Jack Matlock, former US Ambassador to the Soviet Union, discusses NATO expansion and the collapse of European security
Glenn Diesen interviews Jack Matlock, the US Ambassador to the Soviet Union under President Reagan, who helped negotiate the end of the Cold War.
Summary
Glenn Diesen interviews Jack Matlock, the former US Ambassador to the Soviet Union, who played a central role in negotiating the end of the Cold War under President Reagan. Matlock argues that the Cold War ended not through Western victory but through a negotiated settlement — and that the subsequent treatment of Russia as a defeated power, combined with NATO expansion eastward, directly violated the spirit of assurances given to Gorbachev and set the stage for the current conflict in Ukraine. He contends that the United States compounded this error by actively working to install a Western-oriented government in Ukraine, an intervention he compares directly to the Soviet placement of nuclear missiles in Cuba. Matlock also argues that the rise of neoconservative ideology, domestic electoral politics, and a hubristic belief in American unipolarity drove decisions that most senior Cold War diplomats — including himself — publicly warned would prove catastrophic.
Key Takeaways
FULL TRANSCRIPT
The End of the Cold War — Misunderstandings and What Actually Happened
Glenn Diesen: Welcome back. We are joined today by Jack Matlock, the US Ambassador to the Soviet Union who contributed greatly to negotiating an end to the Cold War with President Reagan in the late 1980s. Thank you very much for taking the time, sir.
Jack Matlock: Glad to be with you. Thanks for having me on.
Glenn Diesen: I'm a big fan of your books, your work, and of course your contribution to diplomacy and history — it's quite impressive. Based on your work, I thought a good place to start would be: from your perspective, what are the main misunderstandings about the end of the Cold War?
Jack Matlock: I think there have been several serious misunderstandings among most of the commentators. First of all, the idea that the Cold War ended with the breakup of the Soviet Union is incorrect. The Cold War was over ideologically and practically at least two years before the Soviet Union broke up. And second, the idea that there were winners and losers in the Cold War — that somehow the United States and the West won and Russia lost — is quite incorrect. We negotiated an end to the Cold War to the interests of both countries and everybody else for that matter. That was negotiated without victors.
That occurred because Gorbachev actually abandoned what had been the ideology that caused the Cold War in the first place — the communist ideology, which was totally incompatible with our political system and ways of life in the West. The idea was that there was going to be a worldwide proletarian revolution which would bring about a society that first was socialist but would become communist, and that the state would actually wither away. Of course, what happened in the Soviet Union and the other communist countries was that the state took control of everything, and instead of what they called a socialist system, it was for all practical purposes a condition of state monopoly capitalism. But that was being abandoned.
Now, at the same time, Gorbachev was trying to bring the Soviet Union into what you might say the European system. I remember that when we were negotiating on such issues as German unification, he would say at times — by the way — that we had assured him that if he allowed Germany to unite on the terms that West Germany had set, there would be no expansion of NATO to the east. Even earlier, when President Bush and Gorbachev met in Malta and announced the end of the Cold War officially, one of the conditions was that the Soviet Union would not use force in Eastern Europe to preserve the system there, and the United States would not take advantage of that. That was announced and in writing. As a matter of fact, that commitment President Bush reiterated in a letter to Gorbachev that I delivered when we got back from that meeting.
So the idea that the Cold War was a defeat for the Soviet Union, or that the Soviet Union broke up because of the pressure of the Western Alliance, is simply incorrect. The Soviet Union broke up because of internal pressures and probably would not have broken up if the Cold War had continued. I think those basic misunderstandings fed many of what I consider the mistakes that were made subsequently.
The Promise Not to Expand NATO — What Was Said and What Was Written
Glenn Diesen: This promise of a never-expanding NATO after German reunification often becomes a very hot topic in the media. Many politicians, academics, and journalists dispute it — they say such a promise wasn't made or it was a misunderstanding. But this was made on several occasions, wasn't it?
