Rose Gottemoeller: Top-Ranking Civilian in NATO on Her Career and Faith

Global Poverty
Written By JD Bauman

Summary:

In this episode, we speak to Rose Gottemoeller, the first woman to hold the position of Deputy Secretary General of NATO, the highest-ranking international civil servant role within the organization. Rose has over 40 years of experience working in policy. She is known especially for her role in negotiating the 2010 New START Treaty, which led to a significant reduction in deployed nuclear weapons held by both Russia and the United States.

Some things we touch on in this episode:

  • Rose’s career path and how it has evolved over the years.

  • The role of faith in Rose’s career.

  • Why Christians should care about the use of nuclear weapons.

  • Negotiating the New START treaty & advice on diplomacy careers.

  • General career advice for Christians keen to work in foreign policy and nuclear security.

Articles, organizations, and other media discussed in this episode

Episode Highlights:

Nuclear weapons are called weapons of mass destruction for good reason.

“Nuclear weapons are called weapons of mass destruction for good reason because in a fissile explosion essentially there's tremendous force and firepower in the explosion itself, but then in the firestorm that continues afterward and then in the radiation that is left over even after that…So they truly are weapons with enormous destructive power and the ability to kill not only at the moment but afterward.”

Turning to prayer and the Bible during the most difficult periods.

“And I turned to prayer. I turned to the scripture also to help to lend me strength during that period. And I really depended a lot on my faith to get me through it, because I think you'll recollect, J.D., I recount in the book how people kept saying to me, you're never going to get this treaty done…So if I'd listened to them, I never would have gotten the treaty done. But I just kept really relying on my faith that we would get through it somehow.”

Does academia influence nuclear policy?

Absolutely. I think it's really important that the work that is done in the academic sphere and nowadays in what we call track two, because there are very few channels of communication government to government between Moscow and Washington at this moment. So track two discussions are experts that are outside of government, but that report to their governments on the results of their conversation…. So I think there is a really huge impact that non-governmental academic work can make on government deliberations. And I saw it myself in the work I did at the Carnegie Moscow Center in 2008, particularly with a series of seminars talking about what the next negotiations could look like as we were thinking about embarking on the new START Treaty negotiations.

“Grand-plan” career paths vs. learning by doing

“I would say just do it, honestly. I came into the field, like I always say, on a journeyman's route. I didn't have a degree in nuclear policy. And I knew really very little about the disarmament negotiation process. But I learned by doing. And frankly, that's the most exciting way to get into a career, because you become excited about it as you do it.”

  • JD:

    Okay, great. Rose, thanks so much for coming on.

    Rose Gottemoeller:

    My pleasure, truly.

    JD:

    So could you please take a second to share a little bit about yourself, where you're from, how you stay busy, and what it is you do to impact the world?

    Rose Gottemoeller:

    Well, I will say that I'm a child of the Midwest. I grew up in Columbus, Ohio, and also in Dearborn Heights, Michigan, and left Ohio in 1971 to go off to Georgetown University. And when I got to Georgetown University, I caught a strong case of Potomac fever and so ended up staying in the Washington area pretty much for the next 40 years with some time off for good behavior, spending time also in London, in Moscow, and in Brussels on various jobs. But in other words, I really did make my career inside the Beltway, working inside and outside of government. but it was a life broken up by some interesting stays in foreign countries working abroad.

    JD:

    and you're most known for your work with the New START Treaty, our nuclear arms reduction treaty with Russia. But for those who are a bit less familiar with your background, what are some other projects you've worked on and some other positions you've held working in foreign policy?

    Rose Gottemoeller:

    I mentioned that I've mostly worked in and out of government, and I started my life in the think tank world in the Rand Corporation back in 1978. I worked for the senior analyst at the time working on the Soviet nuclear forces. His name was Thomas Wolf, and he was a great mentor for me. He really got me started working on nuclear policy and doctrine. But he was also very much engaged in what were the early days of strategic arms limitation negotiations. When I came to work for him, he was working on a book on the first strategic arms limitation agreement, SALT-1, that was reached in 1972. He was writing a book called The SALT Experience. So I dove right into helping him on the negotiation aspect of that, looking at Soviet literature, reading all the magazines and newspapers I could find and the official Soviet press. to help him to tell his story of the SALT I agreement. And that really got me started working in the area also of negotiation and diplomacy and realizing that if we were going to tackle this problem, this existential threat of nuclear weapons that could cause global annihilation, that diplomacy and negotiations were going to be extremely important to making that happen. So I give a lot of credit to Tom Wolfe for a for getting me into the field and helping, as I say, to get bitten by that bug. But it was really a formative period in the 1970s and 80s working in Rand Corporation. After that, frankly, I got the opportunity to go work in government for President Clinton. And that was a big change from being in the think tank world. But it was also extremely rewarding.

    JD:

    And I think you said before you worked at Carnegie, you were a Russian interpreter. Is that right? You speak fluent Russian, you know Russian, and you have for a long time now?

