Customer Reviews

The Russia Hand: A Memoir of Presidential Diplomacy

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Strobe Talbott's latest book does not add much to the understanding of Russia or the role played by the Clinton administration (of which Talbott was its most senior Russia hand) towards that country.

Talbott will not be remembered by the Sovietological community for those things he describes in his book, which seem superfluous and self-glorifying. He will be mostly remembered for three events. The first is the billions of dollars wasted of U.S. aid money that he personally oversaw to Russia. The government of Viktor Chernomyrdin (whose personal fortune is estimated at over 10 billion dollars) squandered much U.S. aid money yet Talbott ignored the many warning signs and continued to advocate lending and aid to the Chernomyrdin government with the excuse that Russia is too big to lose.

Second, Talbott will be remembered for the disdainful way in which he treated the genuine Russian democrats that could have given that country a chance, while assisting former communist officials. Talbott famously under-cut the Russian reformers in 1993 when he quipped that "Russia needs more therapy and less shock," referring to the program of "shock therapy" that the reform-minded finance minister Fyodorov was trying to implement. Fyodorov later mentioned that Talbott had "stabbed us in the back." Later that year, the head of the largest pro-democracy movement in Russia, Galina Starovoitova, pleaded with Talbott for assistance in convincing a foreign TV star popular in Russia, to appear in commercials to help the democrats in the December 1993 parliamentary elections. Talbott refused to even return her calls. However, both the U.S. ambassador in Belarus (David Swartz) and the democratic leader of that country at that time (Stanislau Shushkevich) accused Talbott of using U.S. aid to help communist politicians there.

The third event that makes Talbott memorable are the widespread suspicions and accusations of his prior involvement with Soviet state security, the KGB. Some suspect that Talbott may have collaborated with the KGB to portray the USSR in a favorable light as Time Magazine correspondent (which he did) in exchange for access (which he had). Talbott was evasive in his confirmation hearings at the Senate Committee on Foreign Relations on the specific issue of his contacts and relation with a KGB agent named Louie.

These three events are not explored in his self-glorifying book, which is why those seeking to understand those tumultuous times read instead some other book, such as the account by former ambassador Jack Matlock.

The devil is in the details, but the "angels" call the shots (and in this story the "angels" are no angels). This is the short version of Strobe Talbott's exhaustive, intimate memoir of the transformation of US-Russian relations during the tumultuous 1990s. Bereft of the old adversarial structures of the cold war, and lacking any type of transitional plan, the diplomatic establishments of Washington and Moscow were compelled to feel their way through a stubborn morass of suspicion and ignorance and emerge with something like a policy of institutionalized cooperation.

By this account and many others it was a tough row to hoe. The meat of the book covers the period of Clinton/Yeltsin diplomacy between 1992 and 2000, a time when the Russian nation was reeling from the collapse of the Soviet Union and the social upheaval brought on by free market economic "shock treatment." National pride had suffered a series of body blows as the Soviet Empire fell apart and lost its coveted place as the "other" major power on the international stage.

In 1992, while publicly basking in cold war "victory", the US political establishment was inwardly wringing its hands over how to handle its volatile, battered, erstwhile enemy. Internally in Russia political wars continued to rage among nationalists, communists, and liberal market reformers, and it was nowhere near apparent that the nation might not suffer a political hijacking or economic meltdown which would lead the nation back down a path of despotism and isolation. This was a moment of limitless opportunity and unfathomable risk for the US and the world. The stakes were huge, and the outcome unknowable.

Enter the diplomats. Under the direction and tutelage of Mr. Talbott in this country and Yuri Mamedov in Russia, the two little armies of bureaucrats started the decade long brainstorm over nuclear arms, NATO enlargement, the worrying linkages between Russia and Iran, the disposition of Soviet era debt, and myriad other potentially explosive issues. It was no easy business, and progress was halting.

Time and again Talbott's team ran into roadblocks and obfuscation from their Russian counterparts. Some of it was related to the long Russian predisosition to hiding behind opaque bureaucacry; some had more to do with national pride. Most often, though, US Russian progress was stymied by forces inside the Russian establishment with a vested interest in arresting diplomatic progress where it took hold.

Bill Clinton understood all this. And more importantly, he understood Boris Yeltsin. More than once Talbott invokes the importance of the personal relationship between the two men, both by turns rogues, charmers, and vulgarians, with a singular optimism and clarity of vision both for their respective nations and for the future of world security. With some funny and incisive anecdotes Talbott demonstrates again and again the power of the personal in the political process, as Clinton and Yeltsin transcend the turf wars going on among their minions below to hammer out compromises and agreements that start to assume real political and economic coherence.

