Eliot Cohen: Foreign Correspondent

Welcome to Shield of the Republic, 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 Littman during World War two, that a strong and balanced foreign policy is the indispensable shield of our Democratic Republic. I’m Eric Edelman Counseler at the Center for strategic and budgetary assessments, a Bullhorn contributor

and a non resident fellow at the Miller Center, and I’m a much relieved cohost because I am finally rejoined by my partner in this whole enterprise Elliott Cohen, the Robert Eaz good professor, of strategy at Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies in the Arleigh Burke chair of Strategy at the Center for Strategic and International Studies. At long last Elliott. Welcome back. Welcome back Ulysses from your long travels.

Well well, thank you. It was a it’s been a month of travel. It began with a an amazing wedding our younger daughter got married in Seville, Spain, which is a beautiful beautiful city. It was a major cultural event. They actually had a customer band Spanish clubs were banned.

I didn’t know such things exist. And there were other exciting things, including a dancing horse, with a very elegant rider and a Flamenco dancer, who was kind of whirling around in a beautiful Morrish garden. That was quite the cultural experience. It my travels were bookended on the other end by my oldest granddaughter spot Mitzvah. There’s more celebrations, and in the middle of a fascinating two weeks in Finland, Estonia, and Poland, which is what we’ll talk about, I will say the only thing that qualified all these fascinating and wonderful experiences for me was when I I got back, and I opened up our signal chat.

And there is my friend, Eric Edelman. In in in a single you know, I think one single posting using an indelicate word to refer to people who have inappropriate carnal relations with their female parent about the fact that neither he nor I have been yet placed on the Russian sanctions list. And what makes it kinda more acutely painful for us is, you know, my son is on it. Couple of people who we think of as really Russian apologists and Epesars are on it, and there are even dead people on it, if you can believe that. But you and I are not on it.

For the love of god, I don’t know what you have to do to qualify yourself as, you know, a an enemy of this regime. You know, in twenty fourteen, back in the day when the weekly standard was still around, my first piece for the weekly standard Bill Crystal asked me to write, was about Putin’s Russian and Russia’s invasion of Crimea, and I actually advocated Putin’s being personally sanctioned. That was, you know, almost a decade ago. And, of course, this past week, I I argued that we ought to release cluster munitions to use on these guys in in Ukraine. And I you know, you just can’t get no respect.

What kind of

I I I think the way to deal with it, Eric, is to think of it as a puzzle. You know, why did this happen? So my you know, the theory that I’ve come up with is that they they gave the task of the sanctions list to a particularly dull in turn in the SVR, their their foreign intelligence service. And, you know, the guy is just an with. And so he he went with, you know, websites where he could collect lots of names, which he assumed just are all bad guys.

Know, I suppose one other possibility that occurs to me is that they actually know that you and I are the leaders of this movement, and they’re just trying to mess with our heads.

Yes. It’s a I I think it could be a psychological operation, actually several people texting me suggesting that, I you know, I do think to be a little more serious for a second. I do think it does tell you a little bit about how clueless they are about the United States, and it does put me in mind of an anecdote that Michael Zigar recounts in his book All The Kremlin’s Men, Azigar being a particularly well plugged in Russian journalist, in which he recounts a a conversation between Putin and Shoygu, the defense minister, in which Putin counsel Shoygu if you really wanna under stand politics in the United States watch House of Cards, which of course ignores the fact that originally House of Cards was written about British politics and the television version starred the late, sir Ian Richardson as Francis Urkhart, which became the predecessor to Frank Underwood. So I mean, the the levels of cultural and comprehension here are legion.

You know, that’s a sober and realistic analysis. Eric, but I think we’re both still pretty ticked off. Yeah.

Well, tell us about your trip, Elliot.

Well, it was it was a quite a wonderful trip. It was just about two weeks with my colleague Seth Jones at the Center for Strategic and International Studies. As our listeners may or may not know, I’m gonna be shifting my base of operations. Over there, I’m already the Arleigh Burke chair. I think you note the introduction.

Seth is the senior vice president in charge of international security programs.

And also sanctioned, by the way, he’s on the he made the list.

Oh, yeah. No. He he did make a list. He he actually made a point of reminding me of the fact that he was on it and that I wasn’t — Yeah.

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which was painful.

There you go.

And we’re really working on four projects, some of them together, some of them in tandem, and we decided it would be worthwhile to make a swing through that part of the world in order to talk to people about them. So one project, which I’m leading, is a project that’s actually in coordination with Professor Phillips O’Brien at the University of Saint Andrews in Scotland, on why was the analysis of the Russian and Ukrainian military so terrible? Before the war, and in some ways, right, almost down to the present, I would say. There’s another study which Seth has the lead on, which I’ll help out with, which is really about the future of American force posture in Europe. And I think there’s a lot of interesting things that’ll go on there.

