The Rhodes Scholars

Searching for the beginnings of the Ukraine War.

Economic Principals has been writing about the breakup of the Soviet Union since 1991, about the fate of Ukraine since 2014. Now EP is winding up while the war in Ukraine goes grinding on. What last words are there to be write?

Just these: a paper-thin indictment for the record, and a home-made benediction for some sooner time. When the ghastly destruction of the Russia-Ukraine war is over, after boundaries have been redrawn, then a search for origins of the war will be taken up by disinterested historians, in circumstances less dominated by emotion than today.

Those historians might begin with the story of Bill Clinton and Strobe Talbott, two of the 32 members of the Rhodes Scholars Class of 1968, on their way to the Oxford University aboard the S.S. United States. Thirty years later, as American president, encouraged by Talbott, his old friend and close adviser on Russia, made choices that, twenty-five years after that, led others to war.

By seeking to expand the North Atlantic Treaty Alliance (NATO) beyond the previously agreed-upon reunion of German, and the subsequent admission to the alliance of Poland, Hungary, and Czechoslovakia, to include a third tranche of admissions – the Baltic republics of Lithuania, Latvia and Estonia, plus Bulgaria, Romania, Slovakia, and Slovenia – Clinton adopted policies that constricted the next five administrations.

The two men met and bonded in the Rhodes Scholar Class of 1968. Talbott, born to a wealthy Cleveland family, had been enrolled in Yale College at birth. Clinton, from Hot Springs, Arkansas, graduated from Georgetown University in 1968. Talbott’s ascension to Rhodes privilege seemed certain. Clinton’s did not. The two quickly became fast friends, with abundant ambition and talent in common.

How did the two men form strong beliefs about the USSR? By visiting Moscow itself. Talbott for a month in 1969, Clinton in 1970, as part of their long Oxford vacation. It was opportunity nearly as exclusive in the late Sixties as the Rhodes scholarship itself. Impression stuck with them and gradually turned into convictions, confidence reinforced by the passage of time. Clinton returned to Arkansas to pursue politics. Talbott later wrote, as president, Clinton “was his own Russia hand.” Talbott became Time’s bureau chief in several capital cities.

Most of this origin story is to be found in fascinating detail, in First in His Class:” A Biography of Bill Clinton, by David Maraniss. Plenty of other books will invite further inquiries to future historians, including The Russia Hand: a Memoir of Presidential Diplomacy, by Strobe Talbott; Our Man: Richard Holbrooke and the End of the American Century, by George Packer; and my own, Because They Could: The Harvard Russia Scandal (and NATO Expansion) after Twenty-Five Years.

The commitment to NATO expansion that Clinton passed to his successors wasn’t irreversible, not yet, anyway. George W. Bush had the best chance He and Vladimir Putin, who also had just taken office, shared common goals. But the American president’s preoccupation with Iraq ended that. When US allies in Europe failed to heed Putin’s warning, he began to publicly criticizing American willfulness in 2004.

In 1996, Clinton sought broad bipartisan support for his plans and received it. Those were pre-polarization days. We know enough now from the conduct in office of Bush 43 and Trump 47 to understand better than ever the strength of a decision-maker gone solo. Bush 43 persuaded Congress to authorize his foreign invasion of Iraq. Obama delegated authority to Secretaries of State, Hillary Clinton and John Kerry. Trump 45 found himself paralyzed by his previous connections with Russia. Biden inherited a mess and made it worse, much worse. Trump 47 is handcuffed still.

The Clinton-Talbott story sounds like a variation on the great man theory of history, and maybe it is. Perhaps they are better understood as emblematic of a mood of American overconfidence that began with the first Star Wars film (remember the medal ceremony at the end?), accelerated during the Reagan years, ad swept over the West with the “Washington consensus” of 1989.

Cold war historians of the Wisconsin school, led by Prof. William Appleman Williams, made the case that America, having bullied the Soviet Union, was to blame for the Cold War. To EP, that always seemed far-fetched. This time the possibility seems all too real. Hardest of all to understand is why the mainstream media in the U.S. and Britain have enthusiastically gone along for the ride. Expect such a revisionist school to emerge in coming years.

The war in Ukraine is often compared to the previous lengthy land war in Europe. Unlike World War I, however, which began when a wide web of treaty obligations broke apart under unbearable strain, the war in Ukraine was started by a single spark struck the Sixties, in the minds of two bright young men at Oxford, gradually fanned into flames over the course of half a century.

The experience of Ukraine can be compared to that of another durable settlement: of Chicago, the Midwestern American city whose existence was threatened by fire in 1871. Today in Ukraine, it as if Mrs. O’Leary’s cow, with the best of intentions, kicked over that lantern on purpose. Like Chicago, Ukraine, possesses a history of gallantry and a resilient culture, along with a few dark episodes of its own. It, too, will rise with all this history from the ashes.