Latest / Uncomfortable Conversations with Josh Szeps / Marcus Walker: Are We Handing Putin Victory?

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Marcus Walker: Are We Handing Putin Victory? · Uncomfortable Conversations with Josh Szeps

• 0:00
  G'day, humans. Welcome to Safe Space with Dangerous Ideas.
• 0:06
  Here's a dangerous idea. Is Vladimir Putin on the brink a finally achieving what he's
• 0:13
  been trying to do for two years, which is essentially weight us out?
• 0:18
  And create a situation in which we get tired enough and cautious enough that by default
• 0:26
  he cares more about Ukraine than we do, and he's able to pivot, stay the course, and defeat Ukraine.
• 0:37
  There are concerns that we are reaching a tipping point and that the Ukraine war is descending badly.
• 0:46
  What does that mean, not for Ukraine, but for the stability of Europe, for the citizens of eastern and central Europe,
• 0:56
  and most importantly for the liberal world order, that we all have an interest in seeing sustained,
• 1:01
  today a fascinating conversation from someone who's been to Ukraine a number of times,
• 1:06
  and can tell us both what it's like on the ground and what the implications are for the globe at this pivotal moment.
• 1:13
  And why this moment is so pivotal. Marcus Walker is a fantastic journalist and old friend of mine.
• 1:19
  He is ostensibly the South Europe bureau chief for the Wall Street Journal,
• 1:25
  which means that he's stationed in Rome and he covers all the stories coming out of Italy, Spain, and Portugal.
• 1:31
  But because there aren't always earth shattering stories coming out of that part of the world,
• 1:35
  and he has previously had more senior positions at the journal.
• 1:38
  For example, he was the chief European economics correspondent during the global financial crisis
• 1:43
  and lived in Athens when the Greeks voted no and were going to crash out of the euro zone.
• 1:49
  So because he's highly qualified to report on the world's biggest stories,
• 1:53
  and that isn't always happening in Rome, they've been sending him to Ukraine a lot.
• 1:57
  And he's been reporting almost all of his most recent articles in the Wall Street Journal for a global audience have been about Ukraine.
• 2:04
  And he feels that we're at a moment of reckoning in Ukraine.
• 2:10
  It's a tipping point for Putin.
• 2:13
  We're at a position where the United States resolve maybe waning.
• 2:17
  We may be sort of losing collective patience with the war and with our support for Ukraine.
• 2:23
  And Marcus is a brilliant guy who tries to cast his mind forward and say,
• 2:28
  OK, well, what does that mean? How do we balance the risks and rewards of doubling down on Ukraine versus pulling back from Ukraine?
• 2:36
  What does that mean for NATO?
• 2:38
  What does it mean for our collective security as Western liberal democracies?
• 2:42
  What does it mean for the people in Eastern Europe and Central Europe?
• 2:46
  I hope you enjoy this fascinating conversation as much as I did.
• 2:49
  Marcus and I were together in Portugal.
• 2:52
  So the audio is perhaps not perfect.
• 2:55
  But you can hear hopefully the streetscape and imagine the boisterousness and the conviviality of sitting in an apartment in Lisbon,
• 3:05
  chatting with the one on the Marcus board.
• 3:18
  When was the last time you went to Ukraine?
• 3:20
  June.
• 3:23
  Yes. And how many times?
• 3:25
  I've had three periods in Ukraine.
• 3:27
  Now we have some correspond to the journal who were there all the time or nearly all the time.
• 3:32
  And we have others who cover the conflict outside the country and write more about the international dimensions than diplomacy.
• 3:38
  I'm one of the few who tries to do both.
• 3:40
  My main job is trying to understand the geopolitics of it.
• 3:43
  But to me, it's very important to also be on the ground at least some time and some of the time to get a sense of.
• 3:49
  And on the ground, I mean that you're at the key of Marriott in a presidential suite soaking in a tub.
• 3:55
  Are you kidding me?
• 3:56
  Asking passes by what they think of the war?
• 3:59
  Shouting out the window.
• 4:00
  What is there?
