Ukraine is winning, Russia is losing: James Cleverly
Fox News’ Martha MacCallum attends the Aspen Security Forum, where she sits down with British Foreign Secretary James Cleverly, who says Russia is “fragile” and doesn’t “expect” the US to put troops on the ground.
A month before he died in April 1994, former President Richard Nixon wrote a letter to then-President Bill Clinton offering what Clinton later called “wise advice, especially on Russia.” The contents of this letter have now been declassified by the Clinton Presidential Library and appear to be prophetic.
In the seven-page letter, dated March 21, 1994, and discussed by history professor Luke Nichter in the Wall Street Journal, Nixon made a blunt assessment of the political situation in Russia, accurately predicting that relations between Moscow and Kiev would deteriorate and that someone like Putin might come to power. Nixon, then 81, wrote the letter after returning from a two-week trip to Russia and Ukraine.
Although the former president is famous for leaving the White House amid scandal in 1974, his legacy includes being the architect of detente with the Soviet Union during the Cold War. In 1972, Nixon became the first US president to visit Moscow, where he signed the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty and the Strategic Arms Limitation Treaty with Soviet General Secretary Leonid Brezhnev. Nixon spent the years after his presidency traveling abroad on behalf of the United States and offering advice based on decades of experience to guide US policy in the post-Cold War era.
Nixon considered the survival of political and economic freedom in Russia “the most important foreign policy issue the nation will face for the balance of this century.” With this understanding, he told Clinton that, based on what he saw in Russia, a fledgling democracy under former Russian President Boris Yeltsin was in danger.
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President Richard Nixon delivers his victory speech at a rally shortly after being elected to a second term by a landslide. (Bettmann/Getty Images)
“As one of Yeltsin’s earliest supporters in this country and as one who continues to admire him for his past leadership, I have reluctantly concluded that his situation has deteriorated rapidly since the December election and that the days of his undisputed leadership of Russia are numbered,” Nixon wrote. “His drinking bouts are longer and his periods of depression are more frequent. The most problematic thing is that he can no longer fulfill his commitments to you and other Western leaders in an increasingly anti-American environment in the Duma and in the country.”
Nixon predicted that relations between Russia and Ukraine would dissolve. He described the situation in Ukraine as “highly explosive”.
“If allowed to get out of hand,” Nixon told Clinton, “it will make Bosnia look like a PTA garden party.”
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President Richard Nixon talks with Soviet leader Leonid Brezhnev on June 20, 1973 at Camp David, Maryland. (Dirck Halstead/Link)
The former president advised Clinton to strengthen American diplomatic representation in Kiev, recounting conversations with American businessmen who complained that the embassy was “understaffed and poorly run.”
Nixon also urged Clinton to develop relationships with potential successors to Yeltsin. “Bush made a mistake by staying too long with Gorbachev because of his close personal relationship. You must avoid making the same mistake in your very good personal relationship with Yeltsin,” he wrote.
He was not sure who would rise to power next. “There is still no one in Yeltsin’s class as a potential leader in Russia,” Nixon wrote. He informed Clinton that a nationalist and populist tide in Russia could produce a “credible presidential candidate,” just five years before Putin’s Russian nationalist regime took over.
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Russian President Boris Yeltsin (right) and former US President Richard Nixon, all smiles, meeting in the Kremlin on February 10, 1993. (Sergei Guneyev/Getty Images)
“Russians are serious people. One of the reasons Khrushchev was put on the shelf in 1964 is that proud Russians were embarrassed by his antics at the UN and other international forums,” Nixon wrote.
The letter also reveals some of Nixon’s dislike of career diplomats. “During my years in the White House I learned that the best decisions I made, like going to China in 1972, were made over the objections or without the approval of most foreign service officers,” he wrote. Nixon advised Clinton to chart her own course and not be held back by her staff. “Remember, foreign service agents get to the top by not getting into trouble. So they’re more interested in covering their own ass than protecting yours.”
Clinton in later years would remember Nixon’s advice fondly. “After his death, I found myself wishing I could pick up the phone and ask President Nixon what he thought about this issue or this issue, especially if it involved Russia,” he said in 2013.
Chris Pandolfo is a writer for Fox News Digital. Send tips to chris.pandolfo@fox.com and follow him on Twitter @ChrisCPandolfo.
