Below are excerpts from two articles about the recent unrest in Kazakhstan. The second is by Pepe Escobar and explains that it is , at least partly, being driven by outsiders as some sort of attempt at a color revolution. The first article, a comprehensive one by Dmitry Plotnikov and published by RT, takes a more nuanced view of the situation. – Natylie

Nationalists are on the rise’: How protests in Kazakhstan turned violent & why Russia feels it can’t stay silent

By Dmitry Plotnikov, RT, 1/5/22

What’s behind the current violent unrest in Kazakhstan and why is political stability in this huge former Soviet republic of such great importance to Russia?

Events in Kazakhstan are unfolding at breakneck speed, with the situation changing on an hourly basis. Initially, it seemed that protests against soaring energy prices would not turn into anything more serious. Since then, however, the country has asked for help from the Collective Security Treaty Organization (CSTO), a Russia-led military bloc, and its soldiers have engaged in fierce street battles with armed marauders.

Kazakhstan has always been viewed as one of the most stable post-Soviet countries, with the transition of power from its first president to his successor, managed by the local elites, initially seen as smooth and efficient. However, today the country is perhaps facing its toughest challenge since it became independent 30 years ago. RT has analyzed the reasons behind the unrest in Kazakhstan.

Footage of protests in Kazakhstan has spread all over the world. Demonstrators are forcing their way into public buildings, driving away military vehicles, and disarming soldiers. They have set on fire the mayor’s office in Almaty, the country’s largest city and second capital, which has now turned into the epicenter of the protest movement.

The unrest, however, appears to be mostly spontaneous and uncontrolled. It seems there are no leaders to organize the crowds, nor has any political party spearheaded the protest movement yet. The government simply does not know who to negotiate with, while the demonstrators are gaining control of many of Kazakhstan’s public buildings, as well as storming and destroying the offices of the Nur Otan ruling political party and national television channels.

The protests started on January 2 in western Kazakhstan when the price of fuel went up. Liquefied Natural Gas (LNG) is used by most local citizens as car fuel instead of gasoline. The government refused to continue subsidizing its price and made it clear that, from then on, the cost of LNG will be controlled solely by the market. And it doubled immediately – from 60 to 120 tenge per liter (from $0.14 to $0.28). The government believes that this step will “allow for the obtaining a balanced gas price based on demand and supply” as well as “attracting investment” for new production capacities. The authorities claim that the old model resulted in gas producers being constantly at a loss – the business was unprofitable for them.

Protests flared up in the town of Zhanaozen and quickly spread to the west and north of the country. Demonstrators blocked traffic in the central parts of Kazakhstan and demanded that LNG prices be brought down to previous levels. Many also wanted to face those public officials, residing in Nur-Sultan, who were responsible for the gas price surge. In the beginning, the protests were mostly peaceful, there were no clashes with the police. However, the situation changed and 69 people were detained by law enforcement on January 2 and 3.

The protests went on and Kazakh President Kassym-Jomart Tokayev instructed his government to address the matter of soaring gas prices. Soon the state press service revealed that an investigation had been launched against owners of Kazakhstani gas stations, aimed at identifying price-fixing cartels, and the government promised to “introduce a set of measures in order to regulate the price of gas.” They also said that some of the local owners had decided to reduce the gas price from 120 to 85-90 tenge (about $0.21) per liter, as required by a social responsibility edict for businesses.

But this was not enough to calm the protesting crowds, who resorted to even more radical actions. On the evening of January 4, violent clashes with law enforcement officers started in many Kazakh towns, which lasted throughout the night. Policemen used batons, tear gas and rubber bullets against protesters, who responded by setting official cars and specialized vehicles ablaze.

In an attempt to soothe the demonstrators, President Tokayev agreed to comply with one of their demands and dismissed the government. Later, there were rumors that early parliamentary elections would be held. However, this second concession again failed to appease the street movement. This may be explained by the make-up of the new government, which did not significantly differ from the previous one. Alihan Smaiylov was appointed head of the new government. In the previous cabinet, he held the post of first deputy prime minister.

It was as if all the concessions only angered the crowds even more. On January 5, they went on to attack and set fire to administrative buildings. At the same time, the police were often reluctant in trying to disperse the demonstrators. Some of them were even seen changing sides.

