International Journal of Intelligence and CounterIntelligence ISSN: 0885-0607 (Print) 1521-0561 (Online) Journal homepage: http://www.tandfonline.com/loi/ujic20 Creating the New Czar Michael Rubin To cite this article: Michael Rubin (2018) Creating the New Czar, International Journal of Intelligence and CounterIntelligence, 31:2, 387-395, DOI: 10.1080/08850607.2018.1418556 To link to this article: https://doi.org/10.1080/08850607.2018.1418556 Published online: 26 Mar 2018. Submit your article to this journal View related articles View Crossmark data Full Terms & Conditions of access and use can be found at http://www.tandfonline.com/action/journalInformation?journalCode=ujic20 International Journal of Intelligence and CounterIntelligence, 31: 387–428, 2018 Copyright © Taylor & Francis Group, LLC ISSN: 0885-0607 print/1521-0561 online DOI: 10.1080/08850607.2018.1418556 none defined BOOK REVIEWS Creating the New Czar MICHAEL RUBIN Mikhail Zygar: All the Kremlin’s Men: Inside the Court of Vladimir Putin PublicAffairs, New York, 2016, 371 p., $27.99. During the 2012 U.S. presidential rather than adversary conformed to debates, President Barack Obama the majority view among the foreign mocked the Republican contender, policy elite. Consider the recent former Massachusetts governor Mitt bipartisan record of outreach to Romney, for identifying Russia as Moscow: On 16 June 2001, President the greatest geopolitical threat facing George W. Bush met Russian the United States. “The 1980s are President Vladimir Putin for the first now calling to ask for their foreign time at a summit in Slovenia. While, policy back, because, the Cold War’s in hindsight, U.S.–Russia relations been over for 20 years,” quipped reached their peak in the 1990s Obama.1 during Bill Clinton’s administration, While history shows Obama wrong, Bush wanted more. He declared it his embrace of Russia as a partner his desire to move beyond Cold War Dr. Michael Rubin is Resident Scholar at the American Enterprise Institute for Public Policy Research, Washington, D.C., and a Senior Lecturer at the U.S. Naval Postgraduate School, Monterey, California. He received an M.S. in Biology and History, and an M.A. and Ph.D. in History from Yale University. Dr. Rubin served as a staff advisor on Iraq and Iran in the Office of the Secretary of Defense from 2002–2004, including an assignment as political advisor to the Coalition Provisional Authority in Baghdad, Iraq, from 2003–2004. Editor of the Middle East Quarterly from 2004–2009, he has remained as its Senior Editor since 2009. The author of Dancing With the Devil: The Perils of Engaging Rogue Regimes (New York: Encounter, 2014), Dr. Rubin’s work appears regularly in numerous publications, including Commentary magazine. ANDCOUNTERINTELLIGENCE VOLUME31,NUMBER2 387 388 BOOKREVIEWS attitudes and to shift from mutually Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces assured destruction (MAD) towards Treaty (INF Treaty) in order to win mutually earned respect. “I was able a new Strategic Arms Reduction to get a sense of his soul,” Bush said Treaty (New START), and then about Putin after his meeting. “He’s covered up evidence that Russia was a man deeply committed to his cheating on that as well.4 Obama country and the best interests of his watered down pressure on Russia, country and I appreciate very much first in order to have access to the frank dialogue and that’s Russian territory for the Northern the beginning of a very constructive Distribution Network, an alternative relationship.” to supplying U.S. troops fighting Ultimately, however, relations in Afghanistan through Pakistan, grew chilly. Putin blamed the United then watered down Washington’s States for encouraging the Rose response to Russia’s invasion of Revolution in Georgia and the Ukraine in order to seek cooperation Orange Revolution in Ukraine, and on resisting Syrian aggression in the resented deeply the expansion of the Middle East. Obama’s outstretched North Atlantic Treaty Organization hand and Clinton’s reset button did (NATO) to the Baltic States of not result in flourishing bilateral Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania which relations. Instead, in 2016, as once were part of the Soviet Union. candidate Clinton sought to replace Russia opposed the U.S.-led invasion her former boss in the White House, of Iraq and U.S. unilateralism writ Russian hackers, apparently acting large, as well as Bush’s plans to base under Kremlin direction, launched a a missile defense system in the Czech concerted campaign to undermine Republic and Poland. faith in the integrity of the entire When Obama administration U.S. election. Meanwhile, as the Secretary of State Hillary Clinton American political focus shifted, first met Russian Foreign Minister Putin both expanded his military and Sergei Lavrov she presented him with modernized his nuclear weapons a symbolic plastic “reset” button, arsenal. saying “We want to reset our Through every U.S. attempt at relationship and so we will do it outreach to Moscow, whether led together.”2 In Moscow four months by a Republican or a Democrat, later, Obama himself told Putin, “We opposition has not been in short think there’s an excellent opportunity supply. Critics ridiculed Bush’s trust to put U.S.