INTERVIEWER: Is, is Russia a threat to Europe?

MR. PLESCH: Politically they're friendly. Their conventional forces have completely fallen apart. But of course their strategic--

INTERVIEWER 2:Let's start again. Would you take that from the top? I, there was a intercom out there.

INTERVIEWER: I guess when we move to our new digs you know--

MR. PLESCH: (inaudible)?

INTERVIEWER: Yeah. I, I guess (inaudible) we're gonna have quieter (inaudible) after this. So are we gonna have a nice quiet place to film over in the new place?

MR. PLESCH: Yeah. Putting a, a tape together of all these hearings and getting as many of them as you can. Because you never know--

INTERVIEWER: Right.

MR. PLESCH: --you know. It's worth taping them all I think because you get so much in the Q&A.

INTERVIEWER: Yeah. I think we're doing that and, and you know then we should somehow create (inaudible)--

MR. PLESCH: 'Cause it's a service to the whole community really.

INTERVIEWER: Yeah. (inaudible) to you. Yeah.

MR. PLESCH: And internationally.

INTERVIEWER 2:Let's talk with Thomas after this 'cause I guess he's sort of in charge--

MR. PLESCH: Yeah.

INTERVIEWER 2:--of making sure we get all that done.

INTERVIEWER 2:Okay. Good.

MR. PLESCH: Sorry, David.

INTERVIEWER 2:From the top. Is--

MR. PLESCH: Do we, do we, do you exist as a name entity? What's the house style? Can I say, Well, David?

INTERVIEWER 2:No.

MR. PLESCH: Or do you, you hate that. You hate that.

INTERVIEWER 2:No, not good to do that.

INTERVIEWER 2:Complete the sentence. Russia now, Russia is--

MR. PLESCH: Yes, yes, yes, yes.

INTERVIEWER: Okay. Is, is Russia a threat to Europe?

MR. PLESCH: Its strategic nuclear weapons are a massive threat to Europe and indeed the whole world, as are those of the United States and the other nuclear weapon states. And indeed Russian nuclear weapons, because of their parlous state, are a particular menace. But as it's popularly understood, no, Russia isn't a threat in terms of its conventional forces, and politically they're very friendly indeed.

INTERVIEWER: Do the governments in western Europe you think have this same perception of Russia as not really posing a military threat?

MR. PLESCH: Oh I'll go beyond that. I think the governments in Europe have forgotten about the nuclear weapons, which is very dangerous by and large. And beyond that they really see Russia as pretty much a Third World country. (inaudible) their military threat, the significant problems are the Russian mafia, the threat that they, the Russian mafia poses, and the prospect of complete internal collapse in Russia over the course of the next five or ten years. And that of course is a, a, a global security problem. I mean if one is dealing really with a, a failed state of (inaudible) dimensions across the center of the Eurasian land mass, then we all have a real headache to worry about.

INTERVIEWER: The expansion of NATO, however, seems to be posing a contrary perception of European security issues. Are there differences between the United States view of this and, and European views?

MR. PLESCH: Oh I think so. The Germans are perhaps the closest to the American view. They don't want to be a frontline state anymore, that is, the last edge of western power, and they feel they have a debt to the, the Poles in particular to bring them into the western security system. But the don't see it in the same ways as Washington does.

Washington sees it as a military buildup, and no one in Europe supports that. They think that you can have countries in NATO without increased military spending. And as all NATO generals will tell you, NATO was not interoperable on the central front against the Red Army at the height of the Cold War. The Germans could not talk to the Americans on the radio, right? Why?

It becomes, therefore, essential that Poland should be able to, in a situation where the Russian Army, if it existed, would have to march a thousand kilometers across Ukraine to even get to the Polish border, is beyond most people.

INTERVIEWER: Is there some interest in perhaps having Russia join NATO or, or transforming the character of NATO to permit Russia to be a, a member?