These protests are drastically different from any previous demonstrations Kazakhstan has seen. The mass movement of 2019, which marked the power transition from longtime leader Nursultan Nazarbayev to Tokayev, were dispersed very quickly and in a violent manner – unlike what we see happening in the country today. A casual onlooker can get the impression that the situation in Kazakhstan grew so tense and exploded in a matter of days, and the government is partly paralyzed.

The head of Moscow’s Eurasian Analytical Club, Nikita Mendkovich, believes the reasons behind these mass protests include not only the country’s difficult economic situation, but also the government’s attempts at flirting with nationalists.

“Over the past year or two, we have seen government attempts at flirting with nationalists and pro-Western groups by introducing anti-Russian measures. By this, the ruling elite antagonized Kazakhstan’s Russian-speaking population, which supports Russia and constitutes the majority in Kazakhstan. As a result, the ruling party lost over one million votes at the parliamentary elections in January 2021. But the nationalist opposition interpreted this as a sign of the ruling regime’s weakness and strived to finish it off,” the analyst said.

As he pointed out, at the moment, the Democratic Choice of Kazakhstan (DVK) and Oyan, Qazaqstan (OQ), which are pro-Western opposition groups, are actively trying to head the protests and use them to promote their own agenda. According to Mendkovich, this is exactly why the government’s willingness to comply with the protesters’ economic demands failed to put an end to the unrest, but, on the contrary, seems to have further radicalized the demonstrators and motivated them to put forward purely political demands.

Roman Yuneman, a Russian political figure who spent the first 18 years of his life in Kazakhstan, agrees with Mendkovich that local nationalists are the basis of the protest movement. “It’s not the liberals, or hipsters, who are protesting – it’s the nationalists and patriots. That’s why you can see so many of them holding the national flag, and some are even singing Kazakhstan’s anthem,” he said. Yuneman points out that today’s protests have the largest scale in the history of independent Kazakhstan.

Read complete article here.

Steppe on fire: Kazakhstan’s color revolution

By Pepe Escobar, Strategic Culture Foundation, 1/6/22

Maidan in Almaty? Oh yeah. But it’s complicated.

So is that much fear and loathing all about gas? Not really.

Kazakhstan was rocked into chaos virtually overnight, in principle, because of the doubling of prices for liquefied gas, which reached the (Russian) equivalent of 20 rubles per liter (compare it to an average of 30 rubles in Russia itself).

That was the spark for nationwide protests spanning every latitude from top business hub Almaty to the Caspian Sea ports of Aktau and Atyrau and even the capital Nur-Sultan, formerly Astana.

The central government was forced to roll back the gas price to the equivalent of 8 rubles a liter. Yet that only prompted the next stage of the protests, demanding lower food prices, an end of the vaccination campaign, a lower retirement age for mothers with many children and – last but not least – regime change, complete with its own slogan: Shal, ket! (“Down with the old man.”)

The “old man” is none other than national leader Nursultan Nazarbayev, 81, who even as he stepped down from the presidency after 29 years in power, in 2019, for all practical purposes remains the Kazakh gray eminence as head of the Security Council and the arbiter of domestic and foreign policy.

The prospect of yet another color revolution inevitably comes to mind: perhaps Turquoise-Yellow – reflecting the colors of the Kazakh national flag. Especially because right on cue, sharp observers found out that the usual suspects – the American embassy – was already “warning” about mass protests as early as in December 16, 2021.

Maidan in Almaty? Oh yeah. But it’s complicated.

Almaty in chaos

For the outside world, it’s hard to understand why a major energy exporting power such as Kazakhstan needs to increase gas prices for its own population.

The reason is – what else – unbridled neoliberalism and the proverbial free market shenanigans. Since 2019 liquefied gas is electronically traded in Kazakhstan. So keeping price caps – a decades-long custom – soon became impossible, as producers were constantly faced with selling their product below cost as consumption skyrocketed.

Everybody in Kazakhstan was expecting a price hike, as much as everybody in Kazakhstan uses liquefied gas, especially in their converted cars. And everybody in Kazakhstan has a car, as I was told, ruefully, during my last visit to Almaty, in late 2019, when I was trying in vain to find a taxi to head downtown.

It’s quite telling that the protests started in the city of Zhanaozen, smack into the oil/gas hub of Mangystau. And it’s also telling that Unrest Central immediately turned to car-addicted Almaty, the nation’s real business hub, and not the isolated, government infrastructure-heavy capital in the middle of the steppes.