Not that there weren't bumps along the way. Yeltsin, though Talbott declines a formal diagnoses, comes across as a classic manic depressive, high energy and visionary when his back is to the wall, despondent and alcoholic when he feels his enemies smothering him. Clinton, though keenly attuned to the constraints on his counterpart from the factional strife in the Russian military and the obstreperous Duma, had his hands full when Yeltsin came to the bargaining table in a blustery or drunken temper. Talbott is masterful in recounting the tensions in these encounters, especially in Helsinki in the early part of the adminstration.

In the end, this is the story of two flawed, great men who left their world a better place for having worked together. Talbott leaves no doubt that all the rest, the quibbling and arguing and messy details of diplomacy, were inconsenquential in the face Clinton and Yeltsin's determination to not just preside over the death of an old era but to define a new one. It's somewhat poignant to go back to the beginning of the book, when Clinton, in the twilight of his term, meets the rising star Putin for the first time and senses a new, more stringent and controlled era settling over the Russian nation and the face it shows the world. There's just no chemistry between the bumptious American and the cautious new leader. Talbott leads us to believe that it wasn't just chemistry, but a genuine personal friendship that put the final stake in the heart of the cold war and all the bad that came of it.

Strobe Talbott's The Russia Hand is a comprehensive insider account of US relations with an emerging democratic Russian after the collapse of the Soviet Union. The book is also an explicit record of how diplomacy actually works.

I highly recommend this book for an insight and review of American FP in the 1990s.Talbott provides insights into the particulars of the many negotiations and personal bonds (or channels) that transpired between these two former foes. Talbott explores the numerous problems that divided the US and the new Russian Republic in the 1990s; including NATO enlargement, national missile defense, adapting to capitalism and democracy, wars of the former Yugoslavia and Kosovo.

This book makes great reading. Not only is it a definitive political text - it's funny! Through a motley cast of characters (Bill Clinton, Yeltsin, various negotiators) and the events that they survived Talbott gives a diplomatic thriller an air of high comedy. At times Talbott's depiction Boris Yeltsin borders on caricature.

To sum it all up, I am positive that anyone interested in Foreign Policy, IR, history, or even an unfortunate student looking for a subject for a book review will highly enjoy The Russia Hand. This book is a necessary read for those who wish to understand how the high-stakes game of diplomacy works in practice. And the account is delievered by one of the major players - Strobe Talbott.

I just finished the book about 15 minutes ago, so this is surely a bit of "instant feedback."

Strobe Talbott writes vividly, with candor and with a justified and well-earned political slant that keeps the reader engaged as a would be a thrill-seeking thirty-something reading a Clancy novel (I am borrowing another reviewer's analogy; by the way, this is way better than Clancy).

For anyone interested in the delicate nature of scrutinizing national security decisions, this is a must read. It offers an 'inside the Situation Room' look at the government of the United States at work. While concentrated solely on issues of the US-Russian genre, he successfully weaves other world and domestic events into the book to give the reader a sense of pace, setting and perspective.

He adequately, though unglamourously, bookends the story with the lead-in (Bush 41) to the Clinton years and the moving away from (Bush 43) a contentious, far from self-effacing eight years of transcontinental relations.

The meat of the book, a study of how presidential decisions are made through and pressed by deputy level and below members of both governments, showcases a 'half-dozen' big ticket shows that played out in the nineties, e.g. Kosovo, NATO expansion, Bosnia, and so on. With great and intense detail, Talbott recounts many and varied emotional meetings held between the world's most prominent governments.

Though certainly not faultless, this book is one of the better memoirs to come from the eight years of Clinton. It is precise, pointed and proves that the show must and will go on in American diplomacy.

Talbott's book is captivating and addictive. He writes in such a way that leaves the reader wondering whether Clinton and Yeltsin and Primakov and Gore and Chernomyrdin and 'Chris' and Sandy and Zhirinovsky and Ivanov (both of them) and Ivashov and Mamedov - Talbott drops dozens of names on the reader - are in the next room, contemplating and calculating tomorrow's continued NATO expansion.

Not just a must read, this book should be reviewed, its merits debated and defended. It is well worth it.