I mean, we’re not gonna there there are long term implications from this war for things like that. It’s not just about what the fighting how the fighting will end up. We’re obviously very interested in Russian military futures, and we talked to people about that about you know, how quickly will they recuperate? Will they recuperate? What lessons are they learning?

And then finally, again, sort of large scale project that I’m gonna be interested in for quite some time, the changing character of war. What do we what do we learn? So Finland was pretty straightforward just a lot of military defense intelligence, foreign affairs officials. In Estonia, we were at the Leonard Mary, Con which is a big annual national security conference, and so in addition to the Estonians, and we we spent some time with the Estonians who were very, very impressive. Particularly their defense and intelligence people.

The conference really brought in a lot of people who’ve had very interesting positions, former Ukrainian defense minister, General Chris Cavoli, the supreme allied commander Europe. And then we were in Poland I I was on a panel at Leonard Mary. In Poland, I gave the what was the initial lecture at a big conference, the annual conference called Strategic Ark, which is conducted by Pism, which is the Polish Institute for National Affairs, that turned into an Atlantic article just out on why it’s not enough that Ukraine when Russia has to lose. We could talk a bit about that, but we also had talks with a lot of very senior military and intelligence officials. So all in all, an extremely productive trip maybe just go through what some of the high points were for me.

So I’d visited Finland as a tourist. I’ve never really spend time there as a researcher in a professional capacity, and I very much defer Eric to your knowledge of that country as ambassador. There are a couple of things that struck me. One is, obviously, the fans are determined to be good NATO members. Secondly, they do not particularly wanna have NATO bases on finished soil.

They don’t think they need it. They feel that their military structure, which is based on universal manhood conscription, and volunteer service for women, and a deep, deep reserve system has been vindicated. By this war, and so they feel good about that. My two other takeaways, one is I think they will be good members of NATO, but they’re not gonna lean forward. As one of them said to us, you know, from a cultural point of view, our our instinct is to look around the room, listen carefully, and only then make a contribution.

So, you know, we shouldn’t, I think, expect them to take a lead anytime soon. The other thing is that one of the most interesting conversations was about the border with Russia. And, as one of our interlocutors said, the Russians will weaponize anything. And, they remind us of an incident which you probably know about, but I not, which is in twenty fifteen, twenty sixteen, up north, you know, the Arctic night, three thousand Bangladesh on by because you’re not allowed to cross the border on foot. And this is, in the middle of nowhere, it was clearly a Russian move.

And they turned it off when the Finnish president called Putin, but it was a a strong signal to them. The Fins are in a Finnish way very quietly, reacting to this, they’re fencing large parts of the border. They’re pouring a lot of money into their border protection force, which is semi military, but they are preparing themselves to get various hits from the Russians. So let me stop there. We can talk about Finland, then I’ll that maybe go through Estonia and Poland.

Sure. Well, I think all your observations track very much with with my own, I do stay in touch with lots of folks in Finland, including on occasion with the president who was the finance minister when I was ambassador there some twenty three years ago or so. Yes. I think you’re right. First, the Fins will very much want to be good members of NATO.

When I was there, I was there several years into their membership in the EU, and they were taking up their first EU presidency while I was there. And they were determined to sort of be best in class in in doing it. So they’re they’re very assiduous students, according to OECD data, I mean, the Fins have one of the best education systems in the world, it was kind of a disincentive to try and really master finish, which is a very, very hard language. Since most of them spoke English better than I do, Moreover, they produce more engineers per capita than any country in the OECD. So they will be very committed to being good members of NATO trying to figure out what that means in the first instance.

I think that that will take a bit of adjustment. There will be a period of adjustment because and I’m sure you picked this up. Fins have developed a kind of strategic culture of counting on themselves, having been abandoned essentially by the West in nineteen thirty nine forty during the winter war. They hoped that there would be western intervention, Winston Churchill sort of tried to organize a a kind of western intervention across the high north into Finland that never happened, and so Fins became very self self reliant. They’re now gonna be part of a larger alliance of thirty two and hopefully once Sweden is in, and they’re gonna have to figure out exactly what their proper places.

I don’t think that they’re gonna take a leading role in the alliance, but I think they’re gonna bring some things to the table over time that will allow them to exert enormous influence in the alliance. And maybe and maybe disproportionately.

Yeah. I I think that’s right. I, you know, one of the great things I’m sure you’re this way by travel too. When I’m going somewhere, I really try to read as deeply as I can into history. So I read the history of Finland and the most recent biography of Marshal Mannerheim.

It was quite an astonishing figure. And what I I will say one of the things that came out at me from all this is You know, the Fins had this anomalous position in the Russian empire. They were the grand duchy of Finland. And actually, through most of the nineteenth century, they had quite a bit of autonomy. And then they have this period of the war, and then the period after the war where they, you know, they carve out some sort of sphere of autonomy, sometimes at the price of civil liberties, to some extent, but you know, they they manage it, and they are, you know, very much aware.

