The UC Interview Series: Sir Rodric Braithwaite

Interviewee:

Sir Rodric Braithwaite, GCMG, is a former British diplomat and author. Sir Rodric joined British Diplomatic Service in 1955. His diplomatic career included posts in Indonesia, Italy, Poland, the Soviet Union, and a number of positions at the Foreign and Commonwealth Office. From 1988 to 1992 Sir Rodric was the UK Ambassador in Moscow, first to the Soviet Union and then to the Russian Federation. Subsequently, he was the Prime Minister's foreign policy adviser and chairman of the UK Joint Intelligence Committee (1992–93). His best known books are ‘Afgantsy: The Russians in Afghanistan, 1979–89’, ‘Moscow 1941: A City and Its People at War’, ‘Across the Moscow River: The World Turned Upside Down’. His last book, ‘Armageddon and Paranoia’, was about the nuclear confrontation between the Soviet Union and the West.

Past Experience: On “Helsinki Spirit”, Western (Mis)Perceptions in the 1990s, and Germany

Inal:               Many in the West subscribe to a deeply entrenched view that any negotiation with Russia is doomed to fail. Your professional experience seems to show that this sort of thinking is fundamentally flawed – back in the 70s you participated in the Conference on Security and Co-operation in Europe and you said that the whole process was initially seen as an ingenious Russian trap. However, it eventually led to the highly successful Helsinki Conference. The level of mistrust now is even higher than in the 70s, but I believe that we can and should build upon successes from the past, such as the Helsinki Conference. Can positive examples from our history serve as a useful inspiration for the officials in the West and in Russia to sit at the table together and discuss critical security issues?

Sir Rodric:    I don’t think that the level of mistrust is higher than it was during the Cold War. When people talk now about a new Cold War, they forget what the original Cold War was like. In those days each side was capable of destroying the other at fifteen minutes notice. There was a debate then in the West between those who believed that we should talk with Russians, at least about nuclear matters, and those who believed that if we talked to the Russians, they would always outsmart us. We, nevertheless, talked back then because we were all terrified of the consequences of not talking.

                       The European Security Conference is indeed a good example of what I mean. For many years the West rejected the Soviet proposal for a conference because we feared it would benefit only the Russians. We went into the conference with some reluctance, but we managed to negotiate reasonably satisfactory arrangements on security, the frontiers, and economic relations. The Europeans insisted on the addition of what was called the “Third Basket” of human rights issues. Kissinger thought it was a waste of time. Rather surprisingly Brezhnev agreed to it. The resulting agreements were significant and surely not what Brezhnev expected. Both inside the Soviet Union and in Eastern Europe they encouraged dissident groups to put more pressure on their governments for democratic freedoms, and the governments found themselves reluctantly having to make concessions.

                         The fear of negotiating with Russia still exists. People argue, in effect, that we mustn’t talk to Putin lest he bamboozle us into giving something that we don’t want to give him. To that extent the situation somewhat resembles the 1970s. But although Russia and the West still have a massively destructive nuclear capability, we’re not yet under the kind of pressure that compels us to talk. Both sides feel able to say silly things they would not have risked saying during the real Cold War.

                         All that underestimates the West’s capacity to stand up for its own interests, and the interest of both sides in having a more cooperative relationship with one another.

Inal:              I agree with your point that the level of danger is now less than it was during the Cold War, but my personal experience of talking with former officials and academia from the West shows that the level of mistrust remains high. During the original Cold War we were at least engaged in some kind of talks but now we have NATO’s de-facto ban on any talks with Russia and its famous pledge of ‘no business as usual’. I see many sound proposals coming from the Russian side, especially in the field of mil-to-mil contacts, but they are immediately rejected by the West on the pretext that talking with the current political regime in Russia is a non-starter.

Sir Rodric:    It is easy to proclaim “no business as usual” when we think the Russians have done something bad. Often it means that we can’t think of anything more effective. It is often what our public opinion expects, but in my view it isn’t sensible. In everyday life you often have to do business with people you don’t like. Stopping our military and our intelligence agencies from talking to one another damages everyone’s interests. Talks between our military help to reduce the risk of unintended clashes. Talks between intelligence agencies help to manage the threat of terrorism. I remember, when the Supreme Allied Commander of NATO stayed with me on his first visit to Moscow. A sense of professional comradeship rapidly developed between his delegation and their Soviet opposite number that was fascinating to observe.

                       There is some good news, however. Very soon after Biden became President, he and President Putin agreed to extend the Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty to 2026. Let’s hope that marks the beginning of a more sensible approach to the centrally important business of keeping some grip on nuclear weapons.

