"after words" with jack matlock and dimitri simes continues. >> host: serbia. this clearly was a turning point with the u.s. and russia. they had two different narratives of what was happening in the balkans. the clinton had been attrition fought primarily in terms of the aggression, serbian atrocities. the russians were thinking about a civil war and felt 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 pursued at the time as serbian aggression and serbian atrocities against the muslims? >> guest: i speak for the very reason you indicated, that the way that it was done was as we say counterproductive in the long run because if we had cooperated closely with russia to control the serbs, and we would have been able to do that if we had not start expanding nato to the east to their disadvantage. then i think we could have gotten more cooperation to keep molosovich, 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.,

bypassing the security council making it look to the russians as if we were simply moving in to control of this entire area which had been you might say the russian traditional area of influence was simply i think the wrong message and left me with a heritage that than when we get problems elsewhere they say the russian georgia you could intervene in the balkans, we can intervene elsewhere. the was the wrong message and i think it should have been handled differently. clinton had no ambition to engage in the nation building. he was not looking for an opportunity to have intervention in the balkans.

that was very shortly after the fiasco in somalia and there was little appetite in the washington to engage in new actions which could bring the the united states and to military conflict. but in an attempt to find a peaceful solution to the bosnian conflict, that solution was proved very difficult to identify and the russians were not terribly cooperative and then of course there was 7,000 muslim men massacred by the serbs and an enormous moral outrage but only incidentally in the united states but also in europe and there was a very strong sentiment that the administration essentially was selling out fundamentalists western values of the time when america was only superpower and

could make things right. what would you say in response to the argument about this american responsibility and the opportunity at the same time during the the defining moment in the balkans? >> guest: life and cut situation was brought about in russian eyes and i do not defend the russian policies however i understand how they would have come to the conclusions they did. and it started with expanding nato to other countries. after all nato expansion to the east began before that and my point is we could have gotten more russian cooperation i believe in either controlling molosovich and the serbs orel's going in the u.n. for the united action to protect them if we had not begun the expansion of nato

for no good reason other than domestic politics and the united states. and that's why at the time i very much opposed the expansionw east germany and united germany to stay in nato with the promise 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 win the clinton administration simply ignored it in fact the hearings on the hill i think 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 it much more difficult for russia to cooperate and then to think that a military alliance could authorize action in serbia negative we wouldn't recognize other military alliances could. so and we had told the russians don't worry about nato expansion. it is a defensive alliance. who had serbia attack in nato that we bombed them that was an act of war so this was my understand the pressure, but i think the earlier policy is beginning to expand nato instead of making european security and russia a part of that finding a way to do that brought on many of the current problems we have today in russia. >> host: this was a top decision. no question you are right.

domestic politics played a role, and i don't think president clinton and his associates would deny it. 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 nato expansion. gorbachev thought he got a commitment that there was certainly no legally binding document. moreover, gorbachev was no longer there. the first bush administration was no longer there. it was a different situation. i'm sure you remember how boris yeltsin and the president went to warsaw and had the meeting with the polish president and he offered him 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 to be in nato and nato

would be the breach between the western europe and russia and that they would be of russian greatness to broaden on the issue and they went out standing next to valencia he confirmed that russia did believe that poland as a sovereign nation was entitled. needless to say the united states wasn't pushing poland. poland will supply in, the czech republic was applying, hungary, and this is countries that were on the soviet occupation for many years. you described them yourself in your book. how could the united states say no to them when they wanted to join nato after yeltsin himself said yes. >> 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 there and that first expansion and hadn't gotten the bombing of serbia without security council approval. my point is that we should have looked for a way to build security architecture in europe which included russia as a full participant. if and then also the responsibility as well as guarantees. and i know so that's why it seemed to me we should follow a different route. following the route we did and we said of course this is an entirely defensive alliance unless it is attacked you can't attack anybody else. now, what member of nato did serbia attack? none of them said the russians said what is happening here? what they're seeing is an alliance moving into the area

they had given in breaking of the communist bloc and the soviet union. american military dominated. now the motives and have been to some more calls but the point is a different strategy from the beginning could have brought i believe russia to a position whereby if they could not control molosovich and the serbs they would vote with us in the u.n. authorizing whenever action needed to be taken, so different diplomacy could have had a different result. as it was, buy overriding these things baker says he didn't make a promise, but the record is it was not exactly a promise but it was a statement nato wouldn't

