JVLV: U.S. PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATES READING LIST ON RUSSO-AMERICAN RELATIONS, By Jiri & Leni Valenta

Below is a reading list I have devised for all our presidential candidates. Above all, they must obtain a  basic knowledge of foreign affairs and the policies of the two successful presidents who managed to develop limited partnership with Russia,  Richard Nixon until Watergate and Ronald Reagan. What were the basics of Nixon’s and Reagan’s successes and how can these principles be applied to the present conflict?  What was the domestic context of America's foreign policy?  How did American statecraft helped to establish, at least temporarily, better relations with Russia --necessary reading in light of two international crises, Russia's war in Syria and the temporarily frozen conflict in Ukraine.

1.  Henry Kissinger, World Order, Penguin Books, 2015

Henry Kissinger has written a historical and geopolitical review of prior attempts to set up a stable world order, involving different cultures and different regions. He thus develops a construct by which the lessons of past history can be applied to the modern world.  Clear and indispensable, it will help with conflict resolution in Syria and the Ukraine.  Henry is not just a realpolitik man.  As a Jewish-German refugee, he believes in America as a beacon of liberty and the indispensable country in maintaining world order.

2.  Richard Haas, Foreign Policy Begins at Home, New York:  Basic Books, 2013

President of the Council on Foreign Relations (CFR) Richard Haas offers a reservoir of  tremendous experience in national security bureaucracies.   With his in-depth knowledge, he is able to analyze critical foreign policy issues within a domestic, but also foreign policy context, and is adept at finding practical solutions.  He has the potential to become another Kissinger.  To use Trump's expression, he is a “killer" negotiator.  

 3.   Richard Pipes, Vixi; Memoir of a Non-Belonger, New Haven:  Yale University Press, 2003

The Harvard doyen of American historians of Russia, Polish-born, holocaust survivor, Richard Pipes is a proud “non-belonger” or independent thinker. Still going strong at 92 he is coming out in November with a new biography of Gorbachev’s Kissinger, Alexander Yakovlev; the Man Whose Ideas Delivered Russia from Communism.  I know because I was one of two reviewers for his publisher, the Northern Illinois Press.   As advisor to Ronald Reagan, Dick helped to forge Reagan Doctrine and advance its major proposition, a “double-prong strategy:   encouraging pro-reform forces inside the USSR, and raising …the cost of its imperialism”.  This is essential reading because most of the advice you get from Russian “experts” is a waste of your time. During the Cold War most of them were wrong.  

4.  Dimitri Simes, After the Collapse Russia Seeks Its Place as a Great Power, Simon & Schuster, 1999.

Russian-born American Dimitri Simes is a top Russologist, as well as publisher of the premiere foreign affairs journal, The National Interest (TNI).  He provides a unique journey into Russia’s revolutionary changes during the late Gorbachev-Yeltsin era, having worked as an assistant to Richard Nixon at that time.   As the USSR was collapsing, Nixon criticized President Clinton’s Russologists for underestimating Russia’s potential, and brilliantly predicted its return as an assertive great power.  Putin's interventionism in Ukraine and Syria attest to it.  As Nixon also explained to Simes, during his presidency he generally relied on his own and Kissinger’s gut feelings and judgment. “You can’t expect the State Department to help.  They didn’t come up with a single major initiative during my administration.”  P. 22.  Richard Pipes would agree.

Simes, together with Graham Ellison, also wrote an excellent article for The National Interest, “Russia and America Stumbling Towards War  April 20, 2015.  The candidates might also read  a 2014 essay my wife, Leni, and I wrote for TNI, now much relevant with Russia's intervention in Syria:  “Can Russia and America Work Together to Crush the Islamic State?”

5.  Angela Stent, The Limits of Partnership, U.S.-Russian Relations in the Twenty-first Century, “Princeton University Press, 2014.

Like Richard and Dimitri, Angela is the genuine article, a leader in the field of Russian studies.  A professor at George Washington University, she also served as a desk officer for the CIA on Russia.  Her book conceptualizes the Russo-American relationship as a limited partnership in the 21^st century.  An outstanding scholar, she is better than the dozens of them in the field who engage in largely irrelevant, esoteric analysis, marked by pouring over historical documents with thousands of footnotes and reaching conclusions of no use to policy-makers.  I got to know Angela at CFR earlier.  She is an expert on Germany and Russia and knows Chancellor Merkel well.   In her view, America, the indispensable power, must be involved in negotiations with Russia on the Ukraine.

5.  Alexander Motyl, Article, “Yanukovych Must Go,” Foreign Affairs,   December 11, 2013. 

A renowned political scientist, but also novelist and painter, Rutgers University Professor Alexander Motyl is a different cup of borsht.   America’s best expert on Ukraine, he  could teach Ukrainian History and  Politics 101 and Russo-Ukrainian relations 102 to apologists who blame the Russian invasion of Ukraine on the West.  In his revolutionary essay “Yanukovych Must Go!”  Motyl not only foresaw Ukraine’s coming revolution and Yanukovych’s political demise, but helped to shape the destiny of Ukraine, the country of his ancestors. Have your staff read his biweekly blogs in The World Affairs Journal for updates on the Ukrainian crisis and Russian interventionism. Moreover, while on the election trail, read his satirical novel, Vovotchka: The True Confessions of Vladimir Putin's Best Friend and Confident.

6.  Jiri Valenta (me), Soviet Intervention in Czechoslovakia 1968, Anatomy of a Decision, Johns Hopkins University Press, 1991, with a forward by the late Alexander Dubcek. 

My book was reviewed by renowned Russian specialist Robert Legvold in Foreign Affairs as, “Probably the best grounded study yet done on the Soviet handling of the Czechoslovak affair of 1968.”  Still relevant, it covers Kremlin decision-making in 1968, but also why there was no Kremlin intervention during the Czech peaceful revolution in 1989.   Finally, with the book I edited with William Potter, Soviet Decision-Making for National Security, Allen & Unwin, 1984, it  provides necessary background, but also a conceptual framework for understanding Kremlin decision-making.  The cost of the intervention, the target’s projected resistance, America’s likely response, and the ability to achieve strategic surprise via deception are key Kremlin considerations. 

In “Divining Putin’s Intentions: Why we Must Lose ‘Strategic Patience,’" in the just published, October 2015 issue of the Aspen Review, we also compared all post-war interventions at Russia's periphery including Georgia and Ukraine.   

7.  Daniel Pipes, The Middle East Forum (online)

Political correctness dominates two research fields important to our candidates, the Middle East and Latin America.  The best source on the Syrian crisis, Islamic terrorism and the role of Russia in my view is the Middle East Forum , directed by Daniel Pipes and the Middle East Quarterly of Efraim Karsh. On issues of Syria war, Islamic terrorism and Iran’s nuclear program, these two men and their publications offer some the most astute observerations in our country.

8.   Alya Shandra, Euromaidan Press

The Managing Editor of this Ukrainian press is Alya Shandra.  It includes articles by some of the best experts on the Russian periphery, above all,  Paul Goble.  Subscribe and get on their reading list to find out what is current in Ukraine.

9.  The Russian International Affairs Council (RIAC), Moscow

We are regular bloggers with for the online, English language version of  this major Russian think tank.  The Director General, Andrey Kortunov, helped me arrange Boris Yeltsin’s visit to my Institute of Soviet and East European Studies (ISEES) 1989 and also taught a course with me.  The blogs are free of censorship and provide a variety of viewpoints.