Known and Unknown (36 page)

Yet the status quo persisted in the Department; senior DoD officials were not questioning those deployments. Some combatant commanders seemed to feel they owned the forces and assets under their commands, and were loath to part with them. I started to pepper officials with what seemed to me obvious questions. Was it still wise to have large numbers of our forces in a defensive posture in western Germany to deter a tank invasion from the Soviet Union? Did we still need so many thousands of troops stationed in South Korea when the Korean people were increasingly irritated by the American troop presence, and given that Korea could well afford to do considerably more to defend its own territory? Was the enormous investment the American taxpayers were making in our military really meeting the challenges and realities of the twenty-first century or of the last century?

I also found it unwise to have large numbers of our troops stationed in countries where we needed to get approval from the host government and even in some cases from their parliaments before the president of the United States could move our forces where needed to defend the American people. It was unfair to the American taxpayer to be paying for one set of forces to defend Europe and another to defend East Asia, but then not to be able to use them elsewhere as might be required to defend our country and our interests.

I asked the policy office at the Pentagon to look at the globe afresh and to consider what our posture would be if we reconfigured it ideally, on the basis of what we might need in the future rather than for the past.
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The task involved a number of complex questions. Moving troops and their families away from bases Americans had been using for decades meant disrupting a way of life that had been created around some of these large bases—complete with American schools, shopping villages, hospitals, and restaurants. And though some of our deployments seemed outdated, the presence of our forces in Germany had been providing Europeans with a sense of comfort and security. Our presence in South Korea and Japan was a sign of American resolve to defend northeast Asia—an important sector of the globe that lived in the shadow of a burgeoning China and a reckless North Korean dictator.

I believed our troops had to do more than serve as symbols or security blankets for wealthy allied countries. We needed capable, if independent-minded, allies willing to invest in their own defenses. In large part because America was taking on much of the job for them, European defense expenditures were disturbingly low and declining as a percentage of their GDPs. In prosperous South Korea, the government had taken the unfortunate step of shrinking their own army on the assumption that we would maintain our presence and be prepared to bring in additional divisions if North Korea provoked a war.

Keeping in mind our new national security strategy, with its emphasis on the unanticipated, I knew we could no longer assume that we could predict where we might have to conduct military operations. Whether it would be for humanitarian work—earthquake or tsunami relief, for example—or combat operations, our forces needed the flexibility to move rapidly and without requiring the approval of a host country. Further, I wanted our military to be not only where they were needed but also where they were wanted, appreciated, and where we could move them rapidly to deal with whatever contingencies might arise. I questioned the desirability of tying our forces to massive, permanent bases, especially when it created opposition among local populations. Tensions between our military and Okinawan politicians, for example, had been growing for some time.
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In the country that governed Islam's holiest shrines, Saudi Arabia, the presence of our troops spawned resentments against both the American and Saudi governments. Osama bin Laden propagandized on this point to recruit terrorists and raise money.
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No previous U.S. administration had attempted such a major global defense posture review; we aimed to rationalize our facilities, activities, relationships, legal arrangements, and surge capabilities worldwide to fit a strategy intended to look into the future, not reflect the past.
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Our work, not surprisingly, stimulated interest and concern. President Bush's political opponents who wanted to come across as more hawkish on defense issues made ridiculous accusations that we were “[pulling] back our forces.”
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This ignored the fact that our posture review increased our capability to project forces rapidly anywhere in the world. The more suspicious wondered why we were in such a rush to get this done. My view was, why wait? We had wasted billions of dollars, and we had been sitting in place across the globe for close to sixty years.