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

not just first round, it wasn't just u.s. position on serbia, it was a combination of things that created the impression in russia and across the russian political spectrum that they were no longer relevant. that the united states now felt the russian perspectives could be disregarded, and you described in your book as a part of the american triumph last feeling. could you speak a little bit about that? what do you mean by the triumphalism and how did it come about? >> guest: well, the triumphalism came in the sense that the end of the cold war was a quote military victory and not negotiated in the interest of both countries. and falling from that not only the soviet union but russia and

adults in was a defeated power. i know very well that yeltsin's russia helped us and the cold war and was taking pro-american positions toward the end of the cold war than even gorbachev was taking so to say that russia was defeated power, to think that 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 and there are plenty of observers who said that. but there is another misunderstanding that i think came out of the misunderstanding of how the cold war ended and that was we can help the superpower. i would say first of all the only thing that made the u.s. and soviet union superpowers for a nuclear weapons. we could destroy the world not once, twice but some said seven times over. 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 will get all the problems in the world, the middle east in particular. if we could have solved it then, we certainly would have to. and the idea that we emerged as the sole superpower able to use this great military power now that it was clearly much more than any of the successors of the soviet union had i think it was a great illusion. and we talked about a unipolar world and the russians of course fault that we were acting arrogantly as if we were the only power that accounted. and other sit well it won't last forever but there is a unipolar moment. i say there never was because when the cold war ended, and particularly when the soviet

union collapsed, there was no longer a threat, perceived threat 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 their country simply by using military and economic power was an illusion the superpower a illusion that my title talks about. >> host: well, mr. ambassador, a lot of people would say everything you said this correct, however, what's the big deal? russia was no longer a superpower. there were -- there were addicted like math to the monetary fund loans. boris yeltsin was an alcoholic and very often incoherent. after that, they got a vladimir

putin who isn't a friend of the west, not a champion of democracy. look what president medvedev was saying today about the corruption, about russian dependent judiciary, about the situation when the russian democracy is on paper. would you say we disregard of the russian preferences but it could not happen to more deserving people? what would be a 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 a nuclear armed break up yugoslavia.

so, russia, the elected leadership of russia however irrational yeltsin may have become at times helped us in the cold war and also was the key to breaking up the soviet union. now, you can either bring them in as full partners in the world and encourage their by the development of democracy or to exclude them and discourage the development of democracy. what did we do to the germans after world war ii? they did start the war. they were defeated and yet we insisted the french, british, the others once they had gotten rid of nazis bring them into the european family. with full partners including military arm seemed we had nato for that we had no strategy in the 90's to bring russia into at least european security to make them part of it given responsibilities as well as -- they were going to be very

serious crisis, we were stronger but we should have lived in the direction and led the europeans to bring them into it by excluding them we did not even give them consideration week 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. nevertheless that 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 that advice and also the russians are grown-up and 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's it's a very bad precedent although we are not responsible our policies did encourage developments in russia which has produced a situation which is not in russia's interest or hour as at present. >> host: but may ask a specific question and a very tough one because it is hypothetical. you cannot replace history. you do not know what would happen if we played the cards with russia differently. but what would you say to an argument that if we were not so preoccupied with the balkans, if differences over serbia and kosovo did not create u.s. russia estrangement, if these did not happen we would have somewhat different relationships with russia at the end of the 1990's. and when the prime minister

