there are contemporaneously chronicles. those are the most immediate sources. those are the ones, the narratives. so that is what we always look for. >> talked about the correlation between 9/11 and this period in history. are you constantly reminded of that? >> of course. i have never done any history that wasn't in some way relevant to the current day. that is the kind a litmus test for me. it just seems to me after 9/11 that was really important for americans to understand that they were not the first ones to have this kind of clash with the islamic world, that it is important for them to know also what the dreams are of the islamic world and who they're heroes were. ..

ambassador to the soviet union under president ronald reagan discusses his book, "superpower illusions" helm myths and full of ideologies lead america astray and how to return to reality. in the book, ambassador jack matlock folks with the role played by mikhail gorbachev in bringing down the soviet empire in argues that reagan's

successors learned the wrong lessons from the end of the cold war. he's interviewed by dimitri simes, president of the nixon center and publisher of the national interest. >> host: ambassador, this is an interesting and important book. "superpower illusions." it is also a critical book as far as u.s. foreign policy is concerned at least with the beginning of the clinton administration and then of course the second bush administration. you clearly disagree. was the u.s. foreign policy talk in the spirit that is why i was struck in the last sentence of the book. the last sentence i began in the mood to close to this buyer and in one of encouragement and hope is an nation can face up to its mistakes and correct them it will prove the faith in american

shared by ronald reagan and barack obama is not misplaced. why are you more optimistic now? >> guest: i'm still optimistic of those the last year the might since i wrote that have seen some setbacks. but mainly i was impressed by the fact that obama during the campaign and also so far in the administration placed the nuclear issue back in the forefront of our attention. the issue that reagan and gorbachev dealt with and i thought headed dustin the right direction toward bringing nuclear weapons under control and even eliminating them as a fine thing. so his espousal of that early on and the negotiations with russia to bring that about give me encouragement. also in other areas it seems to me the obama administration was

taking the term that was much more in accord with our interest than what the previous administrations had. for example in the middle east where i think it is clear that israel will not be able to achieve security unless they stop the settlements and began real negotiations and clearly that has been an issue that the obama administration has taken on. >> host: you were prominent foreign policy positions and the two republican presidents ronald reagan and george bush. it's also clear from your book that you admire ronald reagan. how did it happen that you became his foreign policy assistant adviser? the reason i am asking is you were a career for an officer.

you were known as a pragmatist. you were registered a democrat and the image of reagan was here was an ideologue. why did he turn to you to hold this important position? >> guest: first of all my being registered democrat was irrelevant because i never considered foreign policy a partisan issue. yes i was considered a very strong hardliner dealing with the soviet union, but also had lived there. on a new russia and the other nationalities and i knew the soviet ideology is not the whole story. and i found in ronald reagan aide leader who understood how to deal with people, understood that you need to stay in communication, understood if you wanted to convince other people

to do what you would like them to do you must convince them that is in their interest. so in working with reagan, and i think that he picked me probably because george shultz recommended it, i was a senior for an officer at that time who specialized in the soviet union but i think that he picked me because they knew that number one, i was a hard liner in terms of dealing with the communist system but also i knew russia and the country and i sympathized with his desire to conduct negotiations that would change behavior. >> host: it's a very interesting point. you came to office with a desire to change behavior. today a lot of historians, many conservatives, they claim that when reagan came to the white

house key immediately wanted to destroy the soviet union and soviet empire. was this his objective? >> guest: i think that was not his objective. obviously he considered the soviet union an evil empire that they had been but when it began to change and he was convinced it could be changed because much of their policies or not the national interest once they had begun to change he recognized that and when he visited moscow in may of 1988 he was asked is this still an evil empire and he said no. that was in the past. and when he was asked them who is responsible for this change he said mr. gorbachev of course is the leader of this country so this clearly is his aim and i think anyone who reads his memoirs, who reads the diary that he wrote at that time that have been published recognizes

that had been his goal all along. he knew very well you can't bring down a country by bringing pressure to bear because if you bring nothing but pressure to bear without giving them in negotiating option you strengthen the autocratic tendencies. you strengthen the nationalist tendencies and so he was able to count what we wanted in terms of cooperation. looking at things we had common interest, that i think was the essence of his diplomacy. of course we had to wait until you had gorbachev to have a response also to get a leader. if you haven't had gorbachev this wouldn't have worked. but also the hostile policies were not making the soviet union a weaker. the soviet union's problems were in turmoil and by trying to

change the external policies, we made it possible for gorbachev when he agreed to think of internal reforms. >> host: ronald reagan again the common perception is that he came to the office determined to launch against the soviet union and said a lot of things which at the time sounded prerogative it would require the staff today most people would agree with it including probably russian leaders but it was quite controversial. yet you are now telling a fascinating story about president reagan shortly after the assassination attempt writing to brezhnev against the advice of the state department. can you tell about that? >> guest: that shows his initial instinct wants to reach out to make him in contact to