Inal:              You were Ambassador to the USSR and then Russia from 1988 to 1992, a period of dramatic political changes in the country. At the beginning of this political earthquake, the majority of Russians believed that democracy and cooperation with the West would bring prosperity, but the socio-economic horrors of the 90s shattered this belief. Today, many Russians regard perestroika as a betrayal of the country’s national interests and view the subsequent economic challenges as the result of a Western desire to bring Russia to its knees and take control of its resources. Did you encounter these problems in the 90s?

Sir Rodric:    Historians are still arguing about the reasons for the collapse of the Roman Empire. I doubt if people will ever agree on why the Soviet Union collapsed. But the process began long before perestroika. By the time Stalin died, the Soviet Union was already in trouble. Khrushchev realised that something needed to be done, but his remedies didn’t work, and he lost his job. Under Brezhnev, the Soviet Union had many successes but the ideology was threadbare, and the economy was faltering. The elderly Politburo realised that new leadership was needed, so they chose Gorbachev. By then, I think, it may well have been impossible to save the Soviet system and preserve Russia’s position in Eastern Europe. Certainly it is wrong to place the whole blame on Gorbachev.

                        Although most Russians don’t believe it, at the end of the 80s and the beginning of the 90s there was a wave of goodwill and sympathy in the West towards Russia and the Russian people. We believed that if Russia could be integrated into the West as a prosperous democracy it would no longer be a threat. That would be in Russia’s interest as well as the West’s. But we mistakenly thought that we could tell the Russians how to set up their own democracy and how to run their economic affairs. Our behaviour was sometimes arrogant: after all, we thought, we’d won the Cold War. But there was no deliberate plan to bring Russia to its knees.

                        For their part, Russians believed that the West was a magical place where the streets were paved in gold and where you could be prosperous and free. Both sides were very naive, and it all turned nasty.

                        I entirely understand the sense of anger and humiliation that Russians still feel about the Soviet collapse and what followed. I was in Moscow at that time and I saw what was happening. If I were Russian, I might also blame it all on Gorbachev and the West.

                     But as I’ve said, that view is a gross oversimplification. The end of the Cold War was to everybody’s advantage, including the Russians’. None of us now goes to bed in fear that the rockets might kill us before morning. Russia is now more prosperous, more open to new ideas and to the outside world, than ever before.

Inal:                I understand that there were internal socio-economic prerequisites for the collapse of the USSR but I just wonder whether you recall any policies and strategies discussed at the time, which, had they been implemented, might have built better foundations for our future relationship?

Sir Rodric:    Of course, the professionals were thinking about the future of the Soviet Union all the time. In the Foreign Office we saw as early as the 1960s the first signs that the domestic problems of the Soviet Union were getting serious, even if we did not then foresee that it would collapse. It is not difficult to identify trends. The problem is to work out where they are leading, the timing of the events they foreshadow, and the policies you should then adopt. We did not start thinking seriously about how to deal with a post-Soviet Russia until very late. I don’t think that’s surprising or even reprehensible. Governments have to deal with the here and now and have little time and resources to spend on the unforeseeable future.

                        As for our misjudgements in the embassy, of course we made a number of mistakes and got a number of things right. One reason why I kept a diary in Moscow was to check which of my judgements were right and which were wrong. For example I underestimated Yeltsin for quite a long time. At a meeting with him in the summer of 1990, he kept on referring to the Kremlin as “our Kremlin”, even though Gorbachev was still in charge. I commented to my diary that Yeltsin was a megalomaniac, he would never achieve that. That really was an error! It was fairly widely shared. But I’m not sure it made much difference to our policy making. While Gorbachev was in charge we supported him and dealt with him. But when it became clear that Yeltsin was likely to take over we adjusted our posture. Yeltsin knew that my wife Jill had been in the crowds supporting him outside the White House on the night of the shooting in August 1991. So when he took power at the end of the year our relationship with him and his people was quite good.

Inal:               You said that the Foreign Office had anticipated the German reunification but we at MGIMO were taught that it came as a surprise to the Thatcher government. Is that true and were there any other events that the Embassy overlooked but could have predicted?

Sir Rodric:    We did miss some things. After the Four Power Agreement on Berlin in 1971 we all became used to the division of Germany. Even some Germans found it natural. I personally always thought the division was unnatural: reunification was inevitable. But of course I had no idea when.

