[Applause] astonishing news from East Germany where the East German authorities have said in essence that the Berlin Wall doesn't mean anything anymore hinting towards a possible end to the decades Long Cold War the Cold War froze everything a lot of the ethnic conflicts were frozen and then with the end of the Cold War the land thawed and all the different kind of worms started crawling around in Terms of the ethnic dislike that uh people had of each other and that was true in the Balkans the worms coming to life in the Balkans were particularly poisonous
for they were driven both by long resentment and by ethnic hatred after World War II the Soviet Union had cobbled Yugoslavia together out of six ethnic republics with the Eastern Orthodox serbs dominant now with the Cold War over the Republics wanted their independence and began declaring it first the slovin then the croats finally the bosnians a majority of bosnians were Muslim but more than a million Christian serbs lived there as well Serbia's nationalist leader Slobodan milosovic declared the serbs would move to protect their Serb Brothers in Bosnia at any cost [Applause] [Music] As an analyst
at the state department I had the same responsibilities and the same access to information as any Analyst at the CIA and then in November of 1991 we got reports from former Yugoslavia of a mass atrocity event we saw Serb forces start to move non-serb populations using mass killings to facilitate or to encourage that that forced evacuation incredibly um difficult Stories to to read they would move in uh they would uh kill individuals who were resisting they would Target a house they would take the parents from the children uh torturing um somebody in the family and
forcing populations out we identified this massive forc displacement and labeled it ethnic cleansing [Music] the United States was struggling to Understand what exactly was the significance of the breakup of the Soviet Union what did it mean for the United States our responsibilities how to lead in the world what the options and opportunities were to advance our values and interests versus what were the risks and costs and Secretary of State Jim Baker looked at the Yugoslavia disintegrating and said it's not our problem thei the Europeans wanted the lead on the issue of the former Yugoslavia we
had done Madrid we' done German unification we presided over peaceful in the Cold War we' done the Gulf War we were we were stretched out pretty thin the EC at the time European Community wanted the lead on how to deal with the former Yugoslavia and we said Be Our Guest they were all pursuing different agendas Germany Britain France they saw what was coming but their provincial interest overrode that the Germans Historically always been close to Croatia and Slovenia British and French have been closer to Serbia that's where their interest were so you didn't have a
unified International Community the Europeans launched their peace Mission with enthusiasm this is the hour of Europe declared luxembourg's foreign minister but who's Europe would the Europeans give their lives to defend an independent Muslim State early on it Became clear the Europeans lacked the will to threaten force and that diplomacy alone would be no match for the serbs military under the command of Ruthless nationalist General ratco madich Serb soldiers began rampaging through Bosnia their strategy create a territory ethnically cleansed of Bosnian Muslims in May and June of 1992 we started hearing reports of rape camps camps
in which Muslim and cowat women had been Detained and raped as a more of a systematic campaign we were able to identify a significant pattern of Serb military personnel being directed to race and it was there that we were starting to be able to report more systematically with data that the ethnic cleansing campaign was deliberate it was orchestrated and controlled [Music] [Music] Most of the world was appalled by the pictures of concentration camps and there was a demand for justice Witnesses told us over the weekend about sealed box cars carrying civilians to camps where they
were tortured and murdered some of them looked as though they hadn't eaten for weeks if not months they wolfed down their food like they were too frightened to talk about the way they have been treated and the conditions in which they have been kept Conditions which have been hidden from the world we do not have confirming information that the reports of systematic or nonsystematic deaths in these detention facilities are true now Mr Boucher your spokesman your spokesman not mine says there have been abuses torture and killings taking place in those areas now either Mr Boucher
is lying or you are lying it was Frustrating to hear um our senior principles in the state department minimizing the work that we were collecting and presenting to them they've made a decision already about what they're going to do and they just don't want people to know what what's real and so they're out there deliberately trying to convey something that uh we know not to be true and that's hard this drama is unfolding on a world Stage and what we get is diplomatic double talk you cannot confirm a single atrocity is that really what you
are saying Miss secretary the US government for the most part didn't want to get involved in Bosnia it was often to minimize or dismiss to say that things weren't conclusive when uh our analysis tended to be more conclusive we were pushing back against a narrative that since this was age-old ethnic animosities there's Not a whole lot you can do let it burn itself out you have ancient ethnic rivalries that have cropped up as as Yugoslavia is dissolved or getting dissolved and it isn't going to be solved by sending in the 82nd Airborne I learned something
from Vietnam I am not going to commit us forces until I know what the mission is till the military tell me that it can be completed until I know how they can come out Governor Clinton you have one minute We can't get involved in the Quagmire but we must do what we can history has shown us that you can't allow the mass extermination of people and just sit by and watch it happen I would begin with air power against the servs to try to restore the basic conditions of humanity it's enormous responsibility to step into
the White House to take over the world in terms of your of your responsibility in Clinton's case we are running against the ultimate foreign Policy president here's this governor of markas and our goal was to make sure that Clinton lost no votes because of foreign policy we W going to beat Bush on foreign policy ladies and gentlemen let us all join together in welcoming the next [Applause] president on this day the American people have voted to make a new [Applause] beginning yes you said one side in the Bosan conflict repres sense inhumanity that the Holocaust
carried to the degree why do you then tell us that United States cannot take a partisan view on this war well I said that the principle of ethnic cleansing is something we ought to stand up against I think what the United States has to do is to try to figure out whether there is some way consistent with forcing the people to resolve their own difficulties we can stand up to and And stop ethnic cleansing as un Ambassador I saw everybody and on a daily basis other members of the security Council as well as the representative
of Bosnia herzo mriy would come to me every day and say your president said he was going to do something you're not doing anything do something home every president goes through a learning process every president goes through a learning Process I don't care how much experience they've had and you suddenly get a group from The Joint Chiefs of Staff uh All In form all with their medals all with stars on their shoulders uh all telling you something that should or should not be done uh and very frankly it's intimidating uh because you know you may
