it was an absolute privilege to work for Ambassador Tefft in Moscow. I didn't have the same level of experience with Russia and the Soviet Union that he had. I actually started out my career as an A-10 pilot, so my first experience with the Soviet Union was looking down simulated Soviet targets in the Fulda Gap from the gun barrel of an A-10, and measuring our life span in seconds for air pieces that might be firing back at us. So it was a very much more of an operational rather than a diplomatic perspective. And John was great about recognizing what a military representative brings to the table in terms of perspective, best military advice, and also our multiple bosses, as I called it. Everybody understands that defense attachés are responsible for observing what's going on in a nation representing the US military to the host nation and other foreign attachés, and then most importantly, informing the ambassador and others and offering advice. What John did really well was recognize that we also served other bosses besides him as the ambassador. We had responsibilities to keep the Department of Defense informed during our tenure. General Breedlove, who was the SAC here, and the Yukon commander, as well as other combatant commanders, that we had to keep informed. And those relationships were important. And he allowed those relationships to flourish and also contributed to them being very healthy.

Amb. McCarthy: [00:04:22] And at the time that you both were serving there, the situation, as I mentioned in the beginning, was very difficult from the bilateral point of view. John, since you had served there before, how was the context different when you went back to serve as ambassador?

Amb. Tefft: [00:04:36] When I was the deputy ambassador from 1996 to 1999, there was a period where I was actually in charge of the embassy for almost ten months. But this was the period when the United States was working with Russia. The Clinton administration, Strobe Talbott, Al Gore, were all working very hard to try to help Russia not only get its feet on the ground stabilize economically, but to develop in both political and economic ways that we encouraged. This was the period of the Gore-chernomyrdin Commission where the United States and Russia, the prime minister and the vice president would sit down and. Worked through problems and they would bring together cabinet officers to try to find solutions to Russia's problems and to some of our own bilateral problems, because our relationship has always been competitive, if not adversarial in some ways. When I went out to Moscow as ambassador, the Russians had already annexed Crimea. The little green men, as they were called, had gone into the Donbas. There was fighting going on every day in Ukraine. We had imposed sanctions and the relationship, frankly, was already in a very low state. There were limits as to how much not only I, but other Western ambassadors could see people. It was a completely different kind of situation.

Amb. McCarthy: [00:05:53] Bruce, let me ask you, as the military attache, were you able to travel around the country because that's part of the normal duties of an attaché to go and visit bases and they have reciprocal access to ours with permissions and so forth?

Gen. McClintock: [00:06:06] Exactly. We were able to travel. It was a complicated situation before I addressed that. If I may, I want to add one additional comment to what John just talked about, because I saw firsthand and I think a lot of people in the American public forget there are times when the United States works very hard and has worked very hard to establish a positive working relationship with Russia. I saw that firsthand in the Pentagon before coming over in 2014. We actually had high level meetings between our chairman and the Russian Chod, the chief of defense for Russia and the United States through a variety of different working groups, was doing many things to help not only the Russian military, but the Russian economy. All those things ended up getting cut off when Russia illegally invaded and essentially and annexed Crimea and then started intervening in Ukraine. Attaché's by definition, are in a country at the invitation of the host nation. And our job is to travel around and make observations and then provide that information to our embassy leadership as well as to our own countries and the departments that we work for. The Russians are very careful about abiding by the agreements within the letter of the law as they interpret them. But they're also very careful about avoiding any kind of reciprocal actions. We have a bilateral agreement between the United States and Russia that requires us to inform the host nation when we intend to travel and look around. And we always did that. We assiduously applied those rules and complied by noting those trips. And essentially what that did is that meant once we got out into the field, our teams were provided the courtesy of a very close escort by a marked police vehicle. And when I say very close, I'm saying six inches to six car lengths behind us at any time that we're traveling. So we were allowed to travel. But that escort was often used as a means to interfere by making repeated traffic stops.