Jack Matlock: The promise was made. It was not incorporated in the treaties, but parts of it were. To go into a little more detail: in February 1989, when Secretary of State Baker came to Moscow, the hot topic was the question of German unification because the communist regime had been sort of overthrown in East Germany. First of all, we said the United States needed to negotiate this in what we called the two-plus-four format. Europeans and others said, "Well, what do you mean — keeping us out of it?" And we said, "Look, the core issues are between the United States and the Soviet Union. We'll coordinate what we do with our allies, but we have to initially work this out directly with the Soviet Union." The idea was that we would try to get an agreement and then refer it to our allies — the other four, which were the victors in World War II.
At the end of World War II, there were certain agreements between France, Britain, and the United States on the one hand, and the Soviet Union on the other. Some of these gave the Soviet Union rights in Germany and Eastern Europe. In order to legalize the unification of Germany, we had to have, legally, the approval of the Soviet Union.
When Baker came to Moscow in February of that year, he proposed to Gorbachev — throwing out an idea — that wouldn't it be better to have a united Germany as a member of NATO than cut loose from NATO? He began to imply that after all, we would still need to make sure that Germany does not go nuclear, that Germany does not pursue the policies it did before, and we need NATO for that.
Gorbachev answered that of course any expansion of NATO would be unacceptable. But he understood the points Baker was making and added that it had been the policy of the Soviet Union to try to exclude the United States from Europe militarily, but they now understood that some American military presence could have a stabilizing effect. So they were no longer trying to exclude the US from Europe. But then he added, "Of course, you don't really need 300,000 troops stationed in Europe to perform that."
Later, in other conversations, when the question of expansion of NATO came up, Gorbachev would say, "Well, if you do that, you're going to have to take us too." I would have to say this was in the background of both sides, in effect calling for the same end. Gorbachev began in a speech at the UN in 1988 saying that we have a common European home which should be without barriers. And on the other hand, our president and also Prime Minister Thatcher spoke of a Europe whole and free. By 1991, the world had a Europe whole and free.
Why NATO Expansion Was a Mistake — Warnings That Were Ignored
Later, in the 1990s, when a new administration began to consider expanding NATO, I testified before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee that that would eventually be a catastrophe if we started expanding NATO and continued it. I was joined in a statement by, I think, more than thirty of the senior people who had negotiated the end of the Cold War.
The reason we said that was that NATO had been conceived as a defensive alliance in order to make sure that the Soviet Union could not successfully invade Western Europe. There was a great fear that that was their intent. Indeed, if you looked at the Soviet Union and its then East European allies, they had military forces that in quantity were superior to those in the West. I might say that later, when all the documents became available, it is clear that the Soviet Union never intended to invade the West. Their policy was that if the West started a war, they would respond and try to push to the English Channel — but that was planned as a response to what they would have considered aggression from the West.
What I'm trying to say is that the idea of bringing more countries into NATO would turn it from a defensive alliance to an offensive alliance, particularly if these forces were used outside Europe. One of the arguments that people made for expansion in the 1990s was "out of area or out of business" — in other words, we had to use the NATO alliance militarily outside Europe, or else there was no point to it.
People who were not even involved testified that there was never any agreement regarding expansion. Now what I say is: whether or not there was an agreement — and certainly we were given assurances that we wouldn't expand NATO — it was a huge mistake to start expanding NATO regardless.
Another point I would make is that it was not so much Article 5 of the NATO treaty that worried the Russians. I know the Russian ambassador to Washington, whom I had dealt with many times when he was deputy foreign minister of the Soviet Union — Ulyanov — told me, sort of in the mid-1990s, "Look, we don't worry about your Article 5. We're not going to obviously attack these countries or any others. What we worry about is bases. If you put your bases in, that is going to be very worrisome to us."