    Rose Gottemoeller:

    I'm not a conference interpreter. In fact, that's a little bit of a funny story. When I went to Georgetown University, I went to the School of Language and Linguistics to major in Russian, thinking that my dream job was to be a UN conference interpreter and sit in one of those boxes at the United Nations and interpret English to Russian, Russian to English. But in the end of the day, it took me, I think maybe three months at... Georgetown to realize number one, I was never going to be good enough to compete with native speakers. I'm pretty good at Russian, but I'm not a native speaker. And number two, actually, that's not the most interesting part of it. I have great respect for conference interpreters. They are super professionals. But for me, it got to be more interesting to be actually down on the UN floor helping to make the policy rather than sitting in the interpretation booth up above. And so for that reason, and especially after my experience at Rand, I became more and more pulled into the policy world and very, very glad that that's where I landed.

    JD:

    I think that's maybe a common path for people who are interested in foreign policy. They start out being interested in languages and culture and dive deep into a language. For you it was Russian, maybe others as well. Do you speak any other languages?

    Rose Gottemoeller:

    I speak French not very well, but yes, French was my first foreign language and it got a workout when I was the Deputy Secretary General at NATO because there are two official languages at NATO, one is English and the other is French. Again, I can't say I ever impressed any French native speaker with my language, but I did my best.

    JD:

    And so your work at Carnegie got you more intimately involved with issues around nuclear security. Were you interested in that before you started at Carnegie or even before you started learning Russian? Was it sort of an intentional choice to pursue that area because you thought nuclear security was so important? Or did that come later?

    Rose Gottemoeller:

    I have to say honestly that the Cuban Missile Crisis in 1962 made a big impression on me as it did I think for people of all ages, but I was a fourth grader in 1962. And I was used to, as children were in that era, we used to have to do nuclear war drills, like hide under our desks and at some times go out into the corridor and put our head between our knees. And even when I was in third grade, I remember that. happening, one of those drills, and I was thinking to myself, what difference is it going to make if we're sitting in the corridor with our head between our knees, we're all going to be blown up? Isn't that remarkable that a third grader had that kind of knowledge and understanding of the fierce, really existential threat that nuclear weapons pose? So I was definitely a child of that Cold War era and was very, very concerned in 1962. when the nuns that night at the Catholic school where I was going in Dearborn, Michigan said, okay children, you need to go home very quickly today. There could be a nuclear war tonight and you need to be with your parents. Can you imagine telling little kids to get home quick because there could be a nuclear war? But that was a very formative experience for me. And I think it drove my interest. I didn't think about it when I went to work for Tom Wolfe at the Wren Corporation necessarily, but somehow nuclear weapons were already part of the fabric of my life and I understood the dire threat that they posed and I really saw them as an important, very important goal for policy to try to control and limit these weapons.

    JD:

    So I'd love to get into that in a moment and also in the faith dimensions of why, especially a Christian or a Catholic should care about the use of nuclear weapons. But could you maybe unpack the issue a little bit for those of us who are as familiar with the scale and the scope of the nuclear threat? In maybe a minute or two, could you maybe describe what are the most salient risks of some kind of nuclear exchange and what kind of world we would live in if that were to set off?

    Rose Gottemoeller:

    Nuclear weapons are called weapons of mass destruction for good reason because in a fissile explosion essentially there's tremendous force and firepower in the explosion itself, but then in the firestorm that continues afterwards and then in the radiation that is left over even after that. So if you look back at the history of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, it took essentially one bomb over each of those cities to incinerate those cities. So they truly are weapons with enormous destructive power and the ability to kill not only at the moment but afterwards. If you talk to the survivors of the Hiroshima and Nagasaki blasts, and there still are some, sadly, many of course have passed because that was now over 70 years ago. But they talk about the... the damage that has ensued afterwards, psychological damage, but also many people contracting cancers of various kinds from radiation exposure. It's also the case of so-called down-winder communities here in the United States, communities in Idaho, for example, that were downwind of the Nevada nuclear test site where atmospheric testing of nuclear weapons went on in the 1950s into the 1960s. In those cases, many communities have seen several generations of cancer, elevated cancer levels, thyroid cancers and other cancers because of nuclear testing in that region. So yeah, it's a dire threat at the moment, but it is a dire threat that keeps giving too in the kind of radiation impact and damage and cancer effects that can continue many years afterwards.

    JD:

    pretty estimated that something like 80,000 people were killed immediately following the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, and then another 80 to 100,000 within just a couple years following from the radiation effects. And the bombs today are many hundreds, thousands of times more powerful and measured by kilotons of TNT in terms of equivalence of their detonation.

    Rose Gottemoeller:

    Absolutely, and one of the things that was going on during the Cold War was this tremendous nuclear buildup because for a while both the United States and the USSR thought we could somehow use these weapons for nuclear war fighting, that they could be battlefield weapons. And so if you can imagine, the United States built over 32,000 warheads during the Cold War period, and by some accounts the Soviet Union built over 40,000 nuclear warheads during the Cold War period. The thought was, well, we'll just use them on the battlefield. We'll have nuclear mines. And then the two countries, both of us, started to think, well, wait a minute, if there are going to be these radioactive effects and radioactive contamination, in fact, they are not useful battlefield weapons, because nobody will be able to fight. And so in the end of the day, both the United States and USSR backed off on nuclear war fighting. And we have been able to reduce and eliminate a lot of warheads. both the United States and Russia nowadays, we each have between 4,000 and 5,000 nuclear weapons. The Russians, a few more, a few hundred more than the United States has. But it is a big reduction from those five figure numbers in the 1960s. Still a lot of work can be done to reduce and eliminate nuclear weapons, but we've come down a long way from the Cold War years.