Amb. McCarthy: [00:08:02] And the rest of the team. John, The rest of the embassy team, I would assume that also their access and ability to not only talk to people, but to go around the country and we obviously have consulates that too, I would assume would have been curtailed or more supervised.

Amb. Tefft: [00:08:19] I think more supervised is probably the best description because we had three consulates. We had one in Petersburg, which has now been closed. We had one in Yekaterinburg in the Ural Mountains in the center, and then we had one in Vladivostok out on the East Coast. And the officers at those posts, they were unclassified posts. They would travel as much as possible. To give you an example, in his first year as our consul general in Vladivostok, Michael Keys made it a point to get to every single oblast in the Russian Far East, which was quite an achievement, frankly, because some of these places aren't. The basic point here is one that American diplomats have followed since George Kennan was in Moscow, the famous George Kennan in his famous Mr. X article. And in the Long Telegram he sent, he talked about the difficulties of working with the Soviet government and the strong different national security interests we had and the different way they thought of things. But he said, fundamentally, we have to stay in touch with the Russian people. And we did that. And all of the parts of the embassy, whether it's the Defense Attaché's office, our political and economic officers, our consular officers, we're constantly traveling. And one of the things I tried to do was to make sure we had enough money in the budget to be able to allow these officers to go to places because many of them would go to places that the ambassador couldn't go. Smaller places, but still important places for understanding contemporary Russia.

Amb. McCarthy: [00:09:42] Sometimes it's important that the younger officers, the non not the ambassador, go out and have contact.

Amb. Tefft: [00:09:48] At some point, one or more of those younger officers is going to be the ambassador or one of the more of the military officers is going to be the defense attache in Moscow. So this is, in a way also kind of training for the future.

Amb. McCarthy: [00:10:00] Well, I wanted to turn now and talk a little bit about Russian military doctrine and the country's current modernization program. Russia published a new military doctrine in 2014. What does it mean for the US?

Gen. McClintock: [00:10:14] The most recent version of the Russian military doctrine from 2014. In many ways it was a continuation of the past policies and statements, but it very clearly reinforces the concept that the West is not only a powerful competitor, but in fact an adversary. And there are many analysts, both Russian and American, that have used that doctrine and really 2014 as a clear indication that Russia essentially considers itself in conflict already with the West and the United States. There are a lot of specifics in there. One of the ones I like to point out is the fact that this new doctrine does add the concept of what we call information operations to what constitutes a military risk. And it's not uncommon for the Russians to reflect back or project, if you will, what they do themselves onto their perceived adversaries. So those are some of the highlights. I would say for the doctrine.

Amb. Tefft: [00:11:08] I would add just one key point, which is maybe an obvious one, but it bears repeating, and that is that Russia broke the fundamental rules of European security back in 2014 when it annexed, invaded Crimea.

Amb. McCarthy: [00:11:22] Invaded Crimea.

Amb. Tefft: [00:11:23] And, you know, also intervened. However, covertly, they thought they were doing it in the Donbas. We all know European history and we know if nations started using force to intervene or try to redraw borders, we'd be back 100 years ago, 200 years ago, when Europe was fighting small wars over small pieces of land. And I think the Western response to that was fairly robust. I'm not sure that Russia calculated that this would happen, but I think the sanctions and other things we have put on Russia are a tangible example of the fact that all of the Western countries agree that you should not be allowed to use force in modern Europe to be able to take over other people's land. It's very simple. But the Russian doctrine is there and obviously the practice is there.

Amb. McCarthy: [00:12:11] Russia is moving into a modernization program, a nuclear modernization program. Are these efforts replacing old systems or creating new capabilities that can threaten the United States? Because I think it's important for our listeners to know exactly how strong they are.

Amb. Tefft: [00:12:26] And one of the things that all of us watched in Syria was the use by Russia of many of these new weapons. In a way, it was a trial ground for the use of some of these weapons. I think that Russia has obviously increased its conventional and nuclear capabilities, but they're also trying to use these in situations. And, you know, when you start using high performance aircraft and precision guided bombs to be able to kill civilians, which has happened, you know, it's obviously very, very dangerous.