Senior State Department officials initially raised no objections to our review. Secretary of State Powell received periodic updates and seemed content with our analysis. But whatever Powell thought about the defense posture review, others in his department anonymously voiced reservations in the press that echoed the concerns and questions of some of our allies that opposed changing the status quo. From Bosnia to Kosovo to the Sinai peninsula, it seemed that the U.S. military was engaging in new peacekeeping efforts every few years. Those efforts were stretching DoD resources. We either had to increase our capabilities or find ways to pare down our peacekeeping efforts sooner.
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When I pushed to reduce the numbers of American military forces supposedly monitoring a two-decade-old truce between Israel and Egypt in the Sinai peninsula, “[s]ome State Department officials [began] to argue that a withdrawal would underscore what is already seen by some in the region as an American retreat from the Middle East.”
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When I learned, for example, that the Pentagon had been spending $225 million every year to maintain our forces in Iceland, I sent a memo to Powell recommending we make a change.
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I pointed out that our aircraft originally had been stationed in Iceland to track Soviet subs in the North Atlantic. Now that there was no Soviet Union, they were spending their time helping Icelandic fishermen in distress. More than $2 billion had been spent since the end of the Cold War in 1989 to keep our aircraft in Iceland. I believed the $4 billion we would be spending over the next twenty years could be better invested elsewhere. Even so, it took me three years of pressing and prodding—and the resulting loss of another $700 to $800 million to taxpayers—before I could get our military presence in Iceland renegotiated. This was accomplished over the continued opposition of the State Department.
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Iceland was a wake-up call for me. If it was that hard to change our posture there, changes elsewhere in the world would be even more difficult.

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pon arriving at the Pentagon, I made a list of what I saw as the areas of the world that would need to be near the top of our national security priorities. Each needed to be managed deftly. I was particularly focused on our relations with two of America's former rivals—a resurgent Russia and a strengthening China.

Russia, in particular, was an early priority, and I worked hard to establish a productive relationship with my Russian counterpart, Defense Minister Sergei Ivanov. Fortunately, Ivanov was one of the most enjoyable foreign officials I encountered. He was intelligent, quick, well connected in Moscow, and had a sense of humor. Ivanov was a fine conversationalist and spoke excellent English. Unlike some former Soviet diplomats, he didn't engage in long lectures. “I see you get right to the point,” I said to him in our first meeting, as we discussed U.S.-Russian relations. “I will try my best to do so as well.”
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Ivanov was an avid basketball player and fan, so I took him to a Washington Wizards game when he was in town for a meeting. Our friendship was genuine, and I think it proved helpful.

But there were limits to how far personal affinity could go. Unsurprisingly, Ivanov would become uncomfortable when in meetings an American official would make a reference to the West's victory in the Cold War and the collapse of the Soviet Union. He was a steady and effective supporter of President Putin's agenda and never allowed daylight between himself and his government's policies.

In 2001 Russia was at a crossroads, and in many ways it remains there even a decade later. Though the Russians retained the nuclear arsenal of a great power, in other respects they were weak. They had lost much of their old empire. Their gross domestic product was small and largely dependent on the extraction and sale of oil and natural gas. Their population was shrinking. They faced security challenges from China and Chechen Muslims.

It was difficult for many in our country to move away from the Cold War mindset that characterized the Russian government as an enemy. For many, the idea of a threatening superpower—what the Reagan campaign famously characterized as a “bear in the woods”—remained deeply ingrained. While I exercised a certain caution when it came to the Russians, I was hopeful that the relationship could change. During the 1990s, I had been a member of a group of American and Russian business leaders who sought ways to encourage the growth of trade, commerce, and industry within the former Soviet Union. The U.S.–Russia Business Council, sponsored by the RAND Corporation, offered me an opportunity to spend time in Moscow, getting to know the country's business leaders in the years following the Soviet collapse. Many Russian businessmen wanted a more liberal economy and increased Western investment. Others who had benefited from the system of corrupt, state-sanctioned monopolies, preferred to see that system perpetuated.

It seemed to me Russia's leaders were considering two options to reclaim their status as a great power. One was to consort with those regimes around the world that were hostile to the West—China, North Korea, Iran, Iraq, Venezuela, and Cuba, for example—and to increase Russia's sway through intimidation of its neighbors. Choosing that path would entail pressuring the former Soviet satellites to respect Russia's “sphere of influence.” It also would mean that the Russian government would likely face economic difficulties if foreign corporations consequently decided to invest elsewhere.