    JD:

    it seems impossible to overstate the magnitude of the impact that would happen from a nuclear exchange. I mean, even a tenfold reduction in nuclear arms like we've seen since the peak of the Cold War is still hundreds, thousands of nuclear bombs. And I've heard it said that we have enough nuclear bombs to blow up the world seven times over. I actually don't know if that's a correct figure, but I don't know if you've heard it put that way. In the worst case scenario, are we facing an extinction of humanity or are we facing hundreds of millions of deaths? I know one estimate from Luisa Rodriguez put it at something like 35 to 70 million people dying from the most likely nuclear exchange that we would potentially see in the next few decades, which forecasters put it, you know, at least single digit percentages happening. This is by no means some remote risk.

    Rose Gottemoeller:

    Well, certainly there's all kinds of expressions. Another expression of what I call gallows humor is we have enough nuclear weapons to make the rubble bounce. But it is here once again, the threat not only of immediate casualties and deaths in the millions, but also a huge nuclear exchange like that would throw up an enormous amount of dust and debris into the air and create an effect some have called nuclear winter. but in effect leading to global starvation for those survivors because of afterwards the inability to produce any agricultural crops across the globe, even in countries that somehow survive the direct effects of the nuclear exchange. And so as some have said in the past that the survivors would envy the dead because they would be starving to death. So there is not, again, once again, you have the immediate impact of the nuclear exchange, of the large-scale death and destruction, but afterwards, global annihilation from starvation and the lack of ability to continue life on this planet as we know it. So that's why we often call the threat of a huge nuclear exchange an extinction event for the human race, because it would mean that kind of dire impact on humanity.

    JD:

    We're talking about the death of people we would love, that we have known our whole lives, who would not only cease to exist, but would no longer be there to bring humanity forward and to care for the earth and to tend for the earth and to lead fulfilled flourishing lives. I mean, this is not just, I mean, this is an abomination on like the most catastrophic scale if this were to happen. It's astounding to me, like you mentioned before, that this was conceived as some kind of military tactic we could use these bombs in a tactical way. Who in their right mind would ever use a nuclear bomb if this is the consequence in knowing that there are other powers who have nuclear bombs to defend themselves? And I guess this is sort of leading to the question of mutually assured destruction. Do you think that deterrence is fundamentally a sound concept that because the consequences are so great that we need fear that somebody would rationally use one of these bombs and this is all actually an interesting thought experiment, what if someone were to act irrationally? But in the real world, we know that wouldn't happen.

    Rose Gottemoeller:

    The deterrence balance has been stable. Obviously, we have not had this enormous exchange and this enormous catastrophic global annihilation that we are all so concerned about. And in some ways, it's led, I think, a lot of people to relax and kind of put nuclear weapons on the back burner and not think of them as particularly important these days. Frankly, it's a problem I see with young people who don't like to think about nuclear weapons very much. You know, it's an old technology, it's not very glamorous, it's been around for a while, and oh, by the way, there's been a stable nuclear balance, so why do we need to worry about them? But in fact, I think that stability is quite fragile, and we see it during this war of Russian aggression in Ukraine where Russian President Vladimir Putin has been rattling the nuclear saber, and many in his government, his former deputy, Dmitry Medvedev really talking about, you know, dire actions that Russia would take saying, well, if the world exists without Russia, it's not a world worth having. So we're going to basically launch a nuclear attack and take the rest of you with us in the ensuing exchange. So that kind of rhetoric and that kind of crazy nuclear saber rattling has become a factor in this war in Ukraine. And I think for that reason, it has raised awareness that we are Yes, we have some kind of stable deterrent, but it is extraordinarily fragile and it's balanced on a very fine edge. So I do hope that, in fact, the war in Ukraine and the terrible saber rattling that's gone with it will lead to some new attention to trying to control and limit nuclear weapons.

    JD:

    So just to put some numbers to help us gauge the level of risk that we're currently at. I know manifold markets, abetting markets for current events puts the chance of some kind of nuclear explosion used in war in an offensive way by 2050 currently at about 33%. So this is much higher than the most catastrophic outcomes, but we're talking about even more than single digit percentages here. Does that strike you as... if not technically correct, plausible that there's a dice roll chance that in our generation there'd be some kind of nuclear exchange. And do you think that the risks now are higher than they have been in the last few decades, but with the Russians pausing their participation in the New START Treaty, which we'll get into, of course, which you helped negotiate with the Russians? But do you see the risks now as about the same or greater than they were 30 years ago?