MR. PLESCH: Hmm. Well at the political level, yes. But there are of course also a large number of people in Europe who value NATO as they would see it as a lean, mean military alliance, and they don't favor its dilution. Having Greece and Turkey in is trouble enough; adding the Hungarians, the Romanians, and the Polish egos is going to be a nightmare. And adding half of Russia, I see a problem.

But, if NATO insists upon establishing itself as the only game in town then they really have to let the Russians in, at least politically. They don't have to allow them into all the military planning.

But really I mean NATO expansion is a completely irrelevant idea in the minds of most Europeans. They're doing it because the Americans want it, and they quite like NATO, and they don't want to be nasty to the Czechs. But they don't believe in NATO expansion, and they certainly don't believe in any kind of military buildup.

INTERVIEWER: Where would the relevant emphases be, then, if one was concerned about building a sort of larger European unity, addressing what might be perceived as real security issues? What, what are the sort of alternative modes or objectives that should be there instead of NATO expansion?

MR. PLESCH: Well it's really very simple. There is no threat to Europe militarily. NATO is massively militarily superior to the Russians which, as a hypothetical enemy, I, I mean the, to the Muslim threat, so-called. If you look at the, the bean count there, the little tables of tanks we used to see, which our military don't present us these days, but if you actually do those sums NATO is massively superior as it is. There is no need to do anything militarily.

But what there is a need for is economic development and demilitarization. If you look at the scale of armaments in Europe it, it's absolutely massive today. If you go back and look at the outbreak of World War II, Munich and World War II are perhaps the only history lesson that some people in the United States Senate seem to have ever learned. So if you look at the rest of history, you will find that Adolph Hitler started World War II with perhaps one or two thousand tanks, none of which would be counted as a tank today because they're too puny. And yet the armed forces of the alliance field perhaps 50,000 tanks and advanced combat aircraft and the like, five to ten years after the end of the Cold War. We need to see a wholesale demilitarization.

And if we are concerned about armaments in the Middle East, then we should stop selling them. There is absolutely no significant indigenous arms production in the entire Middle East region. They only have weapons if they buy last year's or the year before's model from the Russians, which as we know from the Gulf War don't cut it, or modern kit from us. So the only threat there is is the one that we create by our own weapons sales.

INTERVIEWER: Is it your perception that the Russians are interested in participating in a significant demilitarization in Europe?

MR. PLESCH: Well I don't think one could talk of the Russians en bloc in any more than one can talk of the Americans en bloc. There're a lot of people in Russia who see that as absolutely in their interests, but frankly they got their fingers burned. They refer to you know Gorbachev if they're feeling polite you know as the Romantic Period, when from their point of view they gave away the store and, to put it bluntly, they got screwed. They thought they could deal with the West. They thought that when Secretary Baker and President Bush gave their word, indeed Margaret Thatcher, all spoke of a Europe whole and free, that if they moved beyond communism, if they did arms control deals, they'll be treated as equal partners. But essentially they're being treated as second-class citizens. And most of the people in Washington seem to only have one idea in mind with respect to Russia, and that is to keep them saying "uncle" at every possible opportunity.

INTERVIEWER: A very good point. If you could elaborate a little bit on some of the specifics of their being screwed, or their perception of, of inequality in some of these arms control areas.

MR. PLESCH: Well, broadly speaking Gorbachev believes, and senior American officials at the time believed, that he was given specific verbal guarantees that NATO would not expand and that we would develop a collective security arrangement, perhaps based on the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe, in which Russia was a full and equal partner. Now, that undertaking which was given by the Bush Administration has been betrayed by the Clinton Administration. The, that strategic context allowed the Russians to, for example, agree to the Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty II which they see as putting them at, at disadvantage, albeit in the theology of who counts how many warheads, of, of nuclear arms control. But nevertheless, that is their perception.

