Welcome back. We are joined today byJack Matlock, the U.S. ambassador tothe Soviet Union, who contributedgreatly to negotiate an end to the ColdWar with President Reagan in the late1980s. So thank you very much for takingthe time, sir.
Glad to be with you. Thanks for havingme on.
So I'm a big fan of your books, yourwork, and of course, also your, I guess,your contribution to diplomacy andhistory. It's quite impressive. Based onyour work, though, I thought a goodplace to start would be, from yourperspective, what are the mainmisunderstandings about the end of theCold War?
I think there have been several seriousmisunderstandings among most of thecommentators. First of all, the idea thatthe Cold War ended with the breakup ofthe Soviet Union is incorrect. The ColdWar was over. ideologically andpractically at least two years before theSoviet Union broke up. And second,
the idea that there were winners andlosers in the Cold War, that somehow theUnited States and the West won andRussia lost is quite incorrect. Wenegotiated an end to the Cold War. to theinterests of both countries and everybodyelse for that matter. And that was anegotiated end without victors.
That end occurred because Gorbachevactually abandoned what had been theideology that had caused the Cold War inthe first place. and that is the communistideology, which was totally incompatiblewith our political system and ways of lifein the West. The idea was that there wasgoing to be a worldwide proletarianrevolution which
would bring about a society that first wascommunist but would becomecommunist, first with socialist but wouldbecome communist and that the statewould actually wither away of coursewhat happened in the soviet union andthe other communist countries was thatthe state got control of everything andinstead of what they called a
Jack Matlock: How NATO Expansionism Broke European Security
Jack F. Matlock, Jr, was the U.S. Ambassador to the USSR, 1987–1991, and had a key role in negotiating an end to the Cold War. Ambassador Matlock discusses misunderstandings about the Cold War, the West’s promise to Moscow that NATO would not expand, NATO expansionism undermining the pan-European security architecture, and how NATO became an offensive alliance and provoked the war in Ukraine.
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