    Rose Gottemoeller:

    My colleague at Stanford, Dr. Martin Hellman, talks about risks in that range and even higher risks. And he's a very eminent scientist, one of the fathers of modern cryptography. He writes about this in the most dire terms. So I agree that the risks of some kind of nuclear exchange by 2050 are high and could be quite high given the fragility of the nuclear balance and the kind of You know, this whole notion of nuclear deterrence, you talked about it a moment ago yourself, it's based on the notion that there's some kind of rationality in the leaders who command these terrible weapons. So if somehow President Putin is less than rational in his actions surrounding the war in Ukraine, and many people fear if somehow he's backed into a corner and is being defeated in the war in Ukraine, that will be the moment at which he reaches for nuclear weapons. So... Yes, I think the risks are higher at this moment, and I think we need to do everything we can to try to again control and limit nuclear weapons and also raise global awareness that this is obviously something that could lead to a human extinction event, and therefore we need to proceed with the utmost care. I frankly give President Xi Jinping of China a good deal of credit for publicly reproving Putin and publicly saying to him, do not use nuclear weapons in this war in Ukraine. It's very unusual. Those two guys usually don't talk publicly to each other, and particularly they don't scold each other in public. So I took it very seriously that Xi Jinping was warning Putin not to go down this route. And that kind of thing is helpful, but we need all international leaders basically echoing that kind of message.

    JD:

    So over the next generation, would you say it's primarily risks between the West and Russia that amount to the greatest risk from a nuclear exchange or what with the rise of China and of course North Korea comes quite a lot in the news. Is that risk stratified across many, many different actors?

    Rose Gottemoeller:

    I think we are facing a moment now when we are turning from, as we call it, two nuclear peers, the United States and the Russian Federation, with very similar numbers. We each deploy under the new START Treaty 1,550 weapons. Those are deployed on missiles and other delivery vehicles. And then we keep weapons essentially in storage. And that adds up in the case of the United States to approximately 4,000. weapons in the case of Russia, it's between 4,000 and 5,000 total weapons, of which 1,550 are deployed and ready to launch at very short notice. So that's the overall picture, but now China is starting to build up. China always kept a very small nuclear arsenal, maybe a few hundred warheads, but they are beginning to build more and more missiles, more and more missile silos, more and more ability to deliver nuclear weapons, and we are concerned that they are building up their nuclear warhead numbers as well. So the fear is that not today, but in the next decade or in the next two decades, the United States will face two nuclear peer competitors, similar numbers of nuclear weapons in both the United States and China, I'm sorry, in both Russia and China, with the United States facing both of them. So the question is then. how to deter and defend against two nuclear peers. I happen to believe the United States has a lot of capability and capacity, very high technology, modernizing its nuclear force posture so as able to deter and defend and to handle two nuclear peers. But it is something that a lot of people are worried about.

    JD:

    You mentioned a moment ago the saber rattling happening from President Medvedev and Putin basically about threatening to use nuclear weapons should the war go in the wrong direction. What is it like for you as someone who is in the negotiation room with Medvedev discussing many of the terms of the treaty coming off then as someone who you could bargain with, someone you can reason with. now threatening to use nuclear weapons, someone you know, that it's a very different side of someone, what's been your personal reaction to that?

    Rose Gottemoeller:

    That's so interesting that you mentioned that JD, because indeed you're right. Medvedev was president of the Russian Federation for a brief period between 2007 and 2011. During that period... President Putin had stepped back and became prime minister. Medvedev was the president. It was a moment we thought, wow, maybe Russia is going to reform. And everybody thought Medvedev was really great. He came to Silicon Valley, and he had an iPhone. He tweeted. Everybody thought that was so cool. He was really a reform figure. I will say that during negotiation of the New START Treaty, he and President Obama, President Obama was our president at that point, and they really hit it off in the negotiations. They're both lawyers, so they both had a similar way of thinking about the negotiating process and the problems they were confronting. And even though one spoke Russian and the other spoke English, they spoke the same legal language. sense to both of them. So Medvedev had a hard job, I think, convincing his government, including Putin himself, that this treaty was working out to be a good deal for Russia, but he was very supportive. And in the end of the day, I believe he even stood up to then Prime Minister Vladimir Putin and said, we need this treaty. We're going to complete this treaty. So it's really for me ironic today that he is the nuclear saber-rattler in Russia, along with Vladimir Putin. The two of them seem to work in tandem, where Putin will make these kind of veiled threats, and then Medvedev comes out and says very explicitly, we are going to attack you with nuclear weapons. So it's a strange partnership, I will say, but also it is a situation very ironic for me, knowing that Medvedev played such an important role in the completion of the New START Treaty.

    JD:

    So a book came out recently that you published with Cambria Press discussing your role as chief negotiator for the New START Treaty. Just a quick reminder for those who aren't familiar with the New START Treaty, and please correct me if I'm wrong, Rose, this is the current Nuclear Arms Reduction Treaty we have with Russia. It was enacted I think in 2009, and it reduced the number of deployed nuclear weapons down to a limit of around 1,500 between the U.S. and Russia. And you, Rose, played a key part in the negotiations over about a year's time, and then finally getting it ratified through the Senate. And that's the context in which, especially you were speaking with Medvedev. And could you describe maybe a little bit about what that process was like and where that's going? Because this treaty was suspended, famously suspended, maybe not technically suspended, but... the Russians pause their, I believe their enrollment in the verification aspects of this treaty about last year or about a year ago. So where's that now and where do you think it's going?

