Happy Birthday Mr. Dictator
Eric and Eliot discuss Ukraine’s birthday gift to Vladimir Putin, likely Russian responses, and Eliot’s Atlantic article on Putin’s nuclear threats. Eric eats his words about Liz Truss, and they discuss the relative merits of Nero Wolfe and Daniel Silva for escapist reading.
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].
Eliot’s Essay (https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2022/10/putin-nuclear-weapons-threat-us-sanctions-military/671642/)
Orlando Figes’s The Story of Russia (https://www.amazon.com/Story-Russia-Orlando-Figes/dp/125079689X)
Yulia Latynina’s The Hill Article, “Will Putin use tactical nukes?” (https://thehill.com/opinion/national-security/3673163-will-putin-use-tactical-nukes/)
NUKEMAP (https://nuclearsecrecy.com/nukemap/)
Stephen Kotkin’s Stalin Biography, Volume 1 (https://www.amazon.com/Stalin-Paradoxes-1878-1928-Stephen-Kotkin/dp/0143127861)
Stephen Kotkin’s Stalin Biography, Volume 2 (https://www.amazon.com/Stalin-Waiting-1929-1941-Stephen-Kotkin/dp/1594203806)
Rex Stout’s Nero Wolfe (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nero_Wolfe)
Daniel Silva’s Portrait of an Unknown Woman (https://danielsilvabooks.com/books/portrait-of-an-unknown-woman/)
Daniel Silva’s The Cellist (https://danielsilvabooks.com/books/the-cellist/)
Daniel Silva’s English Spy (https://danielsilvabooks.com/books/the-english-spy/)
Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
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Welcome to Shield of the Republic. A 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 Liptman during World War too that a strong and balanced foreign policy is the shield of our Democratic Republic. I’m Eric Edelman, a contributor to the Bulwark, and nonresident fellow at the Miller Center as well as a counselor at the center for strategic and budgetary assessments, and I’m joined as always by my colleague and all things strategic, Elliot Cohen, the Ozgood professor of strategy at the school of advanced international studies in Washington DC where I also occasionally professor and also the Arleigh Burke Chair of Strategy at the center for strategic and international studies in Washington. Elliot, welcome. How are you doing?
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I’m doing just fine, Eric. It’s good to be back with you. There’s enough of the news,
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I think, to keep the two of us busy without a guest this time. So shall we get right into it?
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Yeah. So thank you first of all for joining me to help celebrate Vladimir Putin’s birthday. There’s one month in the year when he and I are the same age, and it’s well, it’s actually only twenty days. But his seventieth birthday is today,
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you you have a somewhat wider range of facial expressions than he does. And I don’t know if you you noticed and, you know, that the the ceremonies he had First, that that huge kind of creepy Soviet style rally that he had in Moscow and Red Square, you know, where he’s trying to get everybody excited. All all he can do is kinda open his mouth sort of, but there’s literally there’s no facial expression. I don’t know if it’s Botox or, you know, there’s just something dead inside. I mean, some I mean, I I mean, that have surgery
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too too much cosmetic surgery, I think. There are a lot of rumors about that, about with Putin. So one of the things, of course, that’s notable about Putin in the last week. We talked about it last time were his nuclear threats. And the danger of the use of nuclear weapons in the Ukraine conflict.
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Elliott, you’ve written about this this week in the Atlantic in an article that I think is terrific at which I commend to our our listeners. Talk a little bit about what the theory of the case is here for the use of nuclear weapons and how how should we think about it? And then we
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can talk about what president Biden after you wrote when Alton apparently said. Yeah. Well, and of course, you know infinitely more about nuclear weapons than I do, so I wanna hear what you have to say. Look, I think we can start with the fact, which is that the Russians have a lower threshold for nuclear use than we do in all likelihood. That’s part of their doctrine.
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They’ve thought about it a lot. I remember when the wall came down, we finally got access to some of their operational plans. You may recall they had they had plans for very extensive use of tactical nuclear weapons. I think fifty four on Denmark alone as they went charging across the northern plains in Europe. But you know, it’s clear they have been making some nuclear threats.
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And in the article, I make the case that it is a big mistake to let this rattle us. So if I could just walk through those real quickly and then get your thoughts particularly unprecedented by this response. But the first thing to remember is Putin is first and foremost a former KGB officer, that what these guys do is they play mind games, they find out what you fear, and then they play to it. It’s like when he found out that Anglo Merkel is afraid of dogs, so he brought a dog to one of their meetings. He knows that we get anxious about when people hear nuclear weapons, and so he he raises it.
