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Ever more antiwar voices are clamoring for a Stop Hillary Clinton movement in the Democratic primaries – and with very good reason. There are many alarming, indeed frightening, indictments of her tenures as one-half president in the 90s and then as Senator and Secretary of State. Her estranged relationship with truth, her callousness toward human life and her love for every imperial military adventure and regime change scheme are beyond worrisome. They are downright scary.
But the most damning indictment yet of the Clintons on the world stage comes in the book Superpower Illusions by former Ambassador to the USSR, Jack Matlock. The book came out way back in 2009, but it is worth examining again as we confront the possibility of a return to Clintonism. And Matlock is a man who knows whereof he speaks. Wikipedia gives a summary of his career thus:
Jack Foust Matlock, Jr. (born October 1, 1929) is a former American ambassador, career Foreign Service Officer, a teacher, a historian, and a linguist. He was a specialist in Soviet affairs during some of the most tumultuous years of the Cold War, and served as U.S. Ambassador to the Soviet Union from 1987 to 1991.
After (graduate) studies at Columbia University…, (Matlock) entered the Foreign Service in 1956. His 35 year career encompassed much of the Cold War … His first assignment to Moscow was in 1961, and it was from the embassy there that he experienced the 1962 Cuban Missile Crisis, helping to translate diplomatic messages between the leaders.
At the beginning of détente, he was Director of Soviet Affairs in the State Department, ..(attended) all but one of the U.S. – Soviet summits held in the 20 year period 1972-91. Matlock was back in Moscow in 1974, serving in the number two position in the embassy for four years (including time under President Jimmy Carter, jw). Matlock was assigned to Moscow again in 1981 as acting ambassador during the first part of Ronald Reagan’s presidency. Reagan appointed him as ambassador to Czechoslovakia and later asked him to return to Washington in 1983 to work at the National Security Council, with the assignment to develop a negotiating strategy to end the arms race. When Mikhail Gorbachev became the leader of the Soviet Union in 1985, arms negotiations and summit meetings resumed. Matlock was appointed ambassador to the Soviet Union in 1987 and saw the last years of the Soviet Union before he retired from the Foreign Service in 1991.
There is no doubt that Matlock knew what was going on during this period, and he saw considerable promise for a peaceful, secure future at the end of the Bush I presidency. So when he forcefully condemns the Clintons for a disastrous turn in U.S. policy, he is a voice that must be heeded. The original sin of the era stains the Clintons, and they spawned their own inevitable Cain in the form of W.
Being a diplomat, Mattlock speaks diplomatically of the colossal, damaging shift in U.S. -Russia relations under the Clintons who reversed the approach of Reagan and Bush I. He gets to the point right away in the preface to Superpower Illusions:
“The Clinton administration’s decision to expand NATO to the East rather than draw Russia into a cooperative arrangement to ensure European security undermined the prospects of democracy in Russia, made it more difficult to keep peace in the Balkans and slowed the process of nuclear disarmament started by Presidents Reagan and Gorbachev.”
That is a severely damaging condemnation of the Clintons, one of historic dimensions, as we see now as events unfold in Ukraine, with one of Hillary’s protégés, her State Department spokeswoman, Victoria Nuland, very much in charge of the U.S. intervention there. Matlock was so appalled by the Clintons that he changed his political affiliation:
“After I retired from the Foreign Service, I left the Democratic Party early in the Clinton presidency. I felt that President Clinton… lacked both the vision and the competence to take advantage of the opportunity the end of the Cold War and the breakup of the Soviet Union provided. That opportunity was nothing less than a chance to create a world in which security tasks could be shared, weapons of mass destruction reduced rapidly and barriers to nuclear proliferation raised.”
Matlock is appalled that President Clinton lacked both the vision and the competence to proceed on a peaceful task. What else is there? Of course he should have said Presidents Clinton since, as Bill always reminded us, he and Hillary shared the task – “two for one,” as he put it, or Billary or Hillbillary as the alternative media labels the duo.