    Rose Gottemoeller:

    Yes, well, first of all, we did negotiate the treaty in 2009 and 2010, and it entered into force then in 2011. It took almost a year to get the treaty through the Senate in this process that we call advice and consent to ratification. And I'm happy to talk more about that. That was quite a rollercoaster ride. People ask me, what was the harder negotiation with the Russians or with the senators? And I say, you know, it's a toss up from my perspective. They were both very tough. negotiators and had to deal with them and answer all their questions and get them the information they needed. The Senate wanted to really know whether this treaty was in the U.S. national security interest. So just a couple words about the treaty. It does limit so-called strategic offensive weapons systems. These are the big intercontinental systems that are poised between the United States and the Russian Federation. This is where we talk about that stable balance of deterrence. that we have approximately equal numbers of missiles and bombers, submarines with the same number of warheads deployed on them, basically poised against each other. So this is how we get that stable nuclear balance that has maintained over now, thank God, the 70 years since nuclear weapons were used in Hiroshima and Nagasaki, the only time they have been used in warfare. Again, thank God.

    JD:

    is it strategically important that both sides have roughly the same number and why around 1500? I think that's around the level that it was capped at. Is that less than it would take to cause extreme calamity or existential calamity or why that number in particular?

    Rose Gottemoeller:

    Yeah, the reference has been to coming down from those very high numbers that I talked about during the Cold War years. So there's not a kind of rational, I would say, rational calculus of what would or would not cause calamity. Any nuclear exchange from very small numbers up to very high numbers is going to cause a great deal of damage and could lead to further escalation. And so that's the real worry, even if a single nuclear. weapon is exchanged between the United States and Russia, the worry is that escalation could get out of control. And so that, that too has to be a factor that, that we take into account. But the, the notion is that if both sides have essentially equal numbers of deployed warheads under the new Stark Treaty, 1,550 deployed nuclear warheads, and that they are both kept on high alert, it means that One side could not launch a surprise first strike and try to completely annihilate the other side's nuclear weapons without the other side being able to retaliate or respond. So that's, again, it seems very bloodthirsty, but that's the basis upon which nuclear deterrence rests today, that both sides have this stability of a first strike. that neither side can successfully launch a surprise first strike and destroy all the weapons of the other side, that the other side will always face retaliation with nuclear weapons and therefore, as we call it, the stable balance of terror. We both keep back from trying a first strike on the other. So that's again, the rationale and the logic seems very strange, but that is how it has operated.

    JD:

    question I had reading your memoir and that I've always had thinking about these issues, especially as someone who was born and raised in the US as an American thinking from an American perspective is what is Russia actually want? And I know there's no one want, right? There are many stakeholders, many people in power, often fighting within power. As you mentioned, this give and take between Medvedev and Putin, especially about missile defense systems and give and take different forces within the Russian government wanting different things. But if we can speak broadly about what Russia wants, how would you answer that question? And is it similar to what we want as Americans? Is it a, or some Americans, is it a denuclearized safer world? Or is it, as some media portrays it to be, is it kind of sinister totalitarianism? How would you answer that question? What does Russia really want?

    Rose Gottemoeller:

    I think it depends on what Russians you're talking about, but as a first and primary objective for the Russian Federation, and I think that would be shared in all corners of the Russian population, Russia wants security. It wants security within its own borders. And it seems to be that Russia feels it has to expand those borders in order to sustain security. And that's the reason behind its aggression against Ukraine. starting in 2014 with the seizure of Crimea and proceeding now with the invasion, full-scale invasion of Ukraine, that Russia believes its own security basically must be sustained at the cost of some of its neighbors. So that is a problem. But security is a rightful objective, and it is one that the United States also sustains for itself, and countries around the world, leaders and their populations, want security and they want stability. That's the way you have a normal life and everybody strives for a normal life, whatever normality means, and it's defined in different ways by different people. The other thing that Russia wants, and this is probably more at the elite level, the leadership level, they want prestige. And in some corners, nuclear weapons are seen to convey prestige. If you have nuclear weapons, you end up being a country that people pay attention to. It also is a fact that the victors of World War II, who are on the UN Security Council with the ability to exercise the veto power on the UN Security Council, they happen to include the five states that are also nuclear weapons states under the non-proliferation treaty. So that is Russia and the United States, but also China, the UK and France. So there's many ways in which nuclear weapons are seen to generate prestige for a country as well. And I think particularly for the Russian leadership, with their prestige so battered and so destroyed during this war in Ukraine, I think they will hold on to nuclear weapons as a way to convey that they are continuing to be a country that the rest of the world must pay attention to, must kind of accord respect, et cetera. So those are, I would say, two very important reasons for Russia to have nuclear weapons. As to bolstering the tyrannical regime of Vladimir Putin. I don't know if it's that explicit, if nuclear weapons play that role so explicitly. It's all aspects of Russian power, I think, that they come into play. For example, the vast wealth of the Russian oil, gas, and mineral reserves. This is also bolstering the autocratic regime of Putin. And indeed, as we all think about him, being quite the kleptocrat and the people around him also, we call his regime a kleptocracy because they are enriching themselves from the sale of those vast resources. So I think there's a nuance there that's important. It's not only nuclear weapons that impart the kind of foundation for Putin's tyrannical time in office, but there are other aspects as well.

    JD:

    You lived in Moscow for about three years, more than three years, working with, was it the Carnegie Center in Moscow?

    Rose Gottemoeller:

    Exactly.