They’ve got a thirteen hundred kilometer border. It’s about eight hundred miles give or take. And Russia isn’t going anywhere. So on the one hand, they are very and they’re very And one further thing that’s part of this is, you know, they are acutely aware of the winter war of something people in the West often forget the continuation war where they fight alongside the Germans, but not but only so far. There’s actually a third war in the North in Lapland against the German occupation.

So they’re they’re very aware of of all this history, and I think it makes them Both confident at some level, but also very careful. Couple of interlocutors even said, you know, the the government was very much in favor of joining NATO, but the people were really in favor of it. So this, which is, I think, not the way it’s usually done there. But I I guess, you know, my my bottom line is the military people we talked to were very keen on joining NATO, I was a little bit surprised. I think they have not figured out what they want that role in NATO to be.

And, you know, we heard some suggestions that, you know, they they don’t want bases, they don’t need Western, you know, American troops, But, you know, for example, they can provide, in effect, fire support across which a pretty narrow straight stretch of the Bulwark, to the Baltic states in case they get invaded, you know, with high Mars and things like that. So there’s there are a lot of there are a lot of possibilities, but I think the know, the main thing is a good NATO member, but not one that’s gonna be leading the discussion for some time yet.

Yeah. I mean, I think it’s true that the population shifted very dramatically, but I I I would not underestimate the role the Finnish leadership played in bringing us home.

Well, they’ve got a pretty remarkable president.

The president is an extremely impressive person and his management of this among other things with Putin is pretty, I think, significant. His management of the politics of this at home in Finland with the outgoing prime minister, Mona Charen, who just lost the election, but who handled herself remarkably well, I think, during the NATO accession process, despite the fact that they come from different political backgrounds. I mean, he was a leader, although the presidency is is a kind of nonpartisan position, but he came from the National Conservative Party. She came from the Social Democratic Party, but they made it a very effective kind of a duo handling this process along the way, and it was bumpy and not easy because of Turkish president Erdogan’s intercession, I certainly think that they have a lot to bring to the table, both because, just geographically, they and the Swedes will help us close off the Bulwark, if need be, in a conflict, and that’s got to be, you know, presenting some problems for Russian Baltic fleet. But also, they have, you know, in terms of supporting fires for the Bulwark, they have the largest artillery holdings if I recall correctly in Europe, the fin the Fins do.

So they bring some very serious military capability to the table, which is certainly much more, I don’t want to make invidious comparisons, but certainly much more than, I would say, most of the other countries that have exceeded to NATO since nineteen ninety seven save the poles.

Yeah. The the the one qualification to that, I think, is, you know, on mobilization, this is an army of several hundred thousand

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Right. — soldiers. It’s we I went into some detail just how their conscription and training system works. So it is designed for mobilization and essentially territorial defense. And so you know, you’re not likely to see a Finnish armored brigade stationed in Lithuania.

And and, you know, the other thing would this struck me in all three it’s no surprise. Every each of these countries has a very distinct history of the second world war, and that history lives and it, you know, people are acutely conscious of it. You know, you mentioned winter war, the sense of on the one hand, having been not having gotten western support when they needed it, but also this pride that, hey, listen, we’re the of all the belligerent capitals, London and Helsinki, and I guess Moscow were the only ones that were not occupied. They’re very proud, I think, and right very rightly so of the of the self reliance, and that’ll be an issue. You know, of course, the other angle in this maybe way of transitioning to Estonia, you know, they do have this Nordic identity as well.

One of the concerns that the Bulwark have, I found this fascinating, is they are not sure that the Nordic states will come dashing to the rescue. And so, for example, you know, there’s been this very interesting agreement of the Nordic States who essentially merged their air forces. And I think the Nordic states, so Norway, Finland, and Denmark, I mean, the Swedes fly their own airplane, they’re gonna have something like a hundred and seventy f thirty fives.

And the Saab the Saab gripen, Yaz gripen is not a bad aircraft either.

Right. So and they’re gonna have, like, two or possibly even three times as many of these aircraft as the Russians have s u fifty sevens, which is supposedly comparable, although I don’t take any piece of Russian equipment at face value these days.

But they’re most advanced fighter.

Right. But but so so what’s interesting though is the Baltic what’s the Baltic reaction? The Baltic reaction is Right? Those guys will think, okay, we’ve got a nice Nordic defense community. They’ll all be in NATO.

And they’ll all be kind of, you know, busy protecting their space, and they won’t care about us. No, I don’t think that’s right. But but it it’s it’s fascinating because, you know, they they said let’s take Estonia. The Estonia history is very different. Is a history of they fought a war of independence against the Russians, which they actually won, and then they are just steam rollered by the Russians in world war two.

Large chunk of the population is deported, They’ve quite shrewdly managed their independence, but they are they know they’re a postage stamp count sized country, and that could be occupied in a day.