And in fact, in the two-plus-four agreement, though there was no mention of NATO expansion, there was a provision that the territory of the former East Germany would not be used to base any foreign troops or any nuclear weapons. In other words, what was then accepted in the treaty was the principle against basing — and that principle was later violated as NATO expanded.
After Baker returned to Washington, he was told by the lawyers that if Germany unites, there's no way you can exclude part of it from the NATO alliance. So a lot of these issues got mixed up. And then NATO in the 1990s was used in an offensive way against Serbia. What was all but a declared war was declared against Serbia, which had not attacked any NATO member. In fact, we were extending NATO protection to others as Yugoslavia began to break up. That was one of the first things that created extreme tensions between the United States and Russia.
Russia's Role in the Soviet Collapse — Setting the Record Straight
Another point I should make is that when people talk about Russia always being aggressive, it was precisely the elected president of the Russian Federation who played the key role in bringing the Soviet Union down, and he was also a firm supporter of Baltic independence, which was declared legally before the Soviet Union broke up.
The breakup of the Soviet Union was not something the West was pressing for. As a matter of fact, although the first Bush administration was firm in supporting the restoration of independence of the three Baltic countries, we actually, for a number of rational reasons, wanted the rest of the Soviet Union to preserve a voluntary federation of the sort that Gorbachev tended to support. So the idea that we brought the Soviet Union down is absolutely the opposite of what happened — we were doing our best to support Gorbachev in negotiating a new union treaty.
To the point that when President Bush, after visiting Moscow, visited Kyiv, he spoke to the Ukrainian Parliament. He recommended them to enter Gorbachev's federation and said they should avoid suicidal nationalism. He said at the time that this was a speech meant for all the non-Russian Soviet republics, not just Ukraine. When he spoke of suicidal nationalism, he was thinking of what was going on in Georgia at that time.
But it was clear that we did not want the Soviet Union to break up at that time. Events got ahead of things, and by certainly November it was clear that it was probably going to break up. So obviously, after December 25th, when Yeltsin sort of took over in Russia and with the cooperation of others the Soviet Union dissolved, we immediately proposed to recognize the successors — because one of the things that worried us throughout was the proliferation of nuclear weapons.
Ukraine's Nuclear Weapons — Why Relinquishment Was the Right Decision
So one of the conditions for recognizing the independence of Ukraine and others was that they relinquished their nuclear weapons. I know this has become an issue later. Most of these weapons, by the way, were scheduled to be eliminated under arms control treaties we had with the Soviet Union. As a condition of recognizing their independence, they had to agree to abide by these agreements.
Those nuclear weapons that were in Ukraine were, first of all, never under the political control of Ukraine — practically speaking, the codes and so on were in Moscow and passed on to Yeltsin. And second, it is not at all clear that if Ukraine had kept them, they could have maintained them.
In any event, the return of those weapons to Russia, which at first was resisted by the Ukrainian Parliament, was insisted upon by the United States because we feared not that they would be used against us necessarily, but that this technology would seep out into elements that would use it. And I might add, that is still a much greater threat in the future than any government actually using them.
One of the big issues we had in the 1990s was a cooperative effort to make sure that the nuclear materials and nuclear weapons in Russia were first reduced as we had agreed earlier, and second that the materials were secured. That's one of our more successful efforts in the 1990s.
I wanted to explain that background because so many people say now, "Oh, if Ukraine just kept those weapons, Russia would not have attacked them." That was never a practical or political possibility.
Why a Common European Security Architecture Was Never Built
Glenn Diesen: I think people often forget that in the 1990s, a lot of great statesmen — George Kennan, yourself, and others — were warning against going for NATO expansion instead of pursuing a new pan-European security architecture. I was wondering: why did we fail to establish a common European home, as Gorbachev would have said, or at least a common European security architecture? We did have some agreements — the Charter of Paris for a New Europe in 1990, and the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe set up in 1994, based on these principles all essentially originating from the Helsinki Accords. Why did we fail?
