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Before invasions of Ukraine and Crimea and various “resets” of America’s diplomatic approach toward the Kremlin, there was the “Boris and Bill Show” – two chummy and newly-installed presidents meeting multiple times at the tail-end of the 20th Century with the shared goal of bringing Russia into a post-Cold War world order as a peaceful, prosperous (and non-proliferating) society.
Rose Gottemoeller, a Hoover Institution research fellow and former Clinton and Obama administration national security aide, sets the record straight on the Clinton-Yeltsin summits, what she learned as the first American woman to lead nuclear arms talks, why Vladimir Putin went from offering help in the aftermath of the 9/11 attacks to seeing America as a threat Russia’s security, and the challenges of serving as NATO’s deputy secretary general during the first Trump presidency.
It’s all chronicled in her new book, Security Through Cooperation: Space, Nuclear Weapons, and US-Russia Relations after the Cold War, a must-read for history buffs and students of the enigma that is Putin and the Russian mindset.
Recorded on April 28, 2026.
ABOUT THE SPEAKERS
Rose Gottemoeller is a research fellow at the Hoover Institution, as well as a lecturer at Stanford University's Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies and its Center for International Security and Cooperation (CISAC).
Prior to coming to Hoover and Stanford, Gottemoeller spent three years as NATO’s deputy secretary general (2016-2019), helping to drive forward NATO’s adaptation to new security challenges in Europe and in the fight against terrorism. Prior to her service at NATO, Gottemoeller was undersecretary for arms control and international security and assistant secretary of state for arms control, verification, and compliance. From 1998-2000, she was deputy under secretary of energy for defense nuclear and nonproliferation and before that, assistant secretary and director for nonproliferation and national security at the US Department of Energy, where she was responsible for all nonproliferation cooperation with Russia and the Newly Independent States. From 1993-1994, she served on the national security council staff as director for Russia, Ukraine, Kazakhstan, and Belarus. Outside government, Gottemoeller has served at prominent centers of research and academia as a scholar, social scientist, and educator including the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, Georgetown University, and the RAND Corporation. She is fluent in Russian.
Bill Whalen, the Virginia Hobbs Carpenter Distinguished Policy Fellow in Journalism and a Hoover Institution research fellow since 1999, writes and comments on campaigns, elections, and governance with an emphasis on California and America’s political landscapes.
Whalen writes on politics and current events for various national publications, as well as Hoover’s California On Your Mind web channel.
Whalen hosts Hoover’s Matters of Policy & Politics podcast and serves as the moderator of Hoover’s GoodFellows broadcast exploring history, economics, and geopolitical dynamics.
RELATED SOURCES
- Security Through Cooperation. Space, Nuclear Weapons, and US-Russia Relations after the Cold War, by Rose Gottemoeller. Stanford University Press, 2026.
ABOUT THE SERIES
Matters of Policy & Politics, a podcast from the Hoover Institution, examines the direction of federal, state, and local leadership and elections, with an occasional examination of national security and geopolitical concerns, all featuring insightful analysis provided by Hoover Institution scholars and guests.
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