Matlock does not let Bush II off the hook. He is no apologist for the GOP hawks. He sees “W” as continuing and deepening the folly of the Clintons, writing:
“In its sixteen years under Bill Clinton and George W. Bush, America went from being the most admired country on the planet in many opinion polls to the most feared…..The majority of the people in many countries considered the United States the most dangerous country in the world. Nobody likes a bully….”
If anyone comes across as a hectoring bully in her public statements, it is surely Hillary. There are plenty of pundits, mostly of the Democrat or “progressive” persuasion, out there who are all too willing to blame Bush II for all this– even unto FOX’s Megyn Kelly. But in fact the latest bad turn in American imperial policies began with the Clintons.
Matlock also reminds us that it was the Clintons who began NATO’s war on the Balkans, the precedent for other “humanitarian” interventions, including Libya and Syria. This too was a sharp break with Reagan/Bush I as Matlock notes:
“Bush and Baker also injected caution in extending American involvement in disputes that were not directly relevant to American security. As tensions rose among Yugoslavia’s constituent republics, they tried to keep the United States aloof and leave the primary responsibility to America’s European allies. Regarding the growing conflict in Yugoslavia, Baker was quoted as saying, ‘We don’t have a dog in that fight.’”
But there is no fight for which Hillary lacks a dog, and almost always it is a dog of war. The war in the Balkans so engaged her that she declared that she came under fire while visiting there to cheer on the effort. The claim of bullets whizzing by her head turned out to be little more than another in the fabric of mistruths woven by this “congenital liar,” as the late William Safire, a master and connoisseur of the trade of deception himself, labeled her.
On locations 3236 to 6276 of the Kindle edition of Superpower Illusions, Matlock makes his case against the Clintons. Here are some of his words:
“For all of its initial talk about a ‘partnership for reform,’ the Clinton administration dealt with Russia as if it no longer counted, even in European politics. Two decisions in particular turned Russian public opinion during the years of the Clinton administration from strongly pro-American to vigorous opposition to American policies abroad. The first was the decision to extend the NATO military structure into countries that had previously been members of the Warsaw Pact – something Gorbachev had understood would not happen if he allowed a united Germany to remain in NATO. The second was the decision to bomb Serbia without authorization from the United Nations Security Council. “ (A similar contempt for the UN showed up when Obama and Hillary won approval for a no fly zone over Gaddafi’s Libya to the UN Security Council in 2011 by getting China and Russia not to veto it – and then turned it into a bombing campaign, in violation of promises to Russia and China, something Putin labeled as the last straw in terms of trusting the U.S. – jw)
“There was no need to expand NATO to ensure the security of the newly independent countries of Eastern Europe. There were other ways those countries could have been reassured and protected without seeming to re-divide Europe to Russia’s disadvantage. As for the bombing of Serbia (another favorite project of Hillary’s, jw), if NATO had not been enlarged in the manner that occurred, Russia’s government would been much more willing to put pressure on Slobodan Milosevic to come to terms with the Kosovars and – if unsuccessful in this effort – more willing to vote in the United Nations to authorize military intervention…….Clinton’s actions severely damaged the credibility of democratic leaders in Russia who appealed for a more considerate attitude toward Russian national interests.”
“Combined with claiming “victory” in the Cold War (Something the Clintons did but Reagan had not done! jw) expanding NATO suggested to the Russian public that throwing off communism and breaking up the Soviet Union had probably been a bad idea. Instead of getting credit for voluntarily joining the West, they were being treated as if they had been defeated and were not worthy to be allies.”
