The Flight of a Russia Hawk
Fiona Hill and the Defence Review
The first foreign leader to visit the White House in Donald Trump’s first term was our own Theresa May. May’s joint chief of staff (with current MP Nick Timothy) was Fiona Hill; less well known (in the UK at least) was another Fiona Hill, a security adviser to the Trump administration. Confusion reigned, both in officialdom and the media. White House Fiona Hill - the Fiona Hill we will be looking at here - recounts: “Press and commentators fused us together as one Fiona Hill, simultaneously working for the UK Prime Minister and the American President.”1
Born in Bishop Auckland, Hill’s journey “from the Coal House to the White House” (as she puts it) is an interesting one. She has spent most of her working career in the States, marrying an American and taking US citizenship. But now she is now back: she was appointed Chancellor of Durham University in June 2023; and she is centrally involved in the current defence review, announced by the Starmer government in its first days in office.
Keen watchers of US politics may have come across Dr Hill before: she became something of a media darling (in leftist circles) when testifying in the first Trump impeachment trial in 2019. The Guardian ran with the headline: “Fiona Hill rebukes conspiracy theory – and emerges as a heroine for our times”. “Twitter had fallen into a collective swoon”, it reckoned. Meanwhile, old friend of this stack, Nazir Afzal, posted, “She is testament to benefits of immigration & a terrible loss to U.K.”
The Guardian set the scene:
Hill’s opening message to the two ranks of members of Congress arranged in front and above her was that she had come before them as the very embodiment of the American dream. Because of Britain’s enduring social rigidity, she had to emigrate for her talent and expertise to be valued properly.
“I grew up poor, with a very distinctive working-class accent,” she told the House intelligence committee in that same accent, somewhat softened now by her years in the US. “In England in the 1980s and 1990s, this would have impeded my professional advancement. This background has never set me back in America.”
The “conspiracy theory” in question was that it was Ukraine, not Russia, that had interfered in the 2016 election. As she stated, “I would ask that you please not promote politically driven falsehoods that so clearly advance Russian interests.”
She is an implacable Russia hawk; but before we get onto geopolitics, I’ll take a look at her life.
There Is Nothing For You Here
Dr Hill’s 2021 book is partly an autobiography come childhood misery-memoir; partly a level-headed account of her professional life and time in the White House; partly a plea for government policy based around “creating opportunity”. It was lapped up and lauded by the left, and reading the book belies her claim to be not just non-partisan, but anti-partisan. This strange term (with its echoes of racism) presumably leads us to the conclusion that there is a moral duty actively to work against that handy catch-all evil of “political polarisation”.
For Dr Hill is an extremist in her own way - a partisan for the progressive regime. She’s too subtle for her north-eastern upbringing to turn this into a simplistic anti-Thatcherism; UK coal mining jobs had already declined from over 700,000 in the late 1950s to under 300,000 by 1970. She constantly referring to herself as a “miner’s daughter”, but her father’s pit had closed before she was born. She’s not necessarily being dishonest here: I do believe that her father always thought of himself in the honourable job of being a miner, rather than the hospital porter he became.
It is notable though that for the Hills, the “much-beloved” NHS became “the main source of reliable full-time and part-time work, the locus of opportunity”2. Her “mam”, too, worked in the NHS as a midwife, although of course rarely full-time as the children were growing up. The family’s poverty was relative, partly at least because they owned a house and had a mortgage to pay; others would see this as an investment. And life was tough in County Durham in the eighties, as the pits closed (I was at university there at the time), but there can be no doubt that it would have been better in many ways for a child to grow up in a decent-sized market town, with the Bishop’s Palace set in its substantial park, than her father’s pit village of Roddymore, even if the mine had remained open.
Hill went on to read French and Russian at St Andrews, after feeling “out of place” in an Oxford interview. There is one telling story from her time there as regards her later role. Students had to attend a mandatory Russian summer school at East Anglia, and, being tight up for cash, an uncle suggested applying for grant from the Durham Miners’ Association, which she won (as well as one from the local Rotary Club). Some money from the Miners’ Strike had been put into an educational fund for the children of miners; and this had included cash donated by the Soviet miners of the Donbas! Elsewhere, she reveals that she had read Das Kapital (in the library at night) whilst at St Andrews.
