The full text of an interview conducted today by Mike Billington of EIR and the Schiller Institute with retired U.S. Ambassador Jack Matlock , can be found in the Documentation section of this briefing. Matlock is one of America’s most respected retired diplomats. He was first posted to Moscow in 1961, and was America’s man on the scene for most of the Cold War. A scholar of Russian history and culture, Matlock was President Reagan’s choice in 1987 for the crucial post of ambassador to the Soviet Union.
Given that Matlock was a participant in and an eyewitness to many of the historic events which led to the current military conflict in Ukraine, it is especially important to reflect on the fact that Matlock, together with Ronald Reagan and Mikhail Gorbachev, transformed the world through their cooperation in stopping the Cold War. In the interview, Matlock insists that one of the most extreme false narratives about the process was that the West “defeated” the Soviet Union in the Cold War, when in fact the Cold War was stopped two years before the collapse of the Soviet Union through diplomatic efforts he participated in.