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The truth of the matter is, and you you can certainly speak to this as well. There’s not a whole lot for them to do with tactical nuclear weapons on the battlefield. They’re aren’t that many lucrative targets if they begin attacking and even tactical nuclear weapons could be big weapons, I mean, with equivalent of five or ten thousand tons of TNT, you know, they run the risk of radiation blowing back in their faces. Their soldiers would probably do even worse than Ukrainian soldiers were in that would in that environment. It could blow over into Europe, in which case you’ve got a NATO article five situation potentially.
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So there there are a lot of reasons why it doesn’t make a lot of sense. But to my mind, the most important thing for us is not to let ourselves get scared by this because If you do, then you open up the way for nuclear blackmail by any nuclear power at any time. That’s the most profound truth. The other thing I would say is that, you know, we there are plenty of options for us to respond. I’ll just take through them really quickly.
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On the economic front, we have not really implemented the full suite of sanctions, which would include secondary sanctions, which is basically you have a choice. You can do business with Russia or you can do business with the United States and Europe. And there’s no company virtually no company on earth. That for whom that choice is not very clear. Militarily, there are conventional responses.
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I think one thing people don’t may not fully appreciate is the nature of the engine air power that NATO has over the Russians. Russian air force performed terribly. And there’s a dense array of bases and supporting capabilities in Europe And so if, you know, if we wanted to, we could take down, I think the Russian air defenses certainly is pertained to Ukraine and really do a job on Russian forces there. And then on the diplomatic front, instead of trying to find off ramps for Putin, which is an idiotic idea that I think you will probably skewer more effectively than I can. The thing to do right now is to remind the Chinese, that it is not in their interests to for nuclear use to be acceptable.
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Because the next thing they’ll know, they’ll be Russian and South Korean, and maybe even Taiwanese nuclear weapons. And in fact, it’s not in the interests of the Russians. You know, if they use a nuclear weapon, they should be pretty sure that in, you know, with the space of a decade, there’ll be Polish nuclear weapons. There may be Finnish nuclear weapons. There will probably be Turkish nuclear weapons.
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There will probably be Kazak nuclear weapons. This is an old, old technology at this point. Let us remember. So it’s not in their interest. And the final thing I would say is People need to understand that it’s not just Vladimir Putin wakes up and presses a button and behold their nuclear weapons going off.
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There are a lot of other people in the chain who have to go along with it. And one thing that we can do is, I I would hope that the US and other governments have the have identified who those people are and can reach out to them and say, look, you’re gonna be held accountable and don’t think that if you stay in Russia, you’ll be safe because there will be a successor government to Putin one of these days and probably sooner rather than later. And part of the price for readmission into the world of developed economies is going to be consequences for people who did this thing. So I think we’ve got a lot of cards to play, dismayed, by the extent to which people have gotten the shakes over this, but you’re welcome to tell me I’m wrong or you’re even more welcome to tell me Not only am I right, but there are arguments I haven’t even thought of. So over to you.
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No. Of course, you’re right. Yeah. I agree totally as you know. Couple of observations about this.
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So first, there’s nothing new here. In the sense that there’s a long tradition of Soviet slash Russian nuclear bluster and and threats. Going back to nineteen fifty six during the Suez crisis when Nikita Kutuzov threatened to rain down nuclear weapons on London and Paris to get them to withdraw from the Sinai. The one continuity in all this is this tradition of Russian nuclear threats has always been a mask for the weakness of Russia, of Soviet Union, and then Russia vis a vis the west. So this is that this is a long and hallowed tradition on the Soviet Russian side.
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To the question of off ramps, you know, and the president apparently was musing about this the other night with some donors. This this occurred after you wrote, your Atlantic piece, in which he said we’re closer to Armageddon than we’ve been since the Cuban missile crisis.
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You know,
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I think that’s an arguable proposition. I think the nineteen seventy three, you know, Keeper War, nuclear alert when we went to Defcon three, was probably higher. I mean, I don’t know. I’m not aware that we’ve gone to Devcon three at this point. So I think that, you know, the idea is really wrong.
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I’m sorry that the president actually vocalized this in a way that he should have known would become public. In part because it allows Putin to get inside his head a little bit. You know, one of the things about deterrence is that It’s not, you know, what you think determines it matters. It’s what the other guy thinks and getting into their head is the whole essence of deterrence. And one thing you don’t wanna give away is how you’re thinking about this to the other guy because you want them to be in some sent, you know, some state of uncertainty.