Before we move into the Bulwark, I’d before we leave Finland, I have one observation from afar and I’m wondering if you maybe noticed some of it while you were there, which is that the Fins are unique in the sense that they are the only state contiguous, to Russia, to the Soviet Union, with whom the Soviets were at war, that did not end up being occupied and becoming a satellite state, a member of the Warsaw pact. They maintained their independence, but it was at a cost, and the cost was, from nineteen forty five on until really this year, a kind of self censorship about the big neighbor next door, and some repercussions in domestic politics that, you know, I know we don’t have to get into, but My sense has been since making the decision to join NATO, and in particular, since the accession, the actual accession. That a lot of that has fallen away, and the willingness of the Fins to say and do some things about the Russians in a very public way talking about Russian spies inside Finland, but you mentioned the twenty fifteen incident with the bicycles, That was kept very quiet, so I’m wondering if you’re getting a sense of, you know, being liberated from the shackles of self censorship.

Well, you know, again, that’s a five day visit. But not I guess my film is not entirely. And that’s partly because of geography, that eight hundred mile long border, which is not gonna go away, in the sense that You know, the Russians will weaponize immigration that they may do all kinds of other stuff, but there’s a deep mistrust deep, deep, deep, deep, deep mistrust of the Russians. But there’s also history, and I and I do think the history going back to the nineteenth century is is important, You know, the Fins were able to carve out autonomy despite being under some sort of Russian hegemony, and they don’t want that, and they’ll, you know, they would fight against it. But it’s a very different historical experience than the Baltic states had or or the Poles had.

And so I think that, you know, it gives them a certain kind of It’s a combination of weariness, but also confidence that, okay, we can manage this. These guys aren’t going to go away. We can’t be wild and crazy here. We have to be armed to the teeth, but we can sort of manage it. I mean, they felt I wouldn’t say they felt cocky.

But they felt they felt self confident.

Right.

Now, by the way, one thing I would say parenthetically you know, their military, which I’m sure is very, very good in a whole bunch of ways, is optimally designed for the Russians deciding to do the winter war again.

Which judging by the way the Russians took on the fight in Ukraine, they very well might do.

I think that’s true. But in case the the mood music from the Baltic States is is very, very different. Yes.

So let’s move to Estonia. Yeah.

Yeah. So first, you know, it’s Talon is a beautiful city.

Lovely.

You would not think you would not think that the Soviets had occupied it. It a lot of fascinating Estonia including military people, their intelligence people are very, very good. I mean, they are This is a population of one point three million, but The the level of talent they have is quite striking. By the way, one person who I spend a lot of time with is their former president Thomas Ilvis,

Very good guy.

No question in my mind. He he is, by the way, a devoted listener to shield of the republic. So first, hello to us. It was great to meet you. And secondly, with my colleague’s permission, we’d like to get you on the show.

Yes, absolutely.

I think it would be very interesting. So, now, again, the Estonia’s are very serious. They’re doing go through quite an interesting military reform, which will give them about forty thousand troops on mobilization, something like that. But still, they, you know, they they are and they are determined to fight. As far as one can tell, but but they are still very much aware that they depend on not only on conventional forces because can’t be quite sure they’ll get there in time, but on nuclear deterrence.

So from, you know, the from them and the other Baltic states, you had more talk about nuclear deterrence. You heard the most pessimistic assessment of the Russian ability to bounce back?

Pessimistic in the sense that they believe that the Russians can bounce back.

They yes. The three to five years, you know, they they say, look, we’ve never been in a better situation, you know, the Russians have pulled troops from our border. But in three to five years, and maybe as soon as three, they’ll be back. I I don’t happen to believe that, by the way, and we can talk about why I mean, I don’t know what your view is, but I don’t actually believe that. I think Russia is in bigger trouble than that.

I think so too, however, I I just would say, we need to be a little cautious in this sense, which is, you know, the Russians have, you know, developed or demonstrated, I guess I would say, in Ukraine, a huge inability to fight the way they write. They write a lot about combined arms operations, but they found it very difficult to actually execute them and do them. But that’s also in a circumstance where they’re strung out across a, you know, eleven hundred kilometer battlefront. Whether they could, you know, concentrate some forces and do something particularly nasty not not now because right now they’re so, you know, depleted that they can’t do it. But in five years, could they replenish manpower enough to do something, you know, nasty in a more focused way where you have you know, interior lines of communication pretty close by in a place like Estonia.

I just think we shouldn’t you know, high five ourselves into complacency, I guess, is what I was Well,

I I I agree with that. It’s you know, just my view is that they they will find it very hard to get back to where they were on February twenty second. Twenty twenty twenty two, You know, look, the advantage that they will have for the foreseeable future is being completely unprincipled. Having no moral ethical legal restraints whatsoever in what they do. And, you know, against, you know, the Baltic states are small.