It is not surprising that the text is is littered throughout with strongly liberal views on sex and race issues. The first page of the main text, talking about the Trump impeachment hearings, refers to “congressmen” (italics hers). Even a reactionary heart cannot fail to sympathise with constantly being assumed to be a prostitute in western hotels in the Russia of the nineties, with doormen refusing to let her enter without the required backhander. And this is one area where her adopted country comes in for criticism: the lack of transparency is US pay, along with the constant need to negotiate, even at Harvard or the White House3.
She is very vocal on race issues too. Rather strangely, she divides the British ethnic groups (she is happy to use to term) into five: English, Scottish, Irish, Welsh and Traveller. She claims descent from all. Whether this is an affectation, or an Elizabeth Warren-like American-influenced bid for minority status is an open question. But she is certainly all to happy to disparage the white majority and cheer for diversity:
[In the US:] Some people have found themselves in places with little demographic diversity as well as fewer educational opportunities and jobs. Others live in vibrant, diverse, multicultural communities with plenty of access to opportunity.
London is the UK’s center of educational and employment opportunity. Thanks to immigration, London also has a diverse population that mirrors large cities in the United States but puts it out of step with the rest of the country… [The formerly industrial Midlands and North’s] demographic profile has changed little since I lived in one of those forgotten towns in the 1980s, so the classification “White teenagers”… is something of a diversion, what you could call a white rather than a red herring.4
In Dr Hill’s world, race is the central diversity question in the US in the way that class is in the UK; with sex being prevalent everywhere. She frequently claims (as she did on oath before Congress) that she could not have advanced in the UK with her background; but this is taken as an article of faith, rather than engaged with beyond the anecdotal, let alone proved.
One of her themes is that Russia and the US are on the same trajectory towards authoritarianism, Russia is just more advanced. Covid is referred to as the Populists’ Pandemic. The “plot” to “kidnap” Gretchen Wheeler, the Democrat governor of Michigan in October 2020 is adduced as evidence, and she states: “We were tearing ourselves apart.”5 The only problem is that the by a “far right” group responsible for the plot was nearly half Feds or informers, and the plot itself had been suggested by one of the Feds!6
I won’t consider those aspects of the book that cover her opportunity-based policy suggestions: apart from anything else, they are not worth it. One last quote from the book:
Political polarization is ultimately a national security threat as well as a domestic challenge. It is a barrier to the collective action necessary for combating catastrophes like global pandemics, mitigating the effects of climate change, and, as I saw in my time at the White House, thwarting external threats from adversaries such as Russia.7
A Hawk - but with a dose of realism
If there’s one thing that Dr Hill is insistent on more than the joys of diversity, it is that Russia is our “historic adversary”. And she is adamant that Putin interfered in the 2016 election.
An early lucky break came in her year abroad as an undergraduate in 1997, where she got a gig as a translator-come-fixer for NBC News at the signing of the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty by Reagan and Gorbachev in Moscow. It was on this job that a Columbia professor encouraged her to apply to the States for her masters, and she won a scholarship to Harvard, at a time when they were looking to expand international programmes beyond Oxbridge. From 2000, she worked a leading “non-partisan” Washington think tank, the Brookings Institution; then run (for most of her time there) by Strobe Talbott, a Russia expert who had been Deputy Secretary of State under Clinton (an old friend from the time they were both Rhodes Scholars).
Dr Hill trod the familiar path between academia, think tanks and government, and joined the National Intelligence Council as National Intelligence Officer for Russia and Eurasia. She worked under both Bush and Obama, from 2006 to 2009, before returning to Brookings, and co-authoring “Mr. Putin: Operative in the Kremlin”, a “psychological portrait” of the Russian President. This led to her most significant role: as a member of the National Security Council in the first Trump presidency.