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President, I think, has now confirmed, you know, to Putin that these threats are getting to him that they’re, you know, matter of concern. Now, Russia’s probably already knew that. Because of the statements that he and and Jake Sullivan have made about we don’t want World War three, but that had been mitigated to some degree by you know, statements that I’ve defended publicly, by the way, on this podcast and in in front of the United States Senate, that Jake and and the president have made about you know, severe or catastrophic consequences if the Russians use nuclear weapons. That’s the right you know, to my mind, the right deterrent message. It’s undercut when you, you know, start doing what they’ve done in private, which is sort of leak to the newspapers that we might not respond with nuclear weapons.
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Maybe we will, maybe we won’t, but why would you telegraph that to This is
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correct. Actually, if I can interrupt you for a moment to just press you on on this point that you just made. Jake Jake Sullivan is a smart guy. No question about that. Yeah.
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Joe Biden is at least an experienced guy, and I don’t think he’s a soft guy either. I mean, I think he’s a harder human being than some people think. So why are they saying these things? I mean, it’s it doesn’t it doesn’t require Heck, not only it doesn’t require PhD, it doesn’t require a master’s degree, it doesn’t even require I don’t think it requires a college degree. To to understand that when you’re dealing with somebody who is as Putin is a thug who is trying to threaten you and intimidate you, you don’t give them the impression that, yes, you are intimidated.
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What what
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explains the folly of this? I I’m baffled. It’s deterrence one zero one. I think first of all, it’s a persistent failure to appreciate that we’re not dealing with a normal nation state and government here. We’re dealing with essentially a a criminal enterprise that has captured control of state that also happens to have the largest nuclear arsenal in the world.
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And so, you know, I think it’s partly that it’s partly sort of paying ritual obeisance to the world of the arms control industrial complex, you know, that every time the word nuclear is mentioned, we have to, you know, go into a fit of hysterics. The whole thing here is is really, unfortunately, because I really do think it undermines deterrence. And so it’s very bad for the president to be saying I keep looking for Putin’s off ramp. How does he get out of this? It’s not bad for him and his colleagues in government to be thinking about that and to be trying to figure out how to how to how to do it.
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But talking about it is terrible. Now you and I, before we came on, we’re talking about the right way to message this publicly, which is how my favorite prime minister in the world. Son amarin, the prime minister of Finland, a country to which I used to be ambassador, was asked what’s the off ramp for Putin? And she said, get out of Ukraine. And that was the end of her answer.
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And that’s the right answer. Let
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me play devil’s advocate a little bit just to push both of us on this. And and obviously, I agree with you. And I you know, there’s a part of me that just wonders if this is simply poor discipline. Which, you know, is a product of a number of things, and it’s not an elegant explanation, but it may be the true one. But let me give you an alternative view just to sort of test both of us.
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And I think it’s the argument that our friend, Hal, Brands, is making that you know, the United States and Russia are headed to a Syria into Syria’s conflict. We we are indirectly responsible for the killing of thousands of Russian soldiers between the military hardware that we’re giving them, giving the Ukrainians the Intelligence, that were providing the Ukrainians possibly the operational advice, although I, you know, I personally tend to think that the Ukrainians are really good at this point. They could give us operational advice. And this is on a different scale than, say, our aid to the Mujahedin in Afghanistan. And it’s even different in kind than the kind of things the Russians did in Vietnam.
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Maybe not, but it’s I I think you can make that case. Sure.
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And
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and that is coming together with a degree of hostility on both sides, but particularly on the Russian side that is really intense. You know, you and I think both watch these news clips that the wonderful Julia Davis, a follower on Twitter at Julia Davis News, puts up and, you know, you see these I think of them as much of hysterical ghouls and vampires on on Russian television and the venom with which they speak about the United States. The over racism, by the way, is really quite staggering. You know, that they I mean, that they seem to make a point while they’re all these African Americans that soldiers that the United States are sending to Ukraine were not true, but, you know, the racism is really another level of disgusting. You know, that okay.
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You add all those things up. You add add on finally on top of that, that the Russians are really getting beaten and humiliated on the battlefield, which we applaud, then maybe it is a more dangerous situation. So how would you respond to that?
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Well, I never said it wasn’t a dangerous situation. I mean, it is a dangerous situation. And and and the Russian you know, army is being ground to dust before our eyes. It which is leaving Russia very dangerously you know, denuded in in terms of any objective analysis of Russia’s national interest. But having said that, you know, the way you frame this is course is crucially important and I’ve actually discussed this with
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Hal. You
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can frame it the way you just described which Cal has done in the column I think he wrote for Bloomberg, but I don’t think that’s exactly the correct frame. I mean, the correct frame is that Ukraine is fighting a war of national survival. They have no choice. Russia’s involvement in this conflict is purely voluntary. I hate the term war of choice, but this war was a a policy choice that Putin made.