Jack Matlock: I think there may have been a variety of reasons, but in fact I think we — particularly in the United States but also in other Western countries — were responding to domestic politics. In the case of the United States, we have very large numbers of voters in states like Pennsylvania and Illinois from Eastern Europe. They were determined to get these countries into NATO because they traditionally looked at Russia as a threat.
That was one thing. I know that when I testified against NATO expansion during that period, some of the people came up to me and said, "Look, be practical — the president needs those electoral votes. Pennsylvania and Illinois are swing states and all those East Europeans are demanding we go into NATO." So in the case of the United States, it was largely — not entirely — a matter of internal politics.
But second, you had the growing influence of what we call the neoconservatives — the neocons — those whom both Reagan and Bush had sidelined. At that time most were Republicans. Both Reagan and Bush were able to sort of sideline and ignore their advice. They had advised against most of our arms control negotiations. They wanted to continue to use force and to bring down the system — they were thinking of regime change. Which, by the way, was something that neither President Reagan nor the first President Bush thought of. They did not think they were trying to bring down the Soviet Union. Reagan's idea was: communism is a crazy idea, but if that's what the Soviets want, that's their business. What we object to is their forcing it on other people.
Suddenly you had a philosophy being expressed that the United States had won the Cold War, that it was now the sole superpower, and that therefore it could determine the future of other countries. There had been two superpowers that ran the world and now there was only one — what they called a unipolar world.
Now there are several things wrong with that. First of all, yes, the United States had much more power, both militarily and in terms of economics, than any other country. But military power is power to destroy, not power to build. And the economic system is one which could be responsibly managed to the benefit of everybody, or by the more powerful states turned into a weapon.
To my sorrow, I said beginning in the 1990s the United States started to do both — to sanction other countries for things that really had nothing to do with the United States but what we considered their behavior internally. And second, by expanding NATO and then beginning in the 21st century to put bases there, we were basically violating the whole spirit of what we should have been building.
Why we didn't build a common security architecture — obviously we should have been building a European security structure, in fact a world security structure that included everybody. What strikes me is that after the Second World War we were wise to insist that France and Germany, who had been antagonists for so long, bury the hatchet and start cooperating. We were great inspirers and pushers for what later became the common market. But after the end of the Cold War and the breakup of the Soviet Union, instead of bringing Russia and the East European countries into a unified security structure, we began actually to treat Russia as a pariah in many ways.
American Hubris and the Ideology of Unipolarity
And that spirit, I think, was expressed by Secretary of State Madeleine Albright — our first woman Secretary of State — when, in justifying the war against Serbia, she said, "America stands strong and can see the future." I think that was absolutely incredible hubris.
And I would note, by the way, for those who say we need more women in high politics — yes, we should have our leaders, whether they are male or female, on the basis of their merits. But all three of our women secretaries of state have been warmongers. Let's face it. So one's sex or gender doesn't necessarily determine one's political opinions or abilities in certain respects.
Glenn Diesen: Yeah, it often cuts a hole in the assumption that women would be more peaceful leaders than men. I think we're all pretty flawed in this regard. But I also see that the prospect of a hegemonic peace — peace through dominance or strength — was very appealing, which contributed to dismantling the work that had been done for a pan-European security architecture. But beyond creating a Europe without the Russians, which unavoidably became a bit of a Europe against the Russians organized around the EU and NATO — what other mistakes do you see in terms of how we could have managed this relationship with Russia? Because it is interesting: when everyone reads the memoirs of, for example, former CIA director Robert Gates, or yourself, or many others, they all recognize that relations were mismanaged and that we are now paying some of the consequences. What do you consider to be the main mistakes made thereafter?
