Promised Land (9781524763183)

by Obama Barack

  The problem was that the existing sanctions were too weak to have much of an impact. Even U.S. allies like Germany continued to do a healthy amount of business with Iran, and just about everyone bought its oil. The Bush administration had unilaterally imposed additional U.S. sanctions, but those were largely symbolic, since U.S. companies had been blocked from doing business with Iran since 1995. With oil prices high and its economy growing, Iran had been more than happy to string along the P5+1 with regular negotiating sessions that produced nothing other than a commitment to more talking.

  To get Iran’s attention, we’d have to persuade other countries to tighten the vise. And that meant getting buy-in from a pair of powerful, historic adversaries that didn’t like sanctions as a matter of principle, had friendly diplomatic and commercial relations with Iran—and mistrusted U.S. intentions almost as much as Tehran did.

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  HAVING COME OF AGE in the 1960s and ’70s, I was old enough to recall the Cold War as the defining reality of international affairs, the force that chopped Europe in two, fueled a nuclear arms race, and generated proxy wars around the globe. It shaped my childhood imagination: In schoolbooks, newspapers, spy novels, and movies, the Soviet Union was the fearsome adversary in a contest between freedom and tyranny.

  I was also part of a post-Vietnam generation that had learned to question its own government and saw how—from the rise of McCarthyism to support for South Africa’s apartheid regime—Cold War thinking had often led America to betray its ideals. This awareness didn’t stop me from believing we should contain the spread of Marxist totalitarianism. But it made me wary of the notion that good resided only on our side and bad on theirs, or that a people who’d produced Tolstoy and Tchaikovsky were inherently different from us. Instead, the evils of the Soviet system struck me as a variation on a broader human tragedy: The way abstract theories and rigid orthodoxy can curdle into repression. How readily we justify moral compromise and relinquish our freedoms. How power can corrupt and fear can compound and language can be debased. None of that was unique to Soviets or Communists, I thought; it was true for all of us. The brave struggle of dissidents behind the Iron Curtain felt of a piece with, rather than distinct from, the larger struggle for human dignity taking place elsewhere in the world—including America.

  When, in the mid-1980s, Mikhail Gorbachev took over as the general secretary of the Communist Party and ushered in the cautious liberalization known as perestroika and glasnost, I studied what happened closely, wondering if it signaled the dawning of a new age. And when, just a few years later, the Berlin Wall fell and democratic activists inside Russia lifted Boris Yeltsin to power, sweeping aside the old Communist order and dissolving the Soviet Union, I considered it not just a victory for the West but a testimony to the power of a mobilized citizenry and a warning for despots everywhere. If the tumult that engulfed Russia in the 1990s—economic collapse, unfettered corruption, right-wing populism, shadowy oligarchs—gave me pause, nevertheless I held out hope that a more just, prosperous, and free Russia would emerge from the inevitably difficult transition to free markets and representative government.

  I’d mostly been cured of that optimism by the time I became president. It was true that Yeltsin’s successor, Vladimir Putin, who had come to power in 1999, claimed no interest in a return to Marxism-Leninism (“a mistake,” he once called it). And he had successfully stabilized the nation’s economy, in large part thanks to a huge increase in revenues brought about by rising oil prices. Elections were now held in accordance with the Russian constitution, capitalists were everywhere, ordinary Russians could travel abroad, and pro-democracy activists like the chess master Garry Kasparov could get away with criticizing the government without an immediate trip to the Gulag.

  And yet, with each year that Putin remained in power, the new Russia looked more like the old. It became clear that a market economy and periodic elections could go hand in hand with a “soft authoritarianism” that steadily concentrated power in Putin’s hands and shrank the space for meaningful dissent. Oligarchs who cooperated with Putin became some of the world’s wealthiest men. Those who broke from Putin found themselves subject to various criminal prosecutions and stripped of their assets—and Kasparov ultimately did spend a few days in jail for leading an anti-Putin march. Putin’s cronies were handed control of the country’s major media outlets, and the rest were pressured into ensuring him coverage every bit as friendly as the state-owned media had once provided Communist rulers. Independent journalists and civic leaders found themselves monitored by the FSB (the modern incarnation of the KGB)—or, in some cases, turned up dead.

