Window Seat on the World

by Glen Johnson

  “We didn’t want any tanks, any nationalist combat units, or people with extreme views armed with automatic weapons,” President Putin said. “Of course, Russian servicemen backed the Crimean self-defense forces.”366

  There was no wave of criticism after admitting his lie. Rather, there was a surge of nationalist pride in Russia and Crimea.

  President Putin was hailed in both Moscow and Sevastopol on May 9, 2014, when he presided over annual Victory Day parades paying tribute to Russia’s victory over Nazi Germany in World War II.

  “There is a lot of work ahead,” he said while making his first visit to Crimea since its annexation, “but we will overcome all the difficulties because we are together, and that means we have become even stronger.”367

  _________

  ALL TOLD, WE MADE five trips to Russia. The first, to Moscow, was especially eye-opening because everything was new to me.

  We departed from Andrews Air Force Base at mid-afternoon on May 6, 2013, and stopped in Shannon, Ireland, to refuel our plane and grab a customary pint of Guinness. We flew on to Vnukovo International Airport, about seventeen miles southwest of Moscow, and landed the morning of May 7, 2013.

  While the airport is now a civilian one, we taxied over to a private terminal used by military planes, including Air Force One when it brought President Reagan to Russia in 1988.

  The red lettering on the building reads “MOCKBA.”

  We traveled down clean streets, crossed the Moscow River, and passed the redbrick walls of the Kremlin before pulling up to the Ritz Carlton Hotel. As luxurious as that may sound, it’s a standard destination for business travelers because it’s next to Red Square and the Kremlin and offers the usual Western amenities. There’s also a rooftop bar—the O2 Lounge—that has a sweeping nighttime view of Red Square and the Kremlin.

  Inside the lobby, a woman dressed in a traditional Russian sarafan jumper dress gave Secretary Kerry a traditional bread-and-salt greeting: a loaf of bread placed on a rushnik—an embroidered towel—with a pinch-bowl of salt on top.

  He dipped a piece of bread into the salt before eating it.

  We had several hours of free time before the secretary set out for his wreath-laying ceremony at the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier. We then received word of the delay in our meeting with President Putin, so one of our hosts offered to give him a tour of neighboring Red Square and the Kremlin walls.

  We walked through the entrance and across heavy black cobblestones into Red Square. To me, it felt like a movie set after I had seen it on TV so many times while Soviet soldiers, tanks, and missiles streamed through during the annual May Day Parade.

  There directly across the Square was St. Basil’s Cathedral, a cluster of eight churches whose brightly colored domes look like the flames of a bonfire. It’s perhaps the most recognizable building in the city.

  There to the right was Lenin’s Tomb, a squat granite mausoleum where the embalmed body of Soviet leader Vladimir Lenin remains on public display.

  I was surprised by the sight on the left, though. It was the GUM department store, a Harrods-like shopping mall whose shape and windows are illuminated with strings of white lights. I didn’t expect such a capitalist presence in what was once the heart of a Communist country.

  We’d been in Russia only a short time, but I’d already realized that was no longer the case.

  Despite its recent Soviet history, Russia—or at least, Moscow—is brimming with examples of Western influence. There are the luxury hotels on the edge of Red Square, a McDonald’s on Tverskaya Street, a main drag in the city, and a swirl of Mercedes, Lexus, and Toyota automobiles driving around the Kremlin.

  Photographers asked the secretary to pose with St. Basil’s in the background, a request he grudgingly granted. Our host then led him over to the Kremlin Wall Necropolis behind Lenin’s Tomb, where the ashes of various Russian heroes are interred.

  We saw the plaque marking the spot for the remains of Yuri Gagarin, the first human in space, and we walked by a granite bust of Joseph Stalin. It marks his grave in a plot of land at the foot of the Wall.

  We all then returned to our hotel and awaited the call for Secretary Kerry’s meeting with President Putin.

  Traveling to countries like Russia or China is no simple feat for US government officials. Both are deemed “high-threat” locations because the host government is known to aggressively conduct electronic and personal surveillance.

  Whenever we visited locations like these, we left all our regular electronics behind. That meant cellphones, laptops, and anything that might be compromised for future use, or monitored while on site.

  Instead, we were issued burner cell phones and other single-use equipment. We carried them while in the country and then discarded them even before we got back to our plane. And despite using such disposable technology, we were reminded we still couldn’t speak freely because the airwaves were vulnerable.

  The briefing papers we got in every hotel room we used around the world, known as the “Notes to Party,” contained bleak warnings in high-threat destinations.

  “All non-USG facilities, including hotels, are considered compromised and classified material should not be discussed or processed in any of them,” read that first notice we got in Moscow.

  “Visitors to Russia have NO expectation of privacy. Visitors should assume that their movements and conversations may be monitored by host government personnel. Exercise a high degree of caution and remain alert when patronizing in restaurants, bars, theaters, etc., especially during peak hours of business,” said another section of the notice.