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He didn’t have to make it. No one forced him to make it. Almost nobody I mean, if you go back and look at the looks on the face of the, you know, Russian Security Council when he launched this, at the end of February. There was no enthusiasm whatsoever. And now because of the mobilization, we’re seeing that there’s no enthusiasm in Russia.
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You know, for this and certainly not in Moscow and Saint Petersburg because they’re not basically really enforcing the mobilization there. They’re enforcing it in places like Poriatia and, you know, Toova and Acuteia and places like that with I mean, it’s a form of internal epic genocide, frankly, that they’re engaged in — Yeah. — with with their own Russian minority populations. And and basically Putin could end it at any time, I guess, is the point. Right?
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That that goes back to Sana Maran’s point. Get
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your head out
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of the pencil sharpeners how as as Alexander Hague once said, you know, if you wanna stop the pain. Take your head out of the pistol shortly. Well well, but
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but hang on a second. You don’t think So I’ll I’ll push back in two ways. One first, I I don’t think Putin can pull out of this without severe personal consequences. And in particular, because I don’t think he ends up retiring to Aduchev, the way Chrischef did. I think something worse happens to him.
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We should probably talk about that. But the other thing the other way in which I pushed back slightly, and, you know, as is usually the case, you you and I are about ninety eight point five percent in an agreement. So I recently had an email from somebody we both know and respect from government time. I won’t mention their name. But who said, well, this is kind of an existential fight for a lot of Russians.
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A lot of the Russian elite because Ukraine, you know, has always been part of Russian. That what’s striking to me is that is not true. Right. By the way, I would I would comment to all of our listeners a wonderful new book, the story of Russia, by Orlando Figuis, f i g e s, which is great. And one of the things he talks about, the role that Ukraine played as as as part of Russia or parts of Ukraine did at various times.
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I mean, that story is really drastically oversimplified by people who buy the narrative. But I think it is the case that for a large segment of the elite right now. This this does have a somewhat existential feel. First, because they think that Russia has to be an empire and can’t be an empire without Ukraine. And because they also feel that the kind of humiliation that they’re suffering and that they will suffer is somehow means the end of the end of the Russian state.
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Now, some of this is synthetic hysteria, but I think some of it is real. Yeah. You
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know, when I was still a foreign service officer working on some of these issues, we used to talk about this and said, say that, you know, there were a lot of Russians who suffered from post Imperial Stress Syndrome, which has the wonderful acronym of piss, which And therefore, they were a lot of pissed off Russians because of the fact that they no longer could lord it over the other peoples that inhabit that geographic space. Look, I can’t argue with a lot of what, you know, what you’ve said, But the reality is when Russia when the Soviet Union came apart, Russia agreed and signed a a number of legally binding agreements with Ukraine, others that were not legally binding, but political undertakings with us and others that make it clear that Ukraine was an independent country. And — Yeah. — you know, if if if we’re gonna just let people rip up, you know, these international agreements there as you said, there’s no end to it. It’s just like, you know, the nuclear blackmail question.
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If people if they’re gonna to revisionist constructions of national interest, it’s a prescription for a constant conflict and and war. I think it goes
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even deeper than that in a way, you know. The more I’ve thought about it, it’s, you know, one way I’ve I’ve said this, put this to people is, you you know, you you can think of this war is having started at different points. I think we in the West tend to think of it as having started on February twenty fourth with the Russian invasion. Ukrainians, and they were very explicit on this when when I was there a few weeks ago. They think this is a war that began in twenty fourteen.
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Right. I think Vladimir Putin thinks this is a war that began in nineteen ninety one. Yep. And this is a war for the restoration of the Russian state by which he means an imperial state — Right. — which has no natural borders and can’t be itself unless it it covers something that’s kind of like what the czarist state had or maybe the Soviet Union had by by way of territory.
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That’s what’s dangerous. You know, I was it was
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it was really strange that I had one point to that, Elliot. I agree with that, but it’s not just that it has no natural borders and it’s reconstruction essentially of the Soviet Xara state, but it also is one that dominates all of its neighbors. Yes. It’s a dominant position vis a vis all of the neighbors. They have to knuckle under to Russia’s Suzuki.
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Yep. And I think
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that’s what by the way, one of the reasons why the Kazak the ethics of asserting their autonomy in the way they have is very distressing for them, the Turks also. So I think it you know, the the for me, the upshot of this is no matter how this this phase ends. We’re going to be dealing with the dangerous Russia quite some time. And we just need to get used to it. And we’ll be again, you know, I refer people to the figures book as a great introduction to this.