    JD:

    How do you think that experience prepared you in the New START negotiations? Were the contacts you built and the cultural contacts you developed in that time essential or was it, how did that play in? Was that part of the reason that you think you, I'm just speculating here, but maybe you were selected to lead negotiations? I'm curious also for the implications for people who want to be a part of future negotiation processes of being intimately Embedded in the cultures that they're negotiating with if that if that is essential is something they should replicate

    Rose Gottemoeller:

    I think it's very helpful. I consider it very good luck. I don't have a strategic plan in my life, so I didn't think, okay, I'm gonna spend three years in Moscow and then I'm gonna ask President Obama and Secretary of State Clinton whether I can be the chief negotiator for the new start tree. It never works like that. But I think it was a great coincidence that the three years, 2006 to 2008, that I spent in Moscow came right before 2009, 2010 when I was selected by President Clinton. I'm sorry, by President Obama and Secretary of State Clinton, too. to serve as the chief negotiator for New Start. Because in those three years, I was living and working in Moscow with many of the people who I ended up then working with on New Start, particularly the Russian chief negotiator, Anatoly Antonov, who was the head of the department in the Ministry of Foreign Affairs dealing with arms control and nonproliferation policy. So he and I saw each other pretty frequently. I'd invite him to come to the Carnegie Moscow Center to take part. in our seminars there and every once in a while we'd have lunch together and chat. He even invited me to join his expert kind of advisory group of Russian experts who were outside of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs but advised on policy. So that was very unusual. I was the only foreigner to join that group. So it was a case where I got to know my counterpart and that led to certain efficiencies I would say. as we started the negotiations. Oftentimes when you start a new negotiation, if you don't know your counterpart, there's a kind of kabuki dance that goes on for a long time because you're trying to get to know each other, you're trying to understand where the other side's perhaps vulnerabilities are, but also where the other side's thinking patterns lie because it's important to understand what is important to the other side in official policy terms, but also in terms of what will make your counterpart at the negotiating table. into a problem solver rather than, okay, I can't do that because my government doesn't want to do that. And oftentimes in negotiations, you know, it's not going to go anywhere if the other side is just reading their talking points, sticking with their government's instructions and not willing to look for ways to solve problems. So I think that was really very important that I had that opportunity. I hope that Anatoly Antonov can say the same. It's obviously a much more difficult time. The U.S. and the Russian relationship is rock bottom at the moment due to Russia's aggression against Ukraine. But I think that having that kind of good foundation in my time in Moscow was really helpful to the negotiations back in 2009.

    JD:

    I want to pivot to talk a bit about solutions, potential ways we can get out of the current pit, also careers and opportunities for Christians who feel called to tackle this area. But I'd like to maybe before then discuss a little bit about the role of faith and the role of the church in helping denuclearize the world and lead the world to a safer, greener pasture. I know you mentioned that Christian groups, the Vatican, evangelical groups, also Quaker groups in DC, were instrumental in helping ratify the treaty that you negotiated. Could you speak a little bit about that first, and then also share any personal aspects that your faith played in motivating you through the negotiation process?

    Rose Gottemoeller:

    Oh, it was a no brainer for me to call on my Catholic faith throughout the negotiations. I prayed a lot, to be honest, because it was a very difficult negotiating process, not only with the Russians, but also with the Obama administration back in Washington. And if you read my book, Negotiating the New START Treaty, you can tell that it was tough trying to work with the White House and the interagency in Washington, as well as to get the best deal we could with the Russians. So for me, it was a very, very stressful period. And I turned to prayer. I turned to the scripture also to help to lend me strengths during that period. And I really depended a lot on my faith to get me through it, because I think you'll recollect, J.D., I recount in the book how people kept saying to me, you're never going to get this treaty done. You're never going to get this treaty done. People in the White House kept saying that to me. You're never going to get this treaty done. So if I'd listened to them, I never would have gotten the treaty done. But I just kept really relying on my faith that we would get through it somehow. And I just kept pushing along and pushing my colleagues and pushing the Russians. I didn't do it by myself. I don't want to leave that impression. I had an absolutely super delegation with me in Geneva, and they were a great team to be working with. And we all kept pushing despite the discouragements that came at us at various times during the negotiation. I'm not going to say everybody on the negotiation shared. you know, my approach in terms of religion by no means, but for me it was really, really helpful having my Catholic faith to back me up during that whole time.

    JD:

    what was clear to me from reading the memoir was, one, this posture of humility that you maintain, even in writing the book, you're given tremendous levels of responsibility, but you're always extremely humble about describing your involvement in what happened. And also as a leader, you were always so willing to communicate with your team, having quite frequent meetings, keeping everybody posted, but also just joining for... for chili dinners on Sunday nights with people who were away from their families for many months. I know you led negotiations in Geneva and many Americans spent about a year abroad and didn't see their families. And it's just so cool in such servant leadership to see someone really in a position of influence, yet participating, doing life with people who were not. And I just, I thank you for that. And it really comes off and it's really impressive.