Gen. McClintock: [00:12:56] Well, John's, of course, exactly right. My short answer to your question is, is this new or is it replacing old systems? The answer is both. It's doing both. It's really both. And we do military modernization. Exactly. We have a nuclear recapitalization program as well. Most of that is to replace aging systems that are no longer reliable. So some of that is understandable. Another way I like to put this is that Russia has essentially gone to school on the western way of war, going all the way back to the Gulf War, which was a heavy emphasis on precision guided munitions and the use of UAVs and other capabilities. And when they didn't have the resources in the 90s and the 2000 to really develop those as effectively as they are now, they've really gone full board into doing that and they're out there testing those systems. And so they are a much more capable military. They're not ten feet tall, but they're no longer on their knees as one of the best ways to kind of describe it by analogy, the Brussels NATO summit declaration, which I encourage everybody to take a look at the fact that for several years the United States has been pointing out that Russia is in violation of the INF Treaty for developing a system that they've signed a treaty for. But they've also publicly said, well, we're not sure that this treaty is in our best interests anymore, but they've really strung the rest of the world along by claiming that they're not in violation. And only recently have they come out to say, yes, we do in fact have a dual capable, which means it's both conventional and nuclear system that is relatively short range. So they're doing a lot on the modernization path on both fronts.

Amb. McCarthy: [00:14:24] Well, one question also that has to be posed, which is Russia's economy is roughly a 10th of the size of the United States, and it's not in particularly good shape. What are they sacrificing in modernizing?

Amb. Tefft: [00:14:35] The first part is that the Russia has always been able to put a lot of money into their programs. The cost of some of these programs is not as high. I think one of the key points is that Russia has classified a huge part of its defense budget. So one of the hard things for Western analysts in and out of government is to try to figure out how much money they're actually putting into the military acquisitions and expenditures. I think more broadly, the economy is, as you said, in bad shape. And that's fundamentally for several reasons. One is that the Russians have not seriously reformed their economy. They've been afraid to move ahead in this regard. And it shows there's a lot of things that have to be done. They've just announced they're going to increase pensions, but there's a lot of things in terms of openness and transparency in the economy that have to be done or they're not going to move ahead. Individual businessmen need to know that if there's a dispute, they can take it to a court. But in Russia, so many of the courts are compromised by corruption. I think that the economy also has been hindered by the sanctions that have been in place.

Amb. McCarthy: [00:15:41] They have had their effect.

Amb. Tefft: [00:15:42] They've had their effect. And the principal areas where that has affected them has been in the fact that it has been in the lack of foreign investment and also in their inability to be able to market some of their products.

Gen. McClintock: [00:15:54] This is one of the things I loved about many of the aspects I loved about being a defense attache and an embassy. These kinds of conversations are things that a military officer typically isn't exposed to, and we would regularly have country team meetings where I would just sit there in awe of the knowledge level and the ability to analyze these things across the country. Team that got together. The other thing that Russia does as far as their military goes in this stagnant economy now they're no longer in recession, is they're careful about targeting what their development is. They prioritize certain systems and they've slowed down their development timeline to they had a 2020 objective and they've bumped that out a few years. It'll take a few years longer. But I often point out to people they may have a much smaller economy, they may have a smaller military, but look how effective they've been in Syria with a very small footprint in terms of changing the balance of the conflict and really the geopolitical environment.

Amb. McCarthy: [00:16:47] And we'll get to their interest in the Middle East. Well, one aspect of their arsenal, so to speak, is the so-called the ability to do information warfare. I certainly saw their ability to do that in Lithuania when I was there in the Baltics. How do you assess our ability to respond to the use of information as part of the so-called arsenal?