• 4:01
  Our budget doesn't allow that.
• 4:04
  In my case, I've been in the big cities away from the front line and I've been at the front line too, especially in June.
• 4:10
  I was very, very close to the front line.
• 4:12
  Only three or four kilometers from the Russians on a couple of days,
• 4:16
  with Russian artillery flying over our heads and laughing behind us.
• 4:20
  So the Russian artillery is too good.
• 4:22
  They should have made it a little bit shorter and then Marcus would be toast.
• 4:26
  Indeed, yeah.
• 4:27
  So I've been both in a helmet and a flat jacket.
• 4:30
  And in what we call the red zone with a security adviser,
• 4:34
  whom they tend to be ex-British military guys who are trying to tell you how to knock it killed.
• 4:41
  But I've also been inside the country and meeting as many people as I could in the government, ordinary Ukrainians, business people,
• 4:50
  people trying to keep the energy system up and running despite missile attacks,
• 4:55
  as well as talking to soldiers at many, many different ranks at all near the front line.
• 5:02
  Including soldiers who've been Russian soldiers, who've been captured, who were prisoners of war.
• 5:07
  Yes, thanks to one of my Ukrainian colleagues, early on in this summer's Ukrainian counteroffensive,
• 5:15
  I met a group of Russian prisoners of war who had just been captured.
• 5:20
  And they were still bloodied and bruised and just been bandaged by the Ukrainians
• 5:26
  who were being taken away from the front line to be processed and put in a prison of war camp.
• 5:31
  So I met them at a very makeshift facility and got a chance to talk to those who consent to talk.
• 5:38
  And they were poor wretches, some of them had no choice, others did.
• 5:45
  For some, you can only feel sorry for others less, so.
• 5:50
  But definitely hearing their stories was eye-opening too, and that was a story that readers found eye-opening too.
• 5:56
  What do they think they're doing? Do they think that their cannon fodder has been said?
• 6:01
  Yes, for a tour failed.
• 6:03
  You see, what are they doing? They're all good.
• 6:06
  Some of them have absorbed the official narrative of the war that they are fighting against Ukraine,
• 6:12
  that's a hotbed of Nazism, and they think that they're fighting a good war,
• 6:17
  but they were all painfully aware that they were being treated as cannon fodder
• 6:22
  and as utterly disposable by their commanders.
• 6:25
  In the last four months, there's been this Ukrainian counteroffensive to try and push back the Russian occupying army.
• 6:32
  It hasn't been going as well as the Ukrainians hoped, because the Russians had a long time to prepare for it.
• 6:37
  But those Russian infantry units who are manning those minefields and trenches on the front line are also going through hellish months under fire.
• 6:48
  Many of them have not been rotated away from the front line for months and months, and it takes a toll on you.
• 6:56
  One of the people who used both to call scripts were voluntarily said,
• 7:02
  is that because they were convicts who'd been given an opportunity to get out of jail free by going to fight?
• 7:09
  Well, there are three categories, there are conscripts, there are professionals, well they're called contract nicks,
• 7:17
  so they've signed up to be in the army for a certain number of years, and those who sign up in recent,
• 7:22
  in the past year and a half, know full well that they are signing up to fight the war in Ukraine, and it is voluntary in their case.
• 7:28
  And then there are these... Why are they doing that?
• 7:31
  Well, they may well see it as a good career option, they may well earn very well.
• 7:37
  If they survive, they'd come back with more money than they would be making in their provincial town in the far reaches of Russia.
• 7:43
  You'd want it to be a lot more money.
• 7:45
  I'd want a lot of bags of potatoes, I'd want a lot of washed.
• 7:49
  Some die and those who make it back have really benefited, but also there is a strong commitment to the war and by many you believe in what they're being told.
• 8:02
  And then the third category is prisoners in the past year, the Russian army has relied very heavily on getting convicts to sign up for six months or more,
• 8:15
  fighting on the front line, and if they survive, they get a pardon.
• 8:18
  And being in the Russian prison system is such a hellish existence that six months of risking your life and then a prospect of freedom looks like that.
