Both Victory and Security Guarantee for Ukraine
Episode Notes
Transcript
Eliot and Eric chew over the developments in Ukraine. They consider divisions within and among West European governments, the question of what defeat of Russia and victory for Ukraine means in practical terms, the lingering overestimation of Russian possibilities and underestimation of Ukrainian potential on the battlefield, and the potential role of China providing lethal aid to Russia. They conclude with a discussion about making the U.S. the arsenal of democracy in the West and globally and the use and abuse of historical analogies.
Shield of the Republic is a Bulwark podcast co-sponsored by the Miller Center of Public Affairs at the University of Virginia. Email us with your feedback at [email protected].
HMS Belfast
“NATO’s Biggest European Members Float Defense Pact With Ukraine” by Wall Street Journal
“How Putin blundered into Ukraine — then doubled down” by Financial Times
Timothy Snyder’s Essay Debunking Vladimir Putin’s Essay Written After Consuming Hallucinogens, “How to think about war in Ukraine”
Eliot’s Article on the False Historical Lessons from World War II, “Military History Doesn’t Say What Ukraine’s Critics Think”
“Every Man His Own Historian” by Carl L. Becker
Eliot’s Foreign Affairs Essay, “Move Fast and Win Things”
Thinking In Times by Ernest May and Richard Neustadt
Eric’s Article with David Kramer and Vlad Kobets, “Ukraine and Belarus Are Fighting the Same War”
Eric’s Article with David Kramer and Ben Parker, “Moldova Is Putin’s Next Target”
“After the Fall. Must We Prepare for the Breakup of Russia?” by Bruno Tertrais
Senior Policy Analyst
Jewish Institute for National Security of America
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This transcript was generated automatically and may contain errors and omissions. Ironically, the transcription service has particular problems with the word “bulwark,” so you may see it mangled as “Bullard,” “Boulart,” or even “bull word.” Enjoy!
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Welcome to Shield of the Republic Secret Podcast sponsored by the Bulwark and the Miller Center of Public Affairs at the University of Virginia and dedicated to the proposition articulated by Walter Lippmann during World War two that has strong and balanced foreign policy is the indispensable shield of our Democratic Republic. I’m Eric Edelman, counselor at the center for strategic budgetary assessments and a Bulwark contributor in a non resident fellow at the Miller Center. And I’m joined by my partner in this enterprise Elliot Cohen, the Robert E. As good professor in Strategy and Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies in Washington DC and the Arleigh Burke Chair in Strategy at the center for strategic and international studies. Elliot, welcome.
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It’s good to be with you. It’s good to be with you. Yeah. I’m just back from an adventurous trip to London. And for all of our listeners who find themselves in Ron DeSantis, you know, completely bored, have no idea what to do with themselves in that city.
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I command a visit to HMS bull Belfast. Which is one of the largest, larger surviving warships in the UK from I think it’s the largest one of the UK. From the Second World War. It’s a light cruiser that made repeated runs to Mermannisk. And it’s the Prince have done a great job of preserving it and presenting it.
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So that’s a little plug for the Imperial War Museum, which operates it
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I could actually make a comment about the sad state of repair into which his majesty’s navy has fallen in recent years with only nineteen surface combatants from the
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Longwell, actually, you know, that’s it’s a serious thing because this was just one warship. You know, a thousand men served honor at any given time. And if you look at what the Royal Navy was during World War two, I mean, it was extraordinary. It was really second only to the American. And like you say, nineteen Surface Ships, really.
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I know you guys could do better.
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At some point, we will engage some of our UK colleagues to see about the impact of Ukraine on on all of this. But since the last time we talk together without a a guest to direct us in other other ways, lots has happened. We’ve had the Munich Security Conference. We’ve had the president of the United States in Kiev. We’ve had the president of the United States in Warsaw.
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We’ve had president Putin of Russia give a dueling speech with president Biden, his annual speech to the Federal Assembly, He’s made other comments as well. We’ve had the Secretary of State engaging with his Chinese counterpart. There’s a lot of moving parts here. That we probably ought to dive into. Yeah.
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I I agree. I think there let me open up with thought get your reactions. It seems to me that they’re really
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so
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there’s sort of parallel lines of discourse here. So on the one hand, Biden goes to Keith, and I think you and I both thought that was absolutely the right thing to do. And he bore himself Longwell, and it was a it was a powerful thing to have done. On the other hand, if you look at his rhetoric, it’s actually was not he didn’t really say anything that was different from things he had said before. It’s about the language was helping Ukraine defend itself, not helping Ukraine to win or helping Ukraine defeat Russia.
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You know, nothing obviously about major weapon systems that I think you or I would have liked to see Ridge missiles, F-16s. So I you know, a number of people comment on that. I’ve I have a thought about that, but I wanna get yours first. Similarly, what I’ve I I was not at Munich this year, but talking to people who were, what a number of them competed on was something that I’ve noticed in another context, which is the public rhetoric is one of supporting Ukraine, and to some extent, padding Longwell on the back. Petting the west collective west on its back for doing so much.