Amb. Tefft: [00:17:12] Well, at the embassy, we were obviously limited because they wouldn't, with a few exceptions, let me on TV for fear I think, that we would be propagating what they considered color revolutions and bad ideas. We also discovered that while television has been one of the main linchpins of the Russian government's propaganda machine, in fact, the Internet is increasingly a key point, particularly for young people. The propaganda line on TV was often so heavy handed that young people just didn't watch TV at all. And so what we did was to try to use the Internet. I would give interviews online and I would get, for example, all of my embassy staff together, and we would then be on all of the main Russian Internet sites.

Amb. McCarthy: [00:17:59] I watched some of them. They were really good.

Amb. Tefft: [00:18:01] And we basically answered questions on policy as well as on personal things. They would ask me things like What is your favorite food? And one of my favorite foods is of course, Russian dumplings, which are pelmeni. And everywhere I traveled in Russia. After that one, I became known as Mr. Pelmeni, but I think we were able also to get our message out. We also had a very active program of concerts and other cultural events, and particularly in my last year there, we were able to get the equipment so that we could have, for example, a concert at Spaso House, the ambassador's residence, which we could livestream on the Internet. And just to give you one example, in April of 2017, we were able to bring in three young divas to sing the songs of Ella Fitzgerald on her 100th anniversary.

Amb. McCarthy: [00:18:49] That's great.

Amb. Tefft: [00:18:50] We had at the end of that concert, we had 10,000 people online watching live. By the time I left in September, we had, of course, made this into a tape and was permanently available on our website. We'd had over 250,000 people had watched the website, so we were able to get our message out that way. But fundamentally, it's still a very controlled society and it's very difficult to get your message out, especially early in any kind of straightforward way.

Amb. McCarthy: [00:19:17] Well, I wanted to turn now a little bit to talk about Russia and its view of NATO. John, when you were the deputy ambassador in Moscow in the late 90s, NATO and Russia negotiated what's called the founding act. Later, a special NATO Russia council was set up. And all this has been upset or suspended periodically by repeated hostile actions by Russia, including its incursion into Georgia and then obviously Ukraine. How does Russia perceive NATO today?

Amb. Tefft: [00:19:46] Russia is always trying to find the enemy outside the United States, even in good times. The United States has been depicted in official propaganda as somehow the enemy we're trying to undermine Russia. This is used for domestic purposes to try to rally people and to try to pass the buck, as it were, and blame a problem on a foreign side. Nato has gotten involved in that. Now, during the Soviet period, obviously, there was a diplomatic kind of confrontation. Bruce described what it was like to be an A-10 pilot during that period. But when the Soviet Union ended, we made a concerted effort. And you mentioned the NATO-Russia Founding Act. I was at the side of Secretary Albright when she was with Foreign Minister Primakov during some of the negotiations she had in Russia. And she tried very, very hard. Dick Myers, who was then a lieutenant general and the senior Pentagon senior military officer, assigned he took an active part in those. And we tried extremely hard to put together a package so that as we expanded NATO, we could also include Russia in this. Sadly, Russia, for whatever reasons, decided not to really participate fully. And as I say, I think you come back then to the fact that they exaggerate what NATO, the threat that NATO provides. Nato is a defensive alliance, but they just don't want to believe that. And I think that's one of the really hallmark points over the last 20 or so years that we haven't been able to develop or take advantage of that framework that was put together to try to do more cooperative things and to limit the adversarial part of this.

Amb. McCarthy: [00:21:19] Bruce, while you were in Moscow, the tempo of US and NATO exercises along the eastern frontier increased in the wake of the events of invasion of Crimea. How were these exercises perceived?

Gen. McClintock: [00:21:34] They were perceived as the Russian government wished they would be perceived, which was as a threat and a provocation. And that's captured somewhat in that 2014 military document that we talked about earlier. And it's a double edged sword when we were doing our best to reassure allies and partners that we were there to protect them in case Russia decided to do something like they did in Ukraine, elsewhere, specifically the Baltics, for instance, we would send a very, very small representative force into those countries, just as a sign to say, you know, we're here with you, we have you. But the Russians would take that. And I called it the B-roll footage that will run for decades of the US forces within close proximity to the Russian border. And the Russian media would tell their population, see, here it is. The United States is on our border and there are.