vladimir putin came 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 taliban and outside a every nine -- remind you what they were up to it was after the terrorist attacks in the united states, world trade center, the first world trade center attack. it was after the destroyed kohl of 1988. so putin for the united states and russia to work together against taliban and al qaeda. what the clinton administration had at the time was the russians want to establish more presence in central asia. they want the united states to legitimize continuing their role in that very important region and the clinton administration was not interested. now i have no idea what happened

if we picked putin on his offer. i do not know whether it would be sufficient to prevent september 11th but do we believe that the u.s. and russian estrangement in the late 1990's came at the expense of u.s. focus on al qaeda? >> guest: absolutely that's part of it. and also i think that things got even worse after mine 11 when the putin again 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 we worked in decades to get into very verify reduction of nuclear weapons 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 and the second bush administration made it virtually impossible for any russian leader to cooperate across the board with us because of things we were doing were seen as attempts to undermine their own security and we do think there were opportunities to cooperate and there still are against terrorism and so on. but we have got to understand we have to take the national russian interest into account in doing so and pushing things we don't really need which the russians are going to see is against the national interest or simply going to deprive us of

the cooperation we need to solve the big problems. >> host: you mention in the case of serbia the situation there more general in the balkans differently. the difference was more dramatic in the case of georgia and to describe in your book how it started in 1991 when a georgian president moved against south ossetia and abkhazia and how it started. could you tell this story? >> guest: yes. in the winter of 1991, january, did you worry, when things are very cold, not only had the elected leader at that 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 military opposition to this because, well, she had plenty of problems on his plate but he was also philosophically against using military settlements. so the problems with the enclaves of georgia, with the non-georgia citizens who did not want to be totally observed in georgia culturally but wanted to retain their autonomy when the georgians took the autonomy away and began to militarize it course this destabilized the whole area. so, this was the root of the problems which got very complicated leader. but in the russian eyes, what we did against serbia to free kosovo was similar to what the

leader did against georgia to free the people in south ossetia and abkhazia. now, there are differences of details but the principal of the two was similar and that is why i say we in effect by the way we've treated serbia and kosovo and particularly leader recognizing the independence of kosovo when it wasn't truly independent set the stage with the but the russians did against georgia where none of the parties i think come off with clean hands and i accuse the russian of excess brutality. i also think they did all serve their own interest in creating more instability on the southern border. but psychologically if we look at 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

set. >> host: jack, we don't have much time left. let me finish with a very tough question. the obama administration. you have expressed hope that the period of despair. when you look at what is happening now with the house reform, what ever you think about the health reform clearly it became self absorbent for the administration. some would say of obsession but most important occupation. the administration doesn't have much time, attention and political capital left to deal with the most difficult national security challenges to the united states particularly the arab-israeli conflict which probably as you are arguing could not be settled without strong american role including the strong american pressure on israel which is difficult in the

american domestic 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 that you are quite right. it has absorbed the administration's attention and 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 it had achieved something. after all, if the democrats have a majority in both houses and they can't -- and they are prevented from doing anything, then it looks not very good for the democrats as you might say the majority party. so, i would help having put that behind us we could 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 that the administration will continue on that course. i do believe that more and more of our citizens, jewish and non-jewish who are friends of israel understand that the israeli policy of expansion and the policy of trying to control the west bank and two others were all of jerusalem and to boycott gaza is not in israel's interest. i don't think a true friend of israel should support these, and i believe that the political forces may be moving in the direction to support an obama effort to convince the israelis

that they must help in effect and encourage a viable palestinian state with capital of east jerusalem's with whatever arrangements need to be made in their own interest. and i do think that is what the obama administration and would like to do. now, obviously if he is defeated at home on some things this carries over into other things and now that health care i would hope is behind us as far as a major issue perhaps we can see more focus on these other issues. >> host: mr. ambassador, it was a pleasure talking to you. thank you for writing such an informative and important book. >> guest: thank you for the interview. from the 20,101st jindal festival of the book in charlottesville virginia, rebecca discusses her book, quote could be immortal life of