    Rose Gottemoeller:

    Well, thank you. Thank you for that, JD. I have to say I realized that we would have a very, very serious morale problem unless I paid attention to that aspect of it. And so things like putting together a Thanksgiving dinner for the whole delegation, it ended up being incredible fun, really great fun. And some people even were able to get their wives to fly over to spend Thanksgiving with them. And it just ended up being a huge boost to the delegation. So, and plus everybody pitched in and helped with the dishes. So I didn't even have to do the dishes afterwards. It was great. But yeah, again, those things were sometimes not particularly appreciated back in Washington. On that Thanksgiving day, I got a call from the White House saying, why aren't you all working? I said,

    JD:

    Right.

    Rose Gottemoeller:

    well, it's Thanksgiving Day.

    JD:

    Right, right. So I think that's a theme that comes in play in many of our lives where those of us who are aiming to take on responsibility, to do what we feel called to do, to positively influence the world, where we have these responsibilities, but we also have duties to our family and to our friends. And we can't just ignore those duties, even when we have a large responsibility. I know when you went, I think, to Nick, to help with the START Treaty, the first version of this. You brought your family with you, I believe, to Geneva. Is that right? And that just shows this example of how you incorporated, maybe you could speak more to that. How can Christians really honor these duties we have to our families while still taking seriously big tasks, big responsibilities, like negotiating nuclear arms treaties?

    Rose Gottemoeller:

    Well, first of all, when I worked on the first Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty back in 1990 and 1991, I was a very junior member of the delegation. So I had really a small piece of the responsibility for the entire negotiation compared to others in a leadership role. But I did decide, my children were quite small then, they were two boys, one age seven, the other at that time age three. And I just decided that it was super important if I wanted to have this experience of working on the delegation abroad, that they not. be without their mother for six weeks or two months. So I brought them along with me for a period of about six weeks in Geneva. I had some nieces who came and helped to look after them. It was a lot of responsibility and it was a lot of heavy lifting. To be honest with you, I'm not sure I'd repeat it today if I had the opportunity, but at the time it was really important. Even though I felt like I wasn't pulling my full weight on the delegation. And I wasn't pulling my full weight as a mother during that period. My sons say that it was a very formative experience for them and they're very glad they did it. And my nieces say the same thing. And the four of them are really like bonded for life because they had that experience in Geneva in 1990. So I guess, even though I feel a little guilty about it and lack of performance on my part, it turned out great for them. So life works in strange ways.

    JD:

    Maybe one takeaway is to bring your kids with you on your adventures, right?

    Rose Gottemoeller:

    Exactly, at least within reason.

    JD:

    When it's Geneva, sure, bring the kids, bring the

    Rose Gottemoeller:

    Exactly,

    JD:

    kids.

    Rose Gottemoeller:

    exactly.

    JD:

    So I have a few more questions, and I'm conscious of time, but a few more questions about careers and opportunities for Christians who realize that a nuclear change is such a huge issue, nuclear war is such a big problem, maybe feeling powerless, maybe not sure what major to choose, or maybe they've already graduated, not sure how to get their first foot in the door. Could you speak to your experiences and maybe some opportunities or ideas that you have? Maybe speak about mentorship. I know the mentorship you had with Rand, with Tom Wolf was pivotal, as you said. Feel free to give us broader, specific advice as you can.

    Rose Gottemoeller:

    Absolutely. Honestly, I was very lucky to have the chance to go and work with Tom Wolfe at Rand Corporation, and I didn't really know much about nuclear weapons at that point. So I do say to people, if you're interested in this field and you haven't done your academic work in this field, that's no reason why you can't become involved. And to begin with, it may mean seeking out an internship somewhere, doing some volunteer work. There are many good organizations around that have opportunities to volunteer. You mentioned JD Pox Christi, for example, which is a Catholic organization, but there are other organizations around where you can get some volunteer experience.

    JD:

    Could you speak about this with the Christian organizations that you're familiar with in the nuclear space?

    Rose Gottemoeller:

    Yeah, I'm sorry, I should have prepared a little bit better for this question because I was quite aware of them when I was working on the New START Treaty negotiation. We had at the time a very, very good link to the Methodist Church, for example. We had a very good link to the Catholic Church with several different organizations involved, including Pox Christi, but also the Catholic Church. the American bishops were very involved in helping us get across the finish line. The evangelical movement was extremely helpful and had an entire wing that was very focused on nuclear disarmament issues and nuclear nonproliferation. I frankly don't know to the extent they exist today, but I think it's quite possible to do some research and find that out. If you'd like to replay this question, JD, in the aftermath as you're preparing this, let me know and let me do a little research so I have a better and more succinct answer for you.

    JD:

    We'll include some links below. Yeah.