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You know, you’re you’re gonna you’re not gonna be dealing with a country that’s like a United States or France or Japan you know, or Germany to take a in some ways, a better example, it just says, okay, our borders are our borders. We don’t wanna take more territory from people. Right? That’s not what Russia is. That’s not what the Russian elite is.
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I mean, there’s a an article in the Hill by Yulio LATINNA, the journalist for Ekomoskie and Novaya Gazietta. That is a great companion piece to yours on the Russian nuclear threats. She walks through all of Putin’s threats, and she says having you know, talked to Kremlin insider. She said, Kremlin insiders are terrified by this because they think he might do it. But all the military experts, Russians, that she talks to, are, you know,
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pretty much
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as sanguine as you and I are. For the same reasons. They they can’t make a use case for it. These weapons are way more destructive. I mean, there’s all this discussion of some of it in the Russian literature of nuclear weapons as a nuclear scalpel.
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And David Sanger in New York Times earlier either late last week or early this week had an article on getting all blurs now. But David said quoting some people saying, well, if they used a small tactical nuclear weapon. It would just, you know, just a few city blocks would be destroyed. You know, I I invite every one of our listeners to go on the website, nukemapped that’s curated by Alex Wellerstein, a historian of science at MIT. And you can do your own, you know, nuclear modeling.
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You can pick the aim point and you can have it be an air burst or a ground burst. And You can go ahead and detonate a one kiloton weapon and see how much damage it does. You know, it’s it’s enormous damage, both physically and in terms of casualties. And then when we think about the fact that the most likely use would probably be depending on what, of course, as you know, it’s totally dependent on what the target is. What the conditions are at the time, etcetera.
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But most likely, this is gonna be a, you know, a scander SS twenty six missile that they use short range ballistic missile, which carries a ten kiloton warhead. So now go back to Nuke Mac and, you know, look at what you did with your one kiloton that warhead and and and put a ten kiloton warhead. I mean, I did that actually with some colleagues from New York earlier this week. And I actually made the aim point, the headquarters of their operation. You know, and the ten kiloton warhead basically destroys most of lower Manhattan, kills about a hundred fifteen thousand people, and wounds about three hundred fifty thousand, and that’s just from the initial blasts and and immediate radiation effects, that’s not accounting for long term deaths or from the consequences or the fire damage, which we tended to underestimating all our nuclear modeling because it’s harder to model than blast and radiation.
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So these are just readily destructive weapons and the idea of using them.
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It’s very
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hard to figure out a use case. I can only actually I’d be interested in your view as a military historian. The only real, you know, compelling use case I could imagine would be perhaps if the Ukrainians capture all of, you know, hearsson, Oblastins, Separisha, Oblastback, And it looks like they’re trying to go across the isthmis and get, you know, into Crimea to liberate Crimea. Blocking the isthmus of Crimea because it’s a really constricted geographic space and making it impassable. Would be a kind of, you know, on the
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other hand, the consequences of that is nobody in Crimea can get out either. So Well, I I was gonna say, nobody in Crimea can get out and they can’t get any water. Right. Because so it’s I mean, but that gives you the water to water is coming from. But Yeah.
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No. It I I I find it very hard. I’m I’m completely with you on this, and I’m sure this is where the Russian military is. Maybe could we go in a somewhat different direction? So I’m struck by two things right now.
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One is sign which I just find irritating, which is once again you’re getting stalemate talk, and and and even worse what I what I find a miss really misplaced kind of patronizing attitudes towards the Ukrainians. Well, they’re getting too, you know, they maybe they’re trying to get too ambitious and they don’t fully understand the limits what they’re doing. I think this has been a masterful campaign that they’ve conducted, and I think they know exactly what they’re doing. And by the way, I don’t think it’s gonna be stalemate because I think they will continue at some level during the winter. You know, the last time we we were convinced, well, nobody really continues to fight hard during the winter.
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You had the battle of the bulge. Mhmm. And you know, with the with the Russian military, this in bad shape, I think you could very well have some more collapses. But the other thing that and this is I particularly wanted drawn your your Russia experience this. I I am really struck that the, you know, today on bladomere of Vladimir Ravi’s birthday.
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There’s there are major cracks beginning to appear I think the fragility of it seems to me that the system looks quite brittle and here’s the evidence that I would deduce. First, you have Ramzan Kidirraf, the kind of really autonomous ruler of Chachnia, and what’s the name, Progression, the proprietor of the Wagner Group, openly calling for generals to be shot essentially. You have some of that stuff showing up on Russian late night television again with a kind of a level of hysteria, which is high strike ends for being openly critical of the regime. And then I think on social media, you’re just getting all these videos of troops complaining and, you know, being clearly unhappy and angry. Now I understand that, you know, this is not a society where you’re gonna have a revolution in the streets.