So, you know, I I I don’t dismiss what they’re saying at all. You know, I I completely I completely understand it. Again, it’s just it’s a different perspective and this perspective, I think, driven by their history. There was actually at the conference a German diplomat had he said two very interesting things. One, as he he said, in the past, we thought of security with Russia now we think of security against Russia, which may not seem like a big deal, you know, to Americans or Poles or Baltic.

For Germans, that’s That is not where the German official mind was. But I think the other thing he said and he said it without judgment. He was just reporting it. The other thing he reported, which I thought was quite valuable. He, you know, speaking to the East Europeans, he said, you know, you fear occupation.

Germans, fear, war. And, I think that is I think he’s right. I mean, I think there’s a the historical experience of any of the countries that have lived under the Russian boot. Is just profoundly different. By the way, all of this reinforced and the trip reinforced the sense that I have the United States has to play a very large role.

In in European security, but and this is, you know, I’ll be writing this up at some point. You know, it’s not a question of going back to the Cold War ten divisions in ten days, that sort of thing. And it’s not Cold War Light, you know, five divisions in ten days. I think, you know, what’s clear is we provide not only the nuclear umbrella, but the glue that holds this thing together with these you know, the Nordic community has its concerns, you know, the Nor regions just had a big May ninth parade by Russian workers all of them extremely fit young with the crew cuts in Svalbard, which is technically demilitarized. You know, they are looking at things in the high north.

You know, the Nordic states, as as I mentioned, are trying to, you know, merge their defense capabilities. The Baltic State’s very, very concerned about being overwhelmed very early on. The Poles, of course, being Poles, ready to fight, but feeling they can’t really count on German supply. So they’re they’re engaged in this huge buildup A large part of it, which will be some of it will be American m one Abrams tanks, good chunk of it, more much more of it is gonna be military hardware from South Korea. I mean, they’re buying something like a thousand Korean tanks, and also self propelled artillery.

You know, so that was the other thing. You know, the polls, for the polls, it’s, you know, it’s, again, of of I think a very dark view of the Russian future, the Russian ability to bounce back, but, you know, it’s concern in the sense of, okay, how do we how do we get these guys? And I think they It’s not surprising there, the ones who are leaning forward in terms of arming Ukraine, but I think there is a there’s a somewhat larger strategic concept there. Of kind of building a nexus of states that are on the front lines that are really anti Russian, but but that are backed by the US, the UK, and Couple of other countries, while, you know, the Germans are very, very slowly turning. And then the Europeans further west are, again, I think, understandably sympathetic to Ukraine and supportive, But, you know, they’re mainly thinking about security in terms of refugee flows across the Mediterranean and things things like that.

So it’s You know, the continent is in some ways, or the NATO alliance, I should say, is even more divided than it once was. You know, In the old days, as, you know, I think we both remember, you know, people were worried about well, well, the Russians try to drive all the way to the channel. Which basically means everybody’s facing the same military threat out of Russia. Now, people are facing rather different threats. And so it means, you know, the big conclusion I take away from this trip is the United States really needs to provide the glue.

We do not yes, we should have a brigade combat team permanently stationed in Poland. The Poles want that. It makes perfect sense. But let’s face it. It’s essentially symbolic.

What they what people really need is they need the command and control. They need the long range precision fires. They need the intelligence surveillance targeting and reconnaissance iStar. They, you know, they they want kind of the niche capabilities and behind it, all the American nuclear deterrent. So it’s a, I think, a shaping of our commitment to Europe, which is which is really quite different than it was in the past.

Then the last thing I’ll I’ll just say on on the trip that we can, you and I could just chat back and forth. So, our friend Slavaimir Demski, head of Pism asked me to give a talk to open this conference, and I don’t know if you’ve had this experience, but I find sometimes when I’m traveling and having conversations, it ends up shaping the formal remarks that I’m gonna later on, it just helps me think through. And so, basically, it was a stronger case as I could make. That beyond thinking about the short term, and beyond being quite precise that we really do want the Ukrainians to achieve their objectives, including kicking every last Russian out of their territory. There’s another dimension to this, which we haven’t talked about at all, which is how do you ensure that Russia is beaten?

And what does that mean?

Not only beaten and that this is the point I think that you make. Both in the lecture and in the Atlantic article. It’s not just that we have to make sure Russia is beaten because you and I have talked about that before on this podcast.

They know they’ve been beaten

precisely.

And and, you know, one of the things I, as I said in the the Atlantic article, they you know, they have recognized being beaten before. I mean, without a shot being fired in the seventies and eighties, you know, would Paris drug happens in part because they’re just convince of their own military inferiority. There are other historical presence, so this is not talking about a, you know, trying to march on Moscow. But I think the other critical part is that they understand that they have lost Ukraine forever. And I think there are probably a lot of Russians who now recognize that in a way that they never did in the past, But beyond that, I don’t think Vladimir Putin still fully recognizes that.