have been a senator you may have been a governor but you never had to make decisions that involveed life and death that's a tremendous responsibility and So presidents usually hesitate uh when they face crisis President Clinton nominated to be the US ambassador to Croatia during the war in Bosnia one of the very first cables I was sending urging that the US take action was about the situation in sevo and recommending strong courses of action that they didn't want to take what what had happened in sovo was that the water had been cut off and not
only is there no water but you know There's no sanitation and so the human waste is coming out in the basement of these apartment buildings and bubbling up into the puddles around and so people are taking contaminated water and boiling it but now the gas is turned off so they can't boil the water we had a a team of humanitarian team The Disaster Assistance relief team they told me of the joke that was circulating at Saro and The Gallows humor uh what's the difference between Saro and aitz answer at least in aitz they had gas
uh you you could see that this would be a kind of sensitive joke but but I decided to include it as the beginning of the cable and the end result of what which was everybody read the cable uh and the cable eventually went to President Clinton both Russians and French and he issued the ultimatum to the serbs to turn on the gas way I then got a call from uh the number three in The state department Peter tarnoff and uh his question was why did you send that cable in an unclassified form because it it
then leaked and my answer to him was what Peter uh what about the recommendations in the cable what about doing something about Saro but the call to me which like was one of like two calls or three calls he ever made to me was why did you send it in unclassified form that that's what was going on where the president and the new Administration saw a careful policy process with justifiable concerns over leaks the serbs saw weakness to mosovich and his generals the West's so-called New World Order looked like vacillation and incompetence and they ruthlessly
seized the moment General madich and his Serb Commander ERS pursued a systematic plan to cleanse Muslims from Bosnia the Bosnian Serb Army swept Through Village after Village burning raping murdering civilians who managed to survive fled The Villages for the besieged cities Saro the capital and the Eastern cities of Sanita Tulsa gaja and zepa soon overflowed with tens of thousands of refugees many living in the streets the Serb Army encircled the cities cutting off supplies and electricity there is no food such as we know it a un official reported starving People eat chaff from wheat roots
from trees desperate for heat the people hacked down trees in the public parks for firewood they burned their furniture and bookcases and then one by one their books they used the parks and any other spare ground to bury their dead creating vast makeshift cemeteries at one point we had you know looking at the reference of the Warsaw Ghetto and kind of representations of of of um a lawless um system of complete Deprivation of individuals kind of left to themselves um you know just incredibly uh you know difficult circumstances these names and others were known to
officials in Washington the Pentagon knew the state department knew the White House knew most governments knew Mr President and distinguished guests indifference is a sin and a punishment when people suffer we cannot Remain indifferent and Mr President I cannot not tell you something I have been in the former Yugoslavia I cannot sleep since as a Jew I am saying that we must do something to stop the Bloodshed in that country but other countries that border the former Yugoslavia and have intense interest we finally agreed to a position that we would lift the arms of Bargo
which was having a disproportionate effect the the the serbs were getting Arms from Serbia the bosnians were getting nothing because of the abgo we would push for lifting the arms in Bargo and then using NATO air power to strike uh serup positions if they continued to Shell uh indiscriminately against the Muslims we took that to the Europeans and they wanted nothing to do with it nobody not London not Paris not Germany who was prepared to take this step so we were thrown back on our you know on our back [Music] feet the hard calculus of
the Europeans was that they had troops on the ground in Bosnia and we did not point one point two there was no way we could get troops on the ground that the Congress would approve of because it was opposed to that uh and that our military would approve of so that was the the heart of the problem in bringing the Europeans along it's true that during this period there was friction between the United States and our European allies they were the people on the ground and they they were taking losses soldiers did die they went
in there as basically heavily armed polic in the western sense and then they found themselves interposed between the two parties if the shooting starts you'll be on the losing end of it being a superpower does not mean you can put up a little sign on your desk Saying we are the superpower and then there are buttons you can push and you push a NATO button and the NATO will do what you want Etc being a superpower means that you have leadership and that leadership involves bringing along coalitions bringing along your allies and others uh or
you're going to fail to the Europeans the reason to oppose American bombing was clear it was their troops who were on the ground as Peacekeepers and they would suffer the casualties once the bombing began to the Americans the Europeans had become overly cautious and obstru cist too squeamish to join in the aggressive response the Serb savagery demanded and the Americans suspected there were deeper uglier emotions at play Europeans were hesitant in those days to really go to bat for for a Muslim population there may have been a you know ethnic ethnic nationalism uh which at
least Contributed to European reluctance to uh to help the bosnians there were concentration camps inside Europe starving people behind barbs could you understand their position the European position in that at that time you know I had a difficult time understanding it then uh as now you know I don't know whether there was a different standard for protecting Muslim populations that was under under uh lying some of this now from our vantage Point it was quite clear and it got clear as mich's brutality continued and Europeans still were unwilling to move on the military Helen asked
earlier about your indecisiveness over Bosnia I'm wondering how you think that's affected perceptions of you as a leader there is a concern that you are indecisive and perhaps not tough enough to tackle all the problems well I I'd just like to uh ask You what their evidence is when I took office I said we were going to try to do more in Bosnia we began to engage in multinational humanitarian Aid we got in April and May the United States voted in the security Council to declare the six besieged enclaves safe areas protected by the UN
faced with the Europeans resistance President Clinton had backed down from his proposal to strike the serbs with air power now the Bosnian Muslims in the Safe areas would be entirely dependent on the United Nations for food and on the lightly armed blue helmets of unpro 4 for protection one of the central aspects of the assistant Secretary of State for human rights is to be a witness I traveled with metal and Albright to Bosnia where there had been horrific attack on a a group of soldiers pulled out of their hospital beds and taken off to a
