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

phrases “Open this gate, tear down this wall.” Rather, the Department objected to saying
“Mr. Gorbachev.” They did not want to personalize the words to Gorbachev in fear that
this would be a direct challenge and target him in front of all the Kremlin hardliners.
Generally, we in the NSC thought the State Department was being unduly cautious, as is
often its reputation. Ultimately, the issue went to President Reagan, and he decided to
keep “Mr. Gorbachev.” The world did not come to an end, and, as you know, the speech
is now one of Reagan’s most famous ones. But I quickly learned how working on the
NSC could put me at odds with colleagues in the State Department.
Q: After the Iran Contra affair, was there a feeling in the NSC that things had to be done
differently than before? Was there a sense that we really got into a mess and cannot let
this happen again?
PERINA: There was a sense of a new beginning because of the many personnel changes
and the new leadership of Frank Carlucci and Colin Powell. It was really a very different
institution from the one before, and it was assumed that the Poindexter/Ollie North era
was past. I think we were fortunate in that a very good team came in. Carlucci was a good
administrator, and Colin Powell was, I think, an outstanding leader. It confirmed my view
that the military does much better than the State Department in teaching leadership and
management skills. In part, this is because most FSO’s have very little opportunity to
manage and supervise others until at least the mid-career level, whereas in the military
one is both subordinate and supervisor almost from the beginning. Even in the military,
of course, Powell was far above the norm and an outstanding leader. He knew how to
keep up morale and supervise without micromanaging. So I think even the people who
were holdovers from the Poindexter era recognized that this was a new NSC that would
be run differently. In the job I took I replaced Paula Dobriansky, a political appointee
who went on to senior jobs in the State Department.
Q: You had the Soviet portfolio on the staff?
PERINA: Basically, yes. The Senior Director of the office when I arrived was also a
Soviet expert, Fritz Ermarth, but I did the working-level issues of which there were many
concerning the Soviet Union. Ermarth left after about a year and was replaced by his
deputy, Nelson Ledsky, who was not a trained Soviet expert. So I took on more of the
portfolio in the office and became the primary Soviet person.
Q: Let's take it when you arrived. You had been away from the Soviet Union since 1981.
You had been on the periphery of Soviet issues but now you were directly involved again.
How did you see the Soviet Union when you arrived at the NSC in 1987, as opposed to
when you left Moscow?
PERINA: When I arrived at the NSC there was a big ongoing debate within the
government on trying to interpret Gorbachev, trying to understand if he was a genuine
reformer or just playing a very sophisticated game. The opinion was divided. Some
people thought he was a genuine reformer, while others thought he was playing us and
we had to be very wary of the guy.
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