                         But we didn’t stop thinking. In 1987 the planning staff in the Foreign Office produced a paper on German reunification urging the UK government to start thinking about its likely impact on NATO and Europe’s future. Most senior officials thought that reunification would not happen soon: we shouldn’t waste time discussing it. I argued that it would be prudent to work on the assumption that it might happen. But at that time no one - neither the Americans, nor Gorbachev, nor Kohl - thought it could happen for a very long time. The fall of the Berlin Wall changed all that. Now everybody knew it was going to happen soon. The problem became, how could the change be managed without a dangerous upheaval?

                        Thatcher was not stupid; she knew that too. But she remembered the war, and she wholly distrusted the Germans. My colleague in Bonn told her that reunification was inevitable. But she was nearing the end of her political career, and her judgement was failing. She tried to delay the process. By the spring of 1990 she realised that was impossible. But by then she had done considerable damage to her relations with Gorbachev, President Bush, and Chancellor Kohl. By the end of the year she had lost her job.

                      To do her justice, she was also reflecting a persistent feeling in Britain about the Germans. It’s partly resentment at German success: “Who won the war, anyway?” It is still bubbles on because of Brexit.

Current Issues: On Imperial Nostalgia, “Special Relationship”, and Brexit

Inal:                 I agree that our imperial nostalgia sometimes prevents us from having a true picture of a given situation. Do you believe then, that an imperial mindset, which is still to an extent present in Russian as well as British foreign policy, influences mutual perceptions of the other and prevents us from cooperating on the international level?

Sir Rodric:   Both nations obviously have some kind of imperial nostalgia. Anglo-Russian relations have never been very good. Even in peacetime the British have often seen Russia as a threat. That’s strange, because we are geographically far apart. To get to us, the Russians would first have to fight their way through a lot of Poles, Germans and Frenchmen. The only times that we fought head-to-head was when the British invaded Russia. So why should we worry?

                       One mustn’t forget that there is also a great deal of admiration in Britain for Russian culture, and for Russia as our ally against Napoleon and Hitler. It’s a complicated love-hate relationship.

                         The roots go back a long way. The English were amongst the first to have a relationship with the Russia of Ivan the Terrible, but in those days Russia was a trading opportunity, not a threat. Then in the 17th century Russians started coming to England. They seemed strange people with strange customs.

                        With Peter the Great, Russia began to play a major part in European politics. Some historians believe that British hostility to Russia began to grow at the end of the 18th century with the destruction of Poland, which people found deeply shocking. But I suspect that more influential was indeed the feeling of imperial rivalry: the idea that Russia had aggressive designs on our empire was fanned by a number of activists from the 1820s onward. People really believed that the Russians would try to take our empire away from us.

Inal:                 The Great Game?

Sir Rodric:    Yes, the Great Game. It was mostly paranoia. If you look at the map it would be very difficult for Russia even to get to our empire in India, let alone take it away from us. Russians thought the same, they thought we would come up to Central Asia to take their trade away from them. So the hostility grew throughout the 19th century. It was brought under control in by the Anglo-Russian Convention on Persia, Afghanistan, and Tibet of 1907. But a residue of suspicion remained on both sides.

                          Then came the revolution. When the Bolsheviks took Russia out of the war we thought it was a betrayal of our common fight against Germany. We were shocked when the Bolsheviks murdered the Tsar and his family. Then we intervened in the Civil War, which still makes Russians understandably angry. In the 1920s the Bolshevik attempted to subvert our political system. Stalin’s actions in the 1930s further exacerbated our suspicions.

                       Then in March 1939 we and France gave the Poles a guarantee against German aggression. When the Germans invaded Poland in September, we declared war on them, something neither America or Russia ever did. For nearly two years, until June 1941, we were fighting the Germans while the Soviet Union was allied to them: I have vivid memories of that time as a small boy.

                       British and Russian politicians and commentators still hurl accusations against one another about who behaved worse in the run-up to the war and after it ended. Many of the arguments fail to recognise reality.

                         Take the accusation that the British and Americans betrayed Eastern Europe to the Russians at the end of the war. The reality is that by then the Red Army was in full control. In May 1945, Churchill asked his generals for a plan to throw the Russians out of Poland. They said it would need 40 British and American divisions, 10 Polish divisions and 100,000 rearmed Germans. They called it Operation Unthinkable, and they were quite right. It would have been entirely impossible to put such a force together. Nor would people in Britain and America have tolerated further fighting, this time against our most important ally. I suspect Churchill understood that perfectly well. He was not stupid either.