Amb. McCarthy: [00:22:22] Thousands and thousands of troops which was not the case.

Gen. McClintock: [00:22:24] Absolutely. And they would falsify the amount of presence and in effect, turn it against us. And so that was something we always had to deal with as the fact that the government certainly wanted to project the impression to the population that NATO and the United States are a threat to the sovereign territory of Russia.

Amb. McCarthy: [00:22:43] And in the past several years, we've seen an increase in the number and kinds of encounters between US and Russian aircraft and other assets. What mechanisms do we have when these close encounters, as I call them, take place?

Amb. Tefft: [00:22:56] Well, let me say first a quick word and then let Bruce give you some more details. We have had in place for many, many years going way back into the Cold War, a device called the Incidents at Sea. When I worked on the Soviet desk back so long ago, I don't want to think about it. That was actually an annual event. And then there were periodic exchanges of information and it became something that wasn't just about ships meeting at sea. It was incidents to include aircraft. So that's continued. The Russians wouldn't go. The first year after the Ukrainian invasion. But that's continued now, and I think that's been a key focus. Even more important in this I'll defer to Bruce has been that General Dunford, our chairman of the Joint Chiefs, has been talking with General Gerasimov, the chief of defense, and I think has done a tremendous job for our country and for the security of the world. But then we've also had and this is something our Defense Attache's office worked very hard on these channels to be prevent any kind of an incident in Syria.

Gen. McClintock: [00:23:59] This incidents at sea agreement, which does include incidents above the high seas in international waters, did come out of the Cold War and it was a result of a period where, frankly, there were much more dangerous military activities and a concern about having some kind of an unintended mishap. So those agreements are still in place. They're not perfect. Some of the language is vague and we support some of that broad language. And the challenge we face sometimes today is if the agreement says something like both nations will avoid unsafe acts, we will declare that an act is unsafe. When a Russian airplane flies at high speed within ten feet of another airplane or a surface vessel, and the Russians will claim, oh, well, that's completely safe because our pilots are highly trained and highly skilled, which is an unfortunate loophole that they have. They're using that loophole, a little bit of a lawfare, if you will. But those are agreements are important. We have those annual conferences, the deconfliction agreement that arose out of the Russian intervention in Syria in September 2015. I actually think it is a very important example of where there is still room for cooperation, if not agreement on areas of mutual interest it was in. Neither sides. That's the Russian and US sides interest to have any kind of an unintended escalation between the US and Russia. We both have military forces there. There's aircraft flying around and approximately just over four weeks the nations negotiated and memorandum of understanding that gave us some good basic approaches to avoid unintended mishaps. It was difficult to do given the suspension of military cooperation, but it's a great example of the cooperation between the State Department, the Department of Defense and everyone within the embassy to come up with this agreement.

Amb. McCarthy: [00:25:45] What are their longer term interests in expanding their presence in the Middle East?

Amb. Tefft: [00:25:50] Russia's been in Syria for decades and decades, going back to even the early in my career. They dealt with the current President Assad's father for a long period, as I think most people will remember. They have bases there which they consider their foothold in the Middle East. And, you know, they want to continue those. I think they've just executed in the last year or two extensions of those agreements when the fighting in the civil war in Syria really started. Secretary Kerry made a concerted effort working with the United Nations to try to stop the fighting.

Amb. McCarthy: [00:26:23] Get all sides together. Yes.

Amb. Tefft: [00:26:25] During my time there, he had three visits. He was there earlier with Ambassador McFaul. And he tried very hard to get the Russians to support. And they did. The foreign ministry at least gave support to the idea of using the UN process in Geneva to find a way to move on to a new leader in Syria. I think in the clear light of history, it looks today as if the Russians paid lip service to that, even as they moved to reinforce and to actually engage in supporting militarily the Assad regime and trying to get rid of the opposition. I think that the possibility was always there. I know Secretary Kerry was deeply disappointed because he tried his very best to get the war to stop, to stop the killing of all of the innocent civilians. And then, of course, we also have the couple times at a minimum, use of chemical weapons against civilians, which is not only outlawed, but which Russia said that they they opposed all along. And this is another, of course, of the what Ambassador Huntsman called the malign activities of Russia that President Trump needs to redress with President Putin.