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And then, you know, quietly say, well, you know, at some point, there’s gotta be negotiation or — Yes. — let’s time to think about how this ends and so on. I’ve got to feel like that as is true about ninety eight point five percent of the time, you and I will be in agreement on this. But I’d be curious to get your take on both
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of Longwell, so, of course, some of that broke into the surface in a story that appeared in the Wall Street Journal, which while it was thinly sourced, sort of group the UK, France and Germany together as having publicly, as you say, provided this sort of self congratulatory pattern in the back, but also attaboy for the Ukrainians. But privately, much more gloomy about Ukrainians prospects on the battlefield and the prospect of much changing on the battlefield and therefore talking about what has to happen to end the war and a lot of discussion about some kinds of security assurances to Ukraine that you should make them feel good about negotiating an end to the war with Russia because afterwards, there’ll be something it won’t be NATO membership, but it’ll be, you know, very close affiliation of some kind. And I guess my thought about that and I’d be interested in your take on the article, like, because I know you were in some changes on Twitter with some of our friends in Europe about it. Number one, I thought that it was a bit unfair to group the brits together with the French and Germans here. First of all, there was a Franco German conversation with Zelensky when he was in Paris.
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The brits were not an actual party to that. I think the brits under both Boris Johnson and Rishi Sunak, the current prime minister have actually been pretty stalwart in their defense and in their provision of military equipment. The French have actually done a lot on the equipment side as well, I think, and and the Germans have actually done, you know, a better job than they give themselves. Credit for in some ways, but have also been obviously very slow on on some things that mattered like tanks So I thought there was something a little off about the article that way, but I do have to say that I think it rang true in the sense that one does get this sense, you know, from talking to colleagues in Europe that privately there is this much more bearish attitude. And it strikes me that it is replicated here in the Biden administration.
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I think in all of the chancellaries and certainly here, you’ve got essentially divisions inside the government governments between those who you to the line that Russia must be defeated, and we will stand with Ukraine for as long as it takes, And those who say, well, yes, that’s fine, but it’s not it’s necessary, but not sufficient because not only most Russia be defeated, but Ukraine must actually win. And those two sides of the debate are continuing to contend with one another. I think it explains to some degree the kind of herky, jerky, provision of equipment that you’ve written about multiple times, you know, kind of being a day late and a dollar short or they late in the euro short every every time. And, you know, I think to some degree, it is a manifestation, a continued manifestation what we’ve seen earlier, which is a tendency to over rate Russian possibilities, including this, you know, much vaunted spring offensive, which so far doesn’t amount to a whole lot, underestimate Ukrainian possibilities. And, you know, ultimately, if the you know, we’re with you, you know, we stand behind you a thousand percent, you know, for as long as it takes, but we don’t really want you to win side wins out, that’s a prescription for a frozen conflict.
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Howard Bauchner:
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Yeah, I agree. And in some ways, even more so. So let’s let’s set aside the Biden administration because I think there may be a slightly different dynamic there. In the European one, I think It’s very difficult for the Europeans in particular. It’s sort of difficult for us.
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But but more difficult for them, at least for the, you know, Germans French so on. And I agree with you about separating out the British. To accept that this war is a just a it’s a watershed event. And nothing will go back to being remotely the same. And, you know, we have to accept that.
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Actually, our friend François Highsburg just had a piece in the mold, which is really worth reading. It’s an interview, where he says exactly this. And I think François another friend of ours who I would like to see us speak with Bernu Tertre, and have have the same view that this is You know, we’ve come to one of those great historical moments. It’s very hard for people to accept kind of thing. In particular, because it means accepting that you’re in a world of war.
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So the way I interpret a lot of this hesitation and pessimism is, you know, people still trapped in either cold war or immediate post cold war ways of thinking about the world. And not really being willing to see the world for what it is. Among other things, for a Russia that will not go back in any way shape or form to what it was even a couple of years ago.
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I
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mean,
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that we’re gonna be dealing with a much I’ve got a piece that’ll be coming out in the in the Atlantic about this. The next few days, Russia that is, you know, I I believe, will be malignant, will be vengeful no matter how this ends. We’ll be looking for the next war. We’ll be kind of gripped by xenophobia and paranoia. That is, you know, quite comfortable with all kinds of brutality.
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And I think it’s very hard for, you know, peace loving people who’ve I remember one German saying to me, you know, we’re a lifestyle superpower. You know, the the bread is better. Well, that’s not your world anymore. You’re and you’re in a world where you really gotta think about actually really defeating somebody in a serious way. Even we have trouble thinking that way.
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I mean, we had trouble thinking that way even in Iraq and Afghanistan. You know, that we actually want to win this thing. But we’re still a bit more like that than the Europeans are. The other thing is and I maybe this just grates me because it’s a subject I’ve been thinking more and more about. I I do feel like saying to all those politicians and diplomats you know, quite apart from your own incisive military analysis, are you listening to the same people who told you that either a, there won’t be a war or b, the Russians will be in Kiev within three days, or the war’s gonna be over in six weeks since the Ukrainians can’t stand it.
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I mean, you really have to say, well, where is your the military analysis that leads you to these kind of world weary judgments? And you know, my feeling is that’s actually if you probe that analysis, it’s thin and weak, and it’s coming from people who’ve been consistently Longwell,
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and the worst part of that is that, you know, a lot of people can’t also accept that the people who’ve been right they should now listen to because, you know, they can forgive people for being wrong. What they can’t forgive people is, you know, people who are right about these issues before they themselves saw these things playing out. I look, I agree with you on all points. I think particularly the question of Russia for the Europeans, it’s it’s true for both of us. But for the Europeans, it’s particularly problematic because they had mortgaged so much of their future to the notion of integrating, you know, Russia to take a phrase from a different context make Russia a responsible stakeholder in Europe, that it’s very different.