                         These historical memories are not, however, the main reason for the current hostility between Britain and Russia. The British were bound to react negatively when a foreign power hacked into our domestic politics and sent its agents to murder people on our territory. We were genuinely outraged when Russia annexed Crimea and supported secession in Eastern Ukraine. The domestic political situation in Russia today, the suppression of political opposition, sometimes by force, is not at all what we were hoping for in 1992. Of course many Russians perceive these events differently. The picture that you get in some of the Western press that Putin’s Russia is as bad as Stalin’s Soviet Union is obviously ridiculous. But there are, unfortunately, objective reasons for the deterioration in the relationship.The endlessly debated question - Is Russia part of the West or not? - also complicates our relationship with Russia and Russia’s relationship with the outside world. It’s a complicated story. But my view is firm. People attach too much importance to the Mongol Yoke. Though the cases are dissimilar in many ways, Muslim rule in Spain lasted much longer, yet no one thinks that Spain is not European. No less than Spain, Russia is part of European and Western civilisation. Its religion, its history, its culture are all bound up with Europe. One cannot imagine European culture without the contribution of Russian writers, musicians and artists. Our cultural references are the same.

                          The latest polls show that the number of Russians who disagree with me is growing. Some say that Russia is not European, it is Eurasian. I’ve never come across a convincing explanation of what ‘Eurasian’ actually means. Of course Russia has a long frontier with Asia, and therefore has very important relationships with Asian countries, especially China. That doesn’t make it a “Euro-asian” nation.

Inal:                As we have touched upon modern British foreign policy and Brexit, I would like to hear your thoughts on the concept of Global Britain, promoted by the Conservative party. I personally see some similarities between it and the doctrine of three majestic circles, put forward by Winston Churchill in his Zurich Speech (1946). There is the same bet on the special relations with the US, close cooperation with Europe and reinforced ties with the Commonwealth. Is this a viable strategy for the UK nowadays? What effects will Global Britain concept have on the UK-Russia relations?

Sir Rodric:    Churchill’s proposition made some sense at the time because we still had the empire and a military with a global reach. Even so he was already out of touch with the way the world was developing, as became brutally clear less than a decade later with the fiasco of the Anglo-French invasion of Egypt in 1956. Today Britain is still a significant medium size nation with a competent military and one of the largest economies in the world. There’s no reason why we shouldn’t wield the influence that goes with that. But we are not a global power, and the “Global Britain” concept is meaningless. It is not a substitute for a carefully thought out foreign and defence policy, which we are able and willing to pay for, and which is based on a realistic understanding of our position in a rapidly changing world.

Inal:               I mentioned Britain’s bet on the special relations with the US, and as far as I understand you are not too fond of a term “special relations”. In an op-ed that followed Britain’s decision to invade Iraq, you said that there is nothing special in these relations and it only damages UK positions in Europe and the Muslim world. Seventeen years later, US-UK relations seem to have cooled further. Moreover after Brexit, the UK has lost its role of the bridge to the EU for the US. On what basis can those, who want to nurture this concept, continue calling this relationship “special” and what is your view on the future of relations?

Sir Rodric:    Many of my current and former colleagues are also sceptical about the “special relationship” with the Americans. Of course the relationship is very important to us for many cultural, historical and practical reasons. But the British tend to romanticise it. The Americans certainly don’t. They conduct their relations with us on a hard-headed calculation of their own interests. They cut off Lend-Lease on the day the war ended. They excluded us out of their nuclear programme, although we had played a large role in starting it. The Brexiteers’ idea that the Americans would give us a special trade deal was the purest wishful thinking. We are useful to the Americans, for example when they need support in the United Nations or in a foreign military operation. While we were still in the European Union we were a source of information and advice about what was going on in Brussels. But now they consult the Bundeskanzler, not the British Prime Minister. They flatter us when they need to. But they negotiate the favours they do us very toughly. That all seems reasonable to me. Why should they do anything else?

                       Of course the relationship will continue to be central to our foreign policy, just as it is to the other countries of Europe. We are very close to the Americans in the fields of intelligence and military affairs. We need to preserve these relationships, especially now we are no longer in the EU. But we need to be discriminating as well. Blair’s unquestioning support of America’s war in Iraq damaged us in all sorts of ways. The Germans and the French opposed it, but that has done them no harm.

Inal:                Because of Brexit, some argue the UK has lost its role of the American ‘Trojan horse’ inside the EU. How will that affect special relations?

Sir Rodric:   We were less of a “Trojan Horse” than people think. We were useful to the Americans as a source of information, but they could not count on us to promote their interests there. On matters like agricultural policy and the dispute between Airbus and Boeing we sided with the other Europeans. It was often Brussels who defended British agricultural interests against the Americans. Now we are no longer EU members, we won’t be able to tell the Americans what is going on inside the EU, or have the same influence on European decision making. To that extent, it is negative for the US that we have pulled out of the EU.