“The Clinton administration was deaf to these appeals as well as those of George Kennan the author of the successful containment policy, who warned that enlarging NATO in the proposed manner would be the ‘most fateful error of American policy in the entire post-cold-war era.’ He then explained why: ‘Such a decision may be expected to … restore the atmosphere of the cold war in East-West relations and to impel Russian foreign policy in directions decidedly not to our liking. And last but not least it may make it much more difficult, if not impossible, to secure the Russian Duma’s ratification of the START II agreement and to achieve further reductions of nuclear weapons’’
Thus, the Clintons turned the United States in a very confrontational direction, something that is a hallmark of Hillary’s views to this day. Again Matlock:
“The Clinton administration, without any provocation, in effect repeated a fundamental mistake made at Versailles in 1919. … The Clinton administration practically ensured that … Russia would lose its incentive to reduce nuclear weapons….My point is that the United States should have made every effort to bring the European states, West and East, and including Russia into a new security arrangement…..”
Matlock concludes this section:
“The Clinton administration’s action in bombing Serbia without U.N. approval not only enraged Russia and made close cooperation on nuclear issues more difficult, but it also sent a message to other countries with policies or practices that met American disapproval: Better get nuclear weapons as fast as you can! Otherwise, you can become a target for the U.S. Air Force.”
I would disagree with one point Matlock makes. He feels that the Clintons made the mistakes they did out of domestic political concerns, specifically to get the votes of Poles and others of Eastern European extraction who harbored considerable resentment against the Soviet Union and hence Russia. But the Clintons pursued these policies deep into his second administration right up to the 2000 election of W.
Moreover, Hillary espoused these policies consistently in her 2008 primary battle with Obama who defeated her, largely by presenting himself in contrast to her as the candidate of Peace. And she continued to espouse these hawkish policies right up to last week where she told the Wall Street Journal that she will be a more warlike president than Obama, saying that she would have sent more arms to the “moderate” Syrian rebels long ago – in contrast to Obama. (Of course the “moderate” Syrian rebels have the same base in reality as the Seven Dwarfs. They are a fairy tale.)
From watching the Clintons in the White House for eight years and from Hillary’s hawkish record as Senator and Secretary of State, there can be little doubt that her views are heartfelt. She remains a lethal admixture of neocon and humanitarian imperialist views, an American Exceptionalist, giddy with American military power, arrogantly confident that “our values” are universal and determined that no other power, however peaceful, will achieve the military or economic might to stand up to the U.S. As China rises, peacefully so far, consistent with its history and culture, and as Russia and Iran gain strength, her views could plunge us into a World War. She is far too shallow, arrogant and bellicose to be President at a time when new thinking and considerable wisdom is needed.
John V. Walsh also writes for Antiwar.com, DissidentVoice.org and CounterPunch.com. By day until recently he slaved over a hot oscilloscope attempting to tease out the secret of cellular neuronal function. He can be reached at [email protected]
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John is right, the beginning of Russia’s awakening from the propaganda induced stupor (“we all want to live like people in the Western TV shows”) was the bombing of Serbia in 1999. The final wake up call came in the form of the bombing of Libya. It is just another irony that it was Hillary who recently called Putin a Hitler, whilst Putin was brought to power by Hillbillary. It is quite possible that without Clintons there would have been no Putin: action and reaction.
Yet, I am not against Hillary becoming a US president. This is because I am not in favor of the US in its present form. Hillary substitutes intelligence with bellicosity and such ‘leaders’ are usually on the losing side, especially against someone like Putin who will ride circles around her and make her look even more stupid that she really is. I am sure that Hillary will dissipate the US global power even further.
Hillary reminds me very much of Leonid Brezhnev. This ‘leader’of USSR was similarly unintelligent but very versed in phraseology. To me, Brezhnev was an early warning of how sick USSR was, Gorbachev was the undertaker. Thus, George W and Hillbillary are signalling the same for the US empire.
Many smart people in the US know that their country is not on the right path. They know that all regulatory and feedback mechanisms in their society, the purpose of which is self-correction have been destroyed. The US business is a jungle, in the name of ‘freedom’ all laws have been ‘de-regulated’, retail banks and investment banks can be the same, pensions are a fair game for the greedy CEOs etc. Yet, these smart people cannot do anything about it because the US socio-political system is osseous. If Hillary wins presidency at her second attempt, then I for one will not be disappointed.