    Rose Gottemoeller:

    But in any event, that's one way to go about it. Frankly, I would welcome more young people becoming involved. I've been very happy since I've been teaching at Stanford over the last three years. that more and more students are interested in nuclear weapons. When I was teaching at Georgetown 20 years ago, very few students were interested in nuclear weapons and nuclear deterrence issues. So more and more students are getting interested, which is good. If you're still in school, look for whatever opportunities you can at your university. And I know there are courses across the country because I do also... do work with other universities and do lectures. And there's a lot of interest out there. So there are classes available. But the other thing, there are organizations like so-called ACONA, A-C-O-N-A, which is a negotiating boot camp that is sponsored by Harvard University. And they do a huge amount of work with younger people to help them to understand the dynamics of the negotiating process, as well as all the issues surrounding nuclear disarmament and nonproliferation. So there are a number of those boot camps that are out there and available. And so with some research, you can really get, I think, some good opportunities to learn more. And the last thing I'll say is internships. Internships, particularly if you have recently left a university or a master's program, usually within one year of leaving, you can get an internship with the Department of State. My own... former organization there, the Bureau for Arms Control, Verification and Compliance in the Department of State has many internships. There is a program at the Department of Energy in the National Nuclear Security Administration for nonproliferation fellowships. They are a very good conduit into service in government. And that's also a very, very good way to go. JD, I'll provide you these links so you can add them in. Finally, I would say NATO, if you're interested in working at NATO and learning more about NATO and how NATO addresses nuclear issues, NATO internships are also available and somewhere to look. So I think there are a lot of opportunities for people who are wanting to get into the field.

    JD:

    Looking at the talent space, are there any particular bottlenecks that you think are being particularly neglected right now? That if someone is quite flexible and they have maybe quite general skills and are talented at many things and they're willing to go where there's the greatest need, is there a particular direction you would steer someone?

    Rose Gottemoeller:

    I would say just do it, honestly. I came into the field, like I always say, on a journeyman's route. I didn't have a degree on nuclear policy. And I knew really very little about the disarmament negotiation process. But I learned by doing. And frankly, to me, that's the most exciting way to get into a career, because you become excited about it as you do it. I'm not in any way denigrating or casting doubt on the academic route if you want to be studying in this area and come that pathway, certainly that's one way to do it. But if you're interested and you're outside the field at this moment, I would say just look for opportunities to do it and find out if this is an area that interests you. You may find out you find it boring or you find, well I can't make an impact here. But I think people who get into the field find that they can make an impact and they do make an impact rather quickly.

    JD:

    An economist who listens to this podcast asked, who also knows Russian by the way, and is interested in this area, asked, how, if at all, does academic research inform disarmament negotiations? And maybe you could draw on your experience with New Start.

    Rose Gottemoeller:

    Absolutely. I think it's really important that the work that is done in the academic sphere and nowadays in what we call track two, because there are very few channels of communication government to government between Moscow and Washington at this moment. So track two discussions are experts that are outside of government, but that report to their governments on the results of their conversation. So I'm involved in a number of now track two exercises because there's no official negotiations between the United States and Russia. But on this outside track, we are trying to think through what the issues are, trying to figure out what the options are, and trying then to exchange ideas and offer them back to our governments, both the US and the Russian governments, to say, hey, when it's possible to get back to the negotiating table officially, here are some ideas we've already tried out on each other. We and the Russians have already been talking about this on the expert level. they will be useful foundations for you in official negotiations. So I think there is a really huge impact that non-governmental academic work can make on government deliberations. And I saw it myself in the work I did at the Carnegie Moscow Center in 2008, particularly with a series of seminars talking about what the next negotiations could look like as we were thinking about embarking on the new START Treaty negotiations. So I know that there can be a direct impact.

    JD:

    And one last question here. It seems like the Christian organizations in this space were really helpful with regards to advocacy, with getting the treaty passed in the Senate after it had already been negotiated and agreed to by you and your counterpart in Russia. Would you say as far as explicit Christian engagement with the nuclear issue, that's the realm of involvement, it's more so advocacy rather than direct? directly working on the problem, which is more a matter dealt with by the State Department and more a direct government career.

    Rose Gottemoeller:

    It can be both. We haven't talked about the so-called nuclear freeze movement, but it has led to the negotiation among certain states of a treaty banning nuclear weapons. And that emerged from, I would say, not only from academic work, but also from some religious proponents. And particularly here, the Catholic Church and Pope Francis have been very active in supporting the freeze movement and banning nuclear weapons. very direct links and very direct impacts. Personally, I don't support the Ban Treaty because I'm concerned that it undermines the Non-Proliferation Treaty, which I see as a strong foundation for continued work on disarmament. But that's a debate and a discussion. We'll have to do another podcast on that, JD, to get at that issue. But I think there can be a direct impact. I also will just say that during ratification of the New START Treaty, I really valued the involvement of the churches because they are the ones, what influences the senators? They are politicians. They are influenced when they hear from their constituents. So when the churches got involved and got interested, not only the Catholic church, but also the Methodists and the Evangelicals and the Quakers and other mainline Protestant groups, they started, you know. preaching from the pulpits on Sunday that there should be support for this treaty and started urging their constituents to call and send postcards, etc. And when this kind of flood of constituent support for the treaty began to come into Washington, to the Senate offices, that made a big difference, I think, for our ability to get the treaty across the finish line, to get enough senators to support it for ratification.

    JD:

    Thank you so much. Any other final points or any resources you'd like to plug?

    Rose Gottemoeller:

    No, not right at this moment, but just to wrap up, I will put a few links together for you that I think would be especially helpful if you want to share them together with the podcast. As I said, I'm sorry I wasn't as prepared as I should have been for your one question.

    JD:

    You're very prepared. Now thank you so much for coming on Rose, and we wish you well. Let us know if there's anything we can do to support you. I'd be praying for you in the future.

    Rose Gottemoeller:

    All right, thank you so much, JD. It's been a real pleasure talking with you.

 

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