Amb. McCarthy: [00:27:27] Let me turn now a little bit to since you lived in Russia for so long, which is the issue of views towards the United States and also our operations there. During your time in Russia, many of our diplomats were harassed. You mentioned being tailed, you know, and visiting bases, Bruce and other actions. And President Putin also threw out hundreds of our officers assigned to the embassy. Can we delve a little bit into how these kinds of actions affect the ability of our embassies to operate?

Amb. Tefft: [00:28:02] When I was in Moscow in the 1990s, there was, of course, none of this kind of harassment. The intelligence services and others would follow us and stuff. And we knew that. And I'm certain that the telephones were tapped and the rest of that. But when I was there as ambassador, when I was there with Bruce, we had a much more overt effort to harass not just the officers. I mean, they stopped me in my car a couple of times, which is totally against all diplomatic rules. They also would of course, hassle our defense attachés and others, but it went beyond that. It went to even to families. The one incident that happened a number of times. But there's one incident in particular where one of the spouses of one of our officers who lived on our embassy compound was taking her 11 year old daughter along with her friend to, I think, soccer practice or something like that. And she pulled out of the embassy compound and was immediately stopped by the police and issued a ticket because her daughter was not in a child safety seat.

Amb. McCarthy: [00:29:03] At 11 years old?

Amb. Tefft: [00:29:05] 11 years old. Now, in fact, we Secretary Kerry and I both complained heavily about this. And in the end, they confirmed, yes, indeed, until the age of 12, you're required to be in a child seat. And of course, we laughed and said, come on, this is ridiculous. But it also shows again that everybody who's assigned to that embassy, whether you're working for the US government or you're a part of a family, a spouse, child, you're all engaged in this. It's a very difficult assignment for Americans. As the ambassador, I'm very proud of the way our people handled what was not always a very easy situation.

Amb. McCarthy: [00:29:38] And when all these officers were thrown out suddenly, I mean, did they have to pack up in days? They had to pack up their families and move everything instantaneously?

Gen. McClintock: [00:29:48] They did. In fact, I'd like to build on what John said earlier, because I think it's a pretty important point, not just about Russia, which could be a very impressive environment for not just the government officials that are there, but also their families. But really, I have to say, I learned a tremendous amount about just the sacrifices and service made by foreign Service officers and their families, really worldwide. These kinds of situations don't get the kind of attention. And that uniformed military activity gets. And it's important that the people acknowledge those sacrifices are happening. I actually still stay in touch with my successor, Dave Monero and others, Dave and his family. We call it PNG persona non-grata. So they were kicked out of the country again for diplomatic reasons. Every country has the right to expel people. The Russians do it very aggressively. With many NATO nations. It is first and foremost an impact on the official relations because these relationships take time to build. But as you ask, it's important to point out it has an impact on the families as well. When you have young children in school and you have to pick up your family sometimes in 48 hours, sometimes in as much as it sounds almost trite to say that inasmuch as two weeks that you have to move.

Amb. McCarthy: [00:30:59] Our official relationship is one aspect of our relationship with Russia. But there are deep ties also on the business side, the cultural side, the educational side, not all of which is managed by the United States government and the embassy. And can you give us a sense of where these ties, in your view, stand today and how basically the so-called man in the street view Americans?

Amb. Tefft: [00:31:22] Let me make two points. First is I tried very hard and the embassy staff tried very hard to maintain as many of the personal relationships and even professional relationships as we could. As you could imagine, a number of our officers are on their second tours in Moscow, just like I was, and we had friends from previous times. It wasn't always easy for our Russian friends to have contacts with us because they would get hassled or interviewed by the intelligence services. And so we had a rule basically that if someone really felt it was too difficult to meet, then we didn't push it. But at the same time, we worked really hard to try to expand those contacts. We also had a lot of people to people programs. The Russian government cut back our high school exchange program.

