Interview: Obama Russia Adviser on Cold War Liberals
February 4, 2020 . 9 Comments
Natylie Baldwin asks James Carden about foreign policy views at the U.S.
State Department and inside the Democratic Party, including the Bernie
Sanders campaign.
Aerial view of the State Department's Foggy Bottom neighborhood in
Washington, D.C., in 2009. The Watergate complex is in the foreground.
(dbking, Flickr, CC BY 2.0, Wikimedia Commons)
By Natylie Baldwin
natyliesbaldwin.com
James W. Carden served as an adviser on Russia policy in the Obama State
Department. A contributing writer at The Nation, his work has appeared in a
variety of media outlets. He is executive editor for the American Committee
for East-West Accord. He serves on the board of the Simone Weil Center for
Political Philosophy. This interview is based on emails we exchanged last
week.
Natylie Baldwin: How did you gain your expertise on Russia? How did you
come to be a Russia adviser in the State Department in 2011?
James Carden.
James Carden: I came to be a Russia adviser at State via the Franklin
Fellowship, a program for people in mid-career who wanted to make a
contribution to the U.S. I had just gotten back from a post graduate
semester (after having received my master's at Johns Hopkins SAIS) at the
equivalent institution in Moscow, where I took courses on Russian language
and other courses on Russian foreign policy. It was eye-opening. I was in
the foreigners' program, only one other American was with me and it was
clear there was something a bit "off" from the start. The only other
American in the class, a fellow student - and Russian-fluent, unlike me -
from Columbia, told me that the dean or associate dean - took her aside and
informed her, to our great amusement - that they "knew" she and I were CIA.
My response was basically "I wish, having a salary and health care would be
nice."
Baldwin: Your service in the State Department was under Hillary Clinton - at
least, in the beginning. What was the attitude toward Russia and Ukraine at
that time and what was your experience like?
Carden: I actually thought that for the most part (with one important
exception) that the FSOs [Foreign Service Officers] were, well, many of them
were neutral toward Russia. The political appointees were okay - or at least
the ones I ran into. But I began to wonder: Why this lack of any real
thought as to the country [assignment - or countries? (After all, the Russia
desk shared a suite of offices with the desks that covered a number of
former Soviet states.) The answer was that, with the exception of the desk
head, these people didn't know a thing about Russia either. Not their fault.
But that's how the foreign service is set up. You have expertise in, say,
China? You will spend a lot of your working life in, say, Latin America. It
makes no sense.
Secretary of State Hillary Clinton greeted by department employees on her
first day. (Michael Gross, Wikimedia Commons)
Baldwin: Were you able to ascertain if then Vice President Joe Biden had any
special knowledge of, or interest in, Ukraine that would explain why he
became the administration's point person after the Ukraine crisis broke out?
Carden: No. I had left by then. I think it actually is reflective of Obama's
deep disinterest in European affairs that he had appointed Biden as his
point man on such a pivotal issue as Ukraine. It seemed to me then that
Obama had outsourced his policy on the Ukrainian crisis to his Assistant
Secretary of State Toria [Victoria] Nuland and the then-Ambassador to
Ukraine Geoffrey Pyatt, with disastrous results.
Baldwin: With respect to the impeachment process we've been watching unfold,
it seems that the Democratic Party establishment is emphasizing a Cold War
framing regarding Ukraine and Russia. What are your thoughts on this?
Cold War-era political cartoon depicting U.S. containment strategies.
Carden: I'm not particularly surprised. Part of the problem is personnel,
many of the people advising these politicians working on the Hill or in the
DNC can't even reach back, try as they might, to 1989. What does 1989 mean
to you and me? Well, obviously the fall of the Berlin Wall and the end of
the Cold War. What does 1989 mean to the average staffer? They have no
memory of the first Cold War and consequently no conception of how the
current one might be even more fraught with danger.
Part of it of course is the old adage "where you sit is where you stand." So
take Adam Schiff. Schiff has defense industry interests in his district,
gets campaign cash from them and consequently - as a very good article in
Jacobin laid out recently - has never met a war he didn't like.
The underlying reason for the party's embrace of the Cold War mentality
though has, of course to do with the 2016 election. Had it gone the other
way - as it could have had the Clinton campaign bothered to make a few more
trips to Michigan and Wisconsin - we wouldn't have heard much more about the
much-vaunted Russian intervention. But she lost and her team took the issue
of Russian interference (which, I'm sorry, was negligible) blew it up and
ran with it in order to deflect blame from themselves. Now Robbie Mook runs
a "disinformation" course up at Harvard. What a world.