• 8:29
  Under these people who robbed a grocery store to feed their starting families, or are these harbinged violent criminals?
• 8:35
  It includes a lot of harbing violent criminals, includes murderers, rapists, armed robbers, drug dealers.
• 8:42
  I spoke to a drug dealer from St. Petersburg.
• 8:45
  He had previously been a professional soldier and then after the army had become a drug dealer and he'd ended up in prison and to him going back to fight again for six months.
• 8:56
  It seemed like the better bet than staying in jail, but he found that he was horribly mistreated by his own commanders even after he was wounded.
• 9:04
  They didn't let him recover. He was told to carry on fighting.
• 9:07
  And he eventually was wounded again and then just surrendered to the Ukrainians.
• 9:13
  Right. So probably not the best gamble that he made.
• 9:18
  You know, it kind of depends how it works out for him now because Ukraine and Russia make exchanges of prisoners of war.
• 9:26
  And in Russia, it's actually illegal now. It has become a crime to surrender if you have any way of fighting on ill or shit.
• 9:34
  And there have been cases of Russians who were given back and were then killed.
• 9:39
  Especially Wagner members, for example, members of that private military corporation.
• 9:45
  So it can be very, very dangerous for them to be given back and some of them ask the Ukrainians to keep them and to not.
• 9:52
  Right. But if he's not convicted of having surrendered and does get set back, then is Putin good for his word that he's just going to release these murderers and rapists and drug dealers back into society after they've done six months at the front?
• 10:06
  That already people who've been released back into society, yes, after serving the time in Ukraine.
• 10:12
  Why would Putin not want chaos on the streets of Russia by opening the doors of the prisons?
• 10:19
  You would think so, especially for a guy whose sales pitch to the Russian population is to bring back order after the chaos of the 1990s that preceded the Putin era.
• 10:30
  It appears that in the current situation, he doesn't mind about the high reoffending rate of violent criminals whom he has released onto the streets after a stint in the trenches.
• 10:41
  It may well be that this is the lesser evil from his point of view because he has a shortage of, he has had until now shortage of troops to man those front lines.
• 10:52
  And you mentioned the counteroffensive not going maybe as well as the Ukrainians and the West had hoped.
• 10:58
  What's the status quo? What's the stalemate, can you explain to us the Russian position in the south and what the Ukrainians would need to do what?
• 11:09
  Yeah, so about a year ago, so in the autumn of 2022, the Russians found themselves on the back foot and the Ukrainians were pushing and taking back some of the territories that the Russians captured early on in the invasion early 2022.
• 11:24
  So Putin ordered a general mobilization and mobilized 300,000 new troops and packed the front line with often poorly trained conscripts as well as throwing in all these convicts.
• 11:37
  And at that point, Ukraine didn't have the trained manpower or the weaponry to continue pushing forward and taking back occupied land.
• 11:47
  And so we had a hiatus over the last winter until Ukraine received enough weaponry from the West and it trained enough new brigades to launch this summer's offensive which began in June.
• 11:57
  The problem was that in the meantime Russia had many months to prepare defensive positions so to try to hold on to the remainder of what it occupies which is essentially the south, southeast and east of Ukraine as well as the Ukrainian peninsula.
• 12:12
  The Russians have laid down very dense minefields, they've dug systems of trenches and they've stopped by artillery and they've been preparing a defensive campaign for many months.
• 12:23
  And it is very hard for the Ukrainians to break through especially since they don't have much of an air force, the Russians control the skies, they have attack helicopters, they have a far more planes and in modern warfare if you don't have air power it's very, very difficult.
• 12:39
  And it's probably worth separating in people's minds that a few components here.
• 12:44
  There are the eastern Russian speaking, sort of Russian identifying ethnically Russian areas that are occupied by Russia.
• 12:54
  If I didn't put it that way he said Marcus has a hesitant look on his face about to Google with my description.
• 13:00
  And then there's Crimea which Russia already took almost 10 years ago and then there's the south of and then Crimea is this peninsula dangling off the bottom of Ukraine connected to the mainland by a bridge.
