Few people alive today can speak with greater authority about Russia, the Soviet Union, and the end of the Cold War than Ambassador Jack Matlock. He served four tours in Moscow during a 35-year diplomatic career and was the last U.S. ambassador to the Soviet Union, from 1987 to 1991. In those years he helped negotiate the peaceful end of the Cold War — an achievement he insists must never be misremembered as a Western “victory.”
In our conversation on The Peacemonger, Matlock is characteristically precise and unsparing. The Cold War ended by negotiation, he reminds us, because both sides concluded it served their interests.
The subsequent breakup of the Soviet Union was driven by internal pressures, not American design.
What followed, however, was a series of historic mistakes that have left us in a far more dangerous world.
Chief among them was NATO expansion. Matlock was present when Secretary of State James Baker assured Mikhail Gorbachev that NATO’s jurisdiction would not move “one inch to the east.”
Those assurances were repeated multiple times.
They were never written into a formal treaty covering Eastern Europe, but they formed the political understanding on which the peaceful settlement of the Cold War rested. Expanding the alliance eastward, Matlock argues, transformed a defensive organisation into an offensive one and was strongly opposed by almost all of the American officials who had actually negotiated the end of the Cold War.
He is equally clear about Ukraine.
The conflict is not a simple morality play of a large aggressor attacking a small democracy. It is rooted in complicated history, contested borders created by Stalin and Khrushchev, and Western policies that ignored Russian red lines — particularly the prospect of NATO bases or membership on Ukraine’s territory.
The 2008 Bucharest Summit promise, the 2014 events in Kyiv, and the subsequent de facto treatment of Ukraine as a NATO member all contributed to a predictable confrontation.
Matlock is scathing about the abandonment of diplomacy. Even after 9/11, when Putin was the first foreign leader to offer support, opportunities for a normalised relationship were squandered.
By 2010 Putin still described the United States as a “principal partner.” Western policy chose instead to pursue influence in Russia’s near abroad and to place missiles in Eastern Europe under dubious pretences.
The result has been the progressive isolation of Russia, the devastation of Ukraine, and a Europe that is less secure, not more.
At 96, Matlock speaks with the authority of someone who has seen history from the inside.
He warns that NATO no longer has a coherent purpose, that talk of regime change in Russia is reckless, and that the current path risks nuclear escalation while ignoring the real existential threats of climate, pandemics and economic instability.
This is a conversation that cuts through decades of myth-making. If we are ever to rebuild a stable European security order, we will need to recover the diplomatic seriousness that Matlock and his colleagues once practised.
You can watch the full discussion here.
Wherever you are in the world, whatever your nationality and religion, I wish you much peace.
IMO, Jack Matlock is the last US diplomat of merit, someone who was able to manage the conflicting requirements of representing his country's interests with understanding those of his opposite number.
Perhaps I've overlooked someone here, but in any event, I think his experience and insights should be listened to and acted upon. He is probably the last US official the Russians would trust to deal with.
I've watched Jack Matlock's interviews on other channels.
Besides the fact that he speaks with the voice of history, narrating what he witnessed and participated in (when he didn't help formulate it), I find his lucidity and reasoning during the interviews impressive.
And his memory. His memory...
I always stop to listen to Jack Matlock.
I imagine he's a true icon for Diplomatas.
And Mr. Proud's satisfaction with this guest, I can only imagine...