Does NATO Want Ukraine to Win the War?

Welcome to BED TO DIFFER, The Bulwark weekly round table discussion featuring civil conversation across the political spectrum. We range from center left to center right. I’m Mona Sharon, syndicated columnist and policy advisor to ballwork, and I’m joined by our regulars, Bill Galston of The Bookings Institution and The Wall Street Journal. Linda Chavez of the Nuscannon center and Damon Linker who writes the Substack newsletter, eyes on the right. Our special guest this week is David Kramer, Executive Director of the George W.

Bush Institute and former assistant secretary of state. Professor and foreign policy all around expert. And so we are delighted to have you with us today, David Kramer. And I’m going to begin with you because you had a piece this week along with Eric Edelman who was familiar to listeners of this podcasts regarding Ukraine’s request for battle tanks. They’re getting them.

Finally, The impasse was broken apparently when president Biden agreed that we would send Abrams tanks and this freed up Germany to then drop its objections to the re export of its leopards. There are some two thousand leopards around Europe. And it’s going to sense some itself. So if you wouldn’t mind, start with the debate that the Western Alliance found itself in regarding this request for tanks. It seems like this has become a pattern in the last eleven months since the Russian invasion that Ukraine pleads for some necessary weapon system.

And there’s a lot of dithering on the part of the west.

Well, Mona, thanks very much for having me. And let me say that I think it’s both a good and satisfying moment, but it’s also a frustrating one for the reasons that you just outlined. The Ukrainians have been asking for tanks for a long time, and we have dragged our feet until this week when the Germans finally gave in under pressure and president Biden went ahead for the authorization to send thirty one M one A one Abrams tanks to Ukraine. The leopards are the ones that are most important. And they are the ones that are likely to have a real impact on the ground to help the Ukrainians defeat the Russian forces.

Our Abrams tanks probably won’t get there for a number of months, maybe even into next year. And so it’ll be too late to tip the balance. The other countries that you mentioned, we have the polls and the Dutch, Thins, and others, even the Portuguese have indicated their readiness to send leopard tanks, the brits that are going to send their own, the French are going to send their own as well. This is I think a decisive point in this war. And I think it will really send a strong boost for morale among Ukrainians and will send a very clear signal to Putin that his efforts to try to divide the alliance have failed.

So I do think this is a pivotal point in the war. Ukrainians have been winning, the Russians have suffered numerous defeats and setbacks. This war has not gone the way that Putin anticipated and we just have to stay with the Ukrainians not as long as it takes the sprays that President Biden keeps uttering is well intentioned, I think, but it actually should be replaced with until Ukraine wins. And winning means driving all Russian and Beijing forces off of Ukrainian territory, and I would include Crimea in that?

Howard Bauchner: Yeah, that’s an interesting question about our strategy. You get the sense as a casual observer that the polls and the Fins and others who are closer to Russia have been very clear that the goal they see for Ukraine is to win the war whereas with the Americans and with the Germans and more with the Germans and with us You get this sort of temporizing, and you almost get the sense that they want to arm Ukraine, not for a victory, but for a standoff. Is that unfair?

There is a big difference between helping Ukraine defend itself and helping Ukraine win. Helping Ukraine defend itself does exactly what you just described, which is essentially a stalemate so that the war does not get much worse. Helping Ukraine win means defeating Russian forces and helping Ukraine drive them off of Ukrainian territory. That should be our goal. We should not want Russia to be in a position where it can do this again to Ukraine or any other country.

You’ve mentioned before, the invasion of Georgia in two thousand and eight, the initial invasion of Ukraine in twenty fourteen, the military intervention in Syria in twenty fifteen, This is a dangerous aggressive Russian leadership and forces behind it. And we have an opportunity. Thanks to the heroism and bravery and determination of not just the Ukrainian military, but average Ukrainian citizens to suspend themselves from this invading force and to set it back, to drive it back onto Russian territory. I do think that we in the west and I include Ukraine as part of the West? We and the West, the rest of Europe and the United States, need to change our mindset and focus on helping Ukraine win not just defend itself, and that doesn’t just mean staying as long as it takes, it means helping Ukraine to victory.