a distant Place uh where They were executed and their bodies were put into a Mass grave and we saw gruesome evidence we saw various hands and a few skulls and something mine had a particularly strong phrase that she used coming out of here she said no one should end their life in a garbage dump former all about I was just stunned that this kind of a thing could possibly happen we we were talking about the 1990s so then the question is how do you go back and and not sound like a Blithering idiot emotional and
I went back to the White House and I said I was in Saro where buildings had been bombed where there were fires still burning the most smoke coming still from a variety of buildings and people huddled on the street I mean it was so weird this was a town where the Winter Olympics had been held and all of a sudden it was um basically a [Music] Battleground and I don't think why should we not help people that were living in a war zone that didn't need to be a war zone [Music] and I said something
like gentleman history will judge us on this to keep it in perspective I think the most important quality in public life is courage above all it requires the courage to be willing to act in the in these situations and to to take the Consequences you know a lot of cases there just isn't the courage to act there is the courage to act by people at the top there isn't the courage to act by people who may not be in the top but are capable of influencing or capable of acting on their own and uh you
know if we're really going to have a never again world it's going to require courage when the Holocaust museum opened in Washington those of us working on Bosnia were invited to a special tour [Music] there was an exhibition that had an overlay of the US state department spokesperson um reciting the the language in response to questions from the press the realization that um nothing had changed there were similarities in in in the in the logic of response we shouldn't be bombing the railro roads heading into aitz because we have a bigger Strategic all kinds of
reasons why you would want to respond to mass atrocity violence you can always find them and sensing that um you know was pretty powerful you know I think we also understood that the Clinton team had made a decision not to do something and as much as I was trying to change it from within that was not going to do anything my decision to resign it wasn't a snap decision um it was accumulation of um of being depressed and Demoralized I was exhausted from just essentially every single day the stories and uh the human suffering day
after day and um that takes a toll and um it did for me for 22 months the world has watched and often tried to ignore the bloody Civil War in Bosnia it is hard to watch and impossible to ignore what happened there today at least 60 civilians men women and children were killed at least 200 injured when a market full of Saturday Shoppers was shelled the Shoppers never heard it coming a single 120 mm mortar round plunged through the sheet metal roof and cut down scores of people where they stood the lucky were killed instantly
many screaming for help slowly bled to death bodies and body parts were left in a growing Lake of blood kaval hospital was inundated with the wounded arriving in ambulances cars trucks and Vans later hundreds of SAR avans gather outside the mortuary weeping and screaming as the names of the 68 dead are read out high in the sky above two American fighter planes from an aircraft carrier in the Adriatic could be seen flying their Patrols in Washington President Clinton asked for an urgent investigation of today's Massacre the worst massacre of the Serbian and Croatian war against
Bosnia is bringing more calls tonight for military action by the United States and Europe President Clinton avoided reporters but did Issue a statement expressing revulsion and anger about the latest attack in Saro a lot of pressure being placed on Washington now indeed throughout the West to do something about what is happening in Saro like people everywhere I was outraged by the brutal killing of innocent civilians in the SEL market Last Saturday therefore the United States working with our allies has decided that if any Bosnian Serb heavy weapons are found within 20 km of Saro within
10 days NATO commanders stand ready to conduct air strike against Serb artillery positions the serbs began to move their artillery back but General madich remains defiant the serbs he declares have never accepted any ultimatum and they never Will now when the Serb Army shells the safe area NATO planes Strike Back bombing and strafing Serb gun imp placements general madic retaliates just as the Europeans predicted by seizing 150 un blue helmets as hostages the serbs chained the young soldiers to light posts fences and doors where the peacekeepers are displayed to all the world humiliated and helpless
rather than risk killing the Peacekeepers NATO is forced to Halt the bombing the situation was you know just about as bad as had been throughout the conflict it was just bad everywhere and there was no light at the end of the tunnel we had constant bombings of Syria was the snipers of Syria was increasingly the deaths of women and children and nothing was working and the president was increasingly frustrated by that extraordin when you're dealing with These forces of disintegration if you encourage the aggressors by effectively um responding to them without the use of force
uh you're almost certainly going to find them uh doing more so what happened then is uh the Bosnian serbs began to overrun some of these safe areas particularly the town of sedit in early March 1995 the Bosnian Serb leaders meet and come to a decision the fourth year of War will be the last their strategy was simple in order to complete the ethnic cleansing of Bosnia and create a greater Serbia they must attack and liquidate the Eastern enclaves which are still occupied by tens of thousands of Muslim refugees meanwhile these refugees did what civilians do
when under threat they crowded together into the UN compound itself it was their only hope to survive [Music] We were watching with horror you know hour by hour as imagery came in as well as rumors coming out of the uh out of the region we did have some relatively realtime satellite photography sort of showing the scale of what was going on but nobody was predicting that madich would be as brutal as he was rodom which was the Bosnian Serb Commander he was he was a psychopathic murderer I think that's the only way uh uh to
describe him uh a man of Extraordinary cruelty he was um bellicose and blustering he thought that bosan Muslims were simply animals not people [Music] fore [Music] [Music] General ratco madich and his Bosnian Serb forces uh basically rounded up uh all of The people of the Town separated men from women and children and old people uh sent them on buses out of the town this point everybody is focused on the women and girls who were being bust out and and the fact that um you know that the women are being robbed and and a few of
the girls are being taken off the buses and raped and so that's the human rights story and I'm trying to get people to focus on the missing men and boys fore Heree foree spee for speee spee spee checky check the mouse near for nobody knew quite what had happened to these missing men and at that stage I said I've got to go [Music] We got to sadza and I was able with the help of the local un High Commissioner for refugees uh office to identify half a dozen men who had escaped from zban nit and
we interviewed them and they told this extraordinary story about how they were forced out and marched to these open pits uh and there 7,000 of them were executed and later on two young CIA Officers came up with the actual photographs of the sites with mass Graves before the graves were dug and then afterwards men standing in a field and then they were shot you know it's Reb it was largest single genocide in Europe since the second world war when I came back from sanit I was asked to describe literally what I had seen and Heard