-Russian relations on a in Putin’s soul. “Mr. Bush Gets much stronger footing.”3 Obama Another Look Into Mr. Putin’s Eyes” then abandoned Bush’s proposed editorialized The New York Times as missile defense system. He and the two leaders prepared to meet in Secretary Clinton buried intelligence 2007. Harvard University political they had received which suggested scientist Stephen Walt quipped that that Russia had cheated on the Bush had “missed something when he INTERNATIONALJOURNALOFINTELLIGENCE BOOKREVIEWS 389 saw Putin’s soul.”5 Republicans KGB functionary and a figure were no kinder to Obama. In the relatively unknown both inside and Washington Post, columnist Charles outside Russia—manage to not only Krauthammer acidly observed, rise to Russia’s presidency, but be “If it had the wit, the Obama able to so thoroughly eviscerate any administration would be not angered, political opposition? but appropriately humiliated … [by being] totally outmaneuvered by A VIEW FROM INSIDE RUSSIA Vladimir Putin.”6 “For eight years, the Obama administration misjudged Here, Mikhail Zygar’s All the Vladimir Putin’s Russia,” declared Kremlin’s Men fills an important classicist and historian Victor David gap. A veteran war correspondent Hanson in an essay published just for the business and politics daily days before Obama passed the baton Kommersant, Zygar served in 2009– to Donald Trump.7 2010 as political editor and deputy Nor has there been any shortage of editor-in-chief of the now-defunct writing about Russia’s foreign policy Russky Newsweek. He subsequently and security perspective. Former chess founded and until December 2015 grandmaster-turned-political activist was chief editor for TV Dozhd [Rain Gary Kasparov was comprehensive in TV], Russia’s only independent his 2015 volume Winter is Coming.8 television news station. In short, Vladimir Kara-Murza, vice chairman Zygar has been well-positioned to of Open Russia and an aide to the trace Putin’s rise to power and murdered opposition leader Boris personally know both those who Nemtsov, also speaks frequently about revolve in the President’s orbit, as how Putin’s foreign policy philosophy well as the stars who have flamed mirrors Putinism at home.9 Likewise, out along the way. As he explores Anna Borshchevskaya convincingly Putin’s “family” Zygar confirms showed how a desire to diminish U.S. much that has already been written, interests is the chief factor driving but fleshes out the mechanism by Russia’s growing involvement in the which Putin has made his decisions Middle East.10 and points to the key inflection While some authors have discussed points on his foreign policy. He Putin’s mindset, much of it is purely explores not only the formal political speculative, combining the benefits process, but also the more important of hindsight with the assumption informal networks that operate in an that the broad strategy marking opaque state like Putin’s Russia. Putin’s rise was always deliberate In compiling his narrative, Zygar and successful. Even if true, much interviewed dozens of people from less has been written about the Putin’s inner circle: presidential attitudes and goals of Putin’s administration staff, government enablers and his inner circle. In officials, parliamentarians, and short, how did Putin—an obscure businessmen. Putin may be king/czar ANDCOUNTERINTELLIGENCE VOLUME31,NUMBER2 390 BOOKREVIEWS but he has had an entourage which presidential administration from helped manage his transition from 1999–2003. Today, he is known as a phase to phase. Zygar argues that core member of Putin’s team and while Putin alone made decisions, famous as a businessman holding perhaps hundreds of people worked various positions in prominent to shape the template upon which he Russian companies, but in the late acted. They became “a huge 1990s, he was among President Boris collective mind,” waging “a punishing Yeltsin’s most trusted men. As chief- and incessant war … against [Putin’s of-staff in the Kremlin, Voloshin had and, by extension in their mind, a front row seat in Putin’s rise Russia’s] implacable enemies.” against the backdrop of the fall of In the process Zygar found that Prime Minister Yevgeny Primakov, many of the stories told by those who once the hands-down favorite to surrounded or interacted with Putin succeed Yeltsin. were not or could not be corroborated Here, as throughout his book, Zygar by other witnesses. Perhaps this was infuses the narrative with intangibles because they wished to exaggerate that non-Russians may not have their own roles or simply because picked up upon but which Putin compartmentalized so much became crucial turning points for decisionmaking.