Inal:             Before we proceed to your message to the younger generation, I would also like to ask you about leadership styles. Among many British prime ministers, you worked most with Margaret Thatcher and John Major. The whole world knows who the Iron Lady is, while John Major is rather a grey man for many who are not concerned with British politics. Strong and assertive leaders, such as Thatcher and Churchill, can be arrogant and self-reliant and they can easily miss opportunities for cooperation and compromise. However, they can be extremely efficient in the moments of great pressure. When considering Thatcher’s personalistic or Major’s cooperative style of leadership, in your experience, which proves to be more effective?

Sir Rodric:    I am admirer of Major, for whom I also worked. He was sensible and effective, but his domestic political position was weak, not least because of the continuing negative influence of his predecessor.

                         Opinion about Thatcher in Britain is still polarised. There are people who absolutely hate her and people who think that she is a sort of a goddess. They are both wrong. She is a major historical figure. But she was just a human being like we all are. She was extremely nice to junior staff and other ordinary people, which is quite rare for the powerful people like her. But she was paranoid about her colleagues whom she feared as rivals.

                         Thatcher’s role in ending the Cold War and bringing Gorbachev and Reagan to the negotiations was rather less than she or her supporters liked to think. She was the first to recognise Gorbachev’s importance and she opened Reagan’s eyes to it. That was indeed important, because it helped to restart the process of détente. But once Reagan and Gorbachev started working together there wasn’t much of a role left for Thatcher, much as they both admired her.

                        Her domestic policy was questionable, even when she was in power. Many of her ideas about economics and social policy were quite damaging, and are being abandoned by the present Conservative government. So her record is mixed. But especially with her victory in the Falklands War she did help to restore our self-confidence at a time when our morale was low. People liked her because she was a strong leader. One taxi driver told me that she was the only person in her government with balls. I have endless conversations with Russians who say the same thing: “We need a strong leader and it is the only way we can function”.

Inal:                 Do you think that is true for Russia?

Sir Rodric:    Well, Russians think it is. I think they exaggerate. Strong leaders might be necessary at certain times, but these times should be as infrequent as possible. I am not an admirer of Ivan the Terrible and Stalin. Russia could surely have been modernised and strengthened in ways much less brutal and damaging than the ones they chose. Ivan’s reign was followed by the Time of Troubles. Stalin’s Soviet Union collapsed. Both bear responsibility for those failures.

Message to Future Generation

Inal:                 The last question I would like you to answer would be about my generation, so…

Sir Rodric:   (Laughs) I will tell you something about your generation. I was in Rome, in 1968. Students were demonstrating for a better world, just as they were in Paris. I had an Italian friend who was in his mid 20s. He said, “Rodric, you don’t understand what is going on here. Youth is taking over, it will be youth who decides your future”. What happened next was that these revolutionary young people left university, got married, had kids, got mortgages and moved to the right. I don’t think that youth is wiser than age. Both make dreadful mistakes.

                         My main message for your generation is that you have to make up your own mind. You should not let your leaders make up your mind for you. Moreover I don’t accept the post-modern idea that truth is relative and instrumental. Truth exists, even if it is very difficult to discover. People who argue differently are probably trying to promote some interest of their own.

Inal:              I believe it was only in the 90s that people understood Russians and Westerners were pretty much the same and that we could cooperate. And while people of your generation were perhaps born in the enemy mindset, my generation was born in an interconnected, globalised world. Current mutual aggressive posture prevents many talented young people on both sides from opting for a diplomatic career. How can we best deal with this internal dilemma? And can we, the UC Fellows, who advocate for dialogue and cooperation, survive in this environment?

Sir Rodric:    I was struck by this question. I was asked throughout my life: “What was it like to be a diplomat? Didn’t you mind telling lies all the time?” The answer is that I didn’t tell lies all the time. If you are going to be a diplomat, you need to be trusted and if you tell lies, people will find out.

                        Some of my university friends thought that decent people should not corrupt themselves with government service. They criticised me for joining the Foreign Office. That makes little sense. Countries need good people who are ready to serve the state.

                        But you obviously have a problem if you don’t like what your government asks you to do. I am glad I wasn’t at the Foreign Office at the time of the Iraq War, which I would have found extremely difficult to defend. There are moral problems with most professions, and pressures to conform which are hard to resist. If you are really unhappy with what is going on you can and should resign, even though that may be very difficult.

                        That’s as true in Russia as anywhere else. If thoughtful people like you are not going to become Russian diplomats, what sort of people are? The rest of us, too, need Russian diplomats who like you believe in cooperation and dialogue. So if you are thinking of going to the Russian foreign service, please do so.