Legendary Ambassador Delivers Some Straight Talk in DC

[newthinking]

Legendary Ambassador Delivers Some Straight Talk in DC

Jack Matlock makes the case for the United States reaching a practical compromise with Russia.
James Carden
February 17, 2015

The Nation


Former U.S. Ambassador to Russia Jack Matlock (AP Photo/Alexander Zemlianichenko)

Just as the Beltway’s legions of neo–Cold Warriors were working themselves up into paroxysms of self-righteous indignation over the Obama administration’s refusal to (so far, anyway) arm America’s purported “allies” in Kiev, one of the Cold War’s wise men reappeared in Washington last week.

At a gathering sponsored by the Committee for the Republic, which was formed by an elite group of former Washington officials in response to George W. Bush’s foreign policy adventurism, Jack Matlock spoke for nearly an hour at the National Press Club urging the assembled not to fall prey to the Manichaeistic view of the current crisis in relations between the United States and Russia.

Matlock, 85, knows of what he speaks. He began his thirty-five-year career in the Foreign Service translating dispatches between Washington and Moscow at the height of the Cuban missile crisis. He was present at nearly every US-Soviet summit between 1972–91 and served as US ambassador to Russia under Presidents Ronald Reagan and George HW Bush from 1987–91.

Given his pivotal role in helping to end the four-decade Cold War, Matlock brings the long view so sorely missing from the current debate over Russia policy in Washington. For him Washington’s “group-think” on Russia is “difficult to comprehend.” He told the committee’s rapt, well-heeled audience of former office holders, political appointees and former spooks that as recently as a year ago he dismissed talk of a “new Cold War” as “silly”; after all, that was a worldwide ideological contest between two relatively equal military superpowers. Yet over the past year, Matlock told the group, he has had occasion to revise his view, especially in light of the debate currently being waged in Washington over whether to arm the regime in Kiev.

Continued:
http://www.thenation.com/article/198289/legendary-ambassador-delivers-some-straight-talk-dc

[tblue37]

1. KnR. nt

[mazzarro]

2. Hear, hear! A word to the wise... n/t

[another_liberal]

3. Good to hear from someone who is pre-Victoria Nuland in point of view . . .

Matlock understands the unjustifiable dangers inherent in her husband's call for a "Second American Century."