I’m still trying to figure out what this author is yammering on about. The “lesson of Versailles” was missed? What “lesson” is being talked about here? Since there were about a bazillion lessons to be learned, which is being referenced? Some lesson about Russia? About nuclear weapons? Russia wasn’t part of the Versailles Treaty, as Russia had made a separate peace with Germany the year before. There were two big lessons that nobody has, as yet, learned: #1 Don’t blame Germany for WWI when it was obviously a group effort, #2 Do not, ever, under any circumstance, trust America or Americans to do what is right, moral, or even decent – let alone what they said they would do. The Germans hung their hopes for a peaceful post-war world on Woodrow Wilson, an academic from America who was so totally over his head and out of his element and completely devoid of any sense of Europe or European history, that the only assurance garnered from the Treaty was WWII.
This is one of those articles that after you read it, you will know less than you did before you read it. Hillary Clinton should not be president because she is another Woodrow Wilson, i.e. so in love with herself that she sees everything in the universe as an either for Hillary or against human civilization. And that attitude mimics every religious zealot ever.
@Kiza – I applaud your logic, but beware. I took the same attitude toward John McCain in ’08 “No problem, he’ll weaken the empire much faster than Obama!” Turns out it probably wouldn’t have made much difference. As our forefathers intended, no American can know until after election day which of the candidate, these “best 0f the best” will do the most damage. All have so much potential. It makes me get all weepy just thinking about it…
I think it’s now moot given that a Malaysian airliner has been shot down over Eastern Ukraine. This is going to give the Obama admin the political leverage needed to escalate the conflict in the near term. I would wager we will be seeing American military advisers and equipment flowing into Ukraine shortly and then Russia will in turn escalate.
http://news.sky.com/story/1302864/malaysian-plane-shot-down-with-295-on-board
When it came to foreign policy the Clintons were country bumpkins – the real question is, who had their ear? Who was manipulating them? Who was pumping them with this divisiveness towards Russia, killing a real chance for a peaceful world?
Was it the Israeli lobby – just as is going on today with Obama?
Today Obama is asking for more sanctions against Russia – and the new leader of the Ukraine is Jewish – DA!
p.s. Today an innocent plane was shot out of the sky – for what – for who?
p.s. The cost to the world for all this is staggering.
Well, let us all hope (and pray) that “rod1963” is incorrect.
Sadly, he probably is not.
I don’t have much to say (other than to note that I understand the worse-is-better sympathies of some of the other commenters here, although I’m not certain I agree with them…will you gentlemen be casting your ballot in favor of Hillarious Rotten Klinton in 2016, or is this all just a LARP on your parts?), but this is a great article, and I just wanted to encourage you to keep up the good work.
@Sarayakat
I fully agree with you – there is a component of chance in politics. Also, the Western political system is quite sophisticated and Presidents do not decide as much as most ordinary citizens think. It is the one hundred people around the President who decide, and even more the big campaign donors and corporations. Totally right you are that McCain is the GOP equivalent of Hillbillary. I did not include Obama in the US decline because he is a sleazy, lying politician but he is not as stupid to indicate decline. I pity people who believed Obama’s drivel about “change”, but he is the best liar the US could elect. It is when you ask yourself – how could a person like this get where to he/she is, and the question keeps repeating with the next leader, this is when an empire has a problem. Therefore, electing Hillary would be a symptom of US continuing decline more than a cause.
Regarding the downing of the Malaysian airliner, a sincerely feel sorry for the victims, I could have been on that plane myself. But the crazed, pumped-up screams emanating from the Western political class are entertaining. I reside in Australia and the Prime Minister here has “gone off his rocker”. He is blaming the Russians as if he was personally sitting in front of the radar which observed who launched the missile, but his tone of voice is both entertaining and scary – he is stark raving crazy/mad. Yes, Tony Abbot is the Australian Hillbillary (a benchmark of stupidity) and this signals that the decline is Anglo-sphere wide, not US only. And this is his second time regarding Ukraine, the first crazy outburst did not teach him self-control. How could a person like this get to where he is?