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The European home — Yeah. — the common European home. Right? And And so that has been, I think, very difficult for them, for not everyone, but a lot of them to let go of, and to accept what you said, which I think is quite correct that there’s no going back. So that no matter how this ends, there’s never gonna be, you know, a reliance on cheap Russian gas and oil again.
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And there’s never gonna be a fantasy of incorporating Russia into European security structures at least until, you know, the current regime and or any successor that’s rooted in the structures that were created over the last twenty years or so, you know, has disappeared and and given way to something else. And that I think is a problem. I also think and this I think is more a problem on our side of the pond maybe than theirs. Is there’s a lot of failure of imagination.
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This
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is something you’re not been talking about, you know, for a year now. But you hear people say that, you know, Russia must be defeated. Some people even say Ukraine must win. But you don’t hear very many people come come forward and say, well, what’s the theory of victory? What do you think is actually going to happen to allow this.
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And I think the thing that can only the only path that can lead to this outcome is to allow the Ukrainians to attack the interstices of the Russian military to the point that the Russian military in Ukraine is broken and breaks up and goes home. And that has happened historically, meaning it’s happened to the Russian Army in nineteen seventeen, We know armies can be brought to this point. The French army was, you know, muting in nineteen seventeen. And the German army essentially broke and there was a revolution at home in nineteen eighteen, and that’s what ended, you know, ended world war one. So and this is a nutritional war right now, like those wars.
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And so I I think that people are lacking the, you know, the historical imagination, I think, to understand not that this is a carbon cutout or that there’s some cookie cutter solution here, but, you know, that we have some sense of the possibilities.
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Yeah. You know, I I agree with that. I think, by the way, there’s an interesting conversation for us to have about the role of history as a stimulus to the imagination as opposed to a kind of a cookie cutter, which is sometimes the way it’s used. You know, just to your point about breaking the Russian army and Ukraine, there there was not nearly enough attention paid, I think, to the dog that the the proverbial dog that didn’t bark, namely the Russian offensive. We know these guys care about anniversaries.
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February twenty fourth passed with nothing. You know, the it would have made all the sense in the world, particularly given what the Russians have said, but we know what they want. For one year end, they have some sort of massive offensive either to completely crush Ukrainian energy infrastructure, but certainly to, you know, take back some kind of major battlefield victory. And it’s not even that they tried and couldn’t do it. They didn’t even attempt it.
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It tells you something about the state of their military, which I think people are reluctant to to face up to. And I, as you know, I continue to believe that one of the deeper problems that we have here is that our analysis of both the Russian and the Ukrainian militaries was wildly off before the war began. And I am increasingly, I’m not so sure that it’s gotten a whole lot better. And for a whole variety of reasons. I mean, now now for example, I think with the Ukrainians, you know, reading some of the American military commentary Longwell, they’re not doing it the way we would.
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Well, of course not. They’re Ukrainians, not Americans, and they don’t have, you know, an army that’s been around for several hundred years and that has fantastic resources to train and so forth. And I I just think we’re we’re having trouble seeing straight that that can cause, you know, really serious errors in policy. I I do want us to talk a little bit about Biden, the Biden visit Longwell, because I I guess I have a somewhat different take in that you know, I think Biden is being cautious. I think they did let themselves get spooked by Russian nuclear weapons.
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And, of course, the Russians played to that. But I think what what’s going on here is something that’s a little bit different, which, you know, Biden is I mean, he could be a very hard guy, but there’s a part of him that’s very that is I think kind of emotional. Mhmm. I think there is some kind of connection with Ukraine in the same way. There’s Yeah.
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I mean, he he there is a sentimental piece, and I think it’s you know, it got triggered by Ukrainians in a way that it didn’t get triggered by Afghans. You know, we can speculate on the differences there. But my inclination to think what’s happening is this is, you know, once it’s I’m sure within the administration. People are saying we are pursuing this excellently calibrated policy, you know, so we do a bit more the Russians don’t really notice that we’re doing a bit more, which is kind of a fatuous idea, but they kinda get used to it, they can’t respond, and aren’t we being artful? Instead, you know, my view of these things is people are kind of stumbling Longwell.
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They’re making incremental decisions. And they find themselves being pulled in a certain direction. And I tend to think that this visit, which was not intended to have some sort of great significance. Is actually going to pull us
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in
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the direction of giving the Ukrainians more and more of the stuff that they really need. And that’s because of the impact of the visit on Biden himself personally. But, you know, the kind of symbolism of that visit, the the way we his prestige is now invested in this war. He
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may not have known the step that he was taken. I guess is what I’m saying. Yeah. They I mean, there’s more sunk costs now, certainly reputationally given the fact that the president, you know, went where he did and said what he said. I do think that there are divisions in the administration about this, about what to give, and how fast to give it.
