geopolitical mistakes made by the clinton administration and they were not corrected by the second bush administration. >> "after words" and several other programs are available for download us podcast. more with jack matlock and dimitri simes in a moment.

"after words" with jack matlock and dimitri simes continues. >> host: serbia. this clearly was a turning point in the u.s. relationship with russia. there were two different narrative's of what was happening in the balkans the clinton administration for thought premier li and serbian aggression, serbia and a atrocities. the russians were thinking about the civil law. while both parties were probably at fault and clearly did not want to allow the united states and nato to use military force unilaterally against serbia which was a traditional russian client. why was it wrong in your view for the clinton administration to move against what was

received at the time as serbian aggression and atrocities against the muslims? >> guest: i think for the reason that you indicated the way that will stun was as we say counterproductive in the long run because if we have cooperated closely with russia to control the serbs, and we would have been able to do that if we had not started expanding nato to the east to their disadvantage, then i think we could've gotten more cooperation to keep milosevich the serbian leader under control or if not we could have gotten a vote in the security council to use whatever military force we could but by bypassing the u.n. security council making it look

to the russians as if we were simply moving in to control of this entire area which had been part of you might say the russian traditional area of influence was simply i think the wrong message and it left us with a heritage that the that we get problems elsewhere the russians now say for example in georgia will, you know, you could intervene in the balkans. we can intervene elsewhere. it was the wrong message and i give should have been handled differently. >> host: of course when clinton came to the white house he had no ambition to engage in the nation building. he was not looking for an opportunity to have the interventions in the balkans and anywhere else. that was shortly after the u.s.

asked somalia and there was a little appetite in washington to engage in new actions which could bring the united states in to military conflict. but an attempt to find a solution, peaceful solution to the top bosnian conflict, that solution was proving very difficult to identify, and the russians were not terribly cooperative and then of course there was some bills and muslim men being massacred by the serbs and there was an enormous moral outrage not only incidentally in the united states but also in europe and there was a very strong sentiment that the administration is essentially was selling out fundamental western values at the time when america was the only superpower and could make things right. what would you say in response

to the argument about this american civility and opportunity at the same time during the defining moment in the balkans? >> guest: that situation was brought about and an impression on ase and i do not defend the russian policies. however i understand how russians would have come to the conclusions they did. and it started with the expanding of nato to other countries after all nato expansion to the east to the pact countries began before that, and my point is we could have gotten more russian cooperation. i believe in either country when milosevic and the serbs or else voting in the u.n. for the united action to protect them if we hadn't begun the expansion of nato for no good reason actually

other than domestic politics in the united states, and that's why at the time i very much opposed the expansion of nato knowing that we had convinced gorbachev to allow east germany and united germany to stay in nato with the promise that nato would not move to the east. now that wasn't a legally binding promise but this was one of the things that convinced gorbachev to let germany unite and stay in nato with the understanding there would be no further expansion and when the clinton administration simply ignored it in fact the hearings on the hill if the we both went up to testify would not even ask for the documents that indicated the diplomacy earlier. so i do think that that was the area where we made a much more

difficult for russia to cooperate and then to think of a military alliance could authorize action in serbia i think we wouldn't recognize that other military alliances could. and we had told the russians don't worry about nato expansion. it is a defensive alliance. whom had serbia attacked and nato that we bombed them which is an act of war so this was i understand the pressure but i think that the earlier policy is beginning to expand nato instead of making european security and russia a part of that finding the way to do that brought on many of the current problems we have today in russia. >> host: this was a tough decision regarding the major expansion. no question you are right. domestic politics played a role.

and i don't think that president clinton and associates would deny. but there was more to the story as you cover objectively in your own book secretary baker does deny that he made any commitment to gorbachev regarding the expansion. gorbachev thought he made a commitment but there was certainly no legally binding document. moreover, gorbachev was no longer there. a first bush administration was no longer there. it was a different situation. i'm sure you remember how boris yeltsin and the russian president went and had a meeting with then the polish president and more than one drink too many and he was making the case to yeltsin that it would be in the russian interest to allow poland and that it would be breached between western europe and

russia and would be worse of russian greatness to be broad minded on this issue and then yeltsin went out standing next to him he confirmed russia did believe poland as a soviet nation was entitled. needless to say the united states wasn't pushing. poland was applying. the czech republic was applying the grenada. hungary, and these are countries undersold in the soviet occupation for many years. you describe them yourselves and your book of captive nations. how could of the united states say no to that after yeltsin publicly said yes? >> guest: of course yeltsin said many things publicly. he was impulsive and there was no question that doing it the

