On March 24, 2017, Georgetown University hosted the conference “25 Years of US-Russia Relations: From Cold War to New Cold War”. President of RIAC Igor Ivanov pronounced a speech at the conference.
On March 24, 2017, Georgetown University hosted the conference “25 Years of US-Russia Relations: From Cold War to New Cold War”. President of RIAC Igor Ivanov pronounced a speech at the conference.
Igor Ivanov's text of the speech
Dear Madeleine,
Dear participants of the conference,
Twenty-five years of family life stands for silver wedding. Spouses, who have reached this celebration, can be proud of their relationship.
International relations are not that simple. After the end of the Cold War, the world entered a complicated and protracted transition period characterized by ever-growing instability, multiple conflicts, unpredictability, and the loss of governance in international relations. As a result, we witnessed a rise of mistrust among states. Moreover, we observed a widespread surge of nationalistic moods, skepticism about international institutions, triumphant protectionism rooted in populist slogans.
That was an uneasy environment for the evolution of the Russian-American relations during the last 25 years. We lived through some pleasant moments in these relations, but we also experienced deep disappointments and frustrations. However, as I understand, our conference today is not a party of recollections, but rather an attempt to analyze the past in order to look into the future, trying to understand potential fundamentals for a positive and stable pattern of the US - Russian relations.
Since today I have the pleasure of talking to you together with highly esteemed Madame Albright, I would like to share with you three stories from our joint work as heads of our respective diplomatic services. These three cases can illustrate my vision of the future relations between our two nations.
Late evening of March 23, 1999. I was in Madrid with an official visit to Spain. There was a pause in negotiations and I decided to make use of it and to have dinner with my wife and my daughter in one of local restaurants. The mood in the restaurant was quite upbeat; everybody around us was enjoying magnifying Madrid nightlife. Out of a sudden, I got the message that Secretary of State Albright would like to talk to me by phone immediately. All of us, colleagues of Madeleine, knew about her attachment to the ‘phone diplomacy’, so this call did not come as a great surprise to me. With no delay, I got in touch with Secretary Albright and even tried to start our conversation with some joke. However, Madeleine was very serious. She interrupted me and said: “We have made a decision to launch a military operation against Yugoslavia. Our aircrafts are already on their way; in a couple of hours they will hit their targets. I wanted to inform you about that personally”.
I do not want to dwell upon my reaction to this statement; all of you who studied history of this period can easily guess what my reaction was. However, many times after this conversation I kept asking myself the same question: “Why indeed did she call me?” Finally, I came to the following conclusion. Madeleine understood perfectly well that sooner or later the military operation in Yugoslavia would be over, and we would have to work out a political solution. And no matter how the situation on the ground might evolve, we had to maintain good personal relations.
In the end of the day that was exactly what happened. Three weeks later, on April 13th, Madeleine and I met at the airport of Oslo and literally in a hangar we drafted the main points of a UN Security Council resolution about the political settlement of the situation around Kosovo. Later on, the Security Council adopted this document as its Resolution 1244.
Another story relates to the US-Soviet ABM Treaty of 1972. The Clinton Administration was seriously considering a US withdrawal from the Treaty, and Russia was consistently opposed to such a move. After many discussions of this matter, Madeleine suddenly told me: “Igor, why don’t you take your military and come to Washington with them? Let us go together to Pentagon and let the military from both sides articulate their positions in front of the two of us”.
And so we did. We arrived to the Pentagon analytical center, where Russian and US military had a couple of hours of intense discussions about missile defense. Then our group returned to Moscow. And after some time the US Administration announced that it had postponed the final decision on the ABM Treaty.
In order not to load you with too much of personal reminiscences, let me limit myself to only one more very telling story. All of you should remember the historic visit of Madeleine Albright to Pyongyang in October of 2000. Needless to say, the decision on this trip was made at the highest political level in the United States. Nevertheless, I remember quite well, how many long hours we spent with Madeleine discussing the Korean problem. She expressed her keen interest in every detail of President Putin’s trip to Pyongyang, as well as in my meetings with the North Korean leader. I tend to believe that these discussions made a positive contribution to the preparation of Madeleine’s trip. In any case, it appears evident that in 2000 with joint efforts by Russia, China, United States and also Japan and South Korea we managed to open a window of opportunity for resolving the security problem in the Korean Peninsula. With the new Administration getting to power in Washington, this window was shut down again.
What conclusions about the future of the Russian-American relations could we make based on these stories?
First. Though the end of the Cold War was also the end of the bipolar international system, Russia and the United States continue to play leading roles in many of global matters and to a large extent define together the course of global events.
Second. Russia and the United States possess significant capabilities – and not only nuclear ones – to inflict damage upon security interests of each other.
Third. Without active interaction between Russia and the United States, it will be impossible to restore global governance and to start shaping a new world order.
Fourth. In order to promote a US – Russian cooperation we need to maintain an active dialogue at various levels – from political summits to civil society interaction. Without such a dialogue, there is no way to restore trust and to move on to serious negotiations on key problems of international relations, including the fight against international terrorism and other security challenges. Such a dialogue should not be interrupted even when the positions are very difficult to reconcile.
Fifth. A meaningful dialogue is not possible without mutual respect. Disagreements cannot justify a derogatory or condescending language or direct insults and threats. We therefore need to restore not only the mechanisms of our communications, but also the culture of our dialogue.
Clear enough, this list of recommendations to our respective politicians and to scholars could be much longer. Let me stop here and address your comments and questions.
