TRAC
Interview Transcript

Joseph V. Montville   (cont)

We have to continue to affirm the values of the relationship.  Now, at the political level, it may get a little healthier in the U.S. official Soviet relationship and the Russian relationship after these last congressional elections.  I think the congressional elections were a defeat for some of the more militant right-wing ideologues in the Republican party.  And it may be more fashionable to think in a more mature way about America's international obligations--paying its U.N. debt finally and engaging with Russia in a mature, respectful way, now that there has been a significant erosion of the sort of xenophobic side of the political culture.

 We have--there have been several references to the Gore-Chernomyrdin connection.  This, in fact, has been a very highly institutionalized relationship of consultation every six months led by the vice president and by the Russian prime minister, but with teams, functional teams, at the cabinet level of a number of issues on trade, on the nuclear issues, environment--a very healthy institutionalization of respectful consultation between the two great powers.  I, by the way, don't like the term superpower.  I believe in great powers and then evaluating behavior of great powers in terms of whether they're really great or just big in dominance and destructiveness.

 Another new possibility has come on the scene--something I hope to explore out of my base at the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington: Congressman Lee Hamilton, who I've known for many years and who was at one point the chairman of the House International Relations Committee, and one of the most respected leaders in the Congress on foreign policy, and a great supporter and advocate of TRAC II diplomacy and humanizing relations is retired from the Congress this year.  He's going to become the director of the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars, which also houses the Kennan Institute, which focuses on Russian studies.  And I plan to see him because he really is more than--I'm sure he'll want to be more than just someone who presides over a collection of scholars each doing their own thing, without any kind of unifying theme; not that he would impose a theme on them, but I think he will like to encourage scholarships that focus on problem-solving.  There's this great conceit in the social sciences and the humanities that there is such a thing as pure research.  And I think as long as people are--their lives are threatened and babies are starving, that pure research in the social sciences ought to be focused on solving problems.

 I think, in other words, that we could perhaps add some institutional support from the respective center in Washington to the concept of nourishing this very basic and critical great power relationship between Russia and America.

 I'll just sort of end up with noting some of the specific tasks that I hope to undertake at the Center for Strategic International Studies.  I direct what's called a "preventive diplomacy" program, which tries to integrate the themes and the values of TRAC II diplomacy into a less frightening approach to formal diplomacy called preventive diplomacy.  And I've found that some of the most receptive in the official foreign policy community are in the Pentagon, because they are trained to think ahead, and do contingency planning, whereas the civilians can't plan the afternoon in the morning.

 My goal is to try to institutionalize the concept of anticipating problems and developing alliances between official TRAC I people and unofficial TRAC II people, including my program and many others, so that we can do some problem solving and put out the small fires before they grow to the big fires and to generally maintain a healthy international community by accepting a great power responsibility--a form of stewardship responsibility.

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