Amb. McCarthy: [00:32:05] That was a big loss. It was a terrible, terrible thing.

Amb. Tefft: [00:32:07] But we've also had a number of others, both at higher levels. The University graduates and the Fulbright students or professors who go to there. I would also then say that in the business world in particular, I'm particularly proud of many of our businesses that are in Russia because over the last 25 years they have done a tremendous job of not only showing people how you can be an effective international business, but you can do it ethically. You can do it without corruption. You can do it without breaking the rules. Many of the companies that we have there now are run or certainly managed by talented young Russians who have come up through these companies. Many of these people are very talented people. You know, they love their own country, but they also understand what good international business can be. There's in addition, then lots of American universities and others who still maintain ties in admittedly difficult situation that try to maintain those ties and professorial kind of contacts and exchanges of students and the rest of that. To the extent we can do that, we try to continue it.

Gen. McClintock: [00:33:11] It's hard, I think, for the typical American to get a sense of how much bravery it takes for a typical Russian citizen to even consider having a conversation with a US official in Russia. We have a clear understanding of it, but they're exposing themselves in ways to levels of scrutiny that we don't even consider in the United States, because they are going to be scrutinized for that interaction and likely they're going to be questioned about it. What were your motives? What did you say? What were you asked? What did you agree to do? In a personal sense, in an unofficial capacity? I was regularly almost, I would say, warmed by the sincere interest of your average Russian on the street in the United States. My Russian is not it was not great at the time. It was very clear when I was out and about, usually with my family, sometimes on my own, that I was not from Russia, I was from the West. And people would ask, Oh, are you from America? Yes, I am. Oh, that's wonderful. My cousin or aunt or brother or friend has visited America. I want to go visit. Usually they'd say they'd want to go to California or New York or Florida or something like that.

Gen. McClintock: [00:34:21] Right, the population, at least the folks I encountered, had a genuine interest in the United States and the West, and they didn't have this same level of negative rhetoric that exists within the official government channels.

Amb. Tefft: [00:34:33] I would add that everywhere I traveled in Russia and I was all over the place, I never found anybody who was either rude, nasty or angry at me. Among ordinary people, whether they be officials of a local government or just people I would run into. There are thousands of Russians who have been on programs to the states, either through the official programs or unofficial. And everywhere I would go, I would always have like a breakfast or a lunch, and we would invite a number of these people who at different times had gone to the United States, and it was a chance for them to get a chance to hear the American ambassador talk about elections and whatever. And then all of them would then share their views about what their life had been, say, out in Siberia after they'd had their year of study in the United States. I'll give you one last story to give you an illustration of how people feel. I was out in a Siberian city. Let me say it this way on an official visit, and the university had invited me to come to give a lecture on international affairs, US-Russian relations. And the day before I got there, the university called and said, We've been told you can't come and speak on official orders. Well, later in that day, my political officer who was doing all of the arrangements and logistics, gets a phone call from his contact over at the university and said, We have a group of students that wants to come and see the ambassador.

Amb. Tefft: [00:35:53] Would it be possible for you to get one of the conference rooms at the hotel? And I said, Absolutely, we'll do that. Well, down come 20 to 25 students as well as five different professors, all of whom had wanted to see the ambassador. You know, the American ambassador doesn't always get out to these places in Siberia. Very often they had every question you could imagine. This was, I want to say, May of 2016. So lots of questions about Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton and the campaign and what was going on. Lots of questions about America and American policy, the fact that they were willing to make the risks, as Bruce was describing it, to come down, to engage and to engage. And they didn't want to miss this chance. It wasn't necessarily me personally, but it was the American ambassador who was there. And by God, they didn't want to miss that opportunity to have an interchange and have a chance. I'm sure were interviewed afterwards. I don't know if they were punished, but they did it. And I've always thought of that as a good illustration out in the heart of Russia of what young people in the next generation think.