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But it does seem to me that the discipline of the system is shaky. Am I reading too much into those things? No.
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I think, you know, these systems always look very, you know, authoritarian systems always look very strong and powerful until they’re not, you know, until they crack and start to fragment and fracture. You know, to your point earlier about Putin can’t rest easy, you know, there’s no retirement to his palace in sochi without worrying about what happens
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to him. That
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was true before this all started because there was no succession and because of everything he’s stolen. It’s the reason why, you know, they have to imprison Navalny because Navalny keeps exposing all of this stuff.
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It’s
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interesting that you mentioned, you know, cadre of in prerogation. By the way, I would add to the social media stuff you were talking about. Some of the quizlings, one of the ones in Kurdistan was on social media saying that Shawigu, the defense minister’s performance is so terrible. That he should do the right thing, you know, and, you know, commit suicide. So
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so, yes,
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there are cracks. There’s also an intelligence report that alleges that somebody in the inner circle, you know, recently stood up to to Putin and questioned the, you know, the conduct of the war. I have
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some doubts
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about the provenance of all that. You know, I’m not sure that’s true. But but it’s clear that there’s not a lot of support among the other crats around Putin for for this war, which is why
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kind of real
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loyalists, lacking loyalists, like cadetirov and and promotion I think, are being so vocal and also getting so much attention. And, you know, it’s interesting. So what’s the one thing that sort of unifies Cadera who’s this Chetan kind of mob boss who has for years carried out a lot of Putin’s dirty work you know, assassinations of political opponents, etcetera. And and Percocian, who is Putin’s chef allegedly, you know, so called caterer to the Kremlin. Clearly, you know, in part of Putin’s inner circle, also by the way, the owner of the not just the Wagner Group, but also the Internet research agency that was conducting a lot of the twenty sixteen election interference, you know, all of whom, you know, members of whom were indicted by by Robert Mueller during the Mueller investigation.
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What the two of them have is an armed militia that essentially could function as a Pretorian guard
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you know, if
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and when the military collapse that you and I have talked about from time to time on this podcast actually comes about And if you’re Putin,
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those people
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might be the only thing standing between you and some very attractive lampposts to crowds of quite angry people. I mean, the kind of social contract that Putin has had with the Russian people is
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Shut up
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about politics. Don’t complain about what I do in foreign affairs, and I’ll provide stability and some measure of economic growth. And, you know, that’s going away. And it’s one reason why he was so concerned, I think, about doing the mobilization and only did it you know, when he had to.
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So I I
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think it’s quite fragile. You
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know, the question
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then becomes, you know, and I have no crystal ball. I don’t know how it will play out exactly, you know, who who pulls the RipCord first and, you know, is the military leadership gonna not wanna be made scapegoats? I mean, does he get pushed out by someone, you know, who’s even worse, which I think is distinct possibility. Someone like Patricia But even if it’s someone who’s more nationalistic and worse than Putin on that axis, none of them will, whoever comes next, will not be as personally invested in this war as Putin’s. And therefore, we’ll end and liquidate the liability.
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Yeah. You know, there’s also the principle that, you know, even when a thug is succeeded by another thug, The second thug is a chasem thug. You know, they’ve seen what happened to the first guy and they presumably don’t want the same fate.
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Yeah.
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I
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have a a couple of well, I’ve got a Mia Calpa that I’ve gotta share with you and and listeners. So last episode, I brought up Liz Truss and her appointment of our friend, John Butte, to run a
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review of
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British foreign and security policy, and that she’d reappointed Ben Wallace I think one of the better ministers of defense that Britain’s had for a while and thought that that might augur well for her, you know, tenure, but you know, I gotta eat my words because she
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and her
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chancellor of the exchequer have, you know, sort of done more damage to the British pound than, you know, George Soros and Dwight Eisenhower combined. And looks like they’re putting the Tory party on the path to an electoral defeat by labor that some I saw in the Feet, some Tory Wags are describing as a potential extinction event for the conservative party in Britain. So I I have to get my words on
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that one. Well, I I I must say British politics are always extremely entertaining because, actually, they frequently turn into murder mysteries. You know, they prime minister walks into a meeting. And next thing, you know, there’s a a dozen daggers planted in in his or her back. I mean, know, the serious thing is we need we really need the brits.
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And they’ve played a very a wonderful role in Ukraine, although I will say I think one of the pleasant surprises, you and I usually look at the dark side. One of the pleasant surprises is I think Macron has actually come back. And the French are increasing their shipment of — Yes. — of sophisticated artillery. Yeah.