At first President Kassym-Jomart Tokayev seemed to have been caught in a deer facing the headlights situation. He promised the return of price caps, installed a state of emergency/curfew both in Almaty and Mangystau (then nationwide) while accepting the current government’s resignation en masse and appointing a faceless Deputy Prime Minister, Alikhan Smailov, as interim PM until the formation of a new cabinet.

Yet that could not possibly contain the unrest. In lightning fast succession, we had the storming of the Almaty Akimat (mayor’s office); protesters shooting at the Army; a Nazarbayev monument demolished in Taldykorgan; his former residence in Almaty taken over; Kazakhtelecom disconnecting the whole country from the internet; several members of the National Guard – armored vehicles included – joining the protesters in Aktau; ATMs gone dead.

And then Almaty, plunged into complete chaos, was virtually seized by the protesters, including its international airport, which on Wednesday morning was under extra security, and in the evening had become occupied territory.

Kazakh airspace, meanwhile, had to contend with an extended traffic jam of private jets leaving to Moscow and Western Europe. Even though the Kremlin noted that Nur-Sultan had not asked for any Russian help, a “special delegation” was soon flying out of Moscow. Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov cautiously stressed, “we are convinced that our Kazakh friends can independently solve their internal problems”, adding, “it is important that no one interferes from the outside.”

Geostrategy talks

How could it all derail so fast?

Up to now, the succession game in Kazakhstan had been seen mostly as a hit across Northern Eurasia. Local honchos, oligarchs and the comprador elites all kept their fiefdoms and sources of income. And yet, off the record, I was told in Nur-Sultan in late 2019 there would be serious problems ahead when some regional clans would come to collect – as in confronting “the old man” Nazarbayev and the system he put in place.

Tokayev did issue the proverbial call “not to succumb to internal and external provocations” – which makes sense – yet also assured that the government “will not fall”. Well, it was already falling, even after an emergency meeting trying to address the tangled web of socioeconomic problems with a promise that all “legitimate demands” by the protesters will be met.

This did not play out as a classic regime change scenario – at least initially. The configuration was of a fluid, amorphous state of chaos, as the – fragile – Kazakh institutions of power were simply incapable of comprehending the wider social malaise. A competent political opposition is non-existent: there’s no political exchange. Civil society has no channels to express itself.

So yes: there’s a riot goin’ on – to quote American rhythm’n blues. And everyone is a loser. What is still not exactly clear is which conflicting clans are flaming the protests – and what is their agenda in case they’d have a shot at power. After all, no “spontaneous” protests can pop up simultaneously all over this vast nation virtually overnight.

Kazakhstan was the last republic to leave the collapsing USSR over three decades ago, in December 1991. Under Nazarbayev, it immediately engaged in a self-described “multi-vector” foreign policy. Up to now, Nur-Sultan was skillfully positioning itself as a prime diplomatic mediator – from discussions on the Iranian nuclear program as early as 2013 to the war in/on Syria from 2016. The target: to solidify itself as the quintessential bridge between Europe and Asia.

The Chinese-driven New Silk Roads, or BRI, were officially launched by Xi Jinping at Nazarbayev University in September 2013. That happened to swiftly dovetail with the Kazakh concept of Eurasian economic integration, crafted after Nazarbayev’s own government spending project, Nurly Zhol (“Bright Path”), designed to turbo-charge the economy after the 2008-9 financial crisis.

In September 2015, in Beijing, Nazarbayev aligned Nurly Zhol with BRI, de facto propelling Kazakhstan to the heart of the new Eurasian integration order. Geostrategically, the largest landlocked nation on the planet became the prime interplay territory of the Chinese and Russian visions, BRI and the Eurasia Economic Union (EAEU).

A diversionary tactic

For Russia, Kazakhstan is even more strategic than for China. Nur-Sultan signed the CSTO treaty in 2003. It’s a key member of the EAEU. Both nations have massive military-technical ties and conduct strategic space cooperation in Baikonur. Russian has the status of an official language, spoken by 51% of the republic’s citizens.

At least 3.5 million Russians live in Kazakhstan. It’s still early to speculate about a possible “revolution” tinged with national liberation colors were the old system to eventually collapse. And even if that happened, Moscow will never lose all of its considerable political influence.