Baldwin: What do you think is the biggest obstacle within the government to
the improvement of U.S.-Russia relations? What role do the following factors
play:
poorly trained "Russia experts;"
ideology - particularly, Neocon and Humanitarian Intervention;
influence of the military-industrial complex?
Carden: If this is a multiple choice I would say "d" - all of the above."
Baldwin: You wrote a very interesting article recently that was published at
the American Conservative called "Meet the Cold War Liberals." In it, you
discuss some of the leading Democratic candidates - who are considered
progressive, including Senator Bernie Sanders - and their foreign policy
ideas as they've publicly discussed them.
There seems to be a common theme emerging of the U.S. and democracies of the
world in a struggle against an axis of "authoritarian" governments. This is
problematic on a lot of levels. For example, it continues the deeply
ingrained idea that we have to have a bogeyman to fight and to reinforce our
moral superiority over. Although this framing of democrats versus
authoritarians may play better to those who consider themselves to be
liberal, it partly has its roots in neoconservative ideology. Influential
neocon writer Robert Kagan also said we needed to shift focus to the "newly
confident" authoritarian governments of the world - referencing Russia and
China - in a 2008 interview with Peter Beaumont of The Observer. Neocons
have now insidiously embedded themselves in both major parties. In this
same interview, Kagan stated his support of Hillary Clinton's foreign policy
and claimed that he wanted to be called a "liberal interventionist" rather
than a Neocon. What are your thoughts on this?
Carden: Well. Between the neocons and liberal hawks - it's a distinction
without a difference. And you see that the two war-happy wings of both
parties have shaped our politics in the Trump era. The neocons see in their
mirror image liberal hawks like Samantha Power and Susan Rice, and, above
all, Hillary Clinton. They're simply different sides of the same coin. But
since the day [President Donald] Trump took office, liberals have really
taken to heart the old (and wondrously wrong) adage that "the enemy of my
enemy is my friend." But you would have to be pretty silly to actually
believe something like that. And yet, mainstream Democrats, unable to get
over the fact that Hillary lost the election, have become what they have
long claimed to despise.
Bernie Sanders during January 2020 Democratic primary debate. (Screenshot)
Baldwin: Though Sanders says some laudable things in his Westminster
address (e.g. budget priorities, addressing our internal problems, expanding
diplomacy), why does he seem to be embracing this framework of
us-against-the-authoritarians? Do you think it portends a Sanders
administration possibly being lulled into a regime change intervention if
it's framed as "supporting democratic forces" against authoritarians?
Supporting "democratic forces" in other countries that we deem
insufficiently democratic will no doubt be construed by the target country
as interference in its internal affairs. It is also seems to be right out
of the playbook of the CIA and NED [National Endowment for Democracy] in
terms of facilitating coups. What do you think?
Carden: I can't name names here, but I'll tell you this: Last year I was on
Capitol Hill and ran into one of my sources, a very, very pro-Bernie kind of
person. We got to talking about the upcoming presidential race and Bernie
came up. I was quite surprised when this person told me, without much
pushing, that they thought, whatever Bernie's merits as a person, as a
congressman, as a potential president, that Bernie would quickly and easily
be captured by what President Obama called "the Blob." That has stayed with
me. Nevertheless, I will happily vote for Mr. Sanders in the general, as I
did when I wrote him in on Election Day 2016.
I think part of the reason Sanders has embraced the us-versus-them mindset
is because of his advisers who come out of progressive activism and right
now, as we have seen, it's very in vogue among that set to say, "well, we're
not for regime change wars but we will take a hard line against the global
authoritarians like Putin, Orban and Xi because they don't share our
enlightened politics." It's kind of a way to look "serious" in front of the
entrenched foreign policy establishment of which, of course, they
desperately want to be a part but will never admit to their peers on
Twitter. I would say it is this that worries me most about a potential
Sanders presidency. It's a way that will allow the liberal hawks to enter
through the back door.
Baldwin: Sanders regularly reinforces the Russiagate framework, calls
[Russian President Vladimir] Putin a "brutal dictator" and doesn't seem to
have a very good understanding of contemporary Russia - the world's other
nuclear superpower. He has, however, called for arms control diplomacy.
