16 October 2009

On October 13, during a trip to Russia, Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton gave an extensive interview with the ABC News program Nightline. The interview covered a whole range of international issues, as well as Clinton’s working relationship with President Obama and her own political career. The following are excerpts in which Clinton talks about U.S. relations with Russia, cooperation on Iran, and anti-missile defense systems.

QUESTION: So you met yesterday with the Russian president.

SECRETARY CLINTON: Right.

QUESTION: Iran, I know, was on the agenda.

SECRETARY CLINTON: Right.

QUESTION: Can you update us about the Russian feeling about Iran at this point?

SECRETARY CLINTON: Well, I’m very pleased by how supportive the Russians have been in what has become a united international effort, both in the existing framework, something called the P5+1, which is Russia and China and, you know, Great Britain and France and Germany and us and the EU. We’re all trying to figure out how to put this issue of Iran’s nuclear weapons ambitions, you know, on the very top of the agenda, and I think we’re succeeding. This goes back to the President’s inauguration where he said, you know, I’ll reach out my hand if you unclench your fist.

We know that there are lots of problems between us and the Iranians. But we also know that we remain committed to preventing Iran from becoming a nuclear weapons power. So what have we done? In the meeting in Geneva on October 1st, three very important steps were taken: one, open up your previously undisclosed site at Qom to inspection; number two, ship out your low-enriched uranium for reprocessing outside of Iran — something Russia and the United States jointly presented, which I thought was quite significant; and begin to set a schedule for further meetings because we are pursuing this diplomatic track. Everybody hopes this succeeds. You know, sanctions, which there’s a lot talk about, are a result of the diplomatic track failing. So we are committed to the diplomatic track. But, you know, my view in life and in foreign policy is you hope for the best and you plan for the worst. And so I’m thrilled that we’ve got the kind of united front on the diplomatic track, but we’re also going to continue to look at the potential sanctions if we’re not successful.

QUESTION: The foreign secretary here seemed to dismiss, to some extent, the idea of sanctions. Was that the same position you’ve heard from the president?

SECRETARY CLINTON: Well, I think, to me, they’re not mutually inconsistent. What the president — and he repeated it again to us yesterday — has said consistently is that, look, Russia does not prefer sanctions. You know, they have lots of doubts and concerns about sanctions. But sanctions may be inevitable. Whether they are or not is what we’re trying to determine. So I don’t see any inconsistency in that.

QUESTION: But do you feel — and I guess this is what the American people are interested in knowing — that if sanctions become necessary, the U.S. will have Russia’s support?

SECRETARY CLINTON: I believe if sanctions become necessary, we will have support from Russia, because, for example, even Minister Lavrov has said that if Iran were to renege on the inspections or renege on the agreement we’ve reached about shipping out the low-enriched uranium called LEU, what else would you do? You’d have to sanction.

So, I mean, we take this step by step. And I think the other thing to know about the Russians, for example — and it’s true for some other countries as well — they believe diplomacy should always be in private, not in public, that you don’t get what you need if you pressure people in public. You work it out behind the scenes. You know, our country is much more open. We conduct everything in public, it seems like. So we have a slightly different approach, that we think both public and private combined are the best way to go.

QUESTION: So let me ask you a question that you’re probably going to tell me is in private, but I’m going to ask anyway. Secretary Gates said that and he share a very similar world view when it comes to negotiations, that if you made a concession, you want to make sure you get something back for it. Well, the Americans have just stood down or scrubbed the plan for a nuclear — for the defense system that was going to be in the Czech Republic and Poland, something that the Russians wanted. What did the U.S. get in exchange for that?

SECRETARY CLINTON: Well, I think that it’s really important to understand what we did, because what we did was to conduct a very in-depth review which led us to conclude that the prior planning in the prior administration was not what was needed to meet the threat that we see.

Now, we, frankly, don’t see the threat of a nuclear war between the United States and Russia. We just don’t see that. We didn’t see it happen during the Cold War when, you know, literally it was on a hair trigger. We don’t see that.

What we do see is a country like Iran having short- and medium-range missiles that are able to target and reach our allies, our troops in Europe, the larger, you know, community, the Euro-Atlantic community. And therefore, why would we put in a system that was aimed at a threat that we don’t really perceive and we don’t think that Iran’s long-term, long-range missiles are yet developed enough?

So what we did was to reconfigure our approach to meet the threat that we saw. And I think that, you know, we didn’t — we weren’t looking for any concessions, so we didn’t do it for anybody else. We did it because we thought it was in our national security interest to do it.

QUESTION: No doubt it did engender some good will, though.

SECRETARY CLINTON: I think it was acknowledged as being more sensible, because, clearly, Cynthia, what we’re trying to do here is persuade the Russians — and I think we’re making progress on this — to join with us in missile defense, to be part of the kind of global architecture of protecting against either regimes with nuclear-armed missiles, or, in the most horrible of outcomes, terrorists groups like al-Qaida with nuclear-armed missiles.

So we’re going to everything we can to prevent that from happening, but I think it is highly sensible to also be focusing on defense. I supported missile defense and its development when I was a senator. That set me apart from some Democrats, because I really believe that we have the technological knowhow in our country to be able to create that kind of protective umbrella. But, you know, for me, this was doing what was smart.