So the immediate problem is to assure Kazakhstan’s stability. The protests must be dispersed. There will be plenty of economic concessions. Permanent destabilizing chaos simply cannot be tolerated – and Moscow knows it by heart. Another – rolling – Maidan is out of the question.

The Belarus equation has shown how a strong hand can operate miracles. Still, the CSTO agreements do not cover assistance in case of internal political crises – and Tokayev did not seem to be inclined to make such a request.

Until he did. He called for the CSTO to intervene to restore order. There will be a military enforced curfew. And Nur-Sultan may even confiscate the assets of US and UK companies which are allegedly sponsoring the protests.

This is how Nikol Pashinyan, chairman of the CSTO Collective Security Council and Prime Minister of Armenia, framed it: Tokayev invoked a “threat to national security” and the “sovereignty” of Kazakhstan, “caused, inter alia, by outside interference.” So the CSTO “decided to send peacekeeping forces” to normalize the situation, “for a limited period of time”.

The usual destabilizing suspects are well known. They may not have the reach, the political influence, and the necessary amount of Trojan horses to keep Kazakhstan on fire indefinitely.

At least the Trojan horses themselves are being very explicit. They want an immediate release of all political prisoners; regime change; a provisional government of “reputable” citizens; and – what else – “withdrawal of all alliances with Russia.”

And then it all gets down to the level of ridiculous farce, as the EU starts calling on Kazakh authorities to “respect the right to peaceful protests.” As in allowing total anarchy, robbery, looting, hundreds of vehicles destroyed, attacks with assault rifles, ATMs and even the Duty Free at Almaty airport completely plundered.

This analysis (in Russian) covers some key points, mentioning, “the internet is full of pre-arranged propaganda posters and memos to the rebels” and the fact that “the authorities are not cleaning up the mess, as Lukashenko did in Belarus.”

Slogans so far seem to originate from plenty of sources – extolling everything from a “western path” to Kazakhstan to polygamy and Sharia law: “There is no single goal yet, it has not been identified. The result will come later. It is usually the same. The elimination of sovereignty, external management and, finally, as a rule, the formation of an anti-Russian political party.”

Putin, Lukashenko and Tokayev spent a long time over the phone, at the initiative of Lukashenko. The leaders of all CSTO members are in close contact. A master game plan – as in a massive “anti-terrorist operation” – has already been hatched. Gen. Gerasimov will personally supervise it.

Now compare it to what I learned from two different, high-ranking intel sources.

The first source was explicit: the whole Kazakh adventure is being sponsored by MI6 to create a new Maidan right before the Russia/US-NATO talks in Geneva and Brussels next week, to prevent any kind of agreement. Significantly, the “rebels” maintained their national coordination even after the internet was disconnected.

The second source is more nuanced: the usual suspects are trying to force Russia to back down against the collective West by creating a major distraction in their Eastern front, as part of a rolling strategy of chaos all along Russia’s borders. That may be a clever diversionary tactic, but Russian military intel is watching. Closely. And for the sake of the usual suspects, this better may not be interpreted – ominously – was a war provocation.

Note: I don’t agree with Macgregor that Russia will invade Ukraine. If the US/NATO do not provide Russia with security agreements it can live with, there are other ways Russia can militarily pressure the US, NATO and Ukraine as has been discussed by Gilbert Doctorow and Patrick Armstrong. Only if Kiev attacks Donbas will Russia engage its military there. But I think the rest of what Macgregor has to say is well worth listening to. – Natylie

Douglas Macgregor, a retired US Army Colonel and former Pentagon senior advisor, analyzes the US-Russia standoff in Ukraine; the aftermath of the US withdrawal from Afghanistan; Trump’s failure to act on 2016 campaign anti-interventionist rhetoric, only to surround himself with neocons; and the ongoing, overlooked US military occupation of Syria after the decade-long CIA dirty war.

“The Military Industrial Congressional Complex,” Macgregor says, “seems to be more powerful than anyone who occupies the office of the presidency.”

By Jacob Heilbrunn, The National Interest, 1/1/22

Has President Joe Biden become Russia’s most trusted foreign interlocutor? Donald Trump was widely portrayed as the Kremlin’s cat’s-paw by the Western media, but he proved to be erratic and unreliable in foreign affairs, careening almost daily from bombastic threats to emollient language. Enter Biden.