As you know, I think Spigniewski said this, Dominic Levin, is a very formidable historian said this. If Russia doesn’t have Ukraine, Russia is no longer really an empire. And I think that’s that’s really the critical point. And I, my views, this is achievable, just we need to focus on it. I mean, like you, I get frustrated with the administration, you know, finally working its way to a decision on F-16s.

But I think it’s The problem is the biggest strategic picture in the administration which is lacking.

Look, this is a conversation that Macon and others have raised about, you know, Russia can’t be humiliated, and whether Russia should be humiliated or not, and our colleague at at Johns Hopkins Sargueh Richenko has actually said, well, no, actually, the problem is that the Soviet Union after the fall of communism wasn’t humiliated enough, and this is a question of are you creating a Versailles, you know, analogy where you gonna have a revascist Russia, you know, just kind of wounded and, you know, trying to recuperate and and strike again or are you gonna get ultimately a recognition that Russia can have a a peaceful prosperous future, but it has to be one where it’s not trying to conquer its neighbors all the time.

One of the things I argued in the speech and in the article, there’s a kind of an intermediate place, which I think is the most likely, unfortunately, which is It’ll still be a nasty place. It’ll still be a malevolent place because at the end of the day most Russian Liberals are in prison and exile are dead. It may be a place that implodes. I think that’s conceivable. But but know, I think the bet the thing you should plan for is it’s a really horrible place with Putin or some successor who is just as horrible.

They’ll be willing to do all kinds of awful things, but but launching conventional wars in Europe is not gonna be one of them. And, you know, as I said in the piece, you who wouldn’t prefer a thousand cyberattacks and front organizations and all that to one Mariupol?

You’re right. Wanna just ask you a little bit about the you mentioned the Leonard Mary conference that you’re at, our friend and former guest Fiona Hill gave the Leonard Mary Lecter, I guess, at the conference. Tell us a little bit about that and how it was received. Is it generated a little bit of controversy?

Yeah. So I I this is tremendously embarrassing. I hope Fiona is not listening I wasn’t there for it. I was it was at night, and I was exhausted. So I you know, at my age, I’ve learned you give into that.

But I heard lots of reports and I saw pieces of it. And it was, you know, The bottom line is, well, you know, the Indians don’t like us, and the Brazilian don’t like us, and they’re not on-site with us, and there are a lot of things about American farmers.

The global south

like that. It’s the global south. And I and I actually I got at my lecture in Poland, I got a lot of I got questioned about that. And my reaction was A, the reaction of the so called global south is part of it rests on things you can’t do anything about. You know, South Africa.

Current South African government is gonna be sore because of, you know, the resistance struggle, and they’ll be have a sign spot for the Russians because the Russians helped them and all that. Brazilian anti americanism has been there for a long, long time. India, the kind of resentment of the West and all that. I think a lot of it is still a transactional.

There’s still a very large Neruvian hangover

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Yeah. — neutralism in India. It has been for a while.

There’s there’s a lot of transactional thinking that goes on here. I mean, the Indians are, you know, they’re buying up lots of cheap oil from Russia, and I don’t particularly blame them. And so from that point of view, they’re, you know, they they’re not nothing they do will affect things. And that’s really the big point for me is, You know, you don’t like seeing this, but does it actually make a big difference? And I have to say, I don’t really think it makes a huge difference.

Now, I do think the United States should push back in two ways. One is the rhetorical one, which is to say, oh, so you are in favor of Imperial conquest. Okay, it seems to me in your past, you’re actually we’re not colonialism. You’re in favor of colonialism, and now a an official who was there from the administration who thought I was too harsh, said, well, they that doesn’t really work with them. I said, I don’t care whether it works with them.

It’s just it puts them on the defensive act, you know, the other thing I would say to them is, oh, well, if you don’t care about recognized borders, let’s have a conversation about Kashmir. Because maybe, you know, we should actually take a different point of view on that conflict than we do. So, I I’m in favor of being quite tough and being also in our own turn transactional, which I think we’re — Right.

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we’re actually surprisingly reluctant to do you know, the the person who was great at being transactional was John Bolton at the UN saying, you you vote against us on this one? We’re going to thwart you on that one. And you know what? It worked. So, I’m I’m in favor of and and this is a part of a broader change in American foreign policy that I think is necessary, that we’d be more transactional, particularly with countries that at the end of the day are not don’t particularly share our or leaders, I should say, who don’t particularly share our values.

But like I said, okay, so the South Africans are caught shipping some AK-forty seven ammunition to Russia. Really think that makes a difference. I don’t.