• 13:14
  And then there's that southern area of Ukraine which is quite a prosperous part of Ukraine and quite fertile and quite important to Ukraine's economy because it produces lots of agricultural stuff.
• 13:24
  Have I broadly done that right? And so what are the priorities in each of those three?
• 13:28
  Yeah, I would describe the situation differently. What you've described is how many people around the world have come to understand Ukraine as divided between two different groups who speak different languages have a different allegiance.
• 13:40
  But really when I said a distinguish between Russian speakers who you find all over Ukraine because in the Tsarist times and in Soviet times Russian became the dominant language in cities or of educated peoples and the Russian empire and then the Soviets treated the Ukrainian language as a kind of vernacular spoken by country bonkins.
• 14:00
  So you will find people who identify absolutely as Ukrainians but all their lives until very recently they spoke much better Russian than Ukrainian. So the language is not really a guide to peoples' national identity or because the Soviets made them.
• 14:13
  Yeah, and the Tsars before them and then you have people who are ethnic Russians which means that their families came for Russia. Like once upon a time they came from a city in Russia and moved to Ukraine.
• 14:24
  Often in the 19th century when Ukrainian cities in the east were industrializing there were coal mines and big steel plants. But even that is not really a guide to peoples' political allegiance.
• 14:34
  It's not really about ethnicity. You will find many people say my family came from an amazingly Novgorod or somewhere in Russia but it identifies as Ukrainian.
• 14:45
  So there is no only match between language, ethnicity or a sense and political identity.
• 14:52
  Being Ukrainian or being Russian is conversely you find a lot of people with Ukrainian descent in Russia who identify as Russians and will actively support the Russian war against Ukraine.
• 15:04
  So it's much less neat than in say Western Europe where we tend to think of ethnicity and language and nationhood and political nationhood as all going together.
• 15:15
  I think Russia and Ukraine are more of an idea. You subscribe to that idea of this being your country.
• 15:22
  Now the political situation in Ukraine was certainly that there were divisions between the east and the south which even if people felt Ukrainian they wanted to have a good relationship with Russia.
• 15:33
  They thought that the economic and political relationship with Russia is very important to Ukraine and Western Ukraine which wanted to have better relations with Western Europe and the West and the European Union.
• 15:45
  But that of course doesn't mean that people necessarily wanted to be Russia. The region of Ukraine should become a region of the Russian Federation.
• 15:54
  Now this conflict is debatable when it started but it escalated around 2013-14 when the pro-Russian President Yanukovych fell amid mass demonstrations and Putin reacted by sending troops into his Crimea.
• 16:13
  And then he fermented and sponsored proxy war in Donbass in two regions of eastern Ukraine.
• 16:21
  Now it is certainly true that a significant minority of the population in Crimea and in eastern Ukraine had sympathies for the joining Russia or for the separatist movements that Russia fermented.
• 16:34
  But it's very hard to say how many people, how big of a proportion that was because it is hard. People don't speak freely under military occupation or in the kind of police state that Russia set up in Donbass.
• 16:45
  So however you could still exit Donbass to the rest of Ukraine.
• 16:50
  Yes correct, a lot of people did and so there would have been a lot of it. If you really did like Russia and you were living in eastern Ukraine then at some point in the past ten odd years you probably moved.
• 16:59
  Because there are a lot of refugees that if you go in your home in Kiev or in abroad or other cities you will find a lot of people who in the year after 2014 fled from the regions where they lived to get away from the Russians.
• 17:12
  And I've met, I've talked to so many Ukrainians who are, for example, they they are mothers Russian, you know that part of the family came from Russia.
• 17:19
  They always spoke Russian and are only now trying to learn Ukrainian to a decent standard and they will tell you until 2013-14 I had a kind of mixed identity I wasn't quite sure I was a bit of both.
• 17:29
  And now they have become ordinary Ukrainian patriots.