Contrary to several other reviewers on this site who are rather critical, I found this a very useful and insightful book. The fact that it hardly deals with the rise of the oligarchs and other important Russian domestic items is in my view not relevant as this is a book mainly on Russian-US relations in the 1990s. Talbott writes lucid prose and is often entertaining. One gets a good impression of the endless diplomatic wheeling and dealing behind the scenes with the Russians. Talbott gives a very interesting account of his direct relationship with the Russian official Yuri Mamedov, who served as his personal contact at the Russian foreign ministry. The wounded pride of the Russians, basically due to the collapse of the old Soviet empire, was so great that all kinds of irritations about Yugoslavia and Kosovo, NATO enlargement and other issues were basically inevitable, Talbott suggests between the lines. Amazing that things went so well between Russia and the US in this period of great difficulty for Yeltsin on the Russian domestic front. Boris Yeltsin comes through as an unpredictable politician with a drinking problem which was much bigger apparently than I suspected from reading other written accounts of the 1990s. During summits with the Russians, Clinton and his team were always counting the number of drinks Yeltsin gulped down and were often trying in vain to keep the hard liquor out of reach of the Russian president. When the summit was on American soil, that is. In Russia they didn't have this possibility, of course. Talbott writes with a great knowledge of Russian history and a love of the country, but is in no way uncritical of the mess Yeltsin and his team often made in the realm of foreign policy as well. Witness the unexpected transfer of Russian troops from Bosnia to Pristina at the end of the Kosovo crisis in 1999, which as Talbott pictures it, was a clear example of messy and irresponsible Russian decision making. Still, Talbott rightly suggests that Yeltsin as president was definitely preferable to a communist fossil like Zyuganov.

I am only seventeen and I have a Russian significant other. I didn't know anything about the country itself and wanted to learn more. This book was certainly a behind-the-scenes look at the U.S. and the new Russian Federation. It was not boring. You always were waiting for something to happen, whether it be bad or good. The writer had an incredibly positive perspective on Russia, which was good to see. They did leave out that Russia is still known for its mafia corruption and violence. But I didn't care about the Russian mafia - I was only interested in the future of Russia and what government leaders were doing to rebuild this great nation. The other is that this book was written from the point of view of a democratic administration. Being from a republican "lineage" this made no difference to me, as the book is not party aligned even though it talks about mostly Clinton. We must remember, though, Clinton was leading our country during this very touchy time. Clinton at times was indecisive of which was easier - being a president during the cold war era or during the post-cold war era. Overall a great book.

I actually read this book to be able to write this review, having happened upon this page while surfing the net. Being an avid reader of anything on Russia, I had seen the book several times on the shelf at my local bookstore, but had passed it by, for no particular reason other than not being a fan of the previous administration. I am glad I did read it though, Talbott is both a serious student of Russia and former policy maker from the US side of the negotiating table. His long time friendship with Clinton, and his previous career as a journalist provide an intimate view into the workings of the administration, and some front row observations of the tumultuous Russian post-Soviet period. Most interestingly, he gives a personal perspective and look into the minds and souls of the principle protagonists of the story--Boris Yeltsin and Bill Clinton.

I cannot out-wonk the wonks, but I will give my own homegrown analysis of the period. Undoubltedly, the difficult transition would have been full of pitfalls no matter whose watch it was on. To me, the tragedy of the US's policy was not that it perhaps failed to provide adequate answers or help in the admittedly enormous problem of the transfer from a command economy to a market based one, as Talbott muses at one point in his analysis. The principal problem was to recapture the Russian soul, which had lain dormant in the materialistic totalitarian state. While the US can only do so much to get the Russians to "eat their spinach" as Talbott puts it, we can and must do everything we can to foster freedom of conscience, of the dignity of the human person, and human rights, in its deepest sense. In this post 9-11 world of election mishaps and corporate malfeasance, maybe we could use a dish or two of the green stuff ourselves.

Clinton's old friend and key Russia advisor provides insight on a number foreign policy topics as they evolve. As deputy secretary of state, his accounts provide personal, scholarly and practical accounts. The reader might determine both that Talbott was an invaluable resource as the post-Cold War era evolved, and that in the end, Clinton was his own "Russia Hand."

The primary theme of the book is the relationship between Clinton and Russian President Boris Yeltsin. As they address issues such as NATO expansion, the Balkans, economic difficulties, and each president's own personal troubles, a number of lessons emerge. First, great power politics takes place between human beings, not merely among structural or organizational frameworks. Second, the blending of idealism and realism is thorough and complex, they are not either-or options. Third, political, military, economic, domestic and international issues all impact each other, often in surprising ways. Fourth, watch out for the u in trying to explain policy making: in the generic Y=Ax+By+Cz+u, that u (for unexplained/unexpected) can often play a large role.

The Russia Hand is valuable to students of foreign policy, Russia and U.S.-Russia relations, and the emergence of the post-Cold War era.

Either hilarious or terrifying, or both, depending on your mood -- this book stunned me with its revelations about how close Russia came to blowing up in our faces in the 90's. Hair-raising and beautifully and frankly written. The Keystone Cops meets The Sum of All Fears.

I have read this book almost 6 months ago, so i cannot cite any specific passages from the book, but i do feel this book was well written and was very very intresting. It is better than what some of the reviewers rated it. I liked how the book was cronologically arranged, it took you through the clinton years as if you were there almost with Strobes. The only down fall i can think of is the list of names that continued to come up. I almost broke down to making some notes so i would remmber who was who. There are so many clinton bashing books out there, it is always good to read the opposite view point.