Yeah. I look, I quite agree with you, particularly on the transactional point, I’ve been advocating a much more transactional approach with Turkey for some time, including jointly with the current national security adviser in a piece that we wrote for political about four or five years ago in which we advocated that the US take that approach with Erdogan

I I wanted to ask you a question, because here’s a question I kept kept on getting. I’m not sure I always had a convincing response, and I’d like to know what your response would have been. What do we do if Trump gets elected? We’re really worried about American politics.

It’s a hard question to answer because I share the fears. That those people are expressing, and in particular it’s much more difficult to try and assuage those concerns and fears by telling yourself or telling them that don’t worry there’ll be adults in the room. In part because There were precious few adults in the room during his four year tenure, and while they constrain some of his worst impulses, they, you know, like pulling out of NATO. They I don’t, in my humble opinion, did not constrain him enough. That being said, there are still gonna be some institutional checks, you know, on a on a president Trump, particularly in the congress of the United States.

How much one can rely on that. You know, I’m not sure I can give a convincing answer because I’m not sure I can convince myself. On on that score.

Yeah. Well, gosh. I I was hoping you would have a — A

better answer than

you did. Yeah. I mean, my my feeling was, look, we can’t control this, my personal view is I don’t think Trump gets elected between the possibilities that he ends up in jail. That somehow a a Chris Christie or Tim Scott toppled. And before that, I think that’s a much lower probability.

But in any case, I think in a matchup with Biden with all of his limitations and drawbacks, I think Biden wins again. I mean, I think he just looks you know, once it’s a real campaign, you know, I I just don’t think he looks very good. But the last thing I always say to them, That’s why it’s critical that we act with a sense of urgency now.

You know, I agree with all of that. I guess the only thing I would say is I may not be quite as sanguine as you are about the outcome of the election, not because I disagree with your political analysis but I worry that we would always be one foot slip on the stairs of Air Force One or one bike accident in Rehoboth, you know, away from a different kind of political outcome here. If we could just for the remaining time we’ve got you got really only about, I don’t know, eight eight ten minutes. I’d like to ask you a little bit about what you make of the developments in in Bakmoot. Okay?

So it looks like the Russians have completed their operation in Bakmoot and control the city, although it does put one in mind, I think it was tacitus who said they’ve made a desert and called it peace. Right.

Yeah. That’s the the agricola.

Yeah. So they’ve got Bakmoot, but this is this is to me kind of the definition of pyrrhic victory. Ukrainian continue to move on the flanks and look like they say they wanna encircle Bakmoot and cut the Russian forces thereof, which I think they might be able to accomplish this. Hard to know. What what’s what’s your sense of it?

So I I I think it’s real nothing burger of a story. I think if they had taken Bahmut much earlier on and relatively swiftly, then I think it might have been a big deal. I mean, the Russians are clinging to this. If you look at the Russian social media, they’re all over it, which is really I think it reflects desperation. So, you know, a number of thoughts, actually, more triggered by military history than anything else, although I’ll get to the contemporary analysis.

One is that Sometimes in war, places require a symbolic significance for one side or the other side, that has absolutely no relationship to their genuine, real, kind of, tactical, military value, think of Verdun. Second kind of historical thought related to that is the idea behind Verdun, the the German idea is that here’s where we bleed the French army dry, although they ended up also being blood dry by Verdun. But in this case, as far as we can tell, the Russians have suffered way disproportionate losses. It is striking to me that people who’ve had direct access to the Ukrainian high command say they have no second they have no qualms whatsoever about Bahmut understood not because of its intrinsic value, not because of symbolic value, but because this was a place to really bloody the Russians. Particularly, the Wagner group, you know, I think one thing that Pete has been missing some of the commentaries There are actually two pieces to the Wagner group.

One are these convicts who they pump up full of drugs and, you know, just send off to get slaughtered. The other is it’s actually some of the more competent units in the Russian military, and those are getting eaten up too.

Airborne units. For the most part?

Well, but there are also Vogner units, which are really quite competitive, which are quite professional. So now beyond that, it’s clear that the I mean, the actually, the Ukrainians have been seizing, you know, sizable chunks of terrain in both the south and the north. And so there’s some speculation that they’ll that they will encircle the place. The thing that strikes me most though is Ukranians have been putting we’ve been pouring a lot of resources into them. There’s undoubtedly a lot more that has not been public.

By the way, I think our Finish friends have been very quietly supplying the Ukrainian a lot of stuff. They they just don’t you know, the Scandinavians, by and large, don’t talk about this. They just do it.

Right.

Which I which I like. But on the occasion, I had a couple of occasions to talk to people who I’ll just put it this way, really should know. Or be in a position to give a very thoughtful professional judgment from a number of different countries. And all of them were quite optimistic about what Ukrainian will be able to achieve. With the new brigades that have been trained, the equipment that they’ve got.

Now what does that mean? Does that mean that they’ll reoccupy everything probably not? Might they be able to, you know, split the Russian military in two, isolate Crimea? All kinds of possibilities are are open. But I think at the end of the day, this is just This is really just a small footnote.