way that it happened if it had stopped their and that first expansion and you hadn't gotten to the bombing of serbia without security council approval my point is we should have looked for a way to build security architecture in europe which included russia as a full participant giving them also responsibility as well as guarantees so that's why it seemed to me we should have followed a different route get following the route we did and we said at the time of course this is an entirely defensive alliance unless it is attacked you can't attack anybody else. what member of nato did serbia attack? none of them so the russians say what's happening here? what they are seeing is an american military alliance moving into the area that they had given up and breaking up the

communist bloc and breaking up the soviet union. american military dominated. now our motives may have been pure but they are going to be in seen differently someone else and my point is a different strategy from the very beginning could have brought i believe russia into a position whereby they could not control molosovich and the serbs they would vote in the u.n. authorizing whatever action needed to be taken so a different diplomacy i think could have had a different result. as it was, buy overriding fees things baker says that he didn't make a promise but that the record is it was not exactly a promise but a was a statement that nato would move its jurisdiction even 1 inch to the

east and that's a complicated question but that's the way gorbachev understood. all i will say as the american ambassador if i had been asked what our policy was i would have made that very clear because that was my understanding of the policy of the time. it just did not occur to us that we would ever consider in our interest to move the structure, some of the infrastructure of nato to the east particularly when there was no pact. but they are right that was not a legal thing that was a political understanding, which if it had been abided by would have made it less likely that he would have had a more aggressive nationalistic russia in the 21st century. >> it seems to me that what you are saying now and you said some of it in your book is that it was not just the nato expansion particularly not just the first

round of expansion. it wasn't just u.s. position on serbia. it was a combination of things that created the impression in russia, the impression across the russian political spectrum. then they were no longer relevant pitted the united and you described inian your book as a part of the triumphant feeling. could you speak a little bit about that? what do you mean by this triumphalism and how did it come about? >> guest: the try on fellows on came in the sense that the end of the cold war was a close eye military victory, not a negotiated in the in the interest of both countries. in the following from that not only the soviet union but russia and yeltsin was a defeated power. now i know very well that

yeltsin's russia helped us end the cold war and was taking more pro-american positions toward the end of the cold war the uneven gorbachev was taking. so to say in effect that russia was defeated come to think about was the case and get many people said they don't like nato expansion. tough, they lost the cold war and we can do what we please. there are plenty of observers here who said that. but there is another misunderstanding that i think came out of a misunderstanding of how the cold war ended, and that was that we can out the superpower. i would say first of all the only thing that made the u.s. and soviet union superpowers were nuclear weapons. we could destroy the world not once, twice, but some said seven times over. now, why you need that much power i don't know. but we never had the power to change the world in our own

image using military force, nor did the soviet union and look at old problems in the world the middle east in particular. if we could have solved it then we certainly would have. and the idea that we emerge as the sole superpower able to use this great military power now that it was clearly much more than the successors of the soviet union i think it was a great illusion and we talked about a unipolar world and the russians thought we were acting arrogantly as if we were the only power that counted and others said well it won't last forever but there is a unipolar moment. and i say there never was because when the cold war ended particularly when the soviet union collapsed there was no longer a threat, perceived

threat out there for the united states to protect others from so our power, our soft power which was by far the most important of what we had before was diminished but acting as if we could change the world, change of third countries simply by using military and economic power was an illusion. the super power delusion am i title talks about. >> host: mr. ambassador, a lot of people would say everything you said is correct, however, what is the big deal? now, russia was no longer a superpower. they were addictive like a drug addict to monetary fund loans. the leader boris yeltsin was often incoherent after that putin who is not a friend of the west and champion of democracy

just look what president met the def was saying about russian corruption, about very dependent judiciary about the situation with russian democracy on mainland paper. wouldn't you say we disregarded the russian preferences but it couldn't happen to more deserving people? would be the problem for the united states? >> guest: i think that by not treating russia in the way that the expected to be treated when russia was the country that after all broke up the soviet union if yeltsin hadn't moved to break up the soviet union peacefully you might have had eight nuclear arm breakup of yugoslavia. so, the elected leadership of

russia however irrational yeltsin may have become at times help us end the cold war and also was a key to breaking up the soviet union. now you can either bring them in a and as full partners in the world and encourage their by the development of democracy would exclude them and discourage the form of democracy. what did we do to the germans after world war ii? they did start the war. they were defeated by the war if we insisted the french and british and offers once they'd gotten rid of nazis bring them into the european family with four partners include and military arms and we have nato for that. we had no strategy in the 90's to bring russia into at least european security to make them a part of it and give them responsibilities as well as. now they are going through a very serious crisis. we were much stronger but should have led in the direction and

let the europeans to bring them into eight by excluding them we did not even give them consideration we gave the germans after world war ii, and the results have not been nearly as damaging as you might say nazis were after world war i. but nevertheless i think fed did contribute to the policies that you see putin having carried out. i would go further and say that much of the economic advice given based on what george soros calls free-market fundamentalism was probably a bad advice and the russians are grown up and they are responsible for whatever advice they took nevertheless the idea that you simply could go immediately to a free-market system by allowing