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They’ve already spent about a quarter of their about a quarter of their high quality artillery pieces to Ukrainians. There was a very interesting little squib about how Macron and Burrell, the EU’s foreign policy chief, were basically helping to arbitrate talks between the Armenian and Azerbaijan a president, which is, by the way, an indication that of how the Russian grip is slipping. You know, that is kind of hard to imagine that happening with that Russian at least concurrence. But really more likely participation in the past. So, you know, maybe the as the Brits go down, the French are coming up and, you know, who knows maybe that’ll stimulate the bridge to get their act together?
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Hope so. I
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mean, as, you know, you point out to Azerbaijan and Armenian flare up. I mean, there’s also been some of that going on between the Kirgees and the Tajeaks because the Russians have had to pull their troops out from around the the periphery of Russia to dispatch them to get ground up in Ukraine, and that’s, you know, allowed it’s the phenomena that I call while the cats away, the mice, you know, started playing. So there’s there’s There’s that. Let’s finish on one other topic that has sort
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of just
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come up in the last twenty four hours, which is Senator Ben Sasse is resigning apparently before the end of the year. His senate seat to become president of the University of Florida, and since you and I from time to time, comment on trends and developments in the academy, you know, I wonder how senator SaaS is going to handle the problems he is
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likely to
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encounter at the University of Florida. He said today, he was quoted as saying in political that the University of Florida is one of the most interesting universities in
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the country. And I
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kind of read that and thought to myself, I wonder how he means that because to one degree or another, it’s one of the most interesting universities in the country because the governor of Florida has been intent on passing laws that, you know, fire the organization that has traditionally tried to draw attention to efforts to suppress free speech on campus. Normally, coming from the left and from the so called Wolk agenda and cancel culture, is now being applied to the education system in Florida and to the university. How do you think how do you think he’s going to respond to to that and handle the pressures from Ron DeSantis. So, you know, on the one hand,
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you know, at first, in particular, I was taken with SaaS’s intellect. You know, he he has a as a very interesting background. He’s a thoughtful, well read guy. I, you know, initially, I thought he was gonna take a stand against Trump. And he has done so only very very selectively and only once he was once again safe to run the senator or it had been safely reelected.
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Although to his credit
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though, he he voted to remove Trump from office after January sixth. Yeah. And I I
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give him credit well, Yes. I give them credit for that, but there were only seven of them who
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did it. So Yeah. I mean
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and I I and I do give them credit, but for goodness sakes. I mean, the guy tried to instigate an attack on congress that would have left scores of congressman senators dead. That should not have been that should not have been a difficult vote. I I he was his was not a particularly outspoken. He he was sort of an opponent of Trump, but not a tremendously outspoken one.
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You know, the disappointment that I feel on him is there’s, you know, there’s no legislation that’s associated with him. He had the potential if he’d wanted to be to be a kind of successor to John McCain on the foreign policy side, and he didn’t do that. I don’t think he particularly wanted to to travel or to really speak out. And, you know, I guess I have mixed feelings about people getting reelected, and then immediately bailing out to take another job. And being a senator is a pretty serious undertaking.
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I think being a university president is very difficult. It was always a difficult job. It’s a much more difficult job. I will be curious to see if he has the nerve stand up to DeSantis when you do have one of these free speech cases on the right. And I think I’m just as a professor and a recovering dean I think everybody needs to be aware that although most of the assaults on free speech in the academy come from the left and they’re they’re bad and they’re getting worse and it’s It’s worse because the dominant culture is a sort of a left culture, which is frequently intolerant.
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There are also very serious assaults that are now coming from the right. And, you know, what you need is a bunch of fearless and ferocious centrists who’ll just say no, you can’t do that. You know,
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traditionally
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University of Chicago has been the place where You’ve had leaders who’ve actually felt that way. Ben Sasse will be tested because DeSantis will try stuff like that, particularly as we get closer to the election. And there will probably be a point where Ben Sasse has to say no, academic freedom whether or not I I like the guys views or not. And I’ll I’ll just say one other thing. Having been in that position, actually, once it’s Dean, defending something.
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The the way you do that, if you’re an honorable
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academic
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leader, I believe, is you don’t say, well, I think so and so’s views on doesn’t such a reprehensible and awful, but but, you know, I do have to defend them in the name of academic freedom. What you have to do is just say, academic freedom, here’s our principles, here’s our statement academic freedom, full stop. And no comments on the fact that I I abhor some professors, so and so politics. We’ll see if he meets that challenge, but I would not place a bet at this moment on which way he would fall when when the time comes, but the time will come. Yeah.
