“Security Through Cooperation”: Rose Gottemoeller on US-Russian Diplomacy Past, Present . . . and Future?

Before invasions of Ukraine and Crimea and various “resets” of America’s diplomatic approach toward the Kremlin, there was the “Boris and Bill Show” – two chummy and newly-installed presidents meeting multiple times at the tail-end of the 20th Century with the shared goal of bringing Russia into a post-Cold War world order as a peaceful, prosperous (and non-proliferating) society.

Rose Gottemoeller, a Hoover Institution research fellow and former Clinton and Obama administration national security aide, sets the record straight on the Clinton-Yeltsin summits, what she learned as the first American woman to lead nuclear arms talks, why Vladimir Putin went from offering help in the aftermath of the 9/11 attacks to seeing America as a threat Russia’s security, and the challenges of serving as NATO’s deputy secretary general during the first Trump presidency.

It’s all chronicled in her new book, Security Through Cooperation: Space, Nuclear Weapons, and US-Russia Relations after the Cold War, a must-read for history buffs and students of the enigma that is Putin and the Russian mindset.