Okay, I want to invite you to comment on one more thing before I bring in my colleagues here, and that is that throughout this conflict, we have seen repeated Russian threats of nuclear escalation or

unstated apocalyptic threats So they did this saying that this would be terrible if we were to send high Mars, and then they said it after the discussion of possibly Sweden

and Finland joining NATO and, you know, this could have catastrophic consequences. And before we send patriots, you know, don’t send patriots because Well, boy, you know, we don’t know what we might do if you send patriots to the Ukrainians. And as you can tell from the question, I’m sort of thinking that the Russians are bluffing. Is that fair? I

think it’s very fair. And there’s a history before February twenty fourth of last year, where Putin backs down in the face of strength and force. If you look at twenty fifteen, there was a Russian military at the violated Turkish airspace. The Turks warned it off and then had to shoot it down. The Russians didn’t do anything in response to that.

Also in twenty eighteen. There were Wagner Forces, this dangerous violent paramilitary organization, run by Yibanye Pregozyan who were threatening our troops in Syria. We worn them off. They didn’t listen, and we bombed and killed probably between two and four hundred. The Russians didn’t say a damn word.

And as you rightly point out, Mona, during this war, the Russians have said if America and Europe to x they will do why. They never do why. We shouldn’t completely dismiss the threat of nuclear escalation but we shouldn’t let it tie our hands behind our back. That is the whole point of their threatening rhetoric so that we will back off our support for the Ukrainians. And we just have to continue to keep our minds and focus on helping Ukraine win.

I think even if the Ukrainians move against Crimea, and we have seen Ukrainian strikes against Russian forces on the Crimean Peninsula. I don’t think the Russians will use nuclear weapons. I don’t think the Russian generals should Putin in the highly unlikely event order such a strike. I don’t think they would go along with it. I don’t think Putin is suicidal.

I don’t think the Russian generals are suicidal. And if they were to use such a weapon, I also don’t think it would matter militarily. And it would also alienate the Chinese, the Indians, and all other countries that have either been neutral or even a little pro russian. I think they would lose almost the entire international community in that case. Bill

Galston, I’m going to invite you in on this topic. We talked about it last week. We’re very worried

about the tanks now that has been achieved. What’s your response to David Kramer? And do you have any questions for him? But what’s your response to his analysis that these Russian threats should not cause us to self deter when it comes to helping Ukraine. I

agree with David completely on that point. And I think as your question indicated and his answer confirmed,

there is

simply no evidence that what the Russians choose to do will be determined by any of these, I think, largely fictional red lines that were alleged to be crossing one after, the next. But I do want to raise a friendly question about the first part. Of his analysis. As readers of my column know, I have been gung ho from the beginning. To give the Ukrainians everything they want as fast as we can get it to them.

And certainly, the maximum objective should be for Ukraine to win the war with victory defined exactly as David defined it. However, we do not know whether Ukraine can win the war even if we give them everything they ask for for as long as they want it. I don’t think it’s helpful for senior military officials from the United States, including the chair of the joint chiefs of

staff, to

be harping on our doubts about what the Ukrainians can achieve once they’re fully equipped. But I think we have to be open to the possibility that unlike World War two, when You know, the war aim of unconditional victory was clearly feasible if we kept at it. We don’t know whether that’s possible in the case. Ukraine. And what I detect in American policy circles within the administration is not a reluctance to help Ukraine win, but a doubt as to whether that’s possible and a desire not to box ourselves in if a stalemate develops with the Ukrainians somewhat short of victory maximally defined, And I am not going to waste a lot of time or ink complaining about that because I don’t think it’s improved.

We may find ourselves in a situation by the end of this year or the middle of next year in which the Ukrainians themselves are beginning to wonder whether the incremental cost of driving the Russians, let us say, back from the February twenty fourth lines all the way to their own borders. Is worth the cost in lives and treasure. I’m not prepared to predict how they’re going to feel after another forty thousand casualties in this fighting season. So for all of those reasons, I’m less critical of president Biden’s terminology than David is.