  The point was underscored when I got into the shower. As the steam built under the flow of hot water, it got more difficult to see through the glass door and into the rest of the bathroom. But on the shower wall itself, a solitary square of glass remained fog-free.

  I wondered if I was being watched over while I washed up.

  The experience prompted me to look warily at the mirror in my bedroom and the blinking red light in the smoke detector on the ceiling. It’s one reason our security personnel erected a tent within the secretary’s suite: so he had an isolated space in which to read any sensitive documents.

  We were told former Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice used to change clothes in her tent to escape prying eyes.

  While I have no doubt the US government treats its Russian visitors similarly, this first exposure to the world of espionage and tradecraft was bracing for someone little more than four months into diplomatic service.

  All of our other visits to Russia brought us back to Moscow, except for one where Secretary Kerry met with President Putin and Foreign Minister Lavrov in the Black Sea resort of Sochi.

  More often than not, though, we met with the Russians outside either of our countries. We attended many of the same multilateral gatherings as the United States and Russia sought to exert their influence in Europe or Africa or Asia, and our two teams got to know each other well.

  Both sides tried to be professional in their interactions with each other; but from a communications perspective, it was often a challenge dealing with our Russian counterparts.

  First of all, we traveled with a large and independent press corps. Since it paid its expenses to follow the secretary of State around, it expected access and the chance to ask him about what he was doing.

  The Russians had some of their own traveling reporters, but their independence was questionable and their questions often were directed at Secretary Kerry rather than at Foreign Minister Lavrov.

  In mid-March 2014, the two met in London at Winfield House, the spacious residence of the US ambassador to the Court of St. James, with that huge backyard rivaling the one at Buckingham Palace.

  Kerry and Lavrov talked for six hours before deciding to take a walk across the grass as they continued their discussion about Ukraine and Syria and other affairs.

  When they finished, they stopped next to a soccer ball and net belonging to the children of US ambassa
dor Matthew Barzun. Without warning, Lavrov wound up and gave the ball a giant kick across the yard. He later explained he’d been a soccer player.

  Despite that brief moment of levity, the two sides clashed over a joint statement about Ukraine, the type of communication called a “Joint Understanding.”

  Maria Zakharova, the foreign minister’s spokesperson, said only partly in jest, “We should label it ‘Joint Mis-Understanding.’”368

  Another irritant was more a fault of our system of government and process of administration.

  When the meetings broke and it was time to address reporters, Lavrov often grew impatient because Kerry routinely asked for time to review his notes.

  Not only did the secretary need to check if there was any breaking news he might be asked about, but as a diplomat whose words were closely monitored around the world, he had to make sure anything he said had gone through the normal administration clearance process.

  That meant White House officials and State Department subject-matter experts had seen and approved most remarks, and the Pentagon and intelligence community had been given insight through the interagency process.

  Lavrov had only one person to worry about when he spoke—President Putin—and little visible clearance process. He often walked up to the podium with nothing more than an index card or a stray piece of paper scribbled with notes he’d just made with a pen kept in his breast pocket.

  Kerry would arrive at his podium toting a large crimson binder filled with his statement, printed in thirty-two-point type and placed in plastic sleeves. The vetted responses to potential questions were on tabbed pages underneath.

  Our cumbersome process also contrasted with the nimbleness of Russia’s when both sides issued press releases on one world development or another. Spokesperson Zakharova would often distribute Russia’s the moment something happened or a meeting ended; on the US side, that was usually just the start of a clearance process that might not end for several hours.

  The disparity was especially evident in the aftermath of the Crimea invasion. The Washington Post reported in December 2017 that an intercepted Russian military intelligence report dated February 2014 “documented how Moscow created fake personas to spread disinformation on social media to buttress its broader military campaign” in Crimea.369

  Meanwhile, RT, an international television network funded by the Russian government, was aggressively promoting the Russian view within the United States.

  The US government had no similar counterweight abroad.

  President Clinton and Congress had shut down the US Information Agency, charged with influencing foreign populations, in 1999, eight years after the Soviet Union had collapsed. Russia, however, sought ways to compensate for its diminished military power and stood up RT in 2005. It also staged cyberattacks in Estonia in 2007 and against Georgia before its 2008 invasion.370

  I remember being struck while walking to the State Department from my apartment in Washington’s West End and passing several bus stops festooned with RT ads on their sides. Former CNN host Larry King had a talk show on RT’s American network.

  I didn’t see anything similar for a US government network during our visits to Moscow.

  I also never saw op-eds by President Obama in the Russian version of The New York Times—because there wasn’t a publication of similar national impact or international stature.

  “We are not competitive with the Russian PR machine,” Undersecretary of State for Public Affairs Rick Stengel told us when our communications team gathered in Washington on March 12, 2014.

  Stengel, the former editor of Time magazine, would spend the rest of the term seeking to close that gap with Russia. He also focused on recruiting Muslim social media forces to stand up to another threat: the Islamic State messaging machine.

  While disagreements within the Obama administration prevented a more broad-based counter-propaganda response, top officials also felt the Russian efforts would fall on deaf ears in the United States.

