Ambassador Matlock to EIR: Western Policy Is Myopic and Doomed to Fail

Ambassador Jack Matlock is one of America’s most respected retired diplomats. A scholar of Russian history and culture, he was posted to Moscow for the first time in 1961, and remained Washington’s man on the scene for most of the Cold War. In 1987, he was chosen by President Reagan for the crucial post of ambassador to the Soviet Union, which he remained until his retirement in 1991.

Ambassador Matlock was able to join in the discussion of the Sept.6 IPC meeting, during which he made perfectly clear, as an insider to the negotiations, that U.S. Secretary of State James Baker, German Foreign Minister Genscher and British Prime Minister John Major had assured Soviet President Gorbachev that if Moscow would approve German reunification, there would be no expansion eastward of NATO. That promise was blatantly broken time and again, as we know.

A few days before the IPC meeting, Ambassador Matlock gave an extensive interview to Mike Billington of EIR and the Schiller Institute. Given that he was a participant in and an eyewitness to many of the historic events which led to the current military conflict in Ukraine, his interview provides a fascinating, historic account of events at the time. He, as ambassador, together with Ronald Reagan and Mikhail Gorbachev, transformed the world through their cooperation in stopping the Cold War. In the interview, Matlock insists that one of the most damaging false narratives about the process was that the end of the Cold war was a “victory of the West” over the Soviet Union, when in fact the Cold War was stopped two years before the collapse of the Soviet Union through diplomatic efforts that he himself had participated in.

Matlock also describes the failure of policy after the 1989 collapse of the Berlin Wall, agreeing with the analysis of Helga Zepp-LaRouche that this was a lost chance for world peace, due to the U.S. decision to reject cooperation in favor of the expansion of NATO. He repeatedly points to the “insanity” of Western leaders, which includes the recent German decision to allow the U.S. to deploy long-range missiles in Germany, which, if ever used, would mean the destruction of Germany itself.

As for Ukraine, which he knows very well, the former top diplomat regrets that the country is “on a suicide course” if the hostility to Russia continues. Contrary to NATO propaganda about “the defense of democracy”, “Ukraine is the furthest thing from a democracy” today. Moreover, the West’s draconian economic sanctions have failed to destroy the Russian economy.

Ambassador Matlock stresses that the “undeclared war on Russia,” together with the genocide in Gaza, and the “preparation for war with China,” must be defeated, and that a return to diplomacy and cooperation is needed.

The full interview is available here.