I think what’s more honestly, more significant is that you have patriot missile systems shooting down

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Consol missiles. Yeah.

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the latest wonder weapon, hypersonic missiles. And, you know, as as always the case when somebody comes out with a new weapon, it’s There are no defenses, and we’ll always get through and all that. And it turns out not to be true. And furthermore, I mean, you and I both remember when people said, well, they can never really operate high Mars. And the m one ambulance tank is just too complicated for them.

Oh, Patreon, you might have gotta be kidding. Or, I mean, most egregiously, when the undersecretary of defense, your successor, a number of times removed, said, well, it would take the Ukrainian eighteen months to learn how to fly f sixteens. No. No. No.

It turns out the answer is four months. I think one of the and maybe this is also kind of a bottom line on the trip. With great respect for the Fins and the Estonians and the poles, because of where they are physically and because of their historical experience, it’s much harder for them to kind of step back and look at the totality of this. And I think that’s that’s something one always has to struggle to do in any war. And you get so engaged in what the military sometimes calls the fifty meter fight, that you forget what the bigger picture is.

And there’s a bigger picture here, which is not only the reequipping of the Ukrainian military, but just look, say, in Zelensky’s diplomatic offensive. You know, he’s flying all over the Middle East, and you know, it has a line open to the China. I mean, there’s a lot there’s a lot of moving pieces here. And I don’t really see any of them favoring the Russians. Do you?

The only factor that could conceivably be favoring the Russians is time, and this goes to your earlier point about the importance of acting with a sense of urgency. The Russians, I think, believe time is on their side, that they still have reserves that, you know, certainly of in population terms, reserves of manpower that they haven’t tapped yet. They may believe that they can be make up the equipment losses with equipment from China or North Korea or South Africa, what have you. And if they can just play for time and that Putin certainly I think believes that Trump could become president again, which would also you know, play to his, you know, his long game. So that’s the only thing I think they have going for them.

Other than that, I think it’s a a badly led depleted, morale challenged, poorly equipped military.

And and and poorly led, you know, they’ve had this is their final theory of victory that they can just outlast us.

Right.

But but think of it. They’ve had four other theories of victory before now. They’d they’d roll over the country in a week, you know, there’d be no resistance. Then, well, okay, they’ll have to fight for a month or two, and the Ukrainians will crack. The third theory of victory is the Europeans will drop them, you know, once they have a cold winter

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Right. — without any

Without any rush cheap russian gas.

And and then, you know, the the next one after that is when we’ll bludgeon the Ukrainian cities into submission with with long range fires, that didn’t work. So this is the last one. It is you know, there’s precedent for it, but it also does have a there’s a little bit of you know, Hitler in the bunker being delighted that FDR is dead. And, you know, there’s undoubtedly gonna be a break in the opposing coalition in so on. I I think I I have believed for some time that Russia is under more internal pressure than we think The economy is under a lot more pressure than we think, and it’s not clear to me that time is as much on their side as they think is.

I mean, I understand the argument. Just I I I think it’s a much more complicated question and there’s a lot of it that doesn’t cut in their direction.

No. I don’t disagree. I I you know, the the problem with regimes like this is they always seem formidable until they’re not.

Yeah. Yeah.

And so I do think there’s there are things going on underneath the surface, and I I’m not at all sure that, you know, Putin is as confident about, you know, what lies beneath as we think he is. You know? Otherwise, why would you be trying to kill Navalny and put putting putting Vlad Carmwertz in jail for twenty five years, etcetera. I mean, you don’t do that.

Well, they just had a deputy a deputy minister drop dead after being critical of the war. Drop dead. I mean, you know, look, one one thing that I think we should expect to see happen is The place is getting more totalitarian, but it’s also, I think, internally divided. We’re gonna see I think we’re gonna see more intra elite violence. And I mean, I’ll sound bloodthirsty, but from my point of view, the more the better.

You see some, you know, incipient signs of that, I think, in some of these profanity laced tie rates on video — Yep.

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by Yevgeni Prigosian who who, as I think, the harbinger of precisely what you what you say. Elliott, I think we’re out of time, and it’s great to have you back.

The time didn’t indeed fly by, and tell you, thank you for interviewing me, and I think next week, I’m gonna interview you.

By then, we should know well, I I can tell you, actually. Let me let me give you the answer to the first question. Regib Tayyip Erdogan will be elected next Sunday as president of Turkey. I think I’m I’m fairly confident

I’ll I’ll I think we’ll both be very happy if you have to eat those words, but somehow I think you won’t.

I I will be extremely happy to eat those words.

Well, we’ll see next next week then.

But that’s it for this episode of Shield of the Republic. I wanna welcome back my my colleague, Elliott Con, if you enjoyed This episode, please leave us a review or send us an email at shield of the republic at gmail dot com. We look forward to hearing from you.