and there was deathly silence where you could almost hear a pin drop now you have another Massacre taking place it's happening today not 40 years ago it's happening now and in many ways the blood of those who are dying is on your hands and you've got to deal with it it's the third year of his presidency and he's finally saying excuse me this is my Presidency it's my legacy and history will say whether or not Bill Clinton did the right thing in the situation and you know I'm prepared to take that [Music] risk I think
frankly what changed him was when he was moved by what he saw happening uh and including Stan and secondly the political calculus changed also because we got closer to the Presidential election in 1996 and the president's political advisers I think changed from be careful let's not get too involved in something too military to uh you really need to resolve this before 1996 I don't see how Serbia can participate in that unless NATO forces to become combatants in bosia the endgame plan was in essence to bring more military power more bombing of bosan Serb positions and
threatening still more on the one hand and on the Other hand to convince the bosniacs to be a little more flexible in the negotiations on the territory and in that way to bring an end to the war the president Ed me to Europe to present the new plan to the Europeans uh I was saying this is a decision by the president of the United States this is American policy we're going to do it we will succeed with you and I hope we can succeed without you But we are going to try this new strategy my
fellow Americans in this new era there are still times when America and America alone can and should make the difference for peace the United States LED NATO's heavy and continuous air strikes those air strikes together with the renewed determination of our European Partners convinced the serbs finally to start thinking about making peace after NATO Plains began to bomb in Earnest it took just 3 weeks to persuade mosovich and the serbs to come to the United States and begin to talk Peace by waging a ruthless pitiless war that killed more than 100,000 civilians the serbs had
already gained much of the territory they coveted they will be forced to give very little of that territory back prot Muslims in the Serb cleansing of the land the horrors of San the coming American election all these factors led to the bombing and the Negotiations president will but the question remains had the young president the will to send his war planes 2 years earlier could he have achieved the same results had his military advisers not been Paralyzed by a lesson drawn from Vietnam that only overwhelming force and a clear exit strategy Justified the use of
American military power could tens of thousands of lives have been saved we will never Know what we do know is that after a decisive show of force and only a few weeks of intense diplomatic effort a peace Accord ending the war in the Balkans was signed it was peace without justice but it was [Applause] peace oh freaking I went to Russia in 1998 I talked to General kavash he said you're taking our Countries in Eastern Europe these are our countries meaning the Czech Republic Slovakia Poland Bulgaria Romania I said they're not your countries they're independent
countries he said we Russians we we know what you're doing you're using this to come into our part of Europe you see there was a education process underway in the Soviet Union it was Taught at all levels of the chain of command that the world was like a chessboard there's my squares and there's your squares and what's in the middle I want them and I'm going to take them if you take those you going to make me feel very unsafe in my square and that's the way the Russians [Music] think after 2 years of relative
calm the Balking are once again on the brink of War violent clashes in the Serbian province of Kosovo a huge demonstration of ethnic Albanian Muslims demanding Independence now to escape Serbian domination it is Kosovo that wants to break away but Serb leader slobad mosovich pledges to keep Kosovo under Serb control I went down to see mosic and mosic showed up about 10 o'clock in the morning had his glass of peir Brandy With him and he says you know General Clark he said uh we know how to handle these albanians we have done this before I
said well how did you handle them he said we killed them we killed them all this is Adam yashari the father of the Kosovo Liberation Army or klaa beginning in the mid 1990s y AR and his large family became symbols of the kosovar Muslim struggle for freedom and independence from Serbia serbs had actually been engaged in a graduated ethnic cleansing program against the Albanian inhabitants of Serbia and that consisted of forbidding the instruction in the schools in the Albanian language running Albanian speaking people out of the government posts harassing doctors and lawyers making life difficult
for people like the jashari family who were um proud of their Albanian Heritage and they were made to feel like second class Citizens in their own country the Dayton agreement signed in November 1995 finally ended the serbs genocidal war on bosnia's Muslims but the agreement did not address Kosovo which the International Community considered a part of Serbia for kosovo's Muslims the problem now became how to gain International attention and persuade the West to support their claim for Independence Many Muslims came to believe that violence was the most effective means during the next 2 years the
KLA began attacking Serb police stations government buildings in Kosovo men flocked to the K and money began to pour in as Dawn broke on March 5th 1998 yashari and the K launched an attack on a police patrol near their Village this time the serbs were ready heavily armed police surr rounded The yashari compound and gave the family an ultimatum they had 2 hours to surrender adem yashari decided Kosovo needed a martyr the family patriarch opened fire the serbs responded with bullets and artillery shells The Siege lasted 3 days at the end a Dem yashari lay
dead beside him lay his wife his brother and his Son in all 57 members of the yashari family fighters women and children died in The Siege Adam's 10-year-old niece was the only yashari that survived I got a call from the US ambassador in Macedonia he said president gigov wants to see you right away so I went to see gigov and he told me this jari family has been murdered and these albanians are not like Bosnians they will fight and he explained to me this he said General Clark there have been many Guerilla movements in the
Soviet Union and they've all been crushed he said the tactics are extreme and they've worked he said in one case the lap Landers they rebelled against the Soviets the Soviets they took a man's children and they smeared them with what the sled Dogs eat and tied them up and turn the sled dogs loose on the children that was the method that mosich learned if you negotiate you look weak so best thing to do with these people is kill them and now you're having these albanians under attack and it will be Soviet methods there will be
War only a few years before NATO bombing and American diplomacy had finally ended The serbs war in Bosnia it had taken 3 and a half years while the serbs massacred Muslims and the United States stood by finally after the serbs murdered 8,000 men and boys at sanit President Clinton had acted sending his war planes to bomb the serbs the serbs at last had been stopped but they had not been cowed unleashing the utmost brutality while the West watched they had Accomplished in Bosnia much of what they desired cleansing huge swaths of Bosnian territory of Muslims