deal with the soviet leader's as leaders who were not only communist ideologues but also had the interest of their country at heart and of course brezhnev turned down that attempt. i'm not sure it was brezhnev, i think it was the foreign minister who seemed to control foreign policy in the last year's and so but what then of ronald reagan tried to do and brought me on the staff to do was to develop a strategy for dealing with the soviet leader's and in fact she developed a strategy to emphasize cooperation, to emphasize common interests so that we were in place that when you got a reform like gorbachev we already had

our policies ready for the sort of a soviet leader. >> host: what you are a saying essentially a fight understand is ronald reagan had strong convictions, which also was a result oriented person in that he was prepared to reckless whoever was in power even if that leader is an attractive and in net as brezhnev. >> guest: absolutely. many on his staff when we had a crisis, a career in airliner shot down and over to eckert 60 people killed, including americans or an american officer shot in east germany, the advisers say we've got to stop talking to them. we will show them. we won't talk to them to read and reagan always said we are not going that route. we don't walk away from negotiating tables. if there are problems in the tension that is all the more reason to talk to them because

we are not going to get anywhere by simply walking away from negotiations. but again if volume dustin to correctly while reagan strongly believe in dialogue with whomever was in power he also was not to think the great communication skills alone sincerity would bring results. how would he want to persuade the direction? >> guest: he believed in negotiation from position of strength and that is the reason for his initial buildup, military buildup because he felt we needed more strength to negotiate effectively. he did not think of this as something to use to start a war but he also understood that you need strength to negotiate. you need you might say poker

chips on the table to trade if it comes to that, but particularly he felt he had a cross to the soviet leaders that number one, we don't want an arms race but if you insist on one you're going to lose it and this was one of his goals when he went to the first meeting of gorbachev. he wrote in a memo and he put forth his goals, and one of the main ones was i must convince him that if we continue this arms race he's going to lose it and two years later, less than two years later we know now gorbachev was lecturing the public bureau seeing their military-industrial complex wants us to get in an arms race because they know we will lose it. congress, we can't let them do that. we've got to cut our military spending triet so in this sense, reagan added i think exactly right. you must convince the other side

that they will gain nothing by their military build up. this gives incentive to bill doud which was our goal. >> host: i want to ask about the soviet union in the spirit of disclosure initially did not expect gorbachev to go very far. i fought here was another russian soviet leader like nikita khrushchev, like alexander ii who would try liberal reform but that a certain point discovered reforms led to the centralization, the centralization threatens them and then they would stop and then they would begin back. i went to moscow for the first time after my immigration in october of 1987 so continuing secretary shultz as a journalist working at that time for cbs news.

i was in moscow for a short period of time but what impressed me and i could not see, i could see only from moscow, what impressed me is gorbachev perhaps had started much bigger than he are originally intended. that there was a process of change, momentum of change, which was becoming almost unstoppable that not only gorbachev wanted to change but people were changing. you came to moscow in 1987. at what point did you begin advising president reagan and secretary shultz this something very significant was happening in the soviet union? >> guest: you know gorbachev's policies were a moving train and initially i was like gnostic which by 1985 he became general secretary and i suggested from the very beginning a strategy of what i call pushing the envelope. let's see how far you will go

and one of the first pushes is will he expand exchanges and begin to bring down the iron curtain and when he signed on to a very extensive exchange agreement in geneva, november 85, we said there may be a possibility. let's keep pushing. actually, i felt that my elma sinking turned a corner finally in may of 1988 when i read the thesis for a conference coming up, which had no element of marxism in them. it was purely a design for democratizing the soviet union. and i told greg at that point -- he was on his way to moscow. i read these thesis and i said if he means this -- and he must because he spit out officially for the communist party -- this country will never be the same. and so, at that point i realized

-- then when he continued with elections and continued these reforms it became clear that he was something different, that he was serious but, you know, the change was gradual and i think that many of us who knew the soviet union were at first certainly skeptical how far could he go? would they stop him before he got to a certain point. >> host: mr. investor one of those important and controversial points in your book is the united states did not win the cold war. that actually gorbachev had done almost as much to bring the outcome would never definition you want to offer for this outcome of reagan. on the surface a discounter into it, right? the soviet union is no more, the soviet empire is no more. there is no i durham curtain. even russia now has a free

market economy. the united states wants to accomplish through the cold war. why are you saying it was not american victory? >> guest: i say it was not an american victory in the military since the way many people think. i don't say we didn't win. yes, we won the they did, too because the agreements we made to end the cold war were also in the interest of the soviet union. now, you pointed out yes, the system was changing. but i think three things happened right at the end of the 80's beginning of the 90's that are connected but they are not the same. at the end of the cold war the cold war ended before communist rule was undermined in the soviet union and before the soviet union collapsed. it ended by negotiation in the interest of both parties. then communist rule eroded in

the soviet union not because of our pressure, but because of gorbachev's policies. when he saw the party on opposing the reforms come he began to take the party out of control. and once he had done that then the internal contradiction within the soviet union brought it down a. so the people who feel that our pressures or that it was something like a military victory did it all wrong because we didn't bring the soviet union down by external pressure and the soviet union didn't come down because they lost war. it came down because the system itself could not be maintained without force, and when gorbachev took the four south. so when people mixup these things -- and of course they had been been very quick succession. it happened when most people didn't expect them and so they complete this in their mind as