When it comes to Russia policy, Biden has sought to promote what might be called détente-lite with Moscow without using the dreaded word “reset.” The governing theory of the Biden administration—or, to put it more precisely, national security adviser Jake Sullivan—has been that China, not Russia, poses the gravest foreign policy challenge to America. In the Interim National Security Strategic Guidance, the White House mentioned China fifteen times, Russia five, and Ukraine not at all. Biden himself is working through the National Security Council (NSC) to attempt to craft a new policy towards Moscow. Biden, in other words, is the Decider.

This is why Russian president Vladimir Putin requested a second phone conversation with Biden. The Russians believe that absent Biden’s personal involvement any potential progress would likely be sabotaged by the State Department bureaucracy, which is highly sympathetic to Ukraine. Indeed, at a recent foreign ministry meeting, Russian sources indicate, Foreign Minister Sergey V. Lavrov specifically referenced Biden—to praise his positive role in promoting dialogue with Moscow.

Read full article here.

By Natylie Baldwin, OpedNews, 12/29/21

The U.S. likes to promote itself as a bastion of liberal democracy on the world stage. But if recent comments by Russian deputy foreign minister Sergey Ryabkov are any indication, it seems that the way in which the U.S. has advocated for liberal democracy and human rights in Russia has led to mistrust of American motives and has arguably done more harm than good for those Russians it is claiming to want to help.

On November 29^th, Ryabkov stated at a meeting of Russia’s upper chamber of parliament that the US has been funding a long-term project of destabilizing Russia and impeding its development:

“Using non-profit international organizations among other tools, Washington is spending considerable funds to destabilize the situation in Russia… under the pretext of helping strengthen democratic institutions and civil society… Notably, it is done under the guise of environmental protection, anti-corruption efforts, ensuring gender equality and ethnic and cultural diversity… [O]ver time, American propaganda and disinformation is becoming more sophisticated, imitating independent media, investigative journalism and grass-roots initiatives.”

Russian officials did not always view the liberal democracy touted by the U.S. in such a negative light, however. Vladimir Putin stated his desire for Russia to be accepted as part of the U.S.-led west during his earlier terms as president and even implemented some domestic policies consistent with this goal. For example, he strengthened the rule of law by implementing the rights of habeas corpus and trial by jury, and increasing rights to exculpatory evidence. Reforms to the criminal code led to the doubling of acquittal rates in bench trials (only heard by a judge) and the tripling of acquittal rates in jury trials, contributing to a 40 percent drop in the overall incarceration rate and a 95 percent drop in the juvenile incarceration rate since 2001.

Furthermore, according to activists I spoke with in 2015, Putin encouraged the emergence of civil society with the first Civic Forum in 2001 – something they said never would have happened under his predecessor. Though admittedly, Putin advocated for a partnership with government, leading to concerns early on among some activists of a desire to co-opt the movement.

Given that he had multiple crises to contend with in those early years, it’s unrealistic to think Putin would have spent his political capital on challenging certain deeply-held conservative cultural norms. But clearly there has been a turn away from even the modest embrace of liberalism he displayed previously as U.S.-led projects to purportedly promote democracy and human rights in Russia have often had the opposite of the intended effect.

Gay Rights

In 2013, U.S. government officials publicly chided Russia at the outset of the Winter Olympics in Sochi for its purported policy of homophobia as reflected in a law prohibiting the propagation of material that encourages homosexuality to minors. Since then, U.S. officials and media pundits have criticized Russia repeatedly for its intolerance toward gays but have little to say about allies like Saudi Arabia and Pakistan, which have far more draconian policies toward homosexuals.

According to the Levada Center, the percentage of Russians who support same-sex relationships actually decreased between 2013 and 2021. If the U.S. thinks it has been helping gay Russians by vociferously condemning the country’s policies on the world stage, it would appear to be wrong.

Women’s Issues: Misrepresenting the Complexity of Domestic Violence in Russia

In September of this year, in the lead-up to the Russian parliamentary elections, the New York Times published a feature article on Alyona Popova, a domestic-violence activist, journalist and lawyer who was running for a seat in the Duma on the outskirts of Moscow.

As is often the case, the article took an issue that affects the lives of many Russians and rather than give it the nuanced and in-depth treatment it deserved, it devolved into a platform for depicting Vladimir Putin and his government as backwards, stating: “Ms. Popova implores women to turn against Vladimir Putin’s ruling party, United Russia, which has rolled back protections for women over the last several years. Leading up to this weekend’s election, she has presented the issue in urgent terms, and a proposal to make all acts of domestic violence subject to criminal penalties tops her campaign platform.”