now in Kosovo the serbs seemed on the verge of doing it all over again keep in mind that again for the context of this situation this administration had been through the cber a massacre on their watch this was a searing experience for some of those who were in office at that time So as they saw this looming again humanitarian catastrophe there was a sense that we can't let this get out of control the way uh Bosnia did mine Corbell Albright do solemnly swear do solemnly swear I was born in Prague Czechoslovakia and I don't want
to overdo my status as a refugee during World War II but we were and I know even as a child what it felt like to have to leave your country and I think that every decision Maker bring their own history and background to looking at decisions the mun agreement of September 1938 was a quintessential moment for me the agreement gave a piece of Czechoslovakia to Germany to Hitler when Neville Chamberlain the British prime minister said something like why should we care about people in Far Away places with unpronouncable names there was not a recognition that
what was being done to dismantle this small Country actually did not achieve peace that you have to stand up to evil and there's no way that I can fully explain what it was like to be a child of World War II and having survived and then sitting behind the sign that said the United States and realizing that we could do something and so the question for me always was if you take action earlier will you be able to prevent terrible things happening Later I thought to myself last time I was UN Ambassador now I'm Secretary
of State and we are not going to just sit around and wait for this we are not going to Stand By and Watch watch the Serbian authorities do in Kosovo what they can no longer get away with doing in Bosnia the secretary of state is in London today for meetings with the same group of countries that helped broker an end to the war in Bosnia hoping to find a solution in Kosovo the time to stop the killing is now the way to do that is to take immediate action against the regime in Belgrade to ensure
that it pays a price for the damage it has already done American policy makers read the lessons of Bosnia and believed that this Victory uh such as it was could be replicated uh in Kosovo the Russians saw things differently they thought that the most important thing in international Affairs Is the national sovereignty uh and what goes on inside borders is the business of the country uh that is in government there and unless they call for assistance then it's not the business of the international Community we have an opportunity to learn from I was at a
meeting with President Clinton and president said one of the most important things that is going to be a part of our Legacy is if we bring Russia into a globalized world and with good relations with the west and the most important person uh in that is going to be yson and I'm going to uh spend a lot of time with him this was our eighth visit it was a good and productive one which emphasized the stability and the strength of the partnership between the United States and Russia if you looked at the Press reports one
could see that what you were writing was that today's meeting with President Bill Clinton was going to be a disaster well now for the first time I can tell you that you're a disaster [Laughter] the political pressure on yelton was intense after the end of Communism the Russian economy was collapsing and for many Russians the West's aggressiveness against their Slavic Brothers fit a pattern of stab in the back betrayal a few years before US Secretary of State James Baker had promised Soviet Leader Mikel gorov that the Western Alliance would move not one inch Eastward Baker
vowed that NATO the North Atlantic Treaty Organization which for four decades had bound the United States military to those of its European allies would not take advantage of Russia's current weakness now under Clinton the United States was doing exactly that bringing Russia Russ's former allies into nato in order the Russians believed to keep Russia humiliated isolated and exposed they were convinced that the United States was tricking Russia boasting about the strong American Russian relationship even as they ignored Russia's legitimate interests in Eastern Europe many Russians began to despise yelen for his close relations with Clinton
and the United States there was a sense in Russia in the mid90s that being a great power and Russia sees itself as a great power that great powers like Russia are entitled to spheres of influence and this is a proud people you know Russians who have a very exceptionalist view of their history and their role in the world and I think there was a sense that was encroached upon that the West took advantage of that moment when I was serving in Russia in the mid 90s I remember Andre kerev who was in the Russ foreign
minister saying you Americans like to tell us What to do but don't don't think that we you know like to be put in that position Serbian forces are going all out to drive ethnic Muslim albanians out of Kosovo SS came destroyed homes and schools nine people have been killed in the last two days including a child forces for some 200,000 villagers to flee their homes into the surrounding woods and Hills Jeremy the serbs were patrolling movement through the villages arresting people who are might be So-called troublemakers minimum they'd be robbed the women might be raped
the kids might be taken captive they might be shot and then people would flee the albanians came to me and they said look we're looking across these mountains in the coast we can see the mortar bombs going off boom boom boom we know who's living in those Villages some of them are our cousins they're they're attacking these Villages what is NATO going to do well That's a pretty strong condemnation of NATO just after you've been beating your breast and saying how great we were because we brought peace into the Balkans we hadn't finished the job
there was not a Shadow of Doubt that we were going to intervene in Costo there were not long debates and the president articulated time again we're not going to permit ethnic cleansing pure ethnic cleansing to take place uh in the last year of the 20th century so Then the question was could we get NATO to sign on some of the NATO members said we have to get the permission of the security Council we knew that was impossible Russia going to veto it to negotiate while to avoid creating more problems for yelton President Clinton tried to
deter milosovic in June 1998 he sends 85 NATO war planes on a demonstration flight above Albanian Macedonia the president means to send a Clear message if milosovic does not halt his ethnic cleansing in Kosovo the Western powers are willing to use their military might to stop him and if mosovich is counting on Russia to protect him by casting its veto in the UN Security Council Clinton sends a message about that too the leader of the nation that proclaims A New World Order built around the United Nations is quite willing to ignore the UN and Order
NATO forces into Combat without security ccil approved in mid June President Clinton calls yelen to discuss the Kosovo crisis we must avoid the mistake we made in Bosnia Clinton tells him by waiting too long to act yelson is alarmed military action in Kosovo he tells Clinton flatly is unacceptable yelson was just bellowing at him saying you know the United States must not will not not cannot uh use Force again uh in the Balkans the way you did in Bosnia this is unacceptable he ranted at Clinton who often in these phone calls by the way would
just sit there and kind of listen take it uh and then he hung up if you want to do it one will stop that would the United States government at every level knew that the Russians were dug in on Kosovo but there was sense that genocide was around the corner if you uh if you did not actan we had a hard choice to make Between seeing this worst case scenario unfold seeing mosich get away with murder and with ethnic cleansing seeing NATO's credibility kind of be shattered uh or to try to keep the Russians on