David, do you want to respond to that?

Sure. Well, Bill, first of all, I’m a great admirer of your column and your support for Ukraine and and wanna extend my appreciation for being a a leading voice on this. Andy Ray is a really important point, but let me bring in a different angle perhaps arguably the most important angle in this, and that’s the Ukrainians themselves. They are agents and many respects of their own future. They do rely on the United States and Europe to provide military assistance so that they can fight this war and win They’re not asking for our soldiers to go on the ground and fight this war.

They’re asking for our weapons so that they can push back on Russian forces. And Ukrainians buy a very sizable margin, believe they can prevail, and they believe they can regain all of their territory. And also by a very large margin, they are firmly opposed to any territorial concessions that could come with any push for negotiations. I think you were referring to General Milli who a month and a half or so ago, and then just last week, has used this line that the winter is a good time for negotiations. I wish General Milli would focus on providing the military assistance the Ukraine needs and leave issues of negotiation and diplomacy to the ones who get paid to do that at the state department.

I think the United States should be focusing on providing the Ukrainians what they think they need. Again, we’re not talking about blank checks. That’s a phony issue in my view. The OIG and the Office of Inspector General, both the State Department and the Pentagon, came out with a report last week that addresses any concerns that people may have about the kinds of assistance then where it’s going to Ukraine. But the Ukrainians are at the center of this.

And as long as they feel they can prevail, they have morale on their side, they have the assistance from the international community on their side, but the Russians are relying on Iran and North Korea and I think really starting to feel the pinch of the sanctions. I think victory for Ukraine is in fact achievable. And I think it should be our goal to help them as long as they are prepared to continue this fight. And every indication I hear is that they are.

Linda Chavez, I’m gonna ask you to reflect on Biden’s leadership. I mean, with caveats and with some question marks, he’s done well at leading the Western alliance in this situation, most recently by saying fine, we’ll send the Abrams tanks at a later date so that Germany can do what’s necessary to free up the leopards. But once again, it does seem that American leadership is crucial And I’m asking you to reflect on what would this war look like if it happened during Trump’s leadership? Or some other leading Republican at this moment?

Well, I don’t know about other leading Republicans. But the war would be over if Donald Trump were president and Ukraine would now be the Ukraine and part of Russia. Had Donald Trump been in the White House at the time of the invasion. I’m absolutely convinced that I don’t think there would have been any resistance at all. You know, I have my criticisms of Biden.

I think he has not moved quickly enough. I mean, we’re now about to be in February. Presumably if there is gonna be an offensive and Ukraine trying to move back and move against the Russian troops in the Dombas region and in the eastern part of the country. Presumably, they have to be ready to do that as soon as it is feasible in terms of the movement of those big tanks. And I think there was this back and forth between the Germans and Biden on whether or not we were gonna send Abrams and trying to convince him that Abrams were not the right tank to be sending too complicated.

It’s got a jet engine, of course, jet fuel, don’t have proper supply lines to be able to fix them. If anything breaks down, was sort of beside the point. It was largely symbolic, I think. The Germans wanted to say that they were not the first and that the United States was also going to be giving tanks whether or not those tanks actually arrive in time for them to even be part of this offensive. So I’ve been a little critical with Biden on that, but he has come through finally.

And he does need to be given, I think very high marks in terms of the way he has led the west. And the way he has kept this alliance together. This is not an easy thing that he has done. And without it, I think the Ukrainians would be they’d be done for. It is only because there’s been the resolve on the part of the west to help and provide the military assistance is needed, that they have even a fighting chance.

I don’t know

what victory looks like, but I certainly know what defeat looks like. And defeat is simply something we cannot accept because it is a threat not just to Ukraine, but throughout Europe, it would be a devastating moment. Should Russia prevail? And get what it wants out of this, which is not just the eastern part of the country. They want Ukraine, they want the whole country, and they’re not gonna stop there.