• 17:33
  But so that's the east and maybe Crimea then southern Ukraine which is currently held by the Russians is correct me if I'm wrong the real playing card at the moment the Joker that the both sides are fighting over because without being cynical I think everybody if you gave them a truth serum would concede that
• 17:54
  if this ends up in some kind of settlement Russia probably ends up with Donbass eastern Ukraine Russia probably ends up with Crimea but what's genuinely in dispute right now and at a critical moment is whether or not Ukraine gets to keep the fertile lands of the South by pushing Russia out of those what does it need to do that and does it have those.
• 18:16
  So firstly almost all Ukrainians now will say we need to get Russia out of our country period and completely that's the redder all of it but I said truth serum.
• 18:25
  Yes, but even so I think that the you know the situation is also is so emotional for almost all Ukrainians now because of the number of dead people everyone knows the people who are who've been killed all named and the whole country is deeply opposed to any territorial concessions.
• 18:44
  And there is a high levels of determination to take back all of Ukraine within its internationally recognized borders there is also a belief that's doing so is the only way that this will actually end I a war with Russia will continue whenever phases it goes through until the day that Russia leaves Ukraine in this international internationally recognized borders.
• 19:06
  Of course that is going to be very very hard to achieve short of a much more western military aid than the West has been willing to give so far and that and just expand on that because I think that there's a perception in the West that we have really passed this test that Putin banked on the West folding like a like dick cheers and not being able to come together with a coherent policy of sustaining aid to Ukraine.
• 19:34
  And that we we passed the test of flying colors we stood up to Putin and we have been pouring bucket loads of money and ammo into Ukraine you have we what do you mean we haven't been doing enough.
• 19:48
  Yeah, it's true that the West passed the first test Putin didn't expect this level of resistance from Ukrainians and he didn't expect this level of aid from the West.
• 20:01
  However, this is a long war and there are there are many acts to this drama and the West has tended to congratulate itself prematurely for example fairly recently Joe Biden said Putin has already lost there's no way Putin can win.
• 20:17
  He said that at the last NATO summit in Vilnius but this really is in a premature premature declaration of victory because Putin has decided to play a long game and to try and salvage what he can after his initial miscalculation this was supposed to be a three day war that was supposed to decapitate the Ukrainian regime and take the country and impose a quizzling.
• 20:43
  And perhaps dismantle the Ukrainian state entirely instead he's ended up in a massive 18 nearly 20 months long.
• 20:52
  But his bet now is that Russia has deeper political and social stamina than the West does he thinks the West is unable to maintain its level of engagement.
• 21:04
  And the debate within the West has been whether to aid the Ukrainians more decisively than they have done so far so that Ukraine has a shot at winning this in the middle of what would that look like.
• 21:16
  Well, at this point it would mean giving the Ukrainians Air Force so F-16s as the other planes that Ukraine has been Ukraine and its modern supporters in the West have been saying you know we need to give them F-16s because many Western countries have had lots of them.
• 21:32
  And later on it had a fly F-16. So it needs a training program. The experience with every kind of weapon that the West has debated sending has gone through the same sort of stages of discussion where skeptics about sending it would say yeah but these are complicated Western systems it would take ages to train people.
• 21:51
  And then they finally start training them and they find that Ukraine has plenty of technically very accomplished you know pilots engineers programmers and they learn everything far faster than expected.
• 22:04
  And even if it does take a lot of time Putin has a lot of time.
• 22:09
  Yes Putin if Putin wants to take Kiev he will do it if it takes him eight years he will do it so if it takes seven years to train fighter pilots which it doesn't then it would still be worth doing.
• 22:21
  So then the question becomes are the other component that you've talked about and written about is not just jets but long range missiles.
• 22:28
  Yes we do not giving the Ukrainians what's the importance of long range missiles.
• 22:33
  So to overcome the Russian occupation of the South of the east of Ukraine the Ukrainians would have to be able to undermine their logistics.
• 22:41
  Their their supply the Russia was the Russian supplies of ammunition and other things and their ability to move reserves about behind the frontline.
• 22:50
  So while the Ukrainians are attacking them front elite they're also shooting long range missiles to take down the support to sort of isolate the frontline.