if the end of the soviet union was the end of the cold war but that is not the case. >> host: you were in moscow as u.s. ambassador during the most interesting and important years of a profound change in the soviet union, 1987, 1991. and you dealt with gorbachev, boris yeltsin and a wide range of politicians. i remember you had not only concerts' with official residence, you also had a lot of seminars you made the american collapse in moscow. do you think these people not just gorbachev but his associates, russian political leader of the time understood what we were doing? what was the likely outcome of

the entire or the nation as they knew it? >> guest: well, we did not encourage a breakup of the soviet union as such. we did all we could to encourage them to move in a space fashion to understand a market economy works and things of the sword and yes we would bring in lectures and lecture them about things that were in trouble to the soviet union including things in history. robert tucker, a biography of stalin came and appeared with a general who was also writing a biography of stalin to talk about unanswered questions about stalin and we have fascinated audiences. i had a lawyer from new york come and speak about the first amendment rights at a time they were considering a law on the press and we had the people from the thing. so we did try to spread ideas

how democracy works. we didn't try to break up the soviet union also we did treat each of the republics with respect. when i went to ukraine by speeches were in ukrainian language for example. but in that sense we were trying to promote democracy without interference and i think that it made the house at that time a jury is meeting on of the factions. sometimes the russians would tell me we are very cliquish outside but when we meet here we make a lot of our political deals because you are on neutral ground so far as internal politics. so that was a very useful thing to do. >> host: two weeks that gorbachev and his associates, the aged and people you know very well, do you think the understood the magnitude of what

they were doing and the likely outcome of the collapse of the soviet union? >> guest: not that the collapse of the soviet union was the likely outcome. i think what they were looking for was the democratization side of it and the help in understanding how do you go about dealing with the economic difficulties that we were facing. now -- i must say we didn't push it consciously towards collapse. we said all along the three countries should be allowed their independence. we never recognize it as part of the soviet union but you know president bush made a speech in kiev in august 91 endorsing the union treaty and among other things condemning the nationalism. having in mind georgia tech that time and making the point that they should choose freedom and freedom and independence are not

synonymous. these were important thoughts so we were not trying to bring down the soviet union as such but support gorbachev's democratization efforts. what we hope to see was a voluntary federation. wanda would be voluntary vow would be space and we thought that would be totally consistent with american interests. >> host: what was clearly consistent with american interest was the united states in the soviet union at the time. you were very popular, president reagan was popular, george shultz was popular, secretary baker was popular and there was a feeling that the united states was a forceful good in the world and that the united states was a special friend of the soviet union as long as the soviet union wanted to have space reforms and wanted to be a benign presence on global affairs. as you know it's a little more

complicated now in terms of american and russia. what does the american and russia in your view today and what happened as a deteriorated? >> guest: one of the things in my book is the policies in the 90's have and then continuing through the second bush administration have conveyed to the russians perhaps inadvertently not conveyed we consider them enemies, we don't consider them equal even when they were supporting all of our policies. they were mistaken policies at that whole time which have been understood in russia as being hostile therefore we now have a situation that we have difficulty finding of the common interests which are out there of the two countries, and i think

that the obama administration started us back to getting back on track but we still have a way to go. >> host: and what were you do if you were in the obama administration advising if the president of russia? >> guest: first of all we need to get the nuclear genie back in the bottle and you know reagan and gorbachev and the first bush administration we made great progress in reducing the threat of nuclear weapons, progress that has virtually stopped. i think it is close to in saying that the united states and russia still have over a thousand nuclear weapons, enough to destroy the world deployed, why? there's no reason why can see. it's a danger. we let that whole nuclear danger escape to escape the attention

of the 90's and second bush administration and i think we need to get back into the obama administration is moving us back in the right direction there. and there's a number of other issues that we need to get back and we go into some of those in the book basically i think that american and russian security interests are much more consistent in conflict and we need to find ways to get back to the sort of cooperation that the reagan and bush administration carried out and get away from the sort of confrontation that develop subsequently. >> host: you knew boris yeltsin and mikhail gorbachev. can you speak about both of them and their relationship in how

this relationship contributed to the demise of the soviet union? >> guest: the relationship reagan and gorbachev developed of course developed over a period of several years from one of almost complete hostility to each other's position to the common position of nuclear weapons. they were both nuclear abolitionists. they both felt humankind is not going to survive ultimately if we don't keep these under control and eventually eliminated them. and i think that you had true believers on the nuclear issue and they took us a long way. but that particular vision i think has been lost in the 90's and there is a chance that the

obama administration is trying to recapture it. but that was the big thing that bound reagan and gorbachev. the common conviction that we need to e eliminate nuclear weapons the they are a surge of mankind. >> host: and what about yeltsin? >> guest: yeltsin was a much more elemental figure, and i think he began to put the destruction of the soviet union ahead of these other issues and i think that yeltsin would have on also along for the abolition of nuclear weapons if the united states hadn't moved with issues such as the nato expansion, the bombing of serbia, actions which seem to leavesi