  What’s more, Putin’s power didn’t rest on simple coercion. He was genuinely popular (his approval ratings at home rarely dipped below 60 percent). It was a popularity rooted in old-fashioned nationalism—the promise to restore Mother Russia to its former glory, to relieve the sense of disruption and humiliation so many Russians had felt over the previous two decades.

  Putin could sell that vision because he’d experienced those disruptions himself. Born into a family without connections or privilege, he’d methodically climbed the Soviet ladder—reservist training with the Red Army, law studies at Leningrad State University, a career in the KGB. After years of loyal and effective service to the state, he’d secured a position of modest stature and respectability, only to see the system he’d devoted his life to capsize overnight when the Berlin Wall fell in 1989. (He was at that time stationed with the KGB in Dresden, East Germany, and he reportedly spent the next few days scrambling to destroy files and standing guard against possible looters.) He’d made a quick pivot to the emerging post-Soviet reality, allying himself to democratic reformer Anatoly Sobchak, a mentor from law school who became mayor of St. Petersburg. Moving into national politics, Putin rose through the ranks of the Yeltsin administration with breathtaking speed, using his power in a variety of posts—including director of the FSB—to pick up allies, dole out favors, gather secrets, and outmaneuver rivals. Yeltsin appointed Putin prime minister in August 1999 and then four months later—hobbled by corruption scandals, bad health, a legendary drinking problem, and a record of catastrophic economic mismanagement—surprised everyone by vacating his office. That made Putin, then forty-seven, the acting president of Russia and provided him with the head start he needed to get elected to a full presidential term three months later. (One of Putin’s first acts was to grant Yeltsin a blanket pardon for any wrongdoing.)

  In the hands of the shrewd and the ruthless, chaos had proven a gift. But whether out of instinct or calculation, Putin also understood the Russian public’s longing for order. While few people had an interest in returning to the days of collective farming and empty store shelves, they were tired and scared and resented those—both at home and abroad—who appeared to have taken advantage of Yeltsin’s weakness. They preferred a strong hand, which Putin was only too happy to provide.

  He reasserted Russian control over the predominantly Muslim province of Chechnya, making no apologies for matching the brutal terrorist tactics of separatist rebels there with unrelenting military violence. He revived Soviet-style surveillance powers in the name of keeping the people safe. When democratic activists challenged Putin’s autocratic tendencies, he dismissed them as tools of the West. He resurrected pre-Communist and even Communist symbols and embraced the long-suppressed Russian Orthodox Church. Fond of showy public works projects, he pursued wildly expensive spectacles, including a bid to host the Winter Olympics in the summer resort town of Sochi. With the fastidiousness of a teenager on Instagram, he curated a constant stream of photo ops, projecting an almost satirical image of masculine vigor (Putin riding a horse with his shirt off, Putin playing hockey), all the while practicing a casual chauvinism and homophobia, and insisting that Russian values were being infected by foreign elements. Everything Putin did fed the narrative that under his firm, paternal guidance, Russia
had regained its mojo.

  There was just one problem for Putin: Russia wasn’t a superpower anymore. Despite having a nuclear arsenal second only to our own, Russia lacked the vast network of alliances and bases that allowed the United States to project its military power across the globe. Russia’s economy remained smaller than those of Italy, Canada, and Brazil, dependent almost entirely on oil, gas, mineral, and arms exports. Moscow’s high-end shopping districts testified to the country’s transformation from a creaky state-run economy to one with a growing number of billionaires, but the pinched lives of ordinary Russians spoke to how little of this new wealth trickled down. According to various international indicators, the levels of Russian corruption and inequality rivaled those in parts of the developing world, and its male life expectancy in 2009 was lower than that of Bangladesh. Few, if any, young Africans, Asians, or Latin Americans looked to Russia for inspiration in the fight to reform their societies, or felt their imaginations stirred by Russian movies or music, or dreamed of studying there, much less immigrating. Shorn of its ideological underpinnings, the once-shiny promise of workers uniting to throw off their chains, Putin’s Russia came off as insular and suspicious of outsiders—to be feared, perhaps, but not emulated.