Damon, do you think that this experience will sort of cause a re evaluation in the alliance? Because now they’re saying we need fighter aircraft and long range missiles, not that they’re suddenly saying this. They have been saying it, but it’s the next thing. Do you think there’s going to be similar amount of foot dragging or has rotation? Or do you think the lesson is, look, give them what they need and let’s see what happens.

Well, I

suspect that we probably will see some foot dragging still for reasons that I tried to talk through a little bit on our show last week. I do think that there is a clear sided rationale for being a little bit slow at each stage and this has to do with balancing the concerns that David and Bill and Linda and YouTube, Mona have all articulated, which is the need to help Ukraine, not just to defend itself to a kind of stalemate, but to push Russia back as far as Russia can reasonably be pushed back. I sort of agree with Bill that we can’t know ahead of time exactly how far that can extend? Will it really extend all the way through liberating Crimea? I I don’t know.

But yes, we have to be there for them with that, but we have to also balance that with the risk of escalation. And so far, whether it’s been entirely intentional or merely just a function of things being kind of slow in dealing with diplomacy with all of these countries and also concerns of not pushing too fast for American public opinion, that it might be that as a result of those considerations, things have just tended to go slowly, but the kind of geopolitical advantage of that is that Russia, as David noted, desperately needs China and India, but especially China to remain friendly. China has his back but I think very conditionally, China does not want to see an exchange of even tactical battlefield nuclear weapons to take place. Over this. And so Putin’s attempt to kind of ratchet things up on his side as partly a function of how fast we ratchet up things on our side.

If it begins to look like the west is all but directly engaged on Ukraine’s side fighting Russian forces. Putin will be in a stronger position to say to China. Hey, look, it’s basically NATO at war with me right now, which could soften China’s opposition to him going more aggressive. And so I think it actually is ideal if this happens stepwise over and over again. I think the approval of the tanks is excellent, very good.

I wanna see them put into action as quickly as possible. And as Ukraine asks for more weapons, we ought to supply them, but also be realistic and saying to yourself, well, alright, if it takes a few weeks, a month or two to kind of you know, circulate through. May now have debates, let people express their concerns, come up with side deals to encourage different countries to contribute and to have it be widely distributed. So it’s not just the United States or not just Germany, but You know, if Portugal wants to send some tanks, great. If the Netherlands wants to send some fighter jets in response to requests, excellent.

Spread it around make it look as much like a firm steady consensus as possible and that in and of itself will keep putting more boxed in than he would be if he were able to say to China. Look, they’re coming at my throat here. You have to loosen the handcuffs a little bit and let me more aggressively take them on, maybe start contemplating bombing some of the many supply lines that are gonna have to be open to keep these tanks functional and so forth. So that’s how it looks to me at least, and it all goes to show yet another sign that I’m with I think pretty much everyone on here in saying that the Biden administration has handled all of this quite nicely.

Bill Galston, did you have a comment?

Just very quickly. I think the big loser in all of this has been the idea that the Europeans are capable of defending themselves without our leadership. Macron and others have floated the idea now for many years that the Europeans ought to be moving towards some sort of autonomous defense capacity. And unless I’m misreading the situation badly, I think the events of the past eleven months have demonstrated that they’ve barely begun to take the first steps. Towards such capacity and for the foreseeable future, they will not have it.

Okay. David Kramer, I invite you to comment on any of what you’ve just heard and I have a final question for you because I know you’ve very kindly taken time out of a meeting to come and talk with us when we very much appreciate and we want to be respectful of your time. Well,

no, thanks, Mona. It’s I’m very glad I joined because this has been a great conversation. I wanna pick up on on both Damon and Linda and what they said. I agree that the Biden administration deserves a lot of credit. For keeping the alliance together for moving so quickly.

I think the fastest sanctions regime I’ve ever seen imposed on another country in a long, long time maybe ever. And I think they deserve credit for keeping the alliance together. And then using this decision on the Abrams tanks to push the Germans to do what they should do. However, I think the withdrawal from Afghanistan in twenty twenty one did play a role. I wanna say it was decisive, but I think played a role and Putin’s thinking that we, the United States, were withdrawing, that we would not respond the way we did.