Gen. McClintock: [00:36:55] This should go both ways. And this is one of the other downsides of PNGs. And the reduction in the embassy staffs is because the ability for Russians to get visas to travel to the United States is diminished. The national perception of Russia as a place to visit. I have people regularly ask me, Oh, you were in Russia, you know, what was it like? Of course they want to know. And is it safe to go there? And I still say and I would continue to say yes, I think if you're going there, I encourage you to go visit a place like Saint Petersburg, maybe take a cruise down to Moscow or something like that, because the culture is amazing. The people, as we've said, are generally warm and interesting and worth talking to. And those kinds of people to people contacts I truly believe are incredibly important.

Amb. McCarthy: [00:37:38] And this gets me to my last question, which is in both our diplomatic and our defense establishments, to take it back a little bit to the official side, have deep area and language expertise. What would you tell a young diplomat or a younger military officer about working in this part of the world?

Amb. Tefft: [00:37:55] I think it's still a critical part of American foreign policy. I always felt after the end of the Soviet Union when we were talking about the peace dividend and cutting back, that, you know, my own personal view was, oh my God, please, let's not do this, because this is still the only country in the world that still can destroy our country militarily. And that's always been at the core of my own understanding. But as Bruce said, it is one of the most fascinating places. If you were ambassador in Lithuania, this was part of the Soviet Union, but it was always trying to be independent and an independent nation. All of the Baltic countries are fascinating. Russia itself, as well as many of the others. I was in the caucuses. I was in Georgia. And it's an absolutely fascinating place. And if you're going to pick a career in the Foreign Service or if you're going to be a foreign area officer in the United States military, this is one of those areas that I think people should think hard about. At the end of the day, you can come home and look in the mirror and say, you know, I did something good for my country today. I helped try to promote some peace. I helped bring represent my country. I helped bring people together today.

Gen. McClintock: [00:39:01] I absolutely agree. You know, I regularly tell people that working in Russia was one of the most important and rewarding assignments in my military career. And frankly, that's not something you would often hear from a fighter pilot in the Air Force. But it was such an incredibly important strategic position and I was privileged to be there at the time that I was there. And I agree, Russia has been and will continue to be a global actor and their nuclear power, as John just alluded to. Now, frankly, we don't always agree with the way they behave, and I don't think it's appropriate for a nuclear power or somebody that wants to be treated as a global peer. And it's important for both of our institutions. That's the Department of Defense and the State Department and our combined government to have people that have a richer understanding of the background of the nation. And that does not happen overnight, especially with a country like Russia. So I encourage people to explore this area further and take the time to go beyond the Daily News feed and the news cycle and read more deeply. And it's a very interesting area. It's important, obviously, for our national security and it is worth delving into.

Amb. McCarthy: [00:40:05] So it's not an area of non-engagement. Despite all the negative that one is reading, it's essential to have continued engagement.

Gen. McClintock: [00:40:11] Yes. And continued engagement. Just to add, it does not mean that somebody like Russia should get a pass for bad behavior. The continued engagement should be upped and we should directly address those kinds of problems and issues, But we should do so in a way that understands the culture and the past and the history.

Amb. McCarthy: [00:40:27] Absolutely. Well, gentlemen, I want to thank you for giving us the so-called bird's eye view of having been inside of Russia working on that part of the world for so many years. My hat goes off to you for having served in a very difficult time leading your teams, which is such an important part of our public service. Thank you. This has been a new episode in the series, The General and the Ambassador, A Conversation. Thank you for listening. The series is a production of the American Academy of Diplomacy with the generous support of the Una Chapman Cox Foundation. You can find the podcast on all major sites and on our website, GeneralAmbassadorPodcast.Org. We welcome input and suggestions on the series. Please let us know your thoughts via General.Ambassador.podcast@gmail.com.