A Quote by Daniel Silva
I grew up reading the classic novels of Cold War espionage, and I studied Russian history and Soviet foreign policy.
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When you think of the Cold War, there are various places where you imagine espionage. Espionage crossroads of the Cold War bring you to the backstreets of Berlin, or Vienna.
I came up during the cold war, and during the cold war it was always possible with the then Soviet Union - the Russian leaders behaved carefully and predictably. They didn't engage in nuclear saber rattling. They were able to work with us and align their interests where possible.
Soviet Union foreign policy is a puzzle inside a riddle wrapped in an enigma, and the key is Russian nationalism.
The premise of Russian foreign policy to the West is that the rule of law is one big joke; the practice of Russian foreign policy is to find prominent people in the West who agree.
I lived next to Russian soldiers. We had Russian army guys in our house when I grew up. We made lemonade for them; they were everywhere. I had a Russian school. I grew up with Russian traditions, I know Russian songs... it infiltrates me a lot. I even speak a little Russian.
There was an intervention of the foreign states in the Russian Far East, Archangel of the West border of Russia. The foreign troops were participating in the attempts to stamp out the revolution. It's not just propaganda, because there are mounds of documents in the archives relating to these events and to the foreign espionage cases.
Those who remember Washington's cold war culture in the 1980s will recall the shocked reactions to Reagan's intervention. People interested in foreign policy were astonished when in 1985 he met alone at Geneva - alone, not a single strategic thinker at his elbow! - with the Soviet Communist master Gorbachev.
In 1945, at the beginning of the Cold War, our leaders led us astray. We need to think of the Cold War as an aberration, a wrong turn. As such, we need to go back to where we were in 1945 - before we took the road to a permanent war economy, a national security state and a foreign policy based on unilateralism and cowboy triumphalism.
What is most important to the history of the world? The Taliban or the collapse of the Soviet empire? Some stirred-up Moslems or the liberation of Central Europe and the end of the Cold War?
My goal was to show the history of the end of the Cold War through both sides - the U.S. side and the Soviet side. I really felt that especially the Soviet side of the story hadn't been well told because we didn't know.
I did not know much history when I became a bombardier in the U.S. Air Force in World War II. Only after the War did I see that we, like the Nazis, had committed atrocities... Hiroshima, Nagasaki, Dresden, my own bombing missions. And when I studied history after the War, I learned from reading on my own, not from my university classes, about the history of U.S. expansion and imperialism.
I had a minor in Russian history, and this was at the time when the big Cold War was going on.
I can't talk about foreign policy like anyone who's spent their life reading and learning foreign policy. But as a citizen in a democracy, it's very important that I participate in that.
In fact, we haven't ever really recalibrated our foreign policy commitments since the end of the Cold War. We still have alliances throughout Asia and across Europe that were devised to tame the Soviet Union, which, last time I checked, ceased to exist more than 20 years ago. Today, of course, we have a commitment to go to nuclear war with Russia in case Russia invades Latvia. To me, that's complete and utter nonsense. There ought to be a reconsideration of our posture in every region of the world.
We had a world dominated by the Soviet Union on the one hand, and the Americans on the other hand. They called it the Cold War. But it wasn't cold. I am someone who comes from the third world. In the third world, the cold war wasn't cold. Millions had been killed. It was a proxy war.
While I'm on foreign soil, I - I just don't feel that I should be speaking about differences with regards to myself and President Obama on foreign policy, either foreign policy of the past, or for foreign policy prescriptions.
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