That is precisely what the Clinton and Bush administrations failed to do, and, as the events described in this book show, the advent of a new Cold War was probably due as much to American insensitivity as it was to Putin’s stridency in pursuing his legitimate goal of restoring Russian pride and status. As we have seen throughout this book, both sides fall too easily into stereotyped thinking, rooted in an era when two ideologies fought for world domination. That era is gone: there is no ‘Russian ideology’, and wishing to have a say in world affairs is a far cry from the Soviet ambition to spread communism around the globe. Yet the Cold War thinking and frictions remain – on both sides, each winding the other up instead of trying to understand the other’s fears.
Russians showed during the Gorbachev and Yeltsin period that they aspired to democracy and freedom, but they hated the chaos that accompanied it. Putin brought greater stability but curtailed democracy. Russians have yet to find a leader who can provide them with both.
NOTES
Chapter 1. The Secret Policeman’s Ball
1. Strobe Talbott, The Russia Hand (New York: Random House, 2002), p 416.
2. Interview with Konstantin Kosachev, 16 December 2009.
3. Talbott, p 397.
4. Stephen F. Cohen, Failed Crusade: America and the Tragedy of Post-Communist Russia (New York: W.W.Norton & Co, 2000), p xii.
5. Interview with Toby Gati, RIA Novosti, 22 March 2011.
6. Vladimir Putin, Ot pervogo litsa (http://archive.kremlin.ru/articles/bookchapter3.shtml – last accessed 7 September 2011).
7. For a good account of this part of Putin’s career, see Peter Baker and Susan Glasser, Kremlin Rising: Vladimir Putin’s Russia and the End of Revolution (New York: Lisa Drew, 2005), pp 47ff.
8. Ibid., p 53.
Chapter 2. Courting the West
1. Interview with George Robertson, 9 March 2011.
2. Interview with Jonathan Powell, 9 March 2011.
3. Guardian, 18 April 2000.
4. Interview with Mikhail Margelov, 29 April 2010.
5. Interview with Condoleezza Rice, 14 April 2011.
6. Interview with Stephen Hadley, 24 January 2011.
7. Interview with Colin Powell, 3 March 2011.
8. Interview with Igor Ivanov, 11 December 2010.
9. Interview with Sergei Ivanov, 29 October 2010.
10. Yelena Tregubova, Bayki kremlevskogo diggera (Moscow: Ad Marginem, 2003), pp 160ff.
11. Bob Woodward, Bush at War (New York: Simon & Schuster, 2002), p 119.
12. Interview with Colin Powell, 3 March 2011.
13. Interview with Condoleezza Rice, 20 June 2011.
14. Bolton interview with Peter Baker and Susan Glasser, quoted in Kremlin Rising, p 131.
15. Interview with Sergei Ivanov, 29 October 2010.
16. White House translation, quoted in Woodward, Bush at War, p 118.
17. In 2009 the Russians finally tried to force the Kyrgyz government to eject the Americans from Manas by offering loans worth $2 billion. The price paid by the US to be allowed to stay was a quadrupling in the rent and the renaming of the air base into a less permanent-sounding ‘Transit Centre’.
18. John Bolton, Surrender is not an Option (New York: Threshold Editions, 2007), p 71.
19. Interview with Gerhard Schröder, 8 June 2011.
20. Interview with George Robertson, 9 March 2011.
21. Interview with Sergei Prikhodko, 30 June 2011.
22. Interview with George Robertson, 9 March 2011.
23. Interview with Colin Powell, 17 May 2011.
24. Interview with Stephen Hadley, 24 January 2011.
25. Interview with Igor Ivanov, 11 December 2010.
26. Interview with Colin Powell, 17 May 2011.
27. Interview with Sergei Ivanov, 29 October 2010.
28. Interview with Condoleezza Rice, 20 June 2011.
Chapter 3. The Battle for Economic Reform
1. Interview with Alexei Kudrin, 14 December 2010.
2. Interview with German Gref, 7 December 2010.
3. Interview with Andrei Illarionov, 27 January 2011.
4. Interview with German Gref, 7 December 2010.
5. Mikhail Kasyanov, Bez Putina (Moscow: Novaya gazeta, 2009), p 216.
6. Interview with Mikhail Kasyanov, 16 February 2011.
7. See Marshall Goldman, Petrostate (New York: OUP, 2008), chapter 5.
8. Interview with Vladimir Milov, 16 February 2011.
Chapter 4. The Darker Side
1. Interview with Viktor Shenderovich, 14 December 2010.
2. Komsomolskaya Pravda, 11 February 2000.
3. Novaya gazeta, 27 March 2000, reprinted in Anna Politkovskaya, Nothing but the Truth (London: Harvill Secker, 2010).
4. Mikhail Kasyanov, Bez Putina (Moscow: Novaya gazeta, 2009), p 217.
5. Interview with German Gref, 7 December 2010.
6. David E. Hoffman, The Oligarchs (Oxford, Public Affairs Ltd, 2002), p 449.
7. John Browne, Beyond Business (London: Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 2010), p 145.
8. Interview with German Gref, 7 December 2010.
9. Martin Sixsmith, Putin’s Oil (London: Continuum, 2010), p 52.
10. Interview with Mikhail Kasyanov, 16 February 2011.
11. My account of this meeting is based on interviews with those present, on (edited) video of the event and on the versions given by Sixsmith, Putin’s Oil, and Andrei Kolesnikov in Kommersant, 20 February 2003.
12. Interview with Leonid Nevzlin, 14 May 2011.
13. Interview with Andrei Illarionov, 27 January 2011.
14. Interview with Mikhail Kasyanov, 16 February 2011.
15. Kasyanov, Bez Putina, pp 199ff.
16. Quoted in Sixsmith, Putin’s Oil, p 153.
17. Observer, 2 November 2003.
Chapter 5. New Europe, Old Europe
1. Interview with George Robertson, 9 March 2011.
2. Interview with Jonathan Powell, 9 March 2011.
3. Interview with Dan Fried, 27 January 2011.
4. Interview with Nicholas Burns, 15 July 2010.
5. Interview with Nicholas Burns, 21 January 2011.
6. Interview with Maurice Gourdault-Montagne, 20 June 2011.
7. Die Zeit, 5 April 2001.
8. Interview with Gerhard Schröder, 8 June 2011.
9. Interview with Alexander Kwaśniewski, 24 November 2010.
10. Interview with Igor Ivanov, 11 December 2010.
11. Interview with Nicholas Burns, 21 January 2011.
12. Interview with Sergei Ivanov, 29 October 2010.
13. Interview with Maurice Gourdault-Montagne, 20 June 2011.
14. Interview with Condoleezza Rice, 14 April 2011.