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And I think, you know, a a lot I mean, I agree with you that they’ve been pulled along by events. But the differences between the two sides, you know, of this this gushing inside the administration, I think, continue to play out. And I think people have been unwilling to, again, this is a kind of failure of imagination again, something we’ve talked about a lot, which is the munitions shortfalls and the weakness of the defense industrial base. And this is a problem. Again, it’s a transatlantic problem.
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It’s a problem in Europe and it’s a problem here. And it’s one of those problems. I think you have to throw money at the problem. And and that, you know, and a lot of it. And, you know, we need to do it, not just for the Ukrainians, although we certainly need to do it for them.
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We need to do it for ourselves because we’ve depleted our own stocks we need to do it for the Taiwanese because they’re already facing eighteen billion dollar backlog of stuff that we’ve promise them that we haven’t delivered, and we need to be seen to be, I think, the arsenal of democracy for our allies Longwell, and and leading the way for them to be doing more, you know, from the cells as well. So, I mean, I think there are multiple reasons to do this but it it’s, you know, it flies in the face. I think of not just the kind of, you know, Rand Paul, Mike Lee, Trump, Republican isolationism and populism that we see. It also flies in the face of the Bernie Sanders, Raukesana, left wing, you know, Democratic party mantra as well. And so I think it’s gonna be difficult to get us to the place we need to be, and this might be a good place to turn to the China issue because I see that very much in this context.
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So the administration’s effort to reengage the PRC with Tony Blinken’s meeting with his counterpart,
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the
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warnings about the intelligence that show that the Chinese are thinking about lethal aid, which they’ve not so far really provided to Russia.
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I
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mean, I think the administration is worried sick that it, you know, it can supply Ukraine up to a point, but not if it gets into a production competition, over munitions with China.
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So
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I think they’re trying to name it and name the Chinese to keep them from doing it in the hope that that that will work. I hope it does work because it will be a very big problem for us if the Chinese start opening up the larder and filling it up for the for the Russians.
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I mean, absolutely. It’ll be a big problem in Ukraine, but I think, you know, it would mark another kind of step change in the international system when it’s clear that the Chinese are willing to engage that way. You know, if I could just go back to one other thing about, you know, why we’ve been hesitant. You and I both Frank Files and one of my favorite French phrases is a laguer. You know, if you’re in a war, you act like you’re in a war.
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And I think, you know, I do really do continue to think that part of our problem is that we’re not willing to make the leap into that mindset. If you have that mindset, then you say, okay. You know, we’re gonna invoke the Defense Production Act. Right. Which means that you can remove all kinds of obstacles.
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You throw a lot of money at it, but you also, you know, you throw money at multi
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year contracts and and and and things of that nature. And I make what other I’ve been because, I mean, look, during World War two, to put the country on a war footing and mobilize the industrial capacity in the United States. President Roosevelt created an office of war mobilization. He took supreme sitting supreme court justice and put him in charge of it. That person, Jimmy Burns, became, you know, known as the deputy president because he was so powerful in what he was doing.
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Now, I’m not suggesting we need to do that. But I do think because this is more than just the Department of Defense here, that is involved in this, that it would be good to have someone sitting in the White House who everyday wakes up with the problem of, you know, how do we maximize and mobilize the productive capacity of our defense industrial base, expand it so we can meet this challenge and the ones that we’re gonna have to face up to in the future. The problem though is that to do that,
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you’d have to admit that we’re in an era where it’s not enough to say, okay, we have to do n plus ten percent. Right? You’ll have to say we’re in a different kind of world, which unfortunately I think we are No. I think the Chinese stuff is is quite interesting. You know, there was the Chinese issued a peace plan, which, of course, immediately was rejected by both sides because neither side is is particularly interested in one at the moment.
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You and I had talked a little bit about this. Now, there’s one school of thought out there which is,
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you
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know, of course, the Ukrainians were bound to reject it. So therefore, this is all arranged between Beijing and Moscow, and it lays the predicate for the Chinese to then supply. Russia with lethal aid, and I that’s a plausible interpretation. And maybe I’m kidding myself, and I’m I’m willing to plead guilty to charges of being naive. But but I think it also represents in some ways Chinese views.
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And I’m I’ve got it right now. You know, I looked at this document. This is China’s position on the political set settlement of the Ukraine crisis from February twenty fourth, so the inverse of war And I guess the the I mean, most of the pieces in this tilt Russian pretty clearly or certainly tilt against the United States. But there are two items which really don’t. And I’m curious to know what you think and given your experiences in Moscow, how you think the Russians read this?
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So the first item says respecting the sovereignty of all countries. And the sovereignty, independence, and territorial integrity of all countries must be effectively upheld. All countries, big or small, stronger, weak, richer poor, equal members of the international community, blah blah blah blah. So I’m not sure if that’s exactly what the Russians want to hear. The other thing is paragraph number eight.
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Reducing strategic risks. Nuclear weapons must not be used and nuclear wars must not be fought, the threat or use of nuclear weapons should be imposed. Right? Well, you know, Moscow can’t be happy with that, I should think. What
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Yeah. So am I being naive? No. No. Well, no.
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I mean, I think on both those points, they are a reiteration of traditional Chinese points. That have been made before and to the Russians before. This just codified them and put them out before the rest of the world. I’m not sure exactly what the Chinese purpose is here. Some of it is just to say we’re for peace.