As I saw it, Russia had another option. It could become a significant global economic power and a partner with the West. It had vast natural resources. Its population included world-class mathematicians, scientists, and engineers. It had an educated labor force with skills relevant to the world economy. I thought that Russia might be able to accomplish a feat of rebirth similar to Germany's and Japan's following World War II—but with advantages that the Germans and Japanese did not have. The Cold War had not left Russia a scene of physical devastation. The country therefore could conceivably become a focus of international trade and investment if Russian leaders were willing to create an environment hospitable to enterprise.
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I was reminded of what former President Nixon told me in 1994 after a visit to Russia. “The Cold War is over,” said the old cold warrior, “but it is not won.”
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His point was that though communism had failed, freedom was still on trial in Russia. If Russia succeeded in building a free system, Nixon said, it would encourage other totalitarian states to move in the same direction. “But if it fails,” he warned, “it will lead to more dictatorships.”
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I wanted Russia to join the circle of advanced, prosperous societies and would have been pleased to see the country grow in strength as a friend or even a partner of the West. Accordingly, I thought the best path for the United States was to avoid hectoring Russia on imperfect democratic practices, but rather to encourage it along a path toward freer economic and political systems. I tried to put myself in their shoes as I considered how we could best make the case to them about our goals and intentions. “Discussions with Russia ought not to be stove-piped into segments,” I wrote in one memo. “What they want is in the political and economic areas—dignity, respect, standing and foreign investment to help their economy.”
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Respect, especially, seemed to be the key. That at least was my perspective when the administration began to discuss one of the prickliest issues in U.S.–Russia relations: missile defense.

We knew Russia's leaders were likely to oppose a system, to some degree. But I hoped that they could see beyond the old Soviet complaints that our program could spark World War III. The objection was wrong on its face. The relatively small scale of our proposal would not make us capable of defending against Russia's massive arsenal of missiles. No well-informed Russian official seriously worried that the United States's missile defense program would protect America against a massive nuclear strike from Russia. I suspected that their real concern might have been that U.S. missile defenses could damage Russia's image as a world power.

A necessary step for implementing an initial missile defense program was to remove the legal barrier to developing the system: the Anti-Ballistic Missile (ABM) Treaty. I believed it was well past time to withdraw from a disadvantageous treaty that, moreover, by 2001 was of dubious legality.
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The Bush administration seemed united on this point.

In an effort to help assuage concerns about our missile defense interests, in August 2001 I made a visit to Moscow, my first as Bush's secretary of defense. The last time I'd traveled to Russia as a member of the government was with President Ford to discuss a new Strategic Arms Limitation Treaty with Soviet leader Leonid Brezhnev. Though Vladimir Putin came of age in the Soviet era as a KGB agent, he was no Brezhnev. Putin was savvier with the media and more sophisticated. He exuded a youthful self-assurance, undoubtedly a political asset in a country with an aging population. Putin did, however, begin our meeting in the Kremlin with a Soviet-style monologue, forcefully outlining his positions and commanding rapt attention.

When he was finished, he seemed interested in getting a sense of the approach our new administration would take to Russia and invited an exchange. “Mr. President,” I began, “I share your hope for a warmer relationship between our two countries.” I noted that I enjoyed working with his defense minister, who had joined us for the meeting.

In fact, I repeated some of the points I had made earlier to Ivanov, appealing to the Russians' self-interest. “As a businessman for almost twenty-five years,” I said, “I know that an environment hospitable to enterprise—with the rule of law, a free press, anticorruption efforts, and the like—are vital to attracting foreign investment.” I noted that “money is a coward”—that is, when potential investors see instability and uncertainty, they tend to invest their money elsewhere. I told Putin that when businessmen see that Russia's closest associates are Cuba, North Korea, Iran, Libya, and the like, and see corruption and periodic public opposition to American policies, they conclude Russia is an uncertain place and that their investments could be at risk. Those were not welcome conclusions for a Russia that sought to emerge as a world economic power.
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Putin and I also talked about the way business executives make decisions on where to build manufacturing plants, where to do research, and, in short, where they decide to conduct business. We discussed how, in a free country, people vote with their feet. Businessmen favor countries that create a competitive business environment.

On the central issue of my visit—the ABM Treaty—Putin said something that I thought he believed, but which I had not expected him to say. He told me that he was not wedded to the old Cold War doctrine of mutual assured destruction, which sought to use the threat of a nuclear exchange as a deterrent between the superpowers. Putin said he understood that our proposed missile defense system would be small scale, designed to deter and defend against rogue states. He knew well it could be overwhelmed by Russia's arsenal, and that once operational, the system could successfully defend against handfuls, not thousands, of missiles.