  It was this gap between the truth of modern-day Russia and Putin’s insistence on its superpower status, I thought, that helped account for the country’s increasingly combative foreign relations. Much of the ire was directed at us: In public remarks, Putin became sharply critical of American policy. When U.S.-backed initiatives came before the U.N. Security Council, he made sure Russia blocked them or watered them down—particularly anything touching on human rights. More consequential were Putin’s escalating efforts to prevent former Soviet bloc countries, now independent, from breaking free of Russia’s orbit. Our diplomats routinely received complaints from Russia’s neighbors about instances of intimidation, economic pressure, misinformation campaigns, covert electioneering, contributions to pro-Russian political candidates, or outright bribery. In the case of Ukraine, there’d been the mysterious poisoning of Viktor Yushchenko, a reformist activist turned president whom Moscow opposed. And then, of course, there had been the invasion of Georgia during the summer of 2008.

  It was hard to know how far down this dangerous path Russia planned to go. Putin was no longer Russia’s president: Despite dominating the polls, he’d chosen to abide by Russia’s constitutional prohibition against three consecutive terms, swapping places with Dmitry Medvedev, his former deputy, who upon being elected president in 2008 had promptly installed Putin as his prime minister. The consensus among analysts was that Medvedev was merely keeping the presidential seat warm until 2012, when Putin would be eligible to run again. Still, Putin’s decision not just to step down but to promote a younger man with a reputation for relatively liberal, pro-Western views suggested he at least cared about appearances. It even offered the possibility that Putin would eventually leave elective office and settle into the role of power broker and elder statesman, allowing a new generation of leadership to put Russia back on the path toward a modern, lawful democracy.

  All that was possible—but not likely. Since the time of the czars, historians had noted Russia’s tendency to adopt with much fanfare the latest European ideas—whether representative government or modern bureaucracy, free markets or state socialism—only to subordinate or abandon such imported notions in favor of older, harsher ways of maintaining the social order. In the battle for Russia’s identity, fear and fatalism usually beat out hope and change. It was an understandable response to a thousand-year history of Mongol invasions, byzantine intrigues, great famines, pervasive serfdom, unbridled tyranny, countless insurrections, bloody revolutions, crippling wars, years-long sieges, and millions upon millions slaughtered—all on a frigid landscape that forgave nothing.

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  IN JULY, I flew to Moscow for my first official visit to Russia as president, accepting the invitation Medvedev had extended at the G20 meeting in April. My thought was that we could continue with our proposed “reset”—focusing on areas of common interest while acknowledging and managing our significant differences. School was out for the summer, which meant that Michelle, Malia, and Sasha could join me. And under the pretext of needing help with the girls (and with the promise of a tour of the Vatican and an audience with the pope when we continued on to Italy for a G8 summit), Michelle convinced my mother-in-law and our close friend Mama Kaye to come along as well.

  Our daughters had always been great travelers, cheerfully enduring our annual nine-hour round-trip commercial flights between Chicago and Hawaii, never whining or throwing tantrums or kicking the seats in front of them, instead engrossing themselves in the games, puzzles, and books that Michelle doled out with military precision at regular intervals. Flying on Air Force One was a definite upgrade for them, with a choice of in-flight movies, actual beds to sleep in, and a flight crew plying them with all kinds of snacks. But still, traveling overseas with the president of the United States presented a new set of challenges. They got woken up just a few hours after falling asleep to put on new dresses and fancy shoes and have their hair combed tight so that they’d be presentable once we landed. They had to smile for photographers as we walked down the stairs, then introduce themselves to a row of gray-haired dignitaries who stood waiting on the tarmac—careful to maintain eye contact and not mumble, as their mother had taught them, and trying not to look bored as their dad engaged in meaningless chitchat before everyone climbed into the awaiting Beast. Rolling down a Moscow freeway, I asked Malia how she was holding up. She looked catatonic, her big brown eyes staring blankly at a spot over my shoulder.

