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

why I believed that it was not worth the cost, even though this was very much a minority
view. Remember also, the European Bureau was not in charge of Russia.
Q: But there was fear of Russian revanchism among the East Europeans. NATO
membership made them feel safer.
PERINA: Yes, but I fear that the way we handled the threat of revanchism made it a selffulfilling
prophecy. Russia was so weakened in 1995 that it was hardly a threat to anyone.
On the contrary, it was a basket case. The standard of living had declined even from
Soviet times. The Russian people had made enormous sacrifices to get rid of
Communism and were really hoping for help and partnership with the West. The NATO
expansion made them think that the reverse was happening—that their weakness was
being exploited. And Russian nationalists and demagogues came forward to take
advantage of this perception.
Q: How did we view the European Union? Were we seeing the European Union as a
good thing or potentially as a rival?
PERINA: At that time our status was pretty high in the European Union and in Western
Europe. We had won the Cold War in a way that no one had imagined a decade earlier,
and we were the only super power on earth. For the most part, the Europeans looked to us
for leadership. France, however, was always the most difficult. It had always been
worried about America’s dominance of Europe, and this certainly did not diminish after
we won the Cold War. It was in this period that the French really started pushing for a
separate European military identity and a more coordinated foreign policy within the
European Union. We always said for the record that we did not oppose this but we very
much wanted it to stay within agreed limits. We certainly did not want the European
Union to become a rival to NATO. We had some early discussions on this with the
Europeans during my time as DAS. There was a lot of thinking within the U.S.
Government about what rules should be applicable in the relationship between NATO
and the EU. The evolving view was that NATO should have first choice on deciding
whether it would deal with an issue or whether it would fall to the EU. It became more
complex when we got to matters like military troops and equipment that were designated
as both NATO and national assets. Thanks to the British and Germans, for the most part
the EU accepted the guidelines that the U.S. proposed.
Q: How about Germany? Was there any concern about a reunified Germany? Wasn’t
this worrying its neighbors?
PERINA: I don’t think we or the Europeans were worried about a resurgent Germany. To
us German democracy seemed pretty solid. We had traditionally wanted Germany to play
a stronger role in Europe as a counterbalance to France. So a unified Germany was not a
concern. It was one of the real achievements of James Baker as Secretary of State and
showed, in my view, how basically cooperative the Russians were in working with us at
that time. What did concern me about Germany when I became DAS was something else.
It was all the reports about how difficult it was for West Germany to integrate the East,
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