The author of this post completely misses the mark. I suppose the left, when they blamed Bush all those years, think it is fair game to go after the Clintons. Ah, the juvenile blame game among partisans!
After the Cold War ended, Russian efforts to mimic the West in terms of its political and financial systems were gradual. Citizens here became restless with the “gold rush” mentality of the new corporate class, led by Putin!, to cash in on opportunities to strike it rich. Throwing them the proverbial bone, Putin smartly began the chant of “Russia, Russia, Russia”, striking a chord among the people who want to remember when they were a superpower challenging American power in the world, keeping the “peasants” occupied with nationalistic fervor while Putin and his henchmen plunder the “mother country”.
Magnificent piece. Quoted, quibcagged, and linked here:
Hillary and War
What are you on about?
Boris Yeltsin courageously stopped a Communist Putsch (climbing on tanks and all that – http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1991_Soviet_coup_d%27%C3%A9tat_attempt), then led the Good Ship Russia from the port of economic stagnation and decrepitude into the Sea of Kleptocracy. Large parts of the economy (completely unaccastumed to any economic or rational thinking) were up for easy pickings by local political players and mafiosi as well as by finanicial vultures bred to high virulence in the crony-capitalist west. Containers of cash were shipped in from “the west”, serial bailouts occurred, zombie banks arose. It was great. Boris increasingly yielded to the call of the bottle, then f*cked up good in Chechnia (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chechnya#First_Chechen_War) and went for world leadership in unpopularity until he struck a deal with his prime minister: be left alone about shady deals if exchange for handing over power.
Putin’s show began after all that had transpired. It begins with the murky bombing of residences in Moscow…
You cannot out-Clinton Clinton (neither out-Guardian the Guardian):
http://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/jul/18/mh17-hillary-clinton-says-russian-backed-rebels-likely-shot-down-plane
A series of remarks by Barack Obama, Joe Biden and John Kerry stopped short of directly blaming pro-Russia rebels for the missile attack on a civilian airliner that killed 298 people.
But Hillary Clinton, the former US secretary of state, was more potent in her statements, saying in a television interview that indications pointed at the Russian-backed side and action was needed to “put [Vladimir] Putin on notice that he has gone too far and we are not going to stand idly by”.
…
“And the Ukrainian government has been quick to blame it on terrorists, which is their name for the Russian insurgents. And there does seem to be some growing awareness that it probably had to be Russian insurgents.
“Now, how we determine that will require some forensics, but then if there is evidence pointing in that direction, the equipment had to have come from Russia. What more the Russians may or may not have done, we don’t know.
“Europeans have to be the ones to take the lead on this. It was a flight from Amsterdam to Kuala Lumpur over European territory. There should be outrage in European capitals.”
Yes, please excuse the lack of outrage on another continent, Madame.
Honest John, the leader of the Ukraine is Jewish, so what?
You wouldn’t be some sort of anti semite, would you?
About that innocent plane, well, you’re just going to ask the Russians about that since it’s now clear either they or their stooges shot it down. Doubtless a tragic mistake, but the whacky conspiracy theorists are already churning alternative histories.
“But in fact the latest bad turn in American imperial policies began with the Clintons.”
I completely LOATHE the Clintons, and would gladlier jump on a punja-stick than vote for Hillary. So for many years I would have accepted the above statement without question. But lately I’ve started to wonder if it all didn’t really begin with Bush/Baker. They were the ones who made the (verbal) pledge to Gorbachev not to expand NATO in exchange for his allowing the re-unification of Germany and the dissolution of the Warsaw Pact. Yes, it was Billary who first violated that pledge. But the fact that Bush and Baker now seem very coy about admitting they made that pledge at all makes me wonder if this whole ‘end of the Cold War’ thing wasn’t a ruse right from the start. Put that together with Desert Storm (first permanent bases in the Persian Gulf!) and Bush’s creepy talk of a “new world order,” and I sometimes think it really began with him. Or heck, maybe it all really began with Franklin Roosevelt…
The only “conspiracy theory” needed here is the one where European aviation authorities conspicuously failed in their [incredibly obvious] duty to shut down commercial flights over eastern Ukrainian airspace (for flights originating out of EU member states, such as The Netherlands, that is). It was almost inevitable that if they were so delinquent in their duties, that the Donetsk separatists would eventually shoot down an airliner, thus making Western intervention on behalf of the [illegitimate, criminal] junta in Kiev, a great deal more likely.