insiders to steal as much as they could i think set a very bad precedent and has also we are not responsible policies did encourage developments in russia and pushed produced a situation was wasn't in russia's interest or hours at the moment. host kaput the st question and a tough one because it is hypothetical. you do not know what has happened, if we play our cards in russia differently. what would you say to an argument and that if we were not so agreed to become preoccupied with the balkans the differences did not create the russian estrangement, that if things did not happen we would have a somewhat different relationship with russia at the end of time these 90's and when the prime minister vladimir putin to the united states to the clinton administration and said let's

work together against taliban and al qaeda and that is on the record. he came to the clinton administration and said let's work together against tel dan and al qaeda and mind you while they knew what al qaeda was up to it was obviously after terrorist attacks on the united states world trade center, first world trade center attack. it was after the attack on the u.s. destroyer in 1998 so putin and stalin was for the united states and russia to work together against taliban and al qaeda. but what the clinton administration had at the time as the russians wanted to establish more presence in central asia. they wanted the united states to legitimize continuing what the russian who ruled scott worse

when putin offered full cooperation and we accepted what he did and then moved against almost every interest that he had by walking out of the treaty and by dropping any verification of the arms control treaty we finally signed. things that we had worked for decades to get into the fair fight reduction of nuclear weapons so i think that we made a series of mistakes. one can never be sure what would

have been the result. but certainly u.s. policies first in the clinton administration but particularly the second bush administration made it virtually impossible for any russian leader to cooperate across the board with us because the things we were doing were seen as attempts to undermine their own security, and i do think that there were opportunities to cooperate and there still are against terrorism and so on, but we have got to understand that we have to take the national interest into account in the doing so and pushing things but we don't really need which the russians are going to see is against their national interest are simply going to deprive us of the cooperation we need to solve

the big problems. >> host: you mentioned in the case of serbia the united states and russia, the situations the more balkans are differently. the difference was more dramatic in the case of georgia. and you described in your book how it started in 1991 when then georgian president moved against south ossetia against abkhazia and how we started. can you tell this story? >> guest: yes. in the winter of 1990, 91, january, february when the winters are very cold there not only had the elected leader at the time of the georgians actually blockaded the capitol of south ossetia in the middle of the winter when the place was

freezing. gorbachev did not attempt the military opposition to this because he had plenty of problems on his plea to other than that but also he was philosophically against using military settlements. so the problems with the enclaves in georgia with the non-georgian citizens who did not want to be totally absorbed in culturally when the georgians took the autonomy away and began to militarize the of course this destabilized the whole area. so this was the root of the problems that got very complicated later but in russian eyes what we did to free kosovo is similar to what the leader did against georgia to free up

the people in south ossetia and abkhazia. now there are differences of details but the principal of the two was similar. that is why i say we by the way treated serbia and kosovo and particularly later recognize and independence of kosovo when it was not truly independent set the stage for what the russians did against georgia where none of the parties i think come off with clean hands. and i accuse the russian of excess bortolotti. i also think they did not serve their own interest in creating more instability on the southern border. but psychologically if you look what we did regarding serbia and what they did regarding georgia leader, you will see that in their minds they were following a pattern which we had said. >> host: jack we don't have much time left.

let me finish with a very tough question. the obama administration. you have expressed hope in the period of despair. when you look at what is happening now with the health care reform, whatever you think about health reform, clearly it became self of serving for the administration. some would say obsession but clearly most important occupation. are you concerned the administration doesn't have much time and attention and capital left to deal with most difficult asian security challenges to the united states particularly arab israeli conflict which probably as you are arguing cannot be settled without stronger role including stronger pressure on israel which is difficult in the american context?

>> guest: well, i'm glad we have the health care now it would seem behind us obviously there will be some debate over whether there should be improvements and what not. but i hope we can put that behind us now. i think you're quite right, it has absorbed the administration's attention, and one can -- one can argue whether or not it was worth it. but i think politically it was necessary for the administration to be able to say that it achieved something. after all, if the democrats have a majority in both houses and they are prevented from doing anything, then looks not very good for the democrats as you might say the majority party. so i would hope having put that behind us we can see the president has somewhat greater elbow room on some of these

other issues, and i do see now in the attempt to stop the settlements i hope the administration will continue on that course. i do believe that the more and more of our citizens, jewish and non-jewish who are friends of israel understand that the israeli policy of expansion and the israeli policy of trying to control the west bank and two of sort all of jerusalem and to boycott gaza is not in their interest. i don't think a friend of israel should support the use. and i don't believe the political forces may be moving in the direction to support and obama effort to convince the