The article then goes on to essentially give the impression that Russians, even women, generally don’t care enough about this issue. It then underpins this impression by mentioning the 2017 law that reclassified first offenses of domestic violence as administrative rather than criminal. But the article never discusses the fact that most Russians polled at the time agreed with this approach and their reason for doing so.

The most common reason Russians stated for supporting the reclassification involved a desire to raise deterrence by increasing reports from victims to police. Russians believe that police will be more incentivized to respond to calls if there is money to be collected.

According to Russian journalist Victoria Ryabikova, awareness of and attitudes towards domestic violence have been evolving in recent years: “In 2017, 59% of Russians supported the idea of reclassifying domestic violence as an administrative, not criminal offense, and 19% considered it acceptable in some cases to strike one’s spouse or child, according to a survey by the All-Russian Center for the Study of Public Opinion (VTsIOM). But by the end of 2019, the situation had changed: 90% of Russians considered any physical violence unacceptable, and a further 50% stated that assault and battery in the home were unforgivable.”

As it turns out, the majority of Russians are not Neanderthals who want to see domestic violence victims go unprotected. If the New York Times would have dug a bit deeper and actually had journalists reporting on Russia who had a contextual understanding of the country and its culture, its readers might have been better informed on the nature of this issue.

By misrepresenting a social issue in Russia via poor reporting to further a tired and overly simplistic narrative, the U.S. and one of its major institutions did little to help Russian women or to improve Americans’ understanding of their experience.

Anti-corruption: The Three Faces of Alexey

Then there is Alexey Navalny, the most famous Russian dissident viewed by many in the west as a political prisoner. His career has mostly consisted of him trying to figure out who he is in his attempts to fight the Kremlin: a right-wing nationalist, a liberal democrat, and more recently an anti-corruption activist. He has had backing by the United States, including a Yale fellowship and U.S. government funding for Democratic Alternative, an organization he co-founded with Maria Gaidar (daughter of ’90s Shock Therapy architect Yegor Gaidar) in 2005.

Despite this concrete support and his near canonization in the U.S.-led western media as well as the fact that Russians do consider corruption to be a significant problem, Navalny has low trust and approval ratings within Russia.

U.S. Meddling and Moralizing Backfires

The Russian government has taken more extreme actions against Navalny and other western-backed activists, including the domestic violence NGOs Anna Center and Nasiliu, in recent years. It seems that, at least to some extent, the Putin government perceives the US-led west to be targeting Russia with a destabilization campaign and is taking measures it views as defensive against activists and NGO’s supported by the U.S. This also ironically allows the Russian government to cynically use these measures to quash debate or dissent on issues as it chooses.

The U.S., for its part, must admit that either it also uses these issues cynically and cares nothing for Russians affected by them or it has supported a strategy that has backfired.

National Security Archive, 11/24/21

Washington, D.C., November 24, 2021 – The biggest train wreck on the track to NATO expansion in the 1990s – Boris Yeltsin’s “cold peace” blow up at Bill Clinton in Budapest in December 1994 – was the result of “combustible” domestic politics in both the U.S. and Russia, and contradictions in the Clinton attempt to have his cake both ways, expanding NATO and partnering with Russia at the same time, according to newly declassified U.S. documents published today by the National Security Archive.

The Yeltsin eruption on December 5, 1994, made the top of the front page of the New York Times the next day, with the Russian president’s accusation (in front of Clinton and other heads of state gathered for a summit of the Conference on Security and Cooperation in Europe, CSCE) that the “domineering” U.S. was “trying to split [the] continent again” through NATO expansion. The angry tone of Yeltsin’s speech echoed years later in his successor Vladimir Putin’s famous 2007 speech at the Munich security conference, though by then the list of Russian grievances went well beyond NATO expansion to such unilateral U.S. actions as withdrawal from the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty and the invasion of Iraq.