And today they have no air defense (inaudible) whole of their western flank. They regard themselves as completely vulnerable to a western air attack at the moment. And broadly speaking they see themselves as having given up everything. The Soviet Union, if you imagine, say, an equivalent to the United States, the United States back to the borders of the 13 colonies, Mexico back in charge of California, New Mexico, and Arizona. Imagine the mental impact on Americans of that sort of retreat to 18th century borders, and you have some idea the way in which the average Russian is feeling today.

INTERVIEWER: Good. I think that, I think that's it for me. That's excellent. That, that covers... Anything else you think is worth adding to this thing?

MR. PLESCH: Well I can chatter on in the same vein for as long as you like. Back to the Bush Administration, people have criticized the bureaucracy in Washington for not having a strategy. But I remember then Under Secretary Bob Zelick(?) explaining in exasperation one late night in Copenhagen to a group of correspondents, including myself, that of course we have a model of hemispheric development for eastern Europe. It's in South America. And as in South America, it will be a long and painful transition to democracy.

So within that mind set it's perfectly acceptable to people of that ilk in Washington to see eastern Europe turn into a series of Colombias, Brazils, Chiles, Argentinas, as, as we saw them in the seventies, eighties, and nineties.

But frankly to Europeans that is absolute anathema. They want to see countries you know rapidly turning into, if not Holland then Portugal you know, civilized countries under the rule of law, without organized crime problems out of control, with their environment problems under control——a civilized situation. But the problem is that eastern Europe and Eurasia in, in the former Soviet Union is being left to rot, that we have no major program of economic development, and that the risk, as some people would say, is not of, well, let us say that the vision of the founders of NATO and the founders of the European Union at the end of World War II was to treat the defeated Germany not as they had been treated in 1918, as a conquered victim to be exploited, but as a country to be nurtured and brought into the democracies. We appear to have entirely forgotten that lesson.

And Washington is behaving towards Russia the way in which Britain and France behaved towards Weimar Germany. And the, the nightmare 10 percent scenario, if you will, is a Weimar Republic in Moscow, but with nuclear weapons, rotting and then giving rise to some Russian Hitler who, of course, would be grist to the mill of Senators Kyl and Helms and Mr. Gaffney, who also be say we told you so, when in fact it was their policies that summoned this, this beast from the dark.

INTERVIEWER: Russians still think of themselves as a Third World country but as a European country, an educated (inaudible).

MR. PLESCH: Well quite right, too. I mean here is the country of Tchaikovsky and, and Tolstoy, the country that in great measure was responsible for the military defeat of Adolph Hitler, or you wouldn't know it from reading, looking at western films, and indeed in history was the country responsible for the defeat of the other great tyrant, Napoleon. And the Russians are very proud about that. And they see themselves as part of the West. And indeed the whole of the European state system since Peter the Great has treated Russia as an equal partner.

And what I think people have no conception of in this country, when they're keeping Russia out, is that for the Russians this is the first time since the Middle Ages that they have been kept out of Europe, that throughout the 18th, 19th, and most, well, of the 20th century they have indeed, even in the time of the Soviet Union, been treated as equals around the table. We may not have liked what they did from time to time, but we treated them as equals. And we're not anymore. We're treating them as second-class citizens who get a second-rate counsel. And frankly people in Europe and in Russia don't understand why the United States is prepared to have a security treaty with the Romanians, or the Albanians, but no treaty with Russia.

INTERVIEWER: Good.

MR. PLESCH: Anyway.

INTERVIEWER: Good.

(UNINTELLIGIBLE CONVERSATION WITH SEVERAL PEOPLE AT ONCE)

INTERVIEWER 2:(inaudible) for staff considerations about doing all eight of those NATO hearings. I mean in other words TV guides--

INTERVIEWER 2:We're doing some of them, right?

INTERVIEWER 2:You can, look at the list that Tomas has. He has all eight. And we prioritized some. There's stuff on like monetary issues that we don't want to sit down and do, but if it's that critical--

INTERVIEWER 2:It's simply a matter of, of manning a desk, right?

(END OF TAPE A)