My life

Yeltsin and I also faced two arms control problems at Helsinki: the reluctance of the Russian Duma to ratify START II, which would reduce both our nuclear arsenals by two-thirds from their Cold War peak; and the growing opposition in Russia to America’s development of missile defense systems. When the Russian economy collapsed and the military budget was slashed, the START II treaty had turned into a bad deal for them. It required both countries to dismantle their multiple-warhead missiles, called MIRVs, and provided for parity in both sides’ single-warhead arsenals. Since Russia relied more heavily than the United States on MIRVs, the Russians would have to build a considerable number of singlewarhead missiles to regain parity, and they couldn’t afford to do it. I told Yeltsin I didn’t want START II to give us strategic superiority and suggested that our teams come up with a solution that included adopting targets for a START III treaty that would take both countries down to between 2,000 and 2,500

warheads, an 80 percent reduction from the Cold War high, and a number sufficiently small so that Russia wouldn’t have to build new missiles to be at parity with us. There was some reluctance in the Pentagon to go that low, but General Shalikashvili believed it was safe to do so, and Bill Cohen backed him. Within a short time, we agreed to extend the deadline for START II from 2002 to 2007 and to have START III come into effect the same year, so that Russia would never be at a strategic disadvantage. On the second issue, since the 1980s the United States had been exploring missile defense, beginning with President Reagan’s idea of a sky-based system that would shoot down all hostile missiles and thus free the world from the specter of nuclear war. There were two problems with the idea: it wasn’t yet technically feasible, and a national missile defense system (NMD) would violate the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty, which forbade such systems because if one country had an NMD and the other didn’t, the latter’s nuclear arsenal might no longer be a deterrent to an attack by the nation with the NMD. Les Aspin, my first secretary of defense, had shifted the emphasis of our efforts away from developing defenses that could shoot down long-range Russian missiles to funding a theater missile defense (TMD) that could protect our soldiers and other people from shorter-range missiles like those being developed by Iran, Iraq, Libya, and North Korea. They were a real danger; in the Gulf War twenty-eight of our soldiers had been killed by an Iraqi Scud missile.

I strongly supported the TMD program, which was permitted by the ABM Treaty and which, as I told Yeltsin, might someday be used to defend both our nations on a common battlefield, in the Balkans or elsewhere. The problem Russia had with our position was that it was unclear what the dividing line was between theater missile defense and the larger ones prohibited by the treaty. The new technologies developed for TMD might later be adaptable for use against ABMs, in violation of the treaty. Eventually, both sides agreed to a technical definition of the dividing line between permissible programs and prohibited ones that allowed us to proceed with the TMD.

The Helsinki summit was an unexpected success, thanks in no small measure to Yeltsin’s capacity to imagine a different future for Russia, in which it would affirm its greatness in terms other than territorial domination, and his willingness to stand against prevailing opinion in the Duma and sometimes even within his own government. Though our work never realized its full potential because the Duma still refused to ratify START II, the stage was set for a successful NATO summit in July in Madrid to move us further along the road to a united Europe.

When I got home, the reaction was generally favorable, though Henry Kissinger and some other Republicans criticized me for agreeing not to deploy nuclear weapons and foreign troops closer to Russia in the new member states. Yeltsin got hit hard by the old Communists, who said he had caved in to me on the important issues. Zyuganov said Yeltsin had let “his friend Bill kick him in the rear.”

Yeltsin had just kicked Zyuganov in the rear in the election by fighting for tomorrow’s Russia instead of yesterday’s. I thought he would weather this storm, too.

When Hillary and Chelsea got home from Africa, they regaled me with their adventures. Africa was important to America, and Hillary’s trip, much like her earlier one to South Asia, emphasized our commitment to supporting leaders and ordinary citizens in their efforts to find peace, prosperity, and freedom and to roll back the tide of AIDS.

On the last day of the month, I announced the appointment of Wes Clark to succeed General George Joulwan as the commander in chief, U.S. European Command, and Supreme Allied Commander of the NATO forces in Europe. I admired both men. Joulwan had vigorously supported an aggressive NATO