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Whether it’s a cover for something, you know, on the lethal aid side to Russia later after both sides rejected, I don’t know that it will be, you know, I don’t wanna be excessively conspiratorial here. I mean, as Floyd said, sometimes a cigar is just a cigar, you know. So I think we have to wait and see. What I would say is it’s very striking and you and I have privately talked about this, the word aggression does not appear in the twelve point Chinese opinion at all. And as you say, there’s a lot of discussion about countries seeking hegemony and, you know, things like that, which are clearly aimed at, you know, the United States, you know, blocks you know, the enlargement of blocks.
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All of that’s, you know, sort of aimed at at us. The cold war mentality. Cold war mentality. All of that’s aimed at us. So I thought that the Ukrainian response was actually quite artful by Zelensky.
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Which was to say, oh, if the Chinese wanna come talk to me about peace, I’m happy to kind of come talk to me, you know. They’re they’re elements of their proposal that that we like, particularly the territorial integrity ones. And while you’re right, those clearly stick in Russia’s kraut to some degree The Russians have a ready answer for that. Right? Which is Ukraine’s not really a country.
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You know? It’s always been Russia. This was all an artificial creation, you know, of the west after the end of the cold war, the the mean nasty west, which made us do this. So, you know, they have a ready made answer for all of this. So I’m, you know, I’m not sure But do you think the Chinese would swallow that?
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No. The Chinese believe in territorial integrity because they believe Taiwan is part of China and their for — Yeah. — right? They have to maintain that, you know, territorial integrity matters. And they really do, I think, at some level, mean it.
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I think they are discomforted by what by what Russia did, particularly doing it immediately after Russia and China had Chinese leaders had met and the Chinese had proclaimed a partnership without end. I don’t think they had in mind what was about to happen and I don’t think Putin actually told them what was about to happen. So, yes, I mean, I have they have some discomfort with this. But there’s another issue though, which is if you’re the Chinese and you’re worried about American Hegemonism and the, you know, the blocks in the cold war mentality, can you afford to see your junior partner who you are in the process of making an economic vassal collapse and fail. And the Chinese don’t want they’re afraid of that too.
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You know that that you and I have lived through that with North Korea. They’re more afraid of North Korea failing than they are of North Korea having nuclear weapons. By the way, I think that is
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one of the reasons why It seems to me our policy is misguided. If you’re thinking if you’re worried about Chinese intervention, the longer this goes on, the greater the likelihood of that. If you enable the Ukrainians to really drive the Russians out of Ukraine territory fast, they don’t have time — Yeah. — to do that. Yeah.
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And I think because, you know, this it’s a big consequential decision and they wrestle with it and they try to figure out what’s going on and all that. So I, you know, I think there’s I I suppose one of the things I’ve always found fascinating about both study of history, but lived experience in in international affairs is how people think about time. Whether they think time is on their side or time is against them, one of the pieces I just wrote, I said there are different clocks ticking and that metaphor really hit me when we were both in government and visit Iraq, and the the the the the clocks that were taking in rock. We’re moving at one pace and the clock that was ticking in Washington was a different one. In other words, you know, what was gonna be domestically sustainable?
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How much pressure there was in Congress as opposed to how long it was gonna take to really change things on the battlefield. And by the way, and parenthetically, in that case, we’re very fortunate that we had David Petreas there who fully understood both clocks. Yes. But there’s something similar here. And I I have to say, After a period of feeling relatively good about the Biden administration, I feel
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less and less good about their ability to really navigate their way through the rest of this? The temporal dimension is hugely important. I mean, as you remember the Taliban always used to say, you guys have the watches, but we have the time. Right. And so I completely agree with you that you know, the idea that we can let this go on ad infinitum, I think, is a mistake.
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Not least because I believe that public opinion, which contrary to much of what you see, you know, people ringing their hands about, Support for Ukraine, both in Europe and in the United States in public opinion, polling remains quite robust. It is certainly true that there’s been a deterioration of self identified Republicans in Poland in support of Ukraine, but overall, it remains quite strong. But I think the one thing that could undermine that, both in Europe and the United States, is the idea that, oh, god. Here we go again. We’ve got another forever
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war. And
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this is just gonna, you know, this is gonna just go on till the cows come
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home and there’s no end to it. By the way, so that I can go full stettler or or am I walled or if I forget which which one which one I am. You know, it it does irk me that the
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It
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seems to me that the the journalists like focusing on March retailer greed or Matt gets you know, or some of these other marginal figures. And not pay a whole lot of attention to mister McConnell or Tom Cotton or Mike McConnell, in the house or Mike Rogers or Mike Gallagher. There you know, if you look at the people who actually run the legislative GOP, they’re eminently solid on this. And the ones who are shooting their mouths off, you know, let’s face it, Ron DeSantis began to think about foreign policy a couple of weeks ago. And is trying to navigate his way through Magaland.
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Right. And, you know,
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had a different view about Ukraine when he was a member of Congress. By the way, but that’s, you know, that’s, you know, I didn’t know. Yeah. That’s a discussion for another day back when, you know, he he was for it before he was against it. To coin a phrase.