What do you think a Sanders administration might be like in terms of
U.S.-Russia relations?
Carden: Better on arms control but pretty bad elsewhere. It's nice that
Bernie's campaign makes the right noises now and again, but really, running
around and taking selfies with Pussy Riot is a pretty bad sign. What next:
Ambassador William Browder? Spare me.
It seems like he could use a tutorial from someone like Stephen F. Cohen.
Barring that, I wouldn't expect much in the way of progress in U.S.-Russian
relations until (if?) Putin leaves the stage. But then, of course, we'll
make the same mistakes we always do: we'll over-personalize/idealize the new
Russian leader as "our kind of guy" and then be inevitably disappointed when
it turns out he actually doesn't want American troops on his borders and
pursues geopolitical interests that conflict with ours. Then the downward
spiral of demonization and Cold War will renew itself. Sanders will make a
lot of noise about Russia's kleptocrats and oligarchs but probably not push
the issue of NATO expansion or missile defense, so on that score, he will be
far superior than someone like Biden or [Senator Amy] Klobuchar.
Joe Biden during January 2020 Democratic primary debate. (Screenshot)
Baldwin: A recent article by Joe Biden in Foreign Affairs, seems to suggest
that he would generally continue the Bush-Obama policies. Of course, he
played a key role in legitimizing the 2014 coup in Ukraine and has been a
big supporter of Russiagate. What do you think a Biden administration would
be like for U.S. foreign policy in general and U.S.-Russia relations in
particular?
Carden: Disaster - on both counts. Biden will toe a much harder line on
Russia, he will ratchet up tensions between Kiev and Moscow and likely push
the issue of NATO expansion which is currently a dead letter - at least
among the Europeans.
He'll take a tougher line on NATO expansion and will likely allow our
policies to be dictated out of Kiev, Warsaw and Riga. There will be a lot of
disingenuous talk about the glories of the Revolution of Dignity [a
reference to the Western spin on the 2014 coup in Ukraine], lots about
Russian information warfare and not too much about how to identify areas of
cooperation - after all, how can you cooperate with a criminal like Putin
anyway? This, by the way, will likely be the policy of any of the Democrats
except for Sanders or by some miracle, [Representative Tulsi] Gabbard.
Outgoing president Herbert Hoover and Roosevelt on Inauguration Day, 1933.
(Library of Congress, Wikimedia Commons)
Baldwin: As an alternative guideline for a more constructive foreign
policy, you bring up FDR's "Good Neighbor Policy" involving the UN and its
original vision of the equality of all nations whose sovereignty would be
respected. Can you explain a bit more about this policy, its historical
context, and why it might be good to look to this now as a way out of our
destructive interventionist foreign policy?
Carden: It was spelled out by FDR in his 1933 inaugural address and then his
Secretary of State Cordell Hull gave it the further imprimatur of official
U.S. policy toward Latin America at the Montevideo Conference later that
year which produced the so-called Montevideo Convention which, among other
things, pledged that the signatories not interfere in each other's domestic
affairs. Seems to me to be an eminently sensible way out of our current
predicament. I would argue that it is informed by the best traditions of
U.S. foreign policy going back to John Quincy Adams and George Washington.
Baldwin: Putin has made public comments recently about the five permanent
security council members of the UN coming together and working cooperatively
on peace and other pressing global issues. He also referenced the original
spirit of the UN. Do you think there would be receptivity in Moscow to a
Good Neighbor type policy as a possible foundation for improved U.S.-Russia
relations?
Carden: I think the Good Neighbor policy is premised on the validity of
Westphalia, so yes, I think it would be welcomed by both Russia and China.
If you look at the public statements of [Russian Foreign Minister] Sergey
Lavrov, for instance, you see broad outlines - or echoes - of that rather
sensible policy of non-interference. It would be a nice change to hear an
American politician recall that tradition rather than bleat on about the
"liberal international order" which of course is not liberal, international
or orderly.
Natylie Baldwin is author of "The View from Moscow: Understanding Russia and
U.S.-Russia Relations," forthcoming in April. She is co-author of "Ukraine:
Zbig's Grand Chessboard & How the West Was Checkmated." She has traveled
throughout western Russia since 2015 and has written several articles based
on her conversations and interviews with a cross-section of Russians. She
blogs at natyliesbaldwin.com.