• 23:01
  Yes haven't they already basically achieved that Crimea because the whole fleet they'll Russian they don't really boats going to Crimea.
• 23:10
  How is Russia feeding it's what is the supply chain into Crimea.
• 23:15
  So it's going overland it's going via the bridge that Russia built linking you know cut over the coach straight to link Russia with the Crimea peninsula.
• 23:25
  And then it's going because Russia occupation is continuous between the eastern provinces and the South.
• 23:32
  Yes the eastern is Sami and they connect with Crimea and there is also a land route from Russia through southern Ukraine to the front lines.
• 23:40
  And the Ukrainians would need more long range firepower to basically stop an adequate supply of ammunition and the Russians ability to move reserves about.
• 23:49
  So can the Ukrainian Geographical question because I don't know the start of the world can the Ukrainians currently shoot wherever in you can they blow anything up in Ukraine that they want to or can they not do they not have missiles that reach a sorry Crimea.
• 24:01
  Do they know of missiles that reach all the way into Crimea.
• 24:04
  Currently they do some of the most popular weapons are long range missiles that Britain and France are given them.
• 24:10
  But those two countries only have a limited supply of those missiles and they're going to run out at the current usage levels.
• 24:17
  The Ukrainians kind of lose a capability that they have right now which is why Zelensky has been asking the US and the Germans to give long range missiles.
• 24:26
  The German missile system is called Taurus and the Germans have lots of those there's a long range cruise missiles and the Americans have their attack and or attack MS long range missiles and both Biden and German chance for the shots have been very reluctance to give those very potent weapons to Ukraine.
• 24:45
  Sure suppose we said no the other day do you said you said not for the foreseeable right but the problem is you need they need to be able to do it now so that they can get through and create the facts on the ground where Russia only has at the very most Crimea and on that not also.
• 25:06
  It is Western leaders who hope to that kind of scenario that will give the Ukrainians enough that they can break through in the South and separate the two parts of Ukraine that the Russians are already occupying namely Crimea and Donbass and that would more or less push the Russians back to their starting lines at the beginning of the full scale war in February 2022.
• 25:29
  At that point the Western hope was that the Ukrainians would be willing to settle short not having conquer back all of their territory but that the punishment for Russia and the complete lack of any gains for Russia would be such that Ukrainians would be able to consider this an acceptable outcome.
• 25:48
  Unfortunately the front lines have really not moved at all in the whole of this year and it is not a good strategic position for Ukraine to settle with Russia still occupying the South of the country occupying most of Ukraine's coast most of its ports as well as very important lands for Ukrainian agriculture and industry.
• 26:09
  And so the laureate goes on that Russia sits on southern Ukraine the more they can reinforce that position the more minds they can place the more permanent they can make that and then for Ukraine to punch through that becomes harder and harder with every passing day that we're not giving them low-range missiles and jets is that yes is that the Ukrainian case.
• 26:32
  Well so Tyne also gives Putin the opportunity to rebuild his army which has been badly more they lost astonishing numbers of well trained soldiers many of Russia's best units have been more and they are now a reliant on poorly trained conscripts to hold the line.
• 26:51
  And the Ukrainian fear is if there is a lot in the fighting a ceasefire or even a peace deal that proves to be temporary only it would give Russia the chance to rebuild its army and then go again.
• 27:04
  And let's remember that there was a peace deal when the Soviet Union collapsed Ukraine was armed to the teeth with nuclear weapons and handed them over to Russia on the basis of a promise that Russia would respect Ukraine's territorial integrity forever.
• 27:20
  So here we that there was several agreements and treaties and here we get into the fundamental difficulty facing Ukraine in reaching any kind of peace many many people in the West and indeed throughout the world wants Ukrainians negotiate and don't recognize the extent to which Putin has as seriously broken treaties and deals he made and deals that Russia made before him.
• 27:48
  Putin himself personally signed a treaty in the early 2000s that exactly delineated the land border between Russia and Ukraine and he was asked in which is now violated because he's now claiming large suites of Ukraine as Russia regions.