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So I think that’s right. Although, I’m sorry to say, I think Marjorie Taylor Green is a more Significant figure then you suggest in the house. Only because of the role she played in rallying support for Kevin McCarthy and their for the role he has, you know, assigned to her. I agree with you that the, you know, center of gravity and the people you identified. And by the way, if you look at the group that leader McConnell took with him to Munich and then onto the Middle East and and up to Helsinki where they finished up last end of last week.
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This was a number of freshman senators who had just come into the senate, some of whom you might have anticipated would be you know, seeing the J. D. Vance, you know, Josh Holly line, but they seemed to be pretty solid when they went both to Munich and to and to Helsinki. So I like you. I think that the media has not done anybody a service here by you know, highlighting the and constantly suggesting that support is eroding, yes, there are division in the Republican Party.
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There’s no question about that. But what the, you know, whether the support is eroding or not, I think, is, you know, a different question.
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Could we talk a little bit about how this might actually conclude? And I’d like to just put a couple of theses to you. So the first one would be that the only real defense guarantees that can really be serious for Ukraine in the context of a ceasefire or something like that. Would have to be either membership in NATO or the presence of American troops in considerable numbers on a permanent basis in Ukraine. That anything short of that is just will be seen as meaningless and as meaningless because the French and Germans and even the breads are not gonna go to war with Russia or Ukraine.
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So that that would be one thesis. Second thesis would be that any ceasefire that it leaves the Russians holding on to anything. And by anything, I mean, the two twenty fourteen territories as well. So another is Crimea and Dundas, means absolutely means continued fighting. Along that line.
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I mean, the only way that you could actually have a ceasefire I believe would be, you know, if those parts of Ukraine are back in Ukrainian territory and you’re back at the recognized international border, then there’s perhaps some hope. But the third and the worst thesis that I’d wanna throw at you is there’s gonna be another war.
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And
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unless Ukraine is part of NATO, basically. Until that time and that and I don’t think that can happen for at least a decade and possibly two for a whole bunch of reasons. Much though I wish, you know, I wish we could bring Ukraine into NATO because I think that would actually protect it, but I don’t think it’s likely to happen. And given that that’s the case, I think we, you know, prudent planning requires that we accept that there will probably be another war and we have to about that. So that’s a pretty grim set of thesis.
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I’d be curious to know what you think.
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Well, it is, grim, but realistic. On the security guarantees, it’s interesting that you put it the way you did. My take on that Wall Street Journal article in which The French, the Germans, and the Brits are talking about security guarantees that are not NATO membership, but can’t amount. Intonado membership. Something, some strong association of some kind is an indication of how far the debate has moved in NATO itself because of the conviction of the Baltic states Poland and the two aspirant states Finland and Sweden, that Ukraine should be in NATO.
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And that the only way to guarantee its security is through NATO. I mean, that’s a conclusion the fins and swedes reached, which is why that their security could only be guaranteed by now, which is why they’re applying. And they have extended that in large part to Ukraine as well. That that that it makes sense. Moreover, and there have been some voices in NATO that have sort of acknowledged this.
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Regardless of the difficulties that you rightly point out, obstruct NATO membership anytime soon. The Ukrainians have earned it. I mean, Ukrainians have shown they are willing to fight for their freedom and liberty they’ve set an example, frankly, for the rest of Europe, which I think had forgotten what it’s like to have to do things like this. You know, how it can happen. I don’t know, but I I would say this, I I can’t imagine any set of security guarantees meaning anything.
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Short of NATO membership. Now, we may be in a period where it’s not possible to take them into NATO. Certainly, while there’s a conflict going I don’t think you can get them into NATO. But I’m not sure I agree with you that the timeline is twenty years. I mean, I think it could happen sooner than that.
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But it very much depends on sort of the outcome, which gets to sort of your other two questions, which are the territorial question. And the question of whether we are only in round one and will we have another round or rounds of conflict over Ukraine. So on the territorial question, I agree totally. I mean, unless Ukraine gets all its territory back. There will continue to be a bone of contention and an argument for Revanch.
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You know, that will drive conflict forever. Important to remember, I think, and it gets lost sight of in all of this discussion Russia of its own free will signed multiple international agreements including a bilateral treaty with Ukraine that guaranteed Ukraine’s territorial integrity in the pre-twenty fourteen borders gave Russia all the access it needed to
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sever
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stop all into the Bulwark Sea fleet etcetera. In fact, it was the the military forces they maintained in Crimea that enabled them to actually take it over so rapidly in twenty fourteen. Nothing was obstructing them. Nothing was keeping them from from enjoying that. And they chose to rip all this up.
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And it’s, you know, it it is a legal, moral reason why Ukraine has to have all that territory back. And then the one that you suggest, which is it will be an ongoing bone of contention if they don’t get it back. Now assuming they get it back somehow, assuming the Russian army breaks and runs at some point and that they can make it impossible for the Russians to resupply Crimea and the Russians ultimately get out of Crimea. That would be the last piece of it, by the way, in my view. And that could likely be the fall into place I think that depending on what the political consequence of that in Russia is, will tell us whether there’s gonna be more conflict or not.
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I think there are many branches and sequels that could come politically out of this in Russia. I could see Putin being deposed. Could see Putin being deposed and having the Putin system stand place, which is to say, the oligarchs and the cronies who who’s economic benefit he has been the patron of. You know, I think they might dispense with him and keep the try and keep the system in place because None of them wanted this war. I mean, there’s a very very good piece in the financial times a deep dive that they did using their terrific sources in the Kremlin, nobody wanted this.