board play on the strong personal connection between Clinton and yelson what Javier salana the NATO Secretary General said at the time mosich has a new tactic he calls it a village a day keeps NATO away that is to say they had found the level of pain that NATO could Tolerate if they only did a village a day NATO would say well it's not that serious right now and um yes we should definitely take this under advisement if they did two or three villages NATO might act so therefore a village a day that's what you got
at that was 400,000 people who had evacuated their Villages and were living up in the forests on these 10,000 ft mountains they were winding up in tent encampments um in neighboring countries Um and um winter was coming so there was initially um a race to Simply put in place the means to receive them feed them keep them warm and so on uh because the numbers were so extraordinarily [Music] High some of them would sneak in at night they try to get the last loaf of bread out of their house but they'd be gone again as
soon as possible because they knew that serbs caught them there Anything could happen and it was all starting over it was like a nightmare and the D was okay what now we discussed our common foreign policy agenda we agreed that the Serbian government must stop all repressive actions against civilian populations allow relief organizations immediate and full access to those in need and pursue an interim settlement here our Approaches have not always completely coincided Russia rejects the use of power methods as a matter of principle conflicts of today have no military Solutions be it in Kosovo
or or others also we don't not accept the NATO sanism idea for the new European security are we Russia and us partners right now and today uh beating farewell Boris yelson and Bill Clinton are they still friends thank You you ask if we're still friends the answer to that is yes you ask if we are if Russia and the United States have a partnership I think the plain answer to that is yes that would even though we don't always agree on every [Applause] issue behind his calming words Clinton is worried about yelton's precarious political position
we are headed to a iion in Kosovo he tells British Prime Minister Tony Blair I'm quite concerned about the stability of yelton's government his economic problems are horrible and his internal political problems are awful Clinton and Blair agree not to bring the Kosovo issue to a un Security Council vote to avoid putting more pressure on yelton we tried to bring up a situation to mosovich he said his internal problem not going to discuss It it was clear that mosovich had no intention of changing his plans he was the worst sort of leader mosovich for his
own purposes used the Nationalist sense that the serbs had in order to keep going after Kosovo that was something that he he talked about all the time and it was a matter of Serbian honor he was living up to the dreams that Serbia had and a revenge for what happened in the 14th century the Battle of Kosovo um in 1389 Where the serbs got defeated by their [Music] Muslims the serbs went through this little village of ROK and rounded up 53 guys and moved them into a ditch and mowed them down this a massacre these
guys are farmers none of us understood why who were they [Music] [Music] responsible for the Ser police who alleged committed this Massacre example Mr mosovich has crossed the threshold uh and the NATO countries I believe now are as one that he must comply or face the distinct possibility of military action we're not in the business anymore of making appeals to him he knows what he has to do if he does it that's his decision of course I hope that he does do it but we're not acting on the basis that he will we're acting now
on the basis that we're going to have to take military action Before he orders the attack on Serbia Clinton calls [Music] yelon I want you to know said Clinton that I am determined to do whatever I can to keep our disagreement on this from ruining everything else we have done and can do together in the coming years yelton is horrified he begs Clinton to reconsider at stake is not just Kosovo yelton declares but the future of Russia I remember how hard it was for me to try to turn the heads of our people towards the
West towards the United States says yelton and now we would lose all that yelson said no no no yet net net don't do this he was Furious apoplectic it was he says you just cannot do that we have a good relationship going but I have a lot of problems at home I have tried to bend for things that you felt were important Uh including the future of NATO but uh he did not say please don't do this he said you can't do this the Russian president tried to explain to Clinton that the issue is much
bigger than Kosovo that acting to stop ethnic cleansing in Kosovo would carry a huge cost in the name of our future in the name of you and me in the name of the security in Europe yelton pleads I ask you to renounce that strike that should be done for the sake of Peace in Europe it is not known who will come after us I can't says Clinton taking account of what Russia thought or Russian interests or uh Russian reactions was not a big deal frankly and the policy establishment here was not actually thinking oh we
need to think carefully about how we've approached this because Russia May react XY Russia was seen as basically having to take it this was a NATO operation now There is a humanitarian reason why I believe we need to take a stand there there is a practical reason if we don't do it now we'll have to do it later and there is a long-term strategic region for the United States our children need a stable free Europe was a Tuesday night on the 23rd of March and general Shelton called me and said got released Authority 24 hours
from now it's goingo knows the phone number of NATO and he Knows where to call when he wants the strikes to stop perhaps 20 targets hit in the first hour alone airports communication Towers command posts military factories and warehouses Christina only 2 weeks ago a bustling city of mly kasar albanians today a virtual Ghost Town diplomat the serbs had a plan that they instituted immediately when the bonds started falling and that is to push the Kosovars out of Kosovo uh into Macedonia in the vast sea of mud and despair new arrivals huddle in groups women
and children traumatized by the loss of their men the refugee camps in Macedonia are packed to bursting more than 100 ,000 ethnic albanians are here already there was a tremendous pressure in the Clinton Administration and then a sense that winter was coming which meant there would be a crisis at humanitarian Levels um and a sense that mosovich was playing a pressure game uh with us and the question was um what would be the response to that soon after the mission began we I think realized that bombing only Serb forces in Kosovo you know the actual
perpetrators of the ethnic cleansing was only having limited effect and that's why as the conflict went on we had to push for Allied agreement to raise the stakes by Beginning to bomb military Targets in Serbia proper and uh even sort of strategic assets like Bridges and TV towers and in Belgrade itself should we or should we not strike the Serbian White House should we strike the Serbian um version of the Pentagon so some of the very sensitive targets the chairman insisted on taking to the White House he wanted President Clinton to understand that a very
