The Russians later firmly believed they had been deceived on Libya. They had been persuaded to abstain at the UN on the grounds that the resolution provided for a humanitarian mission to prevent the slaughter of civilians. Yet as the list of bombing targets steadily grew, it became clear that very few targets were off-limits and that NATO was intent on getting rid of Qaddafi. Convinced they had been tricked, the Russians would subsequently block any such future resolutions, including against President Bashar al-Assad in Syria.
Both Serdyukov and Medvedev expressed concern about growing civilian casualties in Libya as a result of our air strikes. I urged them not to believe Qaddafi’s claims about large-scale civilian deaths. We were taking every possible precaution to avoid such casualties and believed that very few Libyan civilians had been hurt or killed by our aircraft and missiles. I wanted the Russians to know that we believed Qaddafi was forcing civilians into buildings that were obvious targets and also that he was placing the bodies of people he had executed at the bombing sites. Medvedev said he was not happy to see NATO jets and missiles operating in Libya, but these actions were “the result of Qaddafi’s irresponsible behavior” and his “blunders.” He expressed concern that the conflict would go on indefinitely but was “not convinced things will calm down while Qaddafi is in power.” Medvedev then repeated what he had told Vice President Biden in Moscow just two weeks earlier: “Land operations in Libya may have to be considered.” He said Biden had told him that was impossible. Medvedev then worried aloud that “if Libya breaks up and al Qaeda takes root there, no one will benefit, including us, because the extremists will end up in the north Caucasus” part of Russia.
Missile defense was the other main subject of discussion during my visit. Medvedev had made new proposals for NATO-Russian cooperation in this area at the NATO summit in Lisbon the preceding November, and he had followed up with a letter to Obama. Serdyukov began our discussion by noting that Medvedev’s letter had said it was “high time” for a breakthrough in this area. Among other things, Medvedev had proposed a “sectoral approach”—that is, Russian missile defense systems would protect Russia and “neighboring states,” thus “minimizing the negative impact of the U.S. system on Russia’s nuclear forces.” There should be a legally binding agreement assuring that U.S.-NATO missile defenses would not weaken or undermine Russia’s nuclear deterrent. I told Serdyukov we were interested in the proposals Medvedev made at Lisbon. Building on Serdyukov’s suggestion for operational data exchanges, I proposed that we establish two missile defense data centers, one in Russia and one in western Europe, where both Russian and NATO officers would be assigned. The centers could do collaborative planning, establish rules of engagement for missile defense, develop preplanned responses to various missile threat scenarios, and carry out joint exercises focused on countering common missile threats.
I met with Medvedev that evening at his modernistic dacha outside Moscow. He insisted that Russia needed legal guarantees that missile defenses were not aimed at Russia. “Either we reach agreement or we increase our combat potential,” he said. I repeated what I had told Serdyukov about the impossibility of getting a legal agreement ratified by the Senate and that the Baltic states would never accept Russian responsibility for their security. I knew that the Russians’ concern over Obama’s new missile defense approach was focused on the danger posed by future improvements to our SM-3 missile systems. I told Medvedev I understood their concerns. He and I both knew the early phases were of no concern to Russia, but as the United States continued to develop more advanced capabilities, “over time we can persuade you that nothing we have in mind will jeopardize Russia’s nuclear or ballistic missile capabilities.”
Medvedev said he was grateful that Obama was president, that “I can work with him, make deals, and respect each other when we disagree.” He acknowledged that the Iranian threat was real. As we parted, he wished me “success in this part of your life and the next one. May they both be interesting.”
My program in Russia concluded with a dinner cruise that evening on the Moscow River, hosted by Serdyukov. It was an elegant affair, reciprocating a similar cruise I had hosted for him on the Potomac the previous year. On my last night in Russia as secretary of defense, as we glided by the Kremlin, I thought about the remarkable path I had followed during the forty-three years since I began work as a junior Soviet analyst at CIA two days before the USSR invaded Czechoslovakia.
Had Putin allowed Medvedev to run for reelection as president in 2012, the prospects for the Russian people and for the U.S.-Russian relationship would be far brighter. I felt that Medvedev understood Russia’s deep internal problems—economic, demographic, and political, as well as the absence of the rule of law, among others—and had realistic ideas about how to deal with them, including the need to more closely align Russia with the West and to attract foreign investment. However, Putin’s lust for power led him to shoulder Medvedev aside and reclaim the presidency. I believe Putin is a man of Russia’s past, haunted by lost empire, lost glory, and lost power. Putin potentially can serve as president until 2024. As long as he remains in that office, I believe Russia’s internal problems will not be addressed. Russia’s neighbors will continue to be subject to bullying from Moscow, and while the tensions and threats of the Cold War period will not return, opportunities for Russian cooperation with the United States and Europe will be limited. It’s a pity. Russia is a great country too long burdened and held back by autocrats.
I flew from Moscow to Egypt, a visit described earlier, and then on March 24 to Israel. The day before, there had been a terrorist attack on a bus in Jerusalem, leaving one dead and thirty-nine injured. Rocket attacks on Israeli towns from Gaza were continuing, and a little over a week before my visit the Israelis had seized a ship carrying fifty tons of rockets and missiles to Gaza, including missiles from Iran. Political unrest across the Middle East had not interrupted the security threats to Israel.
I had not been to Israel since July 2009, although Defense Minister Ehud Barak visited me in Washington every two or three months. As I said earlier, we had developed a close relationship and were very candid with each other. After a formal welcoming ceremony at the ministry in Tel Aviv (seeing the Stars and Stripes and the Star of David flying together always moved me), we went to Barak’s office to meet privately. I was there primarily to reassure the Israelis of American steadfastness in the midst of the political earthquake under way in the Middle East.
I opened the conversation by expressing condolences over the terrorist attack, to which Barak simply replied, “We will respond shortly to what happened.”
For once, we had more than Iran to discuss. He was interested in my meetings in Egypt, and the bombing of Libya, which had begun just a few days before. He was, naturally, very concerned about developments in the region. He told me Egypt was losing its grip on the Sinai peninsula and hoped it was only temporary because of the potential for large-scale smuggling of weapons into Gaza. I told him that both Tantawi and the prime minister in Cairo had reaffirmed to me their commitment to the Egyptian peace treaty with Israel and said that they would continue to work with the Israeli government. Speaking as a friend, I said now was the time for Israel not to hunker down but to act boldly in the region—to move on the peace process with the Palestinians, to reconcile with Turkey, and to help Jordan. I added that the good news about the turmoil in the region was that it was not about Israel or the United States—“No one is burning U.S. or Israeli flags, yet”—but about internal problems in the Arab countries, and we needed to make sure that that remained the focus. Barak said the best approach on Libya would be to keep hitting the military until they turned on Qaddafi. He hoped the regional turmoil would spread to Iran, where he said the mullahs were celebrating Mubarak’s fall and the increase in oil prices because of the broad unrest. We need to accelerate the sanctions, he continued, in order “to help this earthquake to reach Tehran.”