Military Bases, Anti-Ballistic Missiles, and the Road to Ukraine
Jack Matlock: As we continued to expand NATO, we not only began to expand the alliance itself, but in the first decade of this century we began putting military bases there. The most sensitive of those, as far as Russia was concerned, was the establishment of anti-ballistic missiles in Romania and Poland. Now these missiles — and most people didn't understand this at the time — could be used either offensively or defensively depending upon the software. So it is easy to understand that Putin, the Russian president, would find this threatening. He made it very clear in a speech in Munich in 2007 how he considered the expansion of NATO and particularly the plans to place bases there — bases that could practically be used to attack Russia.
And yet we went ahead with this. Then later, particularly during the Obama administration, we purposely tried to bring about a Western-oriented government in Ukraine. This is something that anyone who knows history should have known was totally unacceptable to any government in Moscow — just as any expansion of any outside power into the Western Hemisphere was considered virtually a casus belli by the United States.
And yet we continued to do that. I think this is one of the big issues that weighed upon Putin's mind, and he warned against it publicly. But later we went ahead, and at one point our representatives were bragging that they had spent billions trying to determine the government of Ukraine. So when a coup d'état occurred there, I think Russia had every reason — and certainly President Putin — to feel that this had been fueled by the United States and its West European allies, because they had representatives openly trying to promote specific candidates in Ukraine, which in fact became in control of Ukraine in 2014.
The Cuban Missile Crisis as a Mirror for Ukraine
This is a very complicated situation. Not only did the US and the West European allies try to determine the internal politics of Ukraine so that it would in effect be hostile to Russia — something that certainly the United States would have reacted very forcefully to if it had happened to us. I can bear witness to that because I was in Moscow in 1961 during what we call the Cuban Missile Crisis.
Let's recall what that was all about. The United States had attempted to invade Cuba unsuccessfully, and Cuba had asked the Soviet Union to supply nuclear weapons. Under traditional international law, that was not a violation of international law — particularly since the United States had nuclear weapons poised in Turkey and also Italy that could reach the Soviet Union. This was before either of us had intercontinental missiles; these were intermediate-range weapons of course.
President Kennedy considered this totally unacceptable and ordered a quarantine of Cuba. We came very close to a nuclear exchange. I was sitting in Moscow then, translating some of Khrushchev's comments. Finally, Khrushchev backed down and agreed to take those weapons out. In effect, Kennedy declared victory, although he had agreed that we would remove the missiles in Turkey — but that could not be publicized. In other words, he forced Khrushchev to make it look as if he had backed down when in fact there was a deal.
Having seen that, having been through that, it was very clear to me that trying to influence the internal politics of Ukraine against the wishes of Russia was not a good idea, to put it mildly.
The 2008 NATO Declaration and the Borders Created by Hitler and Stalin
And in fact, when at the United States' insistence NATO declared that someday Ukraine and Georgia would be members — this was in 2008 — it was clear to me that this was going to create very great difficulties. At that time, polls showed that two-thirds of Ukrainians did not want to be in NATO. The country was increasingly divided, and increasingly the politics were pushed by those in western Ukraine — the areas that traditionally had never been part of Russia but had been in the Austro-Hungarian Empire and then in Poland.
And I might say that the current borders of Ukraine, which the current government is trying to recover, were borders created by Hitler and Stalin. So in effect, the Ukrainians and the West Europeans who are supporting this are ironically trying to enforce something created by Hitler and Stalin. Think about that, and think about how that resonates with Russians.
The issues there are very deep and I think increasingly tragic. Both countries, I think, have followed policies which are not in the interest of their people. It's difficult to see how this is going to be resolved. But when we look at the causes, the attempts of the United States and its West European allies to control an area which is absolutely vital to the security of Russia was, I think, an important causative factor. We have reached a point now that is very difficult to see how it's going to be resolved so that it doesn't negatively affect all of us.