Perhaps this was a mistake for somebody who had been on the Washington Women’s March the day before being invited for the role. She paints herself as politically naive, and simply wanting to serve her country; although high-profile roles are always hard to resist for the ambitious. We don’t (and wouldn’t expect to) learn anything substantive about policy matters from her formal time in government; what we have are tales of misunderstandings, mishaps, and misogyny, often involving clothing and etiquette faux-pas with the ever-present Ivanka. I am sure she sympathises with Zelensky. Nonetheless, she continued in the role until July 2019.
In order to understand her stance on Russia, therefore, we will have to look at her pronouncements after leaving office; fortunately, she has been vocal. But she has also been vocal about the first Trump administration - I won’t bore you with gossipy criticisms that fill much of that section of her book, in lieu of substance. Here, for example, she presents a case for calling the January 6th protests a coup: “Trump disguised what he was doing by operating in plain sight, talking openly about his intent”, and drawing comparisons with authoritarian regimes around the world, including Erdogan.
In an interview in Politico in October 2022, she identifies Elon Musk as acting as “Putin’s messenger for the war”. Eight months into the Ukraine war, this was the soon after Musk had publicly suggested that a peace deal should be considered (but obviously predating his association with Trump), suggesting that Kherson and Zaporizhzhia oblasts could be negotiated, before Putin announced their annexation. As “evidence” she can only point to Musk’s reference to securing water supplies to Crimea, and stating that he would be unlikely to know of the supply canal from Kherson. Those of us following the war did know of it: water supplies to Crimea had been in the news, let alone admitting the possibility that before going public, Musk may have spoken to somebody who informed him of the fact. We can’t discount the possibility that she has had access to intelligence to back her claim, but her public argument really just comes down to: it’s the sort of thing Putin has done before, and Musk is the type of conduit he would use.
But elsewhere in the interview, she manages to combine a hardline hawkishness with a dose of realism that is rare. She recognises that Putin has no intention of giving up Crimea and the four oblasts, and states:
It’s unlikely this ends in any satisfying way. You need every side willing to compromise, and Putin doesn’t want to compromise his goals…
There is not going to be a happy or satisfying ending for anybody, and it’s also not going to be happy or satisfying for Vladimir Putin either, honestly.
An unusually frank sentiment in 2022.
Similarly, an article co-authored before the war recommended a policy based on a balanced commitment to deterrence and détente, and recognised:
Ultimately, the reality is that Russia, under Vladimir Putin, operates within a strategic framework deeply rooted in nationalist traditions that resonate with elites and the public alike. An eventual successor, even one more democratically inclined, will likely operate within this same framework. Premising U.S. policy on the assumption that we can and must change that framework is misguided.
And more realism is to be found in this 2023 lecture, in which she argues cogently for a strategic approach which recognises the era of multipolarity. She references the regionalisation of security, trade and political alliances, and borrows two interesting terms: “limited liability partnerships” and ““mini-lateralism”. She says: “The Cold War era non-aligned movement has reemerged if it ever went away.” And she recognises that the Manichean “You’re either with us or against us” rhetoric of the US will no longer cut it - even within Europe.
There is even a hint that the West has been too aggressive in its expansion eastwards:
Putin believes that Russia is not just the successor state to, but the “State in Continuum” of the Russian Empire and the Soviet Union. And indeed, this is how we all recognized Russia after the dissolution of the USSR in December 1991. This fact explains a great deal about the present. Russia is the last continental empire in Europe.
Emphasis mine. But here’s the paradox: she also refers to Russia (the Russian Federation) as being still an “empire”. This is dangerous talk for a scripted speech; the sort of talk that gets foolish extremists on both sides of the Atlantic dreaming of the break-up of Russia into dozens of successor republics.
Understandably, Hill was at her most hawkish in the early days of the war. She warns that Putin may use a nuclear weapon: “The thing about Putin is, if he has an instrument, he wants to use it. Why have it if you can’t?” And, “He’s already used a nuclear weapon in some respects”, referring to polonium and Litvinenko. An ominous note is struck here: “The only way that we are going to be able to engage with Russia down the line is if there’s a reckoning for what has happened in Ukraine.” As to the possibility of World War III:
We’re already in it. We have been for some time.