The new documents, the result of a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit by the National Security Archive, include a series of revelatory “Bill-Boris” letters in the summer and fall of 1994, and the previously secret memcon of the presidents’ one-on-one at the Washington summit in September 1994. Clinton kept assuring Yeltsin any NATO enlargement would be slow, with no surprises, building a Europe that was inclusive not exclusive, and in “partnership” with Russia. In a phone call on July 5, 1994, Clinton told Yeltsin “I would like us to focus on the Partnership for Peace program” not NATO. At the same time, however, “policy entrepreneurs” in Washington were revving up the bureaucratic process for more rapid NATO enlargement than expected either by Moscow or the Pentagon,[1] which was committed to the Partnership for Peace as the main venue for security integration of Europe, not least because it could include Russia and Ukraine.[2]

The new documents include insightful cables from U.S. Ambassador to Moscow Thomas Pickering, explaining Yeltsin’s new hard line at Budapest as the result of multiple factors. Not least, Pickering pointed to “strong domestic opposition across the [Russian] political spectrum to early NATO expansion,” criticism of Yeltsin and his foreign minister, Andrei Kozyrev, as too “compliant to the West,” and the growing conviction in Moscow that U.S. domestic politics – the pro-expansion Republicans’ sweep of the Congressional mid-term elections in November 1994 – would tilt U.S. policy away from taking Russia’s concerns into account.

Pickering was perhaps too diplomatic because there was plenty of blame to go around on the U.S. side. Clinton wrote in his memoir, “Budapest was embarrassing, a rare moment when people on both sides dropped the ball….”[3] Actually, the drops were almost all in Washington. White House schedulers led by chief of staff Leon Panetta tried to prevent Clinton from even going to Budapest by constraining his window there to eight hours, which meant no time for a one-on-one with Yeltsin. Clinton himself thought he was doing Yeltsin a big favor by even coming and expected good press from the substantial reduction in nuclear arsenals that would result from the signing of the Budapest memorandum on security assurances for Ukraine (violated by Russia in 2014). National Security Adviser Tony Lake gave Clinton a prepared text that “was all yin and no yang – sure to please the Central Europeans and enthusiasts for enlargement, but equally sure to drive the Russians nuts….” The author of that phrase, Deputy Secretary of State Strobe Talbott, wasn’t even in Budapest, paying attention to the Haiti crisis instead (“never again” he later wrote, would he miss a Yeltsin meeting).[4]

The new documents include a previously secret National Security Council memo from Senior Director for Russia Nicholas Burns to Talbott, so sensitive that Burns had it delivered by courier, describing Clinton’s reaction to Budapest as “really pissed off” and reporting “the President did not want to be used any more as a prop by Yeltsin.” At the same time, Burns stressed, “we need to separate our understandable anger on the tone of the debate with [sic] Russia’s substantive concerns which we must take seriously.” Similarly, the Pickering cables recommended using Vice President Al Gore’s previously scheduled December trip to Moscow for meetings with Prime Minister Victor Chernomyrdin to also meet with Yeltsin, calm down the discussion, and get back on a “workable track.”

Mending fences would include Gore’s description to Yeltsin of the parallel NATO and U.S.-Russia tracks as spaceships docking simultaneously and very carefully,[5] and Gore and then Clinton assuring the Russians (but not in writing, as Kozyrev kept asking for) that no NATO action on new members would happen before the 1995 Duma elections or the 1996 presidential elections in Russia.

The final assurance was Clinton’s agreement (despite Russia’s brutal Chechen war and multiple domestic pressures) to come to Moscow in May 1995 for the 50th anniversary celebrations of the victory over Hitler. In Moscow, Yeltsin berated Clinton about NATO expansion, seeing “nothing but humiliation” for Russia: “For me to agree to the borders of NATO expanding towards those of Russia – that would constitute a betrayal on my part of the Russian people.” But Yeltsin also saw Clinton would do whatever he could to ensure Yeltsin’s re-election in 1996, and that mattered the most to him. Only after that Moscow summit would Yeltsin order Kozyrev to sign Russia up for the Partnership for Peace.

The new documents only reached the public domain as the result of a Freedom of Information lawsuit by the National Security Archive against the State Department, seeking the retired files of Strobe Talbott. Thanks to excellent representation by noted FOIA attorney David Sobel, State set up a schedule of regular releases to the Archive over the past three years. The full corpus of thousands of pages covering the entire 1990s will appear next year in the award-winning series published by ProQuest, the Digital National Security Archive, which won Choice Magazine’s designation as an “Outstanding Academic Title 2018.” The Archive also benefited from State’s assignment of veteran reviewer Geoffrey Chapman to the task of assessing the Talbott documents for declassification. Chapman ranks among the most thorough, expert, and professional declassifiers in the U.S. government.

Text and documents available here.