But Putin forthrightly admitted he had a political dilemma. He said he might look like a “traitor” to Russia's national security if he allowed the United States to withdraw from the ABM Treaty without protest.

Putin left me with the impression that he was interested in the option of closer ties with NATO and the West. “Russia is being pushed out of the system of civilized Western defense,” he observed. He charged that NATO had not been sufficiently receptive to including Russia in its collective defense strategy. There was an explanation for this, of course. Many NATO countries—particularly those close to the Russian border—were wary of the Russians. After all, some of them had only recently been threatened or intimidated by the “big bear.” Others had been unwilling Soviet satellite states.

Still, I told Putin that I thought it was conceivable that if Russia continued developing freer political and economic systems and accepted NATO's expansion along its borders, the United States and NATO could welcome Russia into a more stable relationship with the West. I'm not sure my response satisfied him, but I thought it was unrealistic to expect a warm relationship with NATO to blossom overnight, given the attitudes of the Warsaw Pact nations that had so recently joined.

Later that evening, I learned how far America and Russia still had to go to fully understand one another. At a dinner with Ivanov and senior Russian military officials, General Yuri Baluyevsky, then the country's second-ranking military officer, regaled us with a fascinating “fact” I suspect he may have learned from the internet. The brains behind the U.S. missile-defense system, he declared, as if he had unearthed an embarrassing secret, was “an economist named Lyndon LaRouche.” LaRouche, of course, was well-known in the United States as a political extremist and conspiracy theorist. He inhabited the murky zone where the far left and far right wings of politics bend toward each other. To my knowledge, his influence on the American missile defense program was nil.

I made an effort to correct the record for the assembled Russians. But the encounter was troubling. It was not in either of our interests that Russian military leaders should lack such basic knowledge about the United States and the ways American officials think and operate.

 

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f Russia loomed large in early discussions in the Bush administration, the rise of the People's Republic of China (PRC) and its implications for American strategy in Asia was perhaps an even greater and more delicate issue. I had some familiarity with the PRC going back to the 1960s. I was not an early admirer. In Congress, I had been a supporter of the Committee of One Million—a bipartisan organization “in opposition to any concessions to Communist China.”
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After Nixon's historic opening, I traveled to China with Henry Kissinger in 1974 to continue normalization talks with the then vice premier, Deng Xiaoping, who later became the country's paramount leader.
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I returned to China in 1999 as part of a delegation of former national security officials sponsored by the American Foreign Policy Council. The occasion was the fiftieth anniversary of Mao Zedong's victory over the nationalist forces of Chiang Kai-Shek and the founding of the PRC. By then, Beijing's streets were more congested, its air much denser with smog than before, as automobiles had largely replaced bicycles. To commemorate the occasion, the Communist Party had set up a series of exhibitions with cultural displays depicting each of China's many diverse provinces. As befit what the Chinese thought of as a “renegade” province, the Taiwan exhibit was light on culture. In the center of the large room was an enormous diorama of Taiwan under siege. Models of Chinese warships and bombers were attacking the island, while Chinese troops stormed its beaches and missiles landed in its cities. Though the tragedy of Tiananmen Square in 1989 had opened the eyes of some in the West to the Communist regime's capacity for ruthlessness, the prevailing sense was that China would not flex its growing muscles for the foreseeable future. After seeing that Taiwan display, I was not so sure.

Unlike many Western policy makers, the Chinese made a practice of thinking several moves ahead while they looked to take advantage of current events. Kissinger once remarked to me that the game the PRC plays is neither checkers nor chess. It was something far more complicated—patient and cautious. “It's a totally different game,” he said, “and they're good at it.”
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The writings of Sun Tzu were not quaint historical literary contributions in China but principles the Chinese live by to this day. A recurring theme of those writings is long-term strategic thinking. “Be extremely subtle, even to the point of formlessness,” Sun Tzu wrote. “Be extremely mysterious, even to the point of soundlessness. Thereby you can be the director of the opponent's fate.”
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Sun Tzu taught that a battle could be won through careful preparation and superior knowledge of the enemy, even before the enemy knows a battle has begun.