  “I thought our ground was not as fertile,” former Deputy Secretary of State Tony Blinken told The Washington Post for its December 2017 report about the failed response to Russia’s propaganda. “We believed that the truth shall set you free, that the truth would prevail. That proved a bit naive.”371

  In a piece for Politico published about the same time, Stengel wrote: “I wish I could say we figured out what to do about Russian disinformation and that we had seen what Russia would do in the 2016 [US presidential] election. We didn’t and I didn’t.”372

  Despite these and other challenges, Secretary Kerry forged ahead in his dealings with Russia. To him, it was a necessary evil. The country was a nuclear power in its own right, and it held sway not only in Iran and North Korea but Syria. In addition, its UN veto power forced the United States and others to always account for Russia diplomatically.

  Those factors forced him to, in his words, “compartmentalize” his interactions.

  Beyond the goodwill gift exchanges with Foreign Minister Lavrov or his solicitations of President Putin, the secretary genuinely tried to focus on the big picture and areas of common interest. “We have a disagreement about the facts and how we got there, but the art of diplomacy is how to thread the needle,” he told one journalist during an interview in March 2014.373

  And even amid the Russians’ insults, feigned ignorance, or duplicity, he persevered.

  I remember during a phone call hearing him ask Lavrov about a report he’d read on the Internet regarding Russian activity in Ukraine.

  “I don’t comment on websites,” his counterpart replied in a comment that would grow rich with irony over time. “The Internet is your invention.”374

  Kerry ignored this and similar statements, and a year later, I heard him succinctly explain why.

  “If we respond to all their jerkisms, we’ll never get anything done,” he told his assistant secretaries during a meeting in February 2015.375

  He made that comment just as the final stage of the Iran nuclear talks was beginning.

  True to form, after Kerry spent more than a year painstakingly negotiating that deal, Russia and its foreign minister were there at the very end to coax a settlement from an ally—in this case, Iran.

  And then Lavrov complained when the news conference celebrating the achievement was delayed to the waking hours back in the United States.

  He wanted to do it on Moscow’s timetable.

  _________

  ONE REASON THE RUSSIANS may have felt free to exert themselves in Ukraine and Crimea was because President Obama publicly stated he didn’t believe the American people would support going to war for their freedom.

  At the very least, that was an imposing military and political challenge, with Russia and its army sitting on Ukraine’s border. But the president also felt the United States had no appetite for a new battle as it continued to debate the wisdom of its war in Iraq, as well as its ongoing presence in Afghanistan.

  “We are not going to be getting into a military excursion in Ukraine,” Obama told San Diego’s NBC-TV affiliate during an interview in March 2014. “What we are going to do is mobilize all of our diplomatic resources to make sure that we’ve got a strong international coalition that sends a clear message.”376

  President Putin exploited this reality in eastern Europe, as he did several months later in Syria. Syria met the terms of the 2013 chemical weapons agreement negotiated between Russia and the United States, as observed by those who destroyed its declared stockpile and as subsequently verified by the OPCW.

  Nonetheless, Syrian opposition forces and some in the US government criticized the deal. They believed President Obama had blinked on his threat of force, both by seeking congressional approval for a strike and then by making the agreement with the Russians.

  Their argument was that President Assad had avoided any punishment for a war crime—using chemical weapons in Ghouta, Syria—despite crossing a red line drawn by President Obama in 2012. They also sa
id Russia’s intervention through its negotiations with the United States had effectively propped up its Middle Eastern client by sparing it a strike from a superpower.

  Secretary Kerry would rebut that criticism by noting members of Congress themselves had said they wanted to approve any military action.

  “When we take what is a very difficult decision, you have to have buy-in by members and buy-in by the public,” Representative Mike Rogers, a Michigan Republican and chairman of the House Intelligence Committee, said on MSNBC on August 29, 2013. “I think both of those are critically important and, right now, none of that has happened.”377

  The secretary also argued the chemical weapons agreement had achieved a far larger disarmament than the United States would have gained through a cruise-missile strike.

  “Here we were going to have one or two days to degrade and send a message,” he said on April 8, 2014, during testimony to the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. “We came up with a better solution.”378

  Kerry made that argument even though he had been a staunch advocate of using force to respond to the attack. He made the case passionately in the two speeches he delivered within a week of the gas attack on Ghouta.

  “We know that after a decade of conflict, the American people are tired of war,” he said in the latter speech, delivered August 30, 2013. “Believe me, I am, too. But fatigue does not absolve us of our responsibility. Just longing for peace does not necessarily bring it about. And history would judge us all extraordinarily harshly if we turned a blind eye to a dictator’s wanton use of weapons of mass destruction against all warnings, against all common understanding of decency. These things we do know.”379

  While he’d continue to appeal to the White House for a more forceful response the remainder of his term, the former Navy man also said he accepted the chain of command. “Look, the final say on these things is in his hands,” he said of the president during an interview with journalist Jeffrey Goldberg, who wrote an April 2016 article in The Atlantic titled “The Obama Doctrine.”380