  “I think,” she said, “this is the most tired I’ve ever been in my entire life.”

  A midmorning nap seemed to cure the girls’ jet lag, and there are moments of us together in Moscow that I recall as if they happened yesterday. Sasha striding beside me through the grand, red-carpeted halls of the Kremlin, followed by a set of towering uniformed Russian officers, her hands in the pockets of a tan trench coat as if she were a pint-sized secret agent. Or Malia trying to suppress a grimace after she gamely agreed to taste caviar in a rooftop restaurant overlooking Red Square. (True to form, Sasha refused the heap of slimy black stuff on my spoon, even at the risk of not getting a crack at the ice cream station later.)

  But traveling as the First Family wasn’t the same as traveling during the campaign, when we’d ride an RV from town to town and Miche and the girls would stay at my side through parades and county fairs. I now had my itinerary and they had theirs—along with their own support staff, briefings, and official photographer. At the end of our first night in Moscow, when we reunited at the Ritz-Carlton, the four of us lay on the bed and Malia asked why I hadn’t gone with them to see the Russian dancers and dollmakers. Michelle leaned over and whispered conspiratorially, “Your father’s not allowed to have fun. He has to sit in boring meetings all day.”

  “Poor Daddy,” Sasha said, patting me on the head.

  The setting for my official meeting with Medvedev was suitably impressive: one of the palaces within the Kremlin complex, its high, gilded ceilings and elaborate appointments restored to their former czarist glory. Our discussion was cordial and professional. At a joint press conference, we artfully finessed the continuing friction around Georgia and missile defense, and we had plenty of “deliverables” to announce, including an agreed-upon framework for the negotiation of the new strategic arms treaty, which would reduce each side’s allowable nuclear warheads and delivery systems by up to one-third. Gibbs was more excited by Russia’s agreement to lift restrictions on certain U.S. livestock exports, a change worth more than $1 billion to American farmers and ranchers.

  “Something folks back home actually care about,” he said with a grin.

  That evening, Michelle and I were invited to Medvedev’s dacha, a few miles outside the city ce
nter, for a private dinner. From reading Russian novels, I’d imagined a larger but still-rustic version of the traditional country home. Instead, we found ourselves on an enormous estate cloistered in a bank of tall trees. Medvedev and his wife, Svetlana—a cheerful, matronly blonde with whom Michelle and the girls had spent much of the day—greeted us at the front door, and after a brief tour, we walked out through a garden to dine in a large, wood-beamed gazebo.

  Our conversation barely touched on politics. Medvedev was fascinated by the internet and quizzed me about Silicon Valley, expressing his desire to boost Russia’s tech sector. He took a keen interest in my workout routine, describing how he swam for thirty minutes each day. We shared stories about our experiences teaching law, and he confessed his affection for hard rock bands like Deep Purple. Svetlana expressed concerns about how their thirteen-year-old son, Ilya, would manage adolescence with the added attention of being the president’s son—a challenge Michelle and I understood all too well. Medvedev speculated that the boy would eventually prefer attending university abroad.

  We bid the Medvedevs farewell shortly after dessert, taking care that the members of our team were fully loaded into the travel van before our motorcade snaked out of the compound. Gibbs and Marvin had been entertained by members of Medvedev’s team elsewhere on the property, plied with vodka shots and schnapps, putting them in a jovial mood that wouldn’t survive the next morning’s wake-up call. As Michelle fell asleep beside me in the darkness of the car, I was struck by just how ordinary the night had been—how, with the exception of the translators who’d sat discreetly behind us while we ate, we could have been attending a dinner party in any well-to-do American suburb. Medvedev and I had more than a few things in common: Both of us had studied and taught law, gone on to marry and start families a few years later, dabbled in politics, and been helped along by older, cagier politicians. It made me wonder how much the differences between us could be explained by our respective characters and dispositions, and how much was merely the result of our different circumstances. Unlike him, I had the good fortune of having been born in a nation where political success hadn’t required me to ignore billion-dollar kickbacks or the blackmailing of political opponents.