Reading from a script, Serdyukov immediately said that our proposed system would diminish Russia’s nuclear deterrent and have a negative effect on world peace. We had said the system was a counter to Iran and North Korea, but he contended that neither country had missiles capable of reaching Europe or the United States; nor was that likely in the foreseeable future. Russia, he said, was very concerned that our system could intercept Russia’s ballistic missiles. I responded that the concerns of both sides needed to be taken into account, that the opportunities for cooperation between us were unprecedented, and that we both needed to think ten or twenty years into the future. My undersecretary for policy, Eric Edelman, reassured the Russians that the radar in the Czech Republic would be too close to get a fix on missiles launched from Russia; the system had no capability again Russian ICBMs; and debris from the missiles would burn up in the atmosphere. The Russian military experts seemed increasingly intrigued and interested. We repeated a long list of potential areas for cooperation previously mentioned to the Russians, including working together on research and development, sharing data gathered by the system’s radar, jointly testing the system’s components, and possibly using a Soviet-era radar in Azerbaijan. I invited the Russians to visit our missile defense sites in Alaska and California and suggested that, with the permission of the Polish and Czech governments, the Russians would be allowed to routinely inspect missile defense installations in those countries. What I put on the table went well beyond anything presented previously to the Russians. The Russians’ real worry was clearly not about the current system we were describing but about the possibility that at some point in the future we might introduce additional capabilities that would threaten their deterrent. While Serdyukov and Baluyevskiy were unyielding, they agreed to further discussions among technical experts from both sides.
I then moved on to the Kremlin to meet with Putin. I had last entered the Kremlin in 1992 as CIA director, and driving through the gate then, in the U.S. ambassador’s limousine with American flags flying on the front of the car, had felt like a victory lap. By 2007 the world had moved on, and so had I. Putin and I encountered each other at a table in his ornate, very large office with plentiful gold leaf and spectacular chandeliers—all courtesy of the tsars and preservation efforts by the Communists. As I reported to President Bush, the meeting with Putin was cordial, far different in tone from Munich. He blessed the idea of the experts meeting on missile defense and invited me to return to Russia. He recited a litany of woes besetting Russia, which he blamed on the West. His talking points were predictable: We have a similar view of threats and challenges; many in the United States don’t think Russia is a partner; why are you putting bases near our borders?; North Korea and Iran will not have missiles that are threatening anytime soon; why is the United States supporting “separatists” in Georgia?; tensions are not surprising given that we have “looked at each other through the barrel of a shotgun”; we want to be partners, even strategic allies. The issue that really stuck in his craw was the conventional forces in Europe treaty, which he called the “colonial” treaty, “imposed on Russia.” I tried to put a positive spin on the potential to work together.
With fifteen minutes to go in the meeting, an aide came in and whispered something in Putin’s ear. He abruptly, but not impolitely, concluded the meeting, and I was ushered out of his office. Former Russian president Boris Yeltsin had died.
Later that afternoon I met again with Sergei Ivanov, in his new deputy prime minister’s office in the Russian White House. We covered much of the same ground, although Ivanov added some candor about Iran. “You know, the Iranians don’t need a missile to get a nuclear weapon into Russia,” he said, clearly prepared to ratchet up the sanctions pressure on Iran if Tehran didn’t suspend uranium enrichment.
While the press reported that I had received a “cool” reception in Moscow, I told President Bush that my meetings had been warm, businesslike, and surprisingly constructive. I can see now that our two countries were just kicking the can down the road on missile defense, playing for time. The Russians recognized that they were being presented with a fait accompli, and that our offers of cooperation were more like take it or leave it. They hoped they could build enough opposition in Europe to stop the project. We wanted Russian participation, but we would not let their opposition slow our plans, though I would spend four more years working on this problem.
On my way home, I stopped in both Warsaw and Berlin to brief those governments on my meetings in Moscow. President Lech Kaczynski in Warsaw made clear he wanted to move fast on missile defense, concluding negotiations well before Poland’s 2009 election. His defense minister, Aleksander Szczyglo, was standoffish, saying that the U.S. proposal (to emplace ten long-range interceptor missiles in Poland) would be “carefully considered” and that we shouldn’t “prejudge the negotiations.” In a refrain I would hear repeatedly for years, he said that for any plan to be accepted, it must increase Poland’s security.
After the trip, I reported to the president that both Poland and the Czech Republic had domestic political problems associated with the proposed system, with two of the governing coalition parties in Poland opposed to missile defense and the Czech government faced with a hung parliament and elections in the offing. Polls showed that more than half of the Czechs were against deployment of the missile defense radar on their soil. In Poland, one poll had 57 percent opposed. Secretary Rice, in Moscow in mid-May, and the president soon afterward at his ranch in Crawford and during visits to Poland and the Czech Republic, both underscored U.S. resolve to go forward. Putin by then had offered data sharing from the Russian radar in Azerbaijan as an alternative. At a NATO defense ministers meeting in Brussels in June, in the presence of Russian defense minister Serdyukov, I stated explicitly that we would go forward with the missile defense project despite Putin’s offer.
On October 12, 2007, Condi and I met in Moscow with our counterparts—a “two plus two” meeting—as well as with Putin. We came bearing proposals even more attractive to the Russians than those I had put forward the previous April, including the possibility that the interceptors might not be made operational until there was a demonstrated Iranian nuclear-armed ballistic missile capability.
Putin invited us to his dacha outside Moscow. En route, we passed through some very swanky new estates and shopping centers, with stores like those in a high-end shopping center in a wealthy American suburb or in a fashionable part of London, Paris, or Rome. Life was clearly good for at least some Russians, especially those who lived in Putin’s neighborhood. His dacha was large and perfectly nice, but it seemed very utilitarian to me, more like a corporate guesthouse. He kept us waiting for about twenty minutes, which the U.S. press played up as a slight to us both. When he came in, he apologized, explaining that he had been on the telephone with Israeli prime minister Ehud Olmert, talking about the Iranian nuclear threat.