In the aftermath of the Cold War, the United States and NATO grappled with fundamental questions about integrating Russia into the liberal international order and defining the role of former Soviet states in European security—issues that have gained urgent relevance following Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and Putin’s claims of Western expansionism. Stephan Kieninger’s book, Securing Peace in Europe, offers a fresh perspective on NATO-Russia relations through the lens of Strobe Talbott, Clinton’s deputy secretary of state and chief diplomatic broker with the former USSR. In this Q&A, Kieninger’s explains how his book uses Strobe Talbott’s diaries and government papers to show that the Clinton administration repeatedly tried to partner with Russia, contradicting Putin’s claims that the West excluded Russia after the Cold War.

Q: What drove you to write this book?

Stephan Kieninger: I started in the autumn of 2021 during a fellowship at the Woodrow Wilson Center. The project was born out of my idea to examine US foreign policy toward Europe and Russia in the post–Cold War era. In the book, I use Strobe Talbott’s perspective to depict the creation of a new European security architecture in which NATO and Russia had a stake but that finally fell short as Russia withdrew from cooperation and common institutions. In an age of widespread disinformation campaigns, I wanted to write a deeply researched book to rebut Putin’s grievance narrative, showing how the Clinton administration exhausted all opportunities to work with Russia. I hope the book helps explain how we arrived at the current situation in Europe, given Russia’s war in Ukraine.

Q: Can you explain the title, Securing Peace in Europe: Strobe Talbott, NATO, and Russia After the Cold War.

Kieninger: The title refers to the continuous search for peace in Europe. The end of the Cold War did not facilitate eternal security and the end of history. It brought new ethnic wars, a fragile Russia, the danger of loose nuclear weapons, and a potential security vacuum in Central and Eastern Europe after the demise of the Warsaw Pact. The United States and NATO had to address these issues in parallel. My book depicts how Talbott and the Clinton administration worked to stabilize Europe’s security through the opening of NATO, cooperation with Russia across the board, support for the enlargement of the European Union, crisis management, arms control, regional security initiatives, and of course the expansion of NATO’s mission including the use of force in Bosnia and Kosovo and peacekeeping missions in both places. I argue that securing peace in Europe has always been an ongoing task that needs work in several dimensions and across a multitude of regions and trouble spots. Strobe Talbott played a crucial role in all of these endeavors.

Q: Who is Strobe Talbott? How does his unusual biography explain his impact?

Kieninger: Talbott began learning in high school after the Cuban Missile Crisis, when he was at Hotchkiss. In 1964, he went to Yale to pursue his passion for Russian studies. He wanted to be “at the cutting edge of world history,” as his friend Gregory Freidin put it. In 1964, Talbott went to Oxford on a Rhodes fellowship. Bill Clinton was his housemate. Both developed a deep interest in the Soviet Union and traveled there. In his midtwenties, Talbott helped edit and translate Nikita Khruschev’s diaries and then went on to work as a journalist for Time magazine in Yugoslavia in the early 1970s. He wrote eminent books on arms control and US-Soviet relations and had a unique chance to use his experience and knowledge in the Clinton administration. Russia’s and Europe’s security were a matter of the heart for Talbott. He speaks several Slavic languages and has deep connections to people and places. All of this gave Talbott credibility and trust in his contacts with policy makers in Europe. He spoke from experience and had President Clinton’s trust and a large international network of contacts.

Q: What was Talbott’s vision for Russia’s place in Europe? What were the challenges of his Russia diplomacy?

Kieninger: His vision was to integrate post-Soviet Russia into Western structures and the family of democratic nations. He saw Russia as a key player in a new Euro-Atlantic security system, including NATO, the EU, and the United States, of course. The challenge was always to facilitate Russia’s participation in the emerging security architecture as a partner, not as a member. The crux was that Russia wanted a veto and to play by its own rules despite being in a position of weakness and internal chaos after the end of the Cold War. In the book, I depict how Talbott tried to square the triangle of simultaneously engaging Russia and opening up NATO to new members and new missions as elements of a new Euro-Atlantic security architecture. I examine how the Clinton administration and its NATO allies constantly extended a hand to help out Russia. “Maximizing the positive, minimizing the negative,” was the precept of US policy toward Russia, as President Clinton told me in an interview. However, Russian policy makers were never comfortable with the post–Cold War order. They increasingly complained about not being treated as equals by the West. For more than twenty years, the grievance story has been used as a catalyst for Russia’s new imperialism, providing the pretext for Russia’s war of annihilation against Ukraine. In the book, I use Strobe Talbott’s story and his diplomacy to argue that there is no basis for Russia’s grievance story.

Q: What kind of archival sources did you use?

Kieninger: I was fortunate I could use Strobe Talbott’s unique diaries, which he kept throughout his eight years in government. The book is the first scholarly account to draw from them. They are a peerless source, including verbatim notes of meetings and phone conversations with President Clinton that cannot be found anywhere else. Moreover, Talbott wrote notes during their joint travels, especially during Clinton’s meetings with Boris Yeltsin. Talbott’s diary entries go beyond the official records of the Clinton-Yeltsin meeting in that they include observations and commentary that help to put things into context. Last but important, the diaries reveal Talbott’s capacity to see things in perspective and to catch the comedy and ironies of high-stakes diplomacy.

Talbott’s State Department papers are a crucial source, too. Starting in 2019, the State Department began to release materials from the collection. Since then, approximately 4,000 documents have been made available in the State Department’s Virtual Reading Room—and the collection is still growing as more evidence is being released. The materials are unique, reflecting Talbott’s way of working, thinking, and writing as someone who was in constant dialogue to generate ideas and initiate new endeavors. Talbott’s huge paper trail reflects his mammoth capacity for analysis and the enormous scope of his diplomatic activities. Talbott’s State Department papers and his diaries complement each other in many ways. Both collections form a running tally and a throughline in the narrative. Moreover, I have used German and British archival sources and newly available materials from the Clinton Presidential Library.

Q: Can you tell us what you learned during your research for the book?

Kieninger: I learned to see the post–Cold War security landscape in perspective. I knew the post–Cold War world had never been perfect, but working on the book and reading Talbott’s vast materials gave me a deeper understanding of the constant search for security in Europe and America’s role in it. Growing up in the late Cold War and early post–Cold War period, I took America’s engagement in Europe for granted. I saw America’s leadership in the Cold War and during the process of Germany’s unification, as well as in the Gulf War in the early 1990s. As a teenager, I had no idea how contested the US role as a European power actually was. Although Europe was not entirely whole and free, the policy makers of the 1990s managed to build a solid system based on institutions, integration, the rule of law, international cooperation, and human rights. This system is under severe attack. Russia and China are undermining it, and one problem is that policy makers in Europe took America’s security guarantee and military protection for granted for too long.