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I mean, you know, if Sergei Lavrov, the foreign minister found out about it the day the invasion was announced.
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By the way, just on that, I I was stunned that those people were willing to talk to the FDA.
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I’m not at all surprised because there’s a certain amount of reputation, burnishing. I’m sure that’s going on. People are worried about the, you know, the war crimes trials that are likely to take place at some point. Given the number of war crimes that have been committed, and they Will Saletan an interest in at least stopping the war for now. They will also be very susceptible to pressure from the right and the ultra right.
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And there’s no guarantee that the ultra right doesn’t overthrow those people at some point because none of this is very deeply rooted in Russia, and then you get a second round. I mean, that I can easily imagine.
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But
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I could also imagine, you know, one of these guys from far right taking over and just trying to build to borrow a phrase from yesteryear, you know, Russia in one country. Rather than Ruskemeer and not be as invested in this war as Putin is. I mean, it’s this is really Putin’s war in a very personal way that I don’t think is very deeply rooted in even in his system. So I think a lot depends on the to answer your last question on the sort of political what sense of how it how it ends. You
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know, it it is Putin’s war. I agree. You know, it seems to me it’s also a war which is deeper and broader than that, which is a war about the persistence of the Russian empire. And I I think in some ways, or to some extent it’s recreation, to some extent it’s persistence. And in that respect, I think Putin, he he is speaking in ways that are actually informative in terms of understanding where he and people like him are coming from.
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They do see this as being about whether there will be a Russian empire or Russia will become a different kind of state. We we only have a a few minutes left, and I was wondering if I could get us to talk about something that always, you know, runs through our conversations and always has. And that’s the role of historical understanding in how we think about these things. I mean, you and I, you have a PhD in history, I, for my sins, got a PhD in political science, but I didn’t believe in it. And so I began writing history.
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You’re a historian trapped in the body of a political scientist.
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Yeah. That’s I think that’s pretty fair. Ron DeSantis it’s it’s interesting to me to see how people have misused history in the or or have been influenced by kind of crude understandings of history in their judgment. So I think I’ve written at one place, but, you know, just the kind of errors that you get when you think that the Russia of today is the Russia of world war two and the Russian army of today. Is anything like the Red Army of World War two?
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I think there is another set of mistakes when you say, well, there was a truce, you know, in the Korean peninsula wasn’t great, but it’s lasted seventy odd years, sort of neglecting all the differences. And I I’d like to just draw you out a bit on that because I I know for myself that I think my my reading of history shapes a lot of the the way that I think about contemporary issues but but not in the way that it I think it does for a lot of other people, which is to try to draw profound continuities and unchanging qualities. But I’d I’d be curious to know what you have to say on this. So, you know,
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I was an undergraduate at Cornell and one of the great historians at Cornell was Karl Becker who wrote in a presidential American Historical Association presidential address, a famous presidential address called every man his own historian. And on the one hand, it was a bit of a a pan to a relativism, which, you know, I to which I do not subscribe. But he did make a point that I think is important, which is that political leaders frequently you know, have some historical knowledge or, you know, or pseudo knowledge in their heads. That informs their view. And I was very struck in the FTP, so we were talking about the comment that was attributed to Sergei Leveroff the foreign minister of Russia when asked by an acquaintance who was bemoaning the decision to go to war saying, my god, who who who are his advisors?
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Who was he listening to when Lebron said, I had no idea. And Lebron said, his advisors are Ivan the Terrible, Peter the Great, and Katherine the Great. You know, and this is a point you made in your peace and foreign affairs which is people did not pay nearly enough attention. To Putin’s seven thousand words screwed, last summer a year ago, summer in the summer of twenty one, about the Russian people and Ukraine and Ukrainian nationalism. Now a a really good talented story in the, like, Tim Schneider at Yale can can and has picked that apart as, you know, very, very bad history.
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But it was clearly in, you know, in his head while he was making, you know, these decisions. So I think all of us have that, you know, not just putin and other leaders. We all have some sense of whether it’s lived experiences you were saying or the reading we’ve done. And our minds just naturally go to narrative and go to you know, analogies. That’s how humans reason.
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And so it’s just inevitable that people will do this. And as Ernie May and and Richard Newstat pointed out years ago, it’s not that, you know, we should not analogize, but you have to be aware of the limits of any analogy. There no analogy historically is perfect. And I think the problem we have is the tendency is to latch on to something, let’s say, it’s the Korean war. You know?
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And and, you know, look, there are some potentially you could see some elements that are like the cream board, but there are also things that are terribly different about it.
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Well, and then there are there are analogies that are very comfortable and which can get you in trouble. They and I suppose the classic one from David Halberstamps the best in the brine industry. He opens the book with McGeorge Bundy when he’s still at Harvard before it becomes Kennedy’s national security adviser giving a rousing lecture about the Munich crisis of nineteen thirty eight. And fairly or not, Helper Stamm, you know, says there was a lot of Munich thinking going in to Vietnam. On a smaller scale, I remember, you know, when the United States was debating whether or not to intervene in the Bosnian war.