It reflects a terrible understanding by Putin and those in the Kremlin of the

United

States, of Europe, certainly of their closest neighbors, Ukraine. They don’t get other countries at all. They underestimated the Ukrainian’s ability to fight, and they underestimated our ability to stay together and help Ukraine and they grossly overestimated their ability to win. On the point about China, I think Chinese don’t want to associate with a loser. And to the extent that we can demonstrate that Ukraine is winning and Russia is losing, I think president Xi will want to keep his distance, frankly.

The other part, of course, wasn’t mentioned, but we, I think, need to keep in mind, the more we can stand in solidarity with Ukraine, to support them, to help them win I think will give president Xi even further pause before he might think of any moves against Taiwan. How we handle the Russian invasion of Ukraine and support Ukraine will have global implications, including on the Asia front. So what we do, how we respond, how we help Ukraine is so important not just for Ukraine, for the whole European continent, but for the entire globe and hopefully we wouldn’t have another food shortage as the Russians tried to create last summer or energy crisis, reduction of dependence on Russian energy among the Europeans is also a major development in this. Putin is going to leave his country in terrible shape. No matter how this ends, and we have to make sure that he can never do this again.

Well, that’s an excellent note on which to close out this segment. And thank you so much for joining us. And we hope you will come

back. Appreciate

it very much.

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Alright. Now moving on to another topic. This one a domestic political matter. In Florida this week, the Department of Education of Florida led by Governor Rhonda Santos, announced that they would not be permitting Florida’s schools to participate with a proposed AP course in African American history and they listed a series of concerns about the curriculum. So, Linda, I wanna start with you As usual, Rhonda Santos did this in the most hand handed way, for example, saying that the curriculum lacks educational value, which is insulting and very provocative and unnecessary.

On the other

hand, I

don’t know about you, but if I looked over this curriculum and it does seem incredibly one-sided and leftist oriented. What did you make of

it? Well, it is. It is quite ideological. The first part of the course was pretty standard fare. It dealt with the African.

The Aspira, it dealt with the middle passage, it dealt with slavery, with the abolitionist movement, the readings that were suggested writers that students were to become acquainted with were kind of the standard fare. WBD Boys, you had Carter Woods and you had Frederick Douglass, you had all sorts of primary texts that were, I think, very worthy of a study and an eight peak course on African American history. But then towards the end of the course, it went way, way. Off the rails. There was a whole section on what was called post racial racism and color blindness.

The writer there recommended was Eduardo Banias Silva and Karen Fields, both of whom certainly Banias Silva, has very radical views, thinks that color blindness is sort of the epitome of racism. I think fields has a different take and she questions a whole notion of whether there is any real basis for the concept of race. It’s actually something that I sort of share some sympathy with. Her on, but then she goes off in another direction. There’s no attempt to expose students to some of the debates on this area.

For example, if you wanted to talk about whether color blind equal opportunity should be the goal. Why not introduce some people in in addition to Benoit Selva like Thomas Sowell and Shelby Steel. John McCorder, there’s a whole section on black liberation theology. Without a comparable section talking about the role that Christian churches and Jewish synagogues, rabbis, Ministers and priests played in the civil rights movement how critical they were to turning the whole question of civil rights for African Americans into a moral issue, how important that was to winning that argument And then there’s the section that Governor DeSantis called out in particular, which had a whole section on black queer studies. Now, I have no problem with students again reading authors like James Baldwin.

Who was in fact gay. He was also quite a radical. He was also a very provocative and good writer in my view. So, you know, there’s a way of teaching even some of these very controversial subjects, but doing it in a way that enlightened students, so that opens them up to ideas that can be debated. That is not what this course looks like it’s doing.

It looks far more like it is indoctrinating students into a particular worldview, and it is a worldview. That I think not only do not most Americans share, but I think it’s one that does great harm because it teaches particularly African American students to think of themselves as perennial victims. And I don’t think this is very helpful. So, you know, I’m with DeSantis on saying, you know, this is not necessarily a good thing for our schools. And it’s not clear to me that the educational testing services not gonna sort of rethink this and perhaps revise this curriculum because of some of the criticism that has been launched its way.