politically sensitive Target was going to be struck Uh and they approved every single one that that he took over there would be many more Massac tens of thousand the bombing of belgrad was a bit of a shock for some of us at the state department and I remember saying to strobe in a kind of moment of agitation you know this is really unamerican bombing cities you'd have to be a or a devil uh to go into a War and not be afraid Wars are Humanity's uh darkest chaos we we actually bombed refugees who were trying
to get out of the country we bombed Bridges when we thought there was nobody on them and there were people on them war is hell so everything was going wrong at some some point I walk into my office um very early on and my executive assistant says sit down I said what he said just Sit down said what's the matter with you and he said we have just bombed the Chinese Embassy by mistake suddenly CNN is saying that uh the Chinese Embassy was hit so I laid out all the targets and all the maps and
looked at them and nothing was anywhere near the Chinese Embassy I I have send my my regrets and my profound condolences to the leaders and the people of China and to the innocent people in Serbia who have perished I Hate it it was it's tragic it's awful but it's a tragedy and it was an accident [Music] riot police stood between the US Embassy and angry Russians today the building is scarred by three straight days of demonstrations in today's emergency debate in Parliament Ultra nationalist Vladimir janovski showed up in uniform ready for war no surprise there
what is significant though is What's being said by Russians who are normally Pro Western Russia was not starting the war the bombing came from NATO you have no right to start the things that you don't know how to finish we had the most uncontrollable anti-American rhetoric that we'd seen since the not just since the Cold War but in many many years uh you'd have to go back decades to find anything as hysterical and anti-American as what you heard during the C ofo War [Applause] a lot of this I always thought had very little to do
with kosovars and serbians it had to do with domestic politics what suddenly emerged was a an opportunity for yelton's critics opponents all those people whom he had managed to keep uh at Bay it became an opportunity because he is seen as is not standing up to the Americans Mr yelon is under attack from Communists and nationalists who are Pushing him to do more for Yugoslavia from opposition lawmakers who are preparing for a major debate on impeaching him the single biggest political organized force in the Russian Federation was still what was left over of the Communist
Party of the Soviet Union Union and that much of the Nationalist opposition came out either of of a certain set of of especially vitrio politicians who were appealing to Raw Russian nationalism uh and to the Communist party yelson was increasingly pushed by harder line advisers including primov and some of the former KGB people that were gaining more influence the more liberal uh figures in yon's administration had been replaced so Russia was kind of becoming a little more Soviet in its approach and was uh determined not to be uh led by the nose by by NATO
or the United States anymore [Music] this is not looking back and saying oh my God that is going to be really tough on yelson and the reformers in Russia we knew that it was going to be very very tough on them when we were doing it it we were doing the right thing but sometimes that right thing can be very very dangerous I told NATO and the Americans and the Germans don't push us towards military Actions otherwise the whole Europe will plunge into a war Mr yelon according to the speaker of the lower house of
parliament went even further saying he might order Russia to retarget its nuclear weapons at NATO countries taking part in the bombing of Yugoslavia the threats by President yelson of Russia were taken very seriously and and parsed and analyzed and the intelligence community did uh various analyses of this but there just was not a conviction That that Russia was going to use nuclear weapons over Kosovo we thought five six days mosovich would surrender you know twoo much he had not surrendered and there was one particular moment when you know we had to make a decision of
whether we were in use Ground Forces but that's that was when the debate emerged have set out the military did not want to put ground forces in because they said it was a non-permissive Environment and I said but excuse me I don't understand we've been bombing for over 70 days so is there something between permissive and non-permissive is there semi-permissive and then the military who know how to do this said you're not semi dead from NATO's perspective the air campaign well nobody was in favor of ground when you put ground troops in you start taking
casualties you're writing letters home but from the Commander's perspective it Had to be an option it was on the table the credible threat of a ground Invasion dramatically increases the stakes for the arrival of American troops in Kosovo would send Russians into the streets and make yelton's position untenable yelson acts he brings brings back to Power the former Russian Prime Minister Victor chirin he orders him to fly to Belgrade to restrain mosovich and broker a peace Deal with the West after a couple of weeks in which he had not been able to get a handle
on this yelson turn the tables on his critics injects himself into this picture as the man who is going to stop the fighting and Ensure that not more serbs get killed and is going to keep Russia from having any involvement in a war as Chan arrives in Belgrade NATO makes clear that the preparations for an invasion are advancing CH noirin tells milosovic flatly that if NATO invades Russia will not support him I remember sitting in my office at 2:00 in the morning writing a memo uh to the president saying if we want to have the
ground option we have to all you have to say yes in three days um and here are the consequences of that 8 o00 the phone rang it was strobe tabba and strobe said he Surrendered you don't think there was a absolute exhale of relief at that point I went to Brussels went to Nato headquarters went to the office of Javier salana and we basically just had an one big alaso uh we we just hugged and there were a a few shars of kind of relief I shed uh but that's the only time I I would
at least that's the only time I would confess in public it was late at night 8 or 9:00 in Brussels and salana called me and he said U this is over you can stop right now it's over stop the campaign you've done it you've won he said you'll be my friend for life I thought that was a nice expression and and and um I've always treasured what he said to me that night I got a good night's sleep for the first time in about 3 months this is CNN breaking news despite assurances by the Russian
government that its troops would not enter Kosovo Russian soldiers entered the battered Capital early Saturday and were greeted by they came down the main street of Chistina Russian Flags overhead shots fired repeatedly Tim they are simply stunned here at the White House tonight I cannot overstate the shock of White House officials at first they denied it could be true but then rushed into meetings here at the White House very close touch with the Allies I will be it was a nice day in uh Washington and I Got a call from my Deputy who was with
strobe in Moscow between meetings and she said to me you're not going to believe what has been going on here the there was a sense that they had witnessed the kind of Russian national security establishment coming unglued in Russia it was chaos it was chaos yelson was out of business he was uh in at the data and then some Russians high up in the military went rogue I would say it Was almost a mutiny uh it was a m newon it was a Russian special op they got their Battalion in they took the Airfield they