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And there was a lot of reluctance to do it. As Longwell remember, it actually did not take a huge amount of forest to bring that to an end. And we could have if we’d done it earlier, we would have terminated a lot of atrocity and human suffering. The argument was, well, you know, look at the US laws during World War two. You know, they held down more divisions than the allies did in Italy.
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And so this would be an incredibly difficult costly operation. And that was repeated, by the way, in the joint staff Longwell as in the White House and elsewhere. You know, and I I had a a graduate student who’s an army officer who had very good Chairman And I said, you know, this analogy feels a little bit funny to me. Why don’t you write a paper going after? Well, he goes into it and Turns out, yes, they had more divisional flags, but the divisions were one third strength.
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Some of them were consisted entirely of men who had ulcers would be put on relatively easy duty. There was basically no there’s one, I think, first rate infantry division and the Germans managed to hold on to everything in Yugoslavia that they wanted. The tungsten mines the cities and the railroads until the very end. So you know, the the whole this whole notion of what kind of opponent you’d be up against. It’s quite apart from the fact that the US laws of the early forties are quite different from the service of today.
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You know, it it’s a it was a for me, that was just a terrific example of how, yeah, you can take an analogy. But you really need to interrogate it the way an historian interrogates these things and look closely at it and say, really, you know, what is what was really going on? And and frequently, it can be as instructive if you look at the analogy, you pull it apart and realize It’s a terrible analogy. That can be more illuminating about what’s going on than if you believe the analogy.
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It’s true. And I will say that, you know, the Munich analogy, of course, gets a very bad name for precisely the reason you, you know, you reduced that it was I mean, it it underlay what the French and the British thought about NASA in nineteen fifty six. It’s suez. It underlay some of the thinking about the domino theory in Southeast Asia, some of which seems to have been very, very misplaced. I will say that the current circumstance, you know, the Munich analogy kind of fits more than it doesn’t.
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In in a lot of ways. The man, you know, Hitler famously said before Munich that his demand of the sedation land was his last territorial, you know, demand in Europe after the reactivation of the the Rhineland. And it turned out that, you know, it wasn’t his last in territorial demand in in Europe. And, you know, one can already see signs that Putin does not have only designs on, you know, on Ukraine. You know, in the last couple of weeks, David Kramer and I with a couple of coauthors have written about Belarus and you know, the potential that he will just absorb Belarus at some point.
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David Kramer and I wrote that with Vlad Covietz, Belarussian dissident about that. And Ben Parker of the Bulwark and David and I wrote a piece for the Bulwark about Moldova. I mean, we’ve seen evidence just, you know, we’ve just seen evidence in the last few weeks of Russian attempts to manipulate the politics in Moldova where Russian troops, I think it’s the fourteenth army still in Transnistria. Which they’ve occupied since the Soviet Union collapsed and have used to damage essentially the prospects from Moldova to become self sustaining independent and a European have a European vocation become a European country. And it’s easy to see that he you know, has these ambitions to put the Soviet Union back together.
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This was Russian empire, you were saying. I just wanna you know, I know we’re running out of time and our producer is like giving me the hook here, but but I do wanna get to one thing because you talked about the fate of the Russian empire. And it triggered a thought, you know, if you look at what Putin was saying this week, He was talking about the breakup of Russia, not the Soviet Union, but Russia itself. And there’s been some discussion about our friend Bunner Chapetay, who you mentioned earlier, has actually written a piece for the institute, Montanya, about, you know, should we be looking at the potential breakup of Russia? And I would just submit that although I think it’s unlikely,
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I
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don’t think it’s impossible. That at the end of the day, what ends up happening is that Russia breaks up. And I’ve honestly, I don’t know whether I think that’s a good thing or a bad thing. Because it on the one hand, it could unleash all sorts of chaos in the midst of lots of nuclear, chemical, and biological weapons, which would not be good for anybody. On
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the
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other hand, it would take care of this problem of the Russian empire that you advert to, and I just wonder what you think about that? I,
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you know, I take all those points and like you, I’m not sure what I think I you know, this crisis has made me think more about Russian imperial history, I have to say, and focus on that aspect. Of its history, which is a history of continual expansion, including quite frequently very brutal expansion. I suppose my main thought about it is, if it happens, we will be in no position to influence it. And I think one of the great mistakes that leaders tend to make is to think that the only and in fact, we’ve had this discussion here on the show with some of our guests you know, it’s a big mistake to think only the United States has agency. Yep.
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We don’t. You know, it’ll be up to the Russians. And for the rest, I’ll just my concluding thought would be, I take the point about Munich, but for me, the larger point is, you know, evil is real. And that’s what Vladimir Putin embodies. That’s what he’s unleashed on the world.
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It’s about his target. It was estration of that as one can think of. And one of the things that history I think does teach you to do is to look that sort of thing squarely in the eye and call it what it is. And I think that’s what we need to do. Always, I come away from our discussions smarter.
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Thanks, Eric. Yes. I I always come away from these smarter,
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but sadly, frequently more depressed than when I came in. But that will have to do it for this episode of Shield of the Republic. Thank you very much for joining us. I would encourage you. If you enjoyed the podcast, please leave a review for us on Secret Podcast, or wherever you get your podcast from.
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Drop us a line at shield of the Republic at gmail dot com. And we’ll be back next week with another show.