Bill Galston, at Linda said she doesn’t think most Americans would necessarily agree with this perspective. I’m venture that most African Americans don’t agree with this perspective either. I mean, it’s pretty out there. Look, somebody said, well, this is the kind of education you get at universities. Well, yes.

And that’s one of the reasons people are sort of up in arms about the bias and the, you know, wholeness as it were of university educations in all too many cases. But that doesn’t mean it belongs in American high schools. On the other hand, it is so hard to defend somebody like Rhonda

Santos even

when he’s right because of the way he does it. But anyway, what’s your take on this? Well, first of all, Having

gone through that curriculum in some detail, I find it difficult to descent from Linda’s judgment. And I find it impossible to disagree with the proposition that even when DeSantis is right, he’s wrong. But I think what I objected to most about what DeSantis and his spokespeople did was to suggest that the subject as such

has

a questionable place in a high school curriculum, even advanced placement. I know there was some verbiage about sort of revise and resubmit to use academic language, but it was not a very welcoming statement to put it mildly. And DeSantis clearly in handed it as part of his continuing campaign to distinguish

himself from

the rest of the field with the inventiveness and clarity of his strategy and tactics in the culture war. It doesn’t smell like an administration that wants to get this right It’s more like this is another weapon we can pick up and use for intra party as well as inter party. Controversy. And so it is the reverse of a useful contribution to the discussion. Even though if I were confronted with a direct thumbs up, thumbs down, judgment on the curriculum, as it now stands, I would tell the college board to go back and try again.

Damon, Maybe it’s silly of me to imagine that there was ever a time when we had reason to debate, but I’m struck by just how stupid most of our national debates are these days. And

we know

that DeSantis comes at this with history. I mean, he’s a provocateur. He tries to please the, you know, most right wing elements of the Republican base with hopes of elevating his profile and perhaps running press Okay, we know all that. And you can’t forget that when he does something regarding teaching African American history. At the same time, you know, some of the responses are, of course, just preposterous.

So state representative Michelle Rainer, for example, said There are two point eight million students sitting in Florida public schools right now knowing that their governor does not want them to learn about black history. Well, you know, Florida actually mandates that black history be taught in the schools. So, immediately, it goes to eleven. And Nuance, it’s a unicorn. In the

interest of dialing, things down even further perhaps or maybe up. I’m gonna beg to differ a little bit from Linda and Bill’s take on the curriculum for this class. Kind of in the name of trying to be even more nuanced about the question. This isn’t my kind of thing I would not have chosen to take such a course. But for me and, you know, I’m a critic of a lot of, you know, critical race theory and it’s place in public schools, but I don’t see this as a huge problem.

This is an AP course, which means it’s for juniors and mostly seniors who are going to be going to college. It does read

to me

as a curriculum suitable or a college level course in African American history. There is a kind of politicization that happens in such courses toward the end once you get to kind of the present, and I don’t really love that either. But it’s a pretty high level, pretty serious class with a lot of good substance in it. And that I think is very different from what I tend to object to far more, which is the kind of thing that say the six nineteen project from The New York Times was aiming at, which is that’s something different. That has to do with how in a kind of survey course of American history as a whole and to kind of use the strange verbiage of some of these activists whether particularly tendentious reading of African American history will be

centered

in that more general American history. So how significant is slavery for America? Is it central? Is it impossible to understand what capitalism is without putting the enslavement of human beings at the center of that story. Is it possible to talk about American democracy and self government without treating the oppression of black Americans as kind of at the core of that story or not.

I don’t think it makes sense to do that. The activists in the sixteen nineteen project do want to do that. So that’s where I think there really is a serious debate to be had. And where a responsible non demagogic politician, there’s a place for such a politician to stand up and actually make that case. But Brond duSantis is not that guy.

And I think, fastening onto what this particular one course, probably among several AP history options in the Florida Public Schools to kind of single this out and point to it as an example of this terrible thing we have to not permit is to me just rank demigodgery. Again, it’s not my kind of thing, but African American history is an academic specialty. It’s an academic field that is taught in colleges all over the country. If you’re offering AP Credit for college level coursework, that’s one of the things I would expect to be offered. And I don’t just see it as propaganda.

