Cold War
JP: Was the Cold War necessary?
ZB: It certainly took place -that’s part of the answer. What were the alternatives to it in the late 1940s, early ’50s? Was it avoidable? Perhaps with a more enlightened Soviet leadership and a somewhat less anxious Western leadership. But there is no conclusive way of answering that question.
JP: Do you feel that the famous Kennan memo was misused by a lot of influential people in the American foreign policy establishment?
ZB: I don’t think it was misused but after a while the notion of containment acquired a rigidity and a militaristic emphasis that was certainly not intended by Kennan. If I may refer to my own writings in the late ’50s and in particular in the early ’60s, I advocated a policy of peaceful engagement because I felt that the Communist system although strong physically was very weak in terms of social support and economic activity. Therefore a more flexible Western policy would have been a more effective Western strategy for waging the Cold War. Many of those who criticised me believed in containment defined largely on the military dimension purely.
JP: Was the end of the Cold War creatively used?
ZB: The opportunity was not entirely used well. We could have done more to engage and perhaps entangle the new Russia in a relationship with the West, which would have had the effect of reducing some of the increasingly dominant nostalgia for an imperial status that is being evidenced by the Kremlin. But again it is one of those inherently tentative answers. We have no way of knowing whether an alternative historical course would have been successful.
JP: Looking back and reflecting on how you felt at the time, was NATO expansion a good idea?
ZB: I think it was a necessary idea. Therefore politically or historically a good idea. One can easily imagine these days the kind of tensions that would dominate central Europe in the absence of their NATO membership. All one has to do is to look not only at most recent recent frictions between Russia and Estonia but even more dramatically at the threats, embargoes, even military gestures that Russia has been employing against Georgia. Look at Russia’s involvement in the Ukraine including the energy embargo. Clearly membership in both NATO and the European Union has created a more stable relationship and potentially more cooperative relationship between central Europe and Russia.
JP: Wasn’t there a commitment made by Secretary of State James Baker to Gorbachev not to expand NATO?
ZB: I don’t believe that’s right. I believe there was a commitment not to deploy NATO forces in Eastern Europe. I don’t think – but that’s easily checked – that there was any explicit commitment that the NATO alliance itself would not be expanded.
JP: But didn’t the US take advantage of Russia whilst it was weak in the Yeltsin years?
ZB: I think the US took advantage of a situation in which some decisions had to be made on the future status of central Europe. In the absence of clarity on where central Europe belonged – what is it identified with – we would probably have now had serious problems again today in the middle of Europe.
JP: In my interview with Arbatov he makes a strong point about the overriding influence of the military-industrial complex on the Soviet leadership. Would you make some the same criticism of the military-industrial complex here?
ZB: President Eisenhower raised the issue and the very use of these words is a compliment to him. In the West there has been and still is a military-industrial complex that in current stages in history still exercises a significant, more significant and lesser significant role. It is an important facet of reality, absolutely. More important in the West than in the Soviet Union, I don’t know. I rather suspect it was more important in the Soviet Union largely because the economic base was much narrower and the proportion of military spending to GNP was much higher.
Russia
JP: Is there a danger that Russia might become a military adversary once again?
ZB: I rather doubt it. For one thing to be a military adversary of the US on a global scale Russia would have to have some sort of a mission, a global strategy, maybe ideological reason. That strikes me as rather unlikely. But there may be tensions between the US and Russia. That is conceivable. In some respects it has manifested itself on some narrow fronts right now. Beyond that, Russia’s capabilities are much lower that they used to be. Russian society expects more for itself in socio-economic development and it is more difficult to deny it in the context of the relative access of Russia to the outside world and the outside world’s access to Russia. In brief, the kind of total mobilisation that the Soviet system could impose on Russia and the motivation for it would be much more difficult to legitimate in the absence of a compelling, overarching, ideological justification.
JP: So you don’t get nervous when you see this war of words that Putin cranked up at the Munich conference last year and the row over the installation of missiles defences in central Europe? You don’t see these as divisive breaks between the two countries?
ZB: To some extent they may be but I’m not particularly worried because I think the harm they do is essentially to Russia alone. It delays the process of Russia’s eventual association with the West and increased identification with the West. I consider that those processes in the longer run are inevitable and beneficial to Russia. This posturing by Putin – which on a more primitive level is illustrated by his appearance this summer, his torso bared – it seemed to be a kind of childish machismo. It seems to me that Putin has actually done damage to Russia’s international position. But I don’t think that he has done anything that gives cause for serious worry.
JP: Was it a mistake after the end of the Cold War not to bind Russia into a closer relationship with the EU?
ZB More could have been done to create a greater sense of identification between Russia and the West, in particular in the Yeltsin era. But one has to qualify that by noting that there it is an open question whether Russia as a society was ready for it. This was a period of great confusion in Russia, of great uncertainty, considerable humiliation so that it might not have been easy to fashion something that would have lasted in the longer run. However, I do make the point that more should have been tried in the early 1990s.
JP: Don’t you think that Russia is an integral part of western civilization?
ZB: Yes, so is the Ukraine,
JP: You can’t compare Ukrainian writers, poets, composers, painters, playwrights with the greats of Russia.
ZB: That’s not the issue. The question is which society is more European in terms of its mores. More so Ukraine than Russia. The Ukrainians have shown a great deal of ability to deal with diversity without recourse to arms. The Russians have a much greater propensity to solve political problems by force. But I think both societies partake of the Christian heritage and the Christian heritage is very much connected to the European heritage. Of the two societies Ukraine smells more, smacks more of Europe than Russia. But it is a marginal difference.
JP: Would you like to like to see both those countries inside the EU within the next generation?
ZB: I have often said if Ukraine moves to the West and becomes a member of the EU and NATO Russia is far more likely to follow suit than if Ukraine does not.
JP: So it should be an ambition of the EU to beckon to Russia to come into Europe on certain conditions, within say the next 20 years?
ZB: 20 years is maybe too soon but one cannot be too sure of that because the pace of history has certainly accelerated. I have given speeches about a Europe that extends from Portugal on the Atlantic to Vladivostock on the Pacific. But when that will happen I do not know. However I
do know if Ukraine doesn’t move to the West or is prevented from moving or is excluded by the West, Russia’s involvement with the West will be much more delayed and there will be a higher probability of a nostalgic attempt at imperial restoration.
Nuclear disarmament
JP: Both superpowers still maintain a formidable arsenal of nuclear weapons. How can the momentum towards nuclear disarmament be restored?
ZB: By stopping proliferation. That is the sine qua non