ambassador rudolf v. perina - Association for Diplomatic Studies and ...

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Warsaw Pact. Where we felt a certain degree of menace was from radical West German groups. Q: The Baader-Meinhof gang? PERINA: Exactly. The Baader-Meinhof gang and its off-shoots and imitators. There had long been attacks against West German political figures and businessman, and a number had taken place in Berlin. Although it had seemed that Americans were not targeted, the 1980’s brought a significant rise in anti-Americanism as a result of the INF deployment debate. Berlin also had a reputation as a haven for West German radicals because students and young people living there were exempt from the draft. We had growing concerns about terrorist attacks against U.S. interests from such groups, although nothing serious happened during my time. Q: Well, you left Berlin in 1986? PERINA: 1985. Q: I assume you knew that there would only be four more years of the Berlin Wall and then the entire Cold War would come to a screeching end. PERINA: Well, on the contrary, I thought that what I had learned about the theology of Berlin would guarantee me employment for the rest of my career in the State Department. There were not many people who knew the ins and outs of Berlinery, the rules of the corridors and so on. I thought this was valuable knowledge that would always serve me well and make me a permanent expert on Berlin. Of course, within five years it was totally worthless except to the historians. Q: So from 1985 until 1987 you were at the NATO Mission in Brussels. What did you do there? PERINA: I was a political officer and the Deputy U.S. Representative to the Political Committee of NATO. I had a number of other portfolios, among which were the nuclear and space talks in Geneva. President Reagan started this negotiation. The talks were basically three simultaneous negotiations on START, INF and SDI, headed by Max Kampelman on our side. Kampelman was the overall delegation head and did the SDI talks, Mike Glitman headed the INF discussions, and Senator John Tower headed the START team. It was intended as a comprehensive arms control discussion between the U.S. and the Soviet Union. Because the talks were bilateral but related directly to NATO policies, the three negotiators regularly came up to Brussels from Geneva to brief the North Atlantic Council. At the beginning, they came every month or two, though the pace slackened as the talks started bogging down. Nonetheless, I was always the control officer for these visits, as well as for a number of visits by President Reagan, who came to NATO several times for summit-level meetings of the Council. As I said earlier, this is where I saw further evidence of what an important issue SDI was 42
to the Soviet Union. Everything that Max Kampelman and the negotiators reported to NATO bore this out. The Soviets were very afraid of SDI and wanted desperately to find ways of stopping or restricting it. But it was something that Reagan—rightly or wrongly—believed in very strongly and would not negotiate away. Q: I recall that at one point Reagan made a proposal to share the technology with the Soviets so that we could each stop the other’s missiles. PERINA: Right. But the Soviets were convinced it was a trick. They could not believe that we would really share such technology with them, since they would never share it with us if tables were turned. Q: Were you getting the sense that the advent of the computer age and high tech was playing into this? PERINA: This is exactly what I was going to say. You have to put this in the context of the revolution that was taking place in the United States and in the West, with average people starting to acquire personal computers, and kids growing up at home and in school with computer skills. The Soviets saw all this, and they were terrified. Their own kids were still working with an abacus in most of their schools. They saw themselves falling behind technologically in a way that would be qualitative and devastating. They never expressed it that way but one could sense it in talks with them. I was not an expert on SDI. I didn't know if it would or would not work. But I saw it as a useful ploy to motivate the Soviets to change to a freer, more open system that could keep pace with Western technological development. Their closed, authoritarian system just could not do that. In conversations, they always tried to pick up on Western skepticism and say “Well, SDI won't work and even your own experts say it won’t work.” But I would answer something like “Well, you know, if you can build a missile that can fly 5000 miles and hit a square block, don't you think it would be easier to find some way to throw that missile off course?” They were very scared that this was indeed true and we would beat them to doing it. Q: What was your impression of the NATO apparatus? You had been working with two other allies in Berlin but this was now the entire Alliance trying to work in tandem. PERINA: My overwhelming impression from NATO was that this was basically a U.S. run organization. One could really sense that. Most of the Allies were quite deferential to the United States, the French always being a certain exception. In fact, most of the delegates at NATO tended to be even more pro-American than their governments, or at least they tried to give us that impression. In my time, we never had a really heated discussion at NATO, even though I think many Allies were skeptical of some of our policies such as INF deployment and SDI. Whenever Kampelman and his colleagues came up, the questions were invariably softball in nature. NATO was a club and largely our club. It was a very friendly environment for the U.S. Q: What was your impression at the time of how much chance the nuclear and space 43
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Page 11 and 12: Q: You said that after Cleveland yo
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Page 15 and 16: most comprehensive collection of in
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Page 21 and 22: word that he was going to come to a
Page 23 and 24: Q: During the Vietnam War, there wa
Page 25 and 26: very different interpretations. The
Page 27 and 28: Q: So you were there from 1979? PER
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Page 31 and 32: was very tough. We did suspend the
Page 33 and 34: line was that a person was made to
Page 35 and 36: there. The Polish economy was nose-
Page 37 and 38: Q: What sorts of issues did you tal
Page 39 and 40: war. But I can tell you that the So
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Page 45 and 46: phrases “Open this gate, tear dow
Page 47 and 48: PERINA: Yes, they did. Jumping ahea
Page 49 and 50: Those plenary sessions I actually w
Page 51 and 52: PERINA: That is exactly right. The
Page 53 and 54: Q: OK, in 1989 you’re going to th
Page 55 and 56: PERINA: This was an issue because o
Page 57 and 58: position in Europe, and really the
Page 59 and 60: Soviet domination. They had histori
Page 61 and 62: Q: That was my impression as well w
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Page 65 and 66: Q: How were you received by the Ser
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Page 69 and 70: Part of the reason that we didn’t
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Page 73 and 74: Q: So what was happening with Kosov
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Page 81 and 82: Q: And this was not an idle comment
Page 83 and 84: price for having a very bad leaders
Page 85 and 86: PERINA: Certainly during the period
Page 87 and 88: Q: So you took over the Holbrooke r
Page 89 and 90: PERINA: Not really. We coordinated
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Q: Can you give a brief summary of
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PERINA: Well the American interests
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shorter visits of three to four wee
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Q: How so? PERINA: Well, he felt un
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Q: Still, it strikes me that all of
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As for the European Union, most Mol
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PERINA: Nagorno-Karabakh is the mos
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e called the “Prague Process” w
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we physically crossed the front lin
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were about three-quarters of the po
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down to the Black Sea. Since I was
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PERINA: It is difficult to say. He
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political interests to keep it goin
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a huge personal embarrassment. It l
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clearly followed the advice because
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good governance and so on. In its b
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Deputy Secretary, Richard Armitage,
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PERINA: Relations with Europe were
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End of interview 129
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