I see it as a politicized form of scholarship that also has a lot of value as scholarship. Especially if it’s taught responsibly. Now whether that would be true, I don’t know. But anyway, that’s my big to differ take on this issue. Okay.

Well, Linda, I’m

just going to come back to you. I think based on my quick cursory look at the curriculum that it does have a lot of serious scholarship in it, as you mentioned. But at the same time, I, you know, this section on incarceration recommends the work of Michelle Alexander who thinks that the fact that we are imprisoning so many black men is because of a new Jim Crow, and that’s kind of a radical take. And the section on music, I mean, the African American contribution to music, I mean, basically, American music is African American music in many ways. But the scholar they point to is Amir Baracca who had some serious problems with any sentiment and any white the views and lots of other things, including a criminal record.

You know, so I do think their choices are really problematic. Having said that, I also just wish to come from somebody besides DeSantis because, you know, sometimes people do need to push back on institutions like the educational testing service, which is a monopoly basically or almost a monopoly. And has tremendous power in our society and they get to decide, you know, what the curriculum will be. And if they present something that’s very contentious, frequently they get away with it. Well, and exactly right.

And it’s not even as I said that I object to reading a Mary Baracca or as I knew himly Jones is my news. You know, it is that you don’t have a countervailing point of view that — Right. Right. — you know, I don’t necessarily object to any of the people on this list as long as there was some more balance in it. And again, The first two thirds of the course look to me to be pretty good.

I mean, I might have quibbles here and there, but by and large they were dealing with serious topics, had serious suggestions for people to read for actual primary text. It was only when you got into the modern era and when you got into some of the more politicized subjects. And there, perfectly happy to have those things taught so long as there are other points of view represented. I mean, you know, we always hear about students learning to think critically. Well, you can’t think critically about an issue if you were only force fed one side.

Of the issue. And that’s where the problem is here. They’ve tried to do too much for one thing. I mean, this is a huge area to cover. I mean, you’re talking about in one section of the course, I think they talk about the various African kingdoms.

So you’re talking not just about the African American experience, but you’re trying to do history of Africa. Which, you know, ought to be a course in and of itself. You go through this whole colonial period, the era of the civil war reconstruction, and then all the way up to the modern time. So it’s difficult to do this and to do it well. They’ve tried to do both too much and too little.

And I think it is fixable. I think if the people put this course together are serious and listen to smart people, they will be able to come up with some changes that will make this a perfectly appropriate course to teach even in the state of Florida.

Yeah. I guess

I would feel differently about it. If Ron DeSantis had said the African American experience is central to American history. Nobody can deny that. That’s The compromise of eighteen fifty, and the, you know, the Missouri. I mean, every single major event in the nineteenth century before the Civil War had to do with slavery.

And then after the civil war with reconstruction and the civil rights of it, I mean, you know, that is American history. So I wish he had said This is critical to understanding our history as a nation. Very important that people study African American history. It’s really great that there’s an AP course that’s being proposed, but please don’t be so one-sided when you get to the parts that are more modern. Yeah.

No. Clearly, he was playing this for politics — Clearly. — but

— Yeah. — which is just

reprehensible and doesn’t move the country forward. But hopefully, maybe our conversation just now does a little. Alright. Let us move on to our final segment, the highlight or the lowlight of the weekend. I’m going to start with Damon Linker.