The Current Political Leadership — A Collapse of Diplomacy
Glenn Diesen: Well, in terms of ending the Cold War, we see that diplomacy was very important and we were, I would say, blessed with having some good statesmen at that point in time. But how do you make sense of the current political leadership across the West — both the US and Europe — compared to the diplomacy which helped bring an end to the Cold War? When I look at people today — Merz in Germany, the rhetoric there, Macron in France, Starmer in the UK, all three of them talking now about war with Russia — or Trump in the United States, who is hardly a benign leader himself — how do you make sense of the fact that we don't seem to have diplomacy anymore? None of our political leaders or even journalists seem to want to discuss the security concerns and interests of our opponents — not just the Russians but all opponents. How do you make sense of the current political leadership?
Jack Matlock: I can't make sense of it. I can only say that previous norms of diplomacy have simply been abandoned. We talk about democracy — and democracy can mean several things. For one thing, it can be a process by which the citizens of a given country determine its government. That's a process. Or you can begin to put labels on countries — some are democratic and some are not. I think the labeling can be quite false.
The United States is not in the final sense a total democracy. We are a republic — and a republic which, by any current analysis, is run by an oligarchy. An oligarchy which is divided, and yet one in which the majority of the people do not decide our policies. I think that has happened also to some degree in other countries.
But the idea that somehow there is a division between democracies and non-democracies, and that it is the duty of the United States to spread democracy even if it means changing governments — I think that was very similar to the idea the Soviet Union had until Gorbachev: that it was the vanguard of the proletariat and had to support what they called proletarian revolution throughout the world, because socialism in their definition and communism was the future of the world. In effect, with just a few changes, we tended to try the same thing.
Now we used very high-flown language. We said that human rights are very important and we need to enforce them. The problem with that is, first of all, it's a misnomer. What we really should be talking about is civil rights. I think that human beings do not enter the world with rights — in fact, they're totally dependent upon other people, as every other mammal is. Every great civilization defines its own values and rights, and one needs to understand that. An attempt on those grounds to interfere in other countries is going to create great difficulties.
The idea — expressed first by the scholar Fukuyama — that the end of the Cold War meant that the West and democracy was the future of the world, and that it was the duty of the democratic countries to spread it to others, was a fundamentally mistaken idea. Not that what we call human rights are not valuable things, but to consider that anybody who doesn't agree with you on that is somehow at fault gets it all wrong. Civilizations have risen and fallen throughout the last few millennia of human history, and to think that there is one formula that fits everybody is simply fundamentally incorrect.
The Destruction of Nord Stream and the Tragedy of European Policy
The idea that the United States and the West survived the Cold War in better economic shape than others, and that once they adopt our system we find the West actually sanctioning Russia economically instead of keeping them in the one world economic system that was created after the end of the Cold War — I think that feeling of righteousness when we shouldn't have it has undermined the ability of straight thinking.
Right now I cannot understand how any German government could tolerate the destruction of the Nord Stream pipeline. After all, Germany is not going to be competitive in many ways because of the high cost of energy. I would say that is a misapplication of policy toward Ukraine. And the idea of the West Europeans that Ukraine is a democratic society simply struggling — Ukraine is one of the least democratic countries in the world. It has a government that was achieved by a minority and it is one of the most corrupt. Now it is not that the Ukrainians are bad — they're wonderful people. I happen to be one who knows both Russian and Ukrainian; I got my PhD in Slavic languages. It is tragic the way the West European countries and the United States have been pushing for something which is not in Ukraine's interest.
The Minsk Agreements — Violated Before the Ink Was Dry
Without going into all the details, I'll say one thing: when the agreement was made in Minsk in 2015, in effect Russia at that time — though it had taken Crimea, where the majority of people clearly preferred to be in Russia — President Putin refused any attempt to bring the Donbas into Russia, but said that Ukraine must return to what it had originally had: recognizing the Russian language as having political validity, and granting amnesty. But France and Germany, which were parties to that agreement, continued to militarily supply Ukraine with forces that were attacking the east.