Back in the UKSSR: Starmer’s Strategic Defence Review
Less than two weeks after his less than resounding election victory8, Sir Keir Starmer launched a new Strategic Defence Review. A few days later, the key three people leading it were announced: it was to be chaired by former NATO Secretary General and Blair-era Defence Secretary Lord (George) Robertson, with former Deputy Chief of the Defence Staff General Sir Richard Barrons bringing the perspective of the armed forces. The striking choice was the third, Dr Fiona Hill, who had been based in the US for three decades.
Nobody would doubt that the military scene is fast-changing, but the fact is that this is the third defence review on four years. The cost of these is a rounding error in the defence budget, but the effect on UK military strategy (or the lack of it) is crippling. We have a new administration, of course, but the Starmer government is not even pretending to differ in policy from previous Conservative ones. If there is any substantive change to be introduced, the new government - and the review itself - will be a cover for it, not the cause.
Lord Robertson is an ageing senior statesman (he’s 78), and if reports are to be believed, the representatives of the forces are being “gagged by the government” and “increasingly exasperated to be relegated to the background”. It is, I believe, Dr Hill who is driving this review, and any changes it seeks to recommend.
The spiralling costs of the UK nuclear programme have gone from being a nasty secret referred to only by Dominic Cummings a year ago (he claims holes in the public accounts in the order of tens of billions), to being admitted in broadsheets as a major problem for Rachel Reeves. For the first time since the 1980s, the fact that the UK’s nuclear deterrent is not actually '“independent” has entered the discourse. And in general, our exposure to the US for much of our defence equipment, dubious in cost-effectiveness and reliant on the US to operate, is being cast as a potential problem rather than a blessing of the legendary Special Relationship:
The year is 2028 and masked Russian “little green men” start crossing the border of an eastern European country.
Nato’s Article 5 is invoked. In London, officials want to quickly deploy Britain’s F-35 stealth jets to the frontier – but there is a problem.
The US, unwilling to clash with Vladimir Putin, says it won’t support the deployment and refuses to provide communications support, logistics, or even spare parts.
Within a matter of weeks, the Royal Air Force’s most advanced aircraft risks being rendered inoperable along with other American platforms operated by the alliance.
This is the grim scenario that experts say Britain must now plan for as it grapples with the increasingly volatile whims of Donald Trump.
Heady stuff, run of course under the banner of Evil Putin and Volatile Trump. But you don’t have to buy into the narrative to read the suggestions.
Hill herself, of course, after her run-ins with Trump in the White House and testimony to Congress, is not the biggest fan of the President. I quoted earlier her insistence that January 6th was an attempted coup. Back in 2021, she claimed that “if he makes a successful return to the presidency in 2024, democracy’s done.” (It is interesting to note that in this interview, she has some positive things to say about J.D. Vance.) But by last year, in another interview shortly before the election, she was more measured about Trump, and focused more on the threat of Elon Musk: “Musk is hoping to actually own the state. He sees Trump, obviously, as a pathway to power… his loyalty is not necessarily to the United States.”
So what is the role of Dr Hill in the latest review? Will the UK/US dual citizen be the figurehead for the continuation of the military arm of the Special Relationship, or will the Trump-sceptic signal a strategic shift? Will she again be cast as simultaneously working for the UK Prime Minister and the American President? We will see soon when the review is published, likely next month. But one thing is clear: the Russia hawks will remain in charge.
Fiona Hill, “There Is Nothing For You Here”, p. 212
Ibid, p 26
At one point in my notes, I scrawled STOP GOING ON ABOUT BLOODY PAY!
If you pity my plight, you can buy me a “coffee” here: https://buymeacoffee.com/dogmaticslumbers
Ibid, p, 155, pp 164-165
Ibid, p 288
Hill, p 293