A month earlier than he died in April 1994, former President Richard Nixon wrote a letter to then-President Bill Clinton providing what Clinton later known as “smart counsel, particularly with regard to Russia.” The contents of that letter have now been declassified by the Clinton presidential library and seem prophetic.
In the seven-page letter, dated March 21, 1994, and mentioned by historical past professor Luke Nichter in the Wall Street Journal, Nixon gave a blunt evaluation of the political state of affairs in Russia, predicting precisely that relations between Moscow and Kyiv would deteriorate and that somebody like Putin might come to energy. Nixon, 81 on the time, wrote the letter after he returned from a two-week journey to Russia and Ukraine.
While the previous president is notorious for departing the White House amid scandal in 1974, his legacy contains being the architect of détente with the Soviet Union throughout the Cold War. In 1972, Nixon turned the primary U.S. president to go to Moscow, the place he signed the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty and the Strategic Arms Limitation Treaty with Soviet General Secretary Leonid Brezhnev. Nixon spent the years following his presidency taking international journeys on behalf of the United States and providing counsel based mostly on many years of expertise to information U.S. coverage within the post-Cold War period.
Nixon thought of the survival of political and financial freedom in Russia “a very powerful international coverage concern the nation will face for the stability of this century.” With that understanding, he informed Clinton that based mostly on what he noticed in Russia, a fledgling democracy beneath former Russian President Boris Yeltsin was in peril.
“As one in all Yeltsin’s first supporters on this nation and as one who continues to admire him for his management prior to now, I’ve reluctantly concluded that his state of affairs has quickly deteriorated because the elections in December, and that the times of his unquestioned management of Russia are numbered,” Nixon wrote. “His consuming bouts are longer and his intervals of despair are extra frequent. Most troublesome, he can not ship on his commitments to you and different Western leaders in an more and more anti-American atmosphere within the Duma and within the nation.”
Nixon foresaw that relations between Russia and Ukraine would dissolve. He known as the state of affairs in Ukraine “extremely explosive.”
“If it’s allowed to get uncontrolled,” Nixon informed Clinton, “it’ll make Bosnia appear like a PTA backyard celebration.”
The former president suggested Clinton to strengthen American diplomatic illustration in Kyiv, recounting conversations with American businessmen who complained that the embassy was “understaffed and inadequately led.”
Nixon additionally urged Clinton to develop relationships with Yeltsin’s potential successors. “Bush made a mistake in sticking too lengthy to Gorbachev due to his shut private relationship. You should keep away from making that very same mistake in your excellent private relationship with Yeltsin,” he wrote.
He was uncertain who would rise to energy subsequent. “There continues to be nobody who’s in Yeltsin’s class as a possible chief in Russia,” Nixon wrote. He knowledgeable Clinton {that a} nationalist and populist tide in Russia might produce a “credible candidate for president” — a mere 5 years earlier than Putin’s Russian nationalist regime took maintain.
“The Russians are critical individuals. One of the explanations Khrushchev was placed on the shelf again in 1964 is that the proud Russians turned ashamed of his crude antics on the U.N. and in different worldwide boards,” Nixon wrote.
The letter additionally reveals a few of Nixon’s dislike for profession diplomats. “I realized throughout my years within the White House that the perfect selections I made, such because the one to go to China in 1972, have been remodeled the objections of or with out the approval of most international service officers,” he wrote. Nixon suggested Clinton to chart his personal course and to not be held again by his employees. “Remember that international service officers get to the highest by not moving into bother. They are subsequently extra curious about masking their asses than in defending yours.”
Clinton in later years would bear in mind Nixon’s recommendation fondly. “After he died, I discovered myself wishing I might choose up the telephone and ask President Nixon what he thought of this concern or that drawback, notably if it concerned Russia,” he mentioned in 2013.