“Or heck, maybe it all really began with Franklin Roosevelt…”
Naw, it all began with James Knox Polk. Give Texas back to the Mexicans! (Sorry, Ron, but you’ll have to move to Kentucky and move in with Rand.)
It is obvious that in the US, UK, Australia and Canada there is no doubt at all that the Russians shot down this passenger plane. Almost nobody even considers the opposite possibility. What a powerful, mind-blasting propaganda machine this is. Brainwashing par excellence of intellectual Zombies (a super-mini-minority excluded).
Cutting out USUK propaganda, the online noise, the Ukrainian claims and rebel counter-claims, there are only two realistic possibilities:
1) The plane was shot-down by Russian officers in Ukraine who arrived from Russia, by a terribly stupid mistake (the rebels have no capability to operate a sophisticated high-altitude system); there is only damage to Russia from such mistake, therefore it would be only stupidity rather then intent.
2) A plane full of Europeans was routed by the Ukrainian air-traffic control over a small patch of contested land and then shot-down by Ukrainian missiles, the whole operation directed by the CIA or similar US agency in Ukraine; the motive is further EU sanctions on Russia because the US effort on this has stalled.
What is going on in Ukraine is a proxy war and both the US and Russia have their people on the ground. Either could have done this.
Therefore, depending on what your beliefs are, you can choose 1) or 2). If the EU imposes further sanctions on Russia, then the US wins regardless of who did it and why.
The chance of finding out the truth is very low, especially since the USUK propaganda machine has already “decided” Who Done It and the zombies comment accordingly.
Has anyone gone short on Malaysia Airlines before Thursday? This could be indication of a plot, similar to 911 shorting of US airlines involved. Maybe some super-secret US agency has a special “airlines” department.
What I remember from that era was the desperate search for a new enemy. People were talking about ‘the peace dividend’, in other words, what could we do in our society if we didn’t spend massive amounts of our money on the Cold War. The military-industrial complex of course wanted a new enemy to keep our money flowing to them. The Clintons came down firmly for the search for a new enemy, hyping everything from the Chinese to ‘narco-terrorists’ as the next great enemy of which we must all be so very afraid that we willingly hand over all we make to the generals to keep us safe from this horrible danger.
It was clear which side of that fight the Clinton’s were on, and it was the side of the military-industrial complex. That’s been a constant through all the adventures of Hillary and Bill and how they give away our money.
“Many smart people in the U.S. know that their country is not on
the right path. . . .” Well (smart or not!), I’m one of them. Because the U.S Government is so far off course, I even favor nullification and, yes, secession. . . .
“You wouldn’t be some sort of anti semite, would you?”
BY GOD NO.
Why would ANYONE, EVER be an “anti semite”.
Drop dead.
The Clintons are typical Yalies they learned nothing and they forgot nothing.
In addition to extending NATO east and bombing Serbia, Clinton also presided over the systematic looting of Russia’s patrimony by foreign-enabled carpetbaggers, not least among which are the infamous Marc Rich (pardoned by Clinton) and the Harvard Endowment. This third offense is at least equal in magnitude to the betrayal of NATO expansion. No wonder they came to hate us.
Jack Matlock obviously did not remember that Old Man Bush aka Bush 41 was a huge proponent of the “New World Order”. You remember, the policy where nations all lost their sovereignty and were forced to hew to a new world ethos ultimately leading to slavery under the “leadership” of the UN aka jew world order. No thanks, Jack. Read up and get back to us.