So one can say one of the reasons Russia opposes a ceasefire now is that they had one before, and not only Ukraine but also Britain and France — parties to that agreement — violated it because they were supplying military weapons. And later, of course, the former German chancellor said that they signed that just to give Ukraine a chance to build up its military to take back the territory.
The Pattern of Western Military Interventions
I think it is tragic, and I think that President Putin made a horrible mistake when he invaded Ukraine. I am not one who justifies that. But I have to recognize that my own country and NATO illegally attacked Serbia over something in which Serbia had not attacked any NATO country. And then the United States, with some but not all of the NATO allies, attacked Iraq on fabricated grounds that they had nuclear weapons — when they didn't. We completely occupied the country. Hundreds of thousands of people were probably killed, and it stimulated a revival of extreme Islamic groups.
Don't we understand that the United States and some of its NATO allies — and then later we had the case of Libya — yes, Gaddafi was a tyrant in many respects, no question about that. And there was a UN Security Council determination that we should protect the opponents of Gaddafi in Benghazi. But that was expanded to a war that ended in the assassination of Gaddafi, just as the war in Iraq had ended in the assassination of Saddam Hussein. Now these were certainly bad actors in many ways, but wasn't it the responsibility of outsiders — particularly when dealing with them in a way that brought about internal conditions that were worse for everybody there?
There was a certain hubris and a feeling that we can do things that others can't. And maybe physically there was also the idea that by use of force you could topple a government and get something better. It doesn't happen.
The Danger of Regime Change in Russia
And one of the great dangers now, when people talk about needing regime change in Russia, is that if President Putin is removed by force, you are probably going to get something even worse — because there are forces there that are already arguing that Russia has to use its nuclear forces to defend itself. When the West Europeans start sending weapons to Ukraine that are used to attack Russia, former President Medvedev has already said that we will consider any of the factors that make these weapons legitimate targets.
I'm not saying that this is a good policy or not. I'm just saying you have to look at the realities. And why Germany would be involved again in arming rebels in any area that was once part of the Soviet Union — I think is almost inconceivable, and I can't understand why the current government is doing it.
China's Rising Influence and the West's Strategic Failure
But I can see it in a broader context. Right now, I think both in economic ways and politically, China is profiting greatly from all of this — because to most of the world, they seem to be the only great power right now that is asking for peace and tending to support it. I think it is really a catastrophe that we in the West, through our own hubris and misunderstanding of the situation, are in effect conceding leadership in many of these areas to China. Certainly they're doing a better job of developing alternative energies, and they're increasingly doing a better job of engineering and producing things like electric cars.
So how we continue to think of wars and use of the military to change things — it seems to me that is not very rational. In saying so, I'm not endorsing the Chinese government or the things they do internally. I think that's something only the Chinese can change if it needs changing. But the hubris that somehow we in the West possess superiority over others, which seems to lie behind some of this, I think is deplorable, and I hope it will change.
A Final Word — The Pope, the Middle East, and the Need for Peace
Let me also say that we haven't mentioned the Near East, and that of course is one that is dominating many things right now. All I can say is that I think the recent exchanges between Pope Leo and the President of the United States show that for once we have a Pope who is calling it like it is. There were churches during the Second World War — Pope Pius did not condemn what was going on. I'm not a Catholic, but right now I do think that our American Pope, the first, is telling the world something it needs to hear.
Glenn Diesen: Very much agree. And that's one of the great tragedies as well — that no one is speaking about peace anymore. One is currently engaged in this war with Iran, also war with Russia, people are talking about a possible war with China. At least Europeans and leaders have sat by for four years while hundreds of thousands of people have been dying in Ukraine and they didn't even pick up a phone to discuss the security architecture or some way to mitigate the security competition with the Russians. It's quite appalling — grotesque, really. But hopefully we'll be turning a corner. Ambassador, thank you so much for taking the time. I very much appreciate it.
Jack Matlock: Thank you for having me on and for listening.