continued to prepare to outload their troops and land more troops but in the meantime I had called the hungarians and the Ukrainian and the Romanians the Russians had come to them and asked for overflight permission so they did it the typical way you know they went to the ukrainians and said the hungarians have already agreed to Overflight you may as well give us permission so the Ukrainian said okay you can have it they went to the hungarians said the ukrainians have given us permission the hungarians said no they went to the Romanians Romanians said no
they went to the bulgarians the bulgarians said no so they backed down and the additional troops never came in I arrived in Pristina once the war was over uh and there were signs all over saying thank you USA thank you USA And now there is a whole generation of little girls whose first name is meline well I obviously was deeply moved um um and and it made we did do the right thing working with both parties to try to get them together because the Russian presence will help to reassure the servs and figures who are
working for Democratic change there was an argument in the United States which is the Americans won the Cold War and that idea was not about ideology But rather it became focused on the Russians lost then the issue becomes in a sense well who's in charge of Designing the future of this big Euro Atlantic world who whose values whose uh systems whose institutions and so forth and the answer from was was pretty obvious well you know we're in [Applause] charge so it's NATO it is Western Financial and trading institutions it's All of the all of the
things that the United States and the West had stood for our message is clear peace and Humanity will prevail Bale in kovo the last European dictatorship of the 20th century will not destroy Europe's long awaited chance to live at last together in Peace and [Applause] Freedom we didn't listen much we're not good listeners Americans you know we we think if there's a Problem let's get on and fix it and we never have been were willing to accept the premise that in a different world you better sit down with everybody and figure out what the new
rules are going to [Applause] be clearly the mood in in Russia after the war was increasingly anti-western and Kosovo was a key part of the uh of the narrative so it may have been one of the Factors that uh led the you know the the forces around Putin to kind of be the the the choice that yelon had to make in choosing his successor yelon was leaving office in his final call as president with Clinton just 3 hours before the new Millennium yelton thanks Clinton for his friendship then he invites him to meet his successor
a former KGB officer who was largely unknown to the West he is strong and intelligent yelton Assures Clinton I'm sure he is a Democrat the United States missed a terrific opportunity to help Russia transform itself instead we just let Russia be and the power structure that was left after the collapse of the Soviet Union was still in place the same KGB officers like major Colonel Putin they made their way up They Carried the same ideas and prejudices that they'd been schooled to [Music] I'm sure that Putin's time being kind of on the fringes of the
breakup of the Soviet Empire when he was serving in the KGB in East Germany influenced his view of the West and I think a lot of his hostility to the West goes back to his sense that Russia had had been ignored it was not so much that we did anything harmful to Russia but we ignored Russia's point of view in taking our final decision to uh to use the air Power I think that contributed to a lot of the rhetoric we've heard from Putin in more recent years I don't think you can understand Putin's Russia
you know unless you have a sense of that feeling of collapse and humiliation that was very much a part of yelton's Russia from Putin's perspective when he was looking at the independence of OVO he was looking at American plans to establish missile defense installations in Poland and the Czech Republic and he was looking at a NATO Summit in which the United States pushed very hard to open the door to Nato membership for Ukraine and Georgia he saw all this as part of a kind of concerted american-led conspiracy to undermine Russia um and so yeah I
mean their sense was that the United States was the more powerful player along with our NATO allies and so we were making the rules and the moment arose years later you know when they had Relatively more leverage that was still very much on their minds I have over and over and again tried with gimlet eyes to say strobe you and we made a big mistake with two things NATO expansion and the war war against movich over Kosovo because they were crippling to Yelson but that's not the end of my monologue with my my dialogue with
myself you have to say to yourself um what's the other side what would have happened if we had shut down all of the countries that wanted to be part of the West if we had sacrificed them we would have been ashamed of ourselves and as for the genocidal war that mosovich was waging against his own people if we had let that thing go to The end uh history would have um been at least as mad at us as our Russian friends are now how many would have died in kovo had the West not finally acted
to stop ethnic cleansing it is impossible to know but during the month after the bombings ended nearly a million Muslim refugees protected by NATO troops were able to return to their homes today Kosovo is an Independent country created by the West after the [Music] war after the genocides in Bosnia and Rwanda the United Nations embraced the responsibility to protect under this principle known as r2p the sovereignty of each regime over its territory and people carries the responsibility to protect those people from genocide ethnic cleansing and crimes against humanity Should the national government fail to fulfill
that responsibility then the International Community through the security Council must assume it in effect this is what the United States and NATO did in kovo they intervened in a sovereign country and acted to save lives but the intervention had its cost the nations of the region have faced enormous for a Time the United States as sole superpower had been strong enough To impose its Vision but as in any tragedy unchecked power brings Hubris in its train and hubris leads to the downfall of the powerful Vladimir Putin took power vowing to return a humiliated Russia to
its Glory Days and he acted to do just that Putin ruthlessly crushed the rebellion in chetna intervened in Georgia eastern Ukraine and Syria and seized the Crimea Putin curbed Democratic freedoms In Russia assassinated his critics and made himself in effect president for life he became Russia's new strongman and he did so with the approval of vast numbers of Russians who had been humiliated by what they saw as the abject Retreat of the yelton years and welcomed their country's Newfound [Applause] power it is not known who will come after us yelson had warned Clinton the Americans
by imposing their Will on a weakened Russia had helped create their own Nemesis in Vladimir Putin the Americans found a tough and cunning rival who played Russ hand aggressively in the Middle East and in Europe in February 2022 Putin sent his soldiers and tanks into Ukraine vowing to dismantle a sovereign country and set off the gravest crisis in Europe since the second world War no doubt he had been encouraged that when he earlier attacked and invaded his neighbors he had found little real opposition but the seeds of his resentment is a Obsession to recreate the
glory of Soviet power had been sown during the New World Order of the 9s in the United States decisions to expand NATO and to intervene in Kosovo Putin's brutal invasion of Ukraine brought Russia and the United States as close as they have ever been To the nightmare of nuclear confrontation