Okay, Mona. Well, my choice for a highlight is a good essay from The New York Times by Thomas Ed Sol who’s been a guest here on the podcast. His columns are unusual in that they aren’t really kind of your standard opinionated argument driven Ed, they are usually sort of reported in that he reads academic scholarship And then usually emails and talks to journalists and professors about it. And it often can be extremely illuminating, and that includes the one that he published this week titled, the resentment fueling the Republican Party is not coming from the suburbs. And this piece does a really nice job of bringing together a lot of the most recent social science scholarship on the rootedness of of the Republican Party in rural America and how even as recently as about ten years ago,

the

distinction between where the two parties were drawing, their support was much more muddled, that there were still rural areas the country where Democrats did fairly well. There were still lots of suburbs where Republicans were very competitive. But this, especially with the rise of Trump has changed, whereas now we see that Republican support is coming, oh, not in every case, but in a lot of cases, almost exclusively from rural under populated areas of the country. The suburbs have tilted very heavily toward the Democratic party against Trump and also other Republican candidates in the party. And so as that happens, the Republican party becomes more and more radical because the resentments in rural America are quite raw and they seem to get worse over time as depopulation and deaths of despair and other maladies get worse.

So I very much recommend Thomas Ed Sills column, it’s a very good dive into. The kind of most thorough literature of this very important question about just what the hell is going on of this country? There you go. Thank you for that. Okay, Bill

Galston. My highlight is weak.

Comes from the House, Science, and Space Committee. To tee up this highlight, let me introduce you to congressman Bill Foster, a Democrat from Illinois. He is in fact a high energy physicist He’s a particle accelerator designer. And he’s a member of the team that discovered the latest form of the quark called the top quark, perhaps because it’s the heaviest quark. And he recently had occasion to welcome George Santos to the Science and Space Committee.

And here is what he said. And I quote, I’m thrilled to be joined on the science committee by my Republican colleague, doctor George Santos, winner of not only the Nobel Prize, but also the field’s metal, the top prize in mathematics, for his groundbreaking work with imaginary numbers. Clothes, quote. If George Santos has done nothing else, I think he has greatly improved the quality of congressional humor. Well

done. Okay. Linda Chavez. Well, I’m

not sure I can even give my highlight of the week after Bill’s very funny highlight. I’m sure that mister Santos doesn’t even know what the fields price is. I am going to point to a piece that just came out from the New York Times. It’s called bar press Durham defined flaws in the Russia investigation. It didn’t go well.

And it’s a long report that is apparently based on several months of reporting by The New York Times digging into the Durham investigation, and

the

Durham investigation has more or less been concluded. And I guess we’re going to be getting a report sooner. Rather than later, but there was a bombshell in this article, at least it was a bombshell to me. Some of us may recall that at one point, after he’d been appointed, Durham’s purview was not just to investigate how the Russia investigation came about, but he was expanded to have powers to launch essentially a criminal investigation. And of course, all of the Trump folks thought that meant that they were gonna be arresting Hillary Clinton in her various aids, and they were all gonna be going to jail for having spied on the Trump campaign, etcetera.

Well, it turns out, at least according to the New York Times, that those powers were expanded because of a very awkward tip on one of Bilbar and John Durham’s trips to Europe where according to the New York Times, Italian officials warned that there were some financial improprieties and crimes that may have been committed that were linked to Donald Trump. I wonder if we’re gonna read about that. And clearly, no indictments have been forthcoming, but I thought that was a real bombshell. It certainly made my week. I cannot believe I missed that.

Thank you, Linda. I

will look that up. Okay. I would like to mention a piece also in The New York Times. It seems like a small matter, but it really isn’t. It’s called how Finland is teaching a generation to spot misinformation.

And I do think this is going to be a challenge for this decade and wraps longer. We’re trying to tease apart what’s real and what’s not that you see online is is a huge challenge for everyone. The youngians seem to be a little better at it than the older generation, but they too need tools for figuring out what’s real and what’s not. And the thins being right on the border of Russia have been the victims of lots of disinformation campaigns launched by the Russian secret services and so forth. But every country in the world is bombarded with this kind of stuff and not necessarily from foreign actors.

And so it’s really, really important if there are methods for hardening the targets and helping us all to be better consumers of online information. That’s all to the good. Alright. With

that, I would

like to once again thank our guests, David Kramer, who we said goodbye to, but thank you again for joining us and to our panel. I also want to mention that our sound engineer today is Joe Armstrong and our producer, as always, is Katie Cooper. We thank our wonderful listeners, and we will return next week as every week. Former Navy SEAL

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