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I
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mean, my own view is that those of us sort of on the center right In order to have any kind of credibility for calling out, these excesses on the left have to police our own side of the aisle. Yeah. And if we don’t, then, you know, shame on us. Yeah. So
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I
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I I but I’m not gonna take the take that action you know, on betting on a a strong performance, but I hope I’m wrong. I I would love to see him emerge
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as a El overwhelming I really will cheer him on if we do it. But, you know, this is a time when our country, not just the academic world, but the academic world, perhaps more than some other parts, needs really courageous centers who will stand on their principle and have spine. And, you know, being a university president is a pretty good test of one spine. Well, this has been a pretty I mean, we’ve been talking about Armageddon and things that kind. Could do you think we could wrap up by talking about something, you know, a little bit more lighthearted?
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Like, you know, what what are you reading for fun. I mean, I’m I’ll I’ll I’ll start and to say, I’ve been reading the Rexdout Neuro Wolf novel. So these are murder murder mysteries that I think he began Rexnet was quite an amazing guy. He had an incredible career. But he began writing them in the thirties and read them through the nineteen seventies.
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There’s about fifty novels, I think. And the the hero is near a wolf who’s a three hundred pound detective who never wants to leave his New York City Brownstone and who is kind of compulsive. He’s a gourmand. He has to spend several hours a day tending his Orchids. And his assistant is a fellow named Archie Goodwin, who is the he’s kind of the leg man, the muscle, but he’s this kind of wise cracking New Yorker who is the guy who actually narrates the stories.
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And they’re just wonderful. And Neuro Wolf himself is just a wonderful invention as a, you know, a very unusual detective who really doesn’t want to leave his house at all. Well, I’m
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tempted to say that one of the things I’m reading for fun because I am reading it is the first volume of Steve Kotkin’s massive biography of Stalin, which is — Oh, god. — don’t
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don’t be a show off. But
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it’s it’s it’s it’s really apropos because it’s, you know, you’re reading it and it feels like, you know, Russia in the twenties is just like Russia today. It’s like, you know, nothing has changed. But that’s really work, not fun. So I’ve just finished portrait of an unknown artist by Daniel Silva, the husband of my friend at CNN, Jamie Gangel. This is one of a series of novels he’s written about Gabriel Elan at Mossad
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agent who be
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rises in the course of the novels to become the director of Mossad and who is
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or
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as it’s known in the book, the office, and who is also a expert art restore of great art. This book actually is the latest in the series and it takes place after his alleged retirement from spy craft and really is set in the world of art. So for you, Elliot, who I know is a fan of Assertia and Pairs and his his art historian detective, Jonathan Argyle. So think of Jonathan Argyle sort of recreated as as a is really intelligent agent, and you’ll get a sense of sense of and I’m now going I’m going backwards because I’ve read, you know, the most recent books in the series. The cellist, which is very much set in sort of
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yeah. It’s
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it’s very much about Roma Clay about Putin and his involvement in US election interference and then or earlier the order, which
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talks about, you know, some
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of the darker sides of the extreme right in Europe. But
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I’m now
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back in even an earlier one called the English English spy, which is about Gabriel Alon’s efforts
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to find
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out who blew up pleasure craft that had the
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former princess
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of Wales aborted. So So here
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here’s here’s here’s here’s here’s the thing. Those people think that we’re just regular guys. There are two schools of thought about this. One is well, serious people actually like reading murder mysteries and detective fiction. Because there’s a moral clarity about it, because of the intellectual puzzle and blah blah blah.
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And the other is, I’ll cut it out through just enough. They’re great stories. So, you know, it takes your mind off all the all the kinda dark and gloomy stuff that we have to deal with. Although it does involve murder. And I will confess that I am more of a fan of what the the British called Cozy murders.
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So, like, you know, I joined watching midsummer murders, but they’re always three murders a night. But but, you know, they’re usually people who deserve it and, you know, it’s in the beautiful English countryside. But, I guess, is this just lighthearted entertainment, or you and I actually being philosophically very deep by reading these books? It also helps,
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I think, to read things where the good guys win in the end because otherwise, it might be tough to win through the day. So with that, Elliot, look forward to talking to you again soon. Hopefully, we’re gonna have some some guests. We’ve got some folks who’ve written some interesting books. Coming up and when we can manage to squeeze that in between the holidays, we will, you know, get you on a board with us.
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So for those of you who are listening, if you enjoyed this episode of Shield of Republic, please go ahead and give us a review on whatever platform you get your podcast from. If you wanna send us a note, we do read them. Send it to shielded the republic at gmail dot com, and hope you have a great and enjoyable
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week Very good. See you later, Eric.