• 28:05
  Yeah, rhetorically he's saying the whole country is a fiction and doesn't exist and was just a mistake that the Soviets made and is legitimately part of Russia.
• 28:12
  Absolutely. So how much is Putin's signature on a treaty worth?
• 28:17
  Right. So the problem now is everyone says well it's going to end up in a settlement so let's just fast forward to the bit where we all get a settlement and get Zelensky and Putin in a row you know Trump this is Trump's idea you know I call them I tell them to settle yeah the problem is no one believes that Putin wouldn't come back for another bite.
• 28:38
  Yeah, so he could if he has the opportunity.
• 28:41
  So I think that the Western leaders have understood this problem because they've spent so long trying to persuade Putin to settle before the big invasion and since and they they realize that he just isn't a trustworthy partner and that he has not given up his long term aim of either controlling or dismantling the Ukrainian state.
• 29:02
  His existence the Russians have never really accepted and so the strategy instead from the West it would be to make Ukraine strong enough to resist any attempt by Russia to repeat this this invasion in other words to reach up some sort of ceasefire and then arm Ukraine so much that Russia would simply be unable to defeat it even in a second attempt.
• 29:26
  And he's another component to that strategy that you have to make Russia hurt so much from this war even more than it has already that it's not worth going back like can you know it's if we know that the end game is a settlement can we just press the fast forward button and get there or do we have to go slogging through the quagmire and the marshlands and the hellish swamps and the bullets and the limbs being blown off to a maximum level.
• 29:55
  Before you can get to act three I mean no one wants to go through that it's you know through through the pain of war and above all Ukrainians and if you spend any time in Ukraine talking to them the people who are most worry who most tired of this and.
• 30:09
  Who wants to best of all what hell high intensity wars are the Ukrainians and and they fight not because they like it but because they see no alternative.
• 30:19
  This is the only way they can see to survive is is to fight now this is what you're describing is really a question that generates massive disagreement.
• 30:29
  Within Europe within the West the Ukrainians and central Eastern European countries as well as North European countries such as the Finns and Norwegians and the Brits.
• 30:39
  I tend to believe that Russia needs to suffer a clear defeat otherwise there will be no end to Russian expansionism they they really need to see that this attempt to wage a war of conquest has led them to a disaster.
• 30:55
  Because otherwise why they may test a NATO country they may well in the future try to take Estonia yeah so that the ultimate fear all the the bigger interest strategic interest that NATO countries saw in Ukraine as well as you know moral sympathy for for what happened to Ukraine is that if Russia were to conquer Ukraine.
• 31:17
  As well as controlling Belarus which has become a kind of de facto rush military district to this point then Russia would have a strategically greatly strengthened position in Eastern Europe and would be in a position to menace NATO NATO members such as the Baltic countries where there are large Russian minorities and the fear is that they would the Putin would try to whip up trouble there too and would try to look for an opportunity to test where the NATO promises of mutual defense are real.
• 31:46
  It may not need to be tanks across the border when you say whip up unrest it may be we need to send in peacekeepers to help the Russian ethnic minorities in these countries to withstand the forces of fascism that are being imposed by the Baltic governments or whatever it might be and it may not be quite clear enough for the U.S. and other NATO powers to go all right this means World War Three then might be like well I mean he has more than 20 years of experience at wage
• 32:16
  in hybrid war using all means of putting pressure on countries from cyber attacks to trying to manipulate elections, financing pro-Russian parties, subversion assassination and outright invasion.
• 32:32
  So that's the argument for trying to make sure that Russia perceives it at itself as having been defeated and it's clear and unequivocal.
• 32:54
  The argument on the other side which is in order to do that we need to give them these fighter jets we need to give them long range missiles is we're hanging on a second we're trying not to if this guy is such a bad guy let's try not to escalate with him let's try to provide him with some kind of off ramp let's try not to turn this into World War Three.
• 33:15
  Do we really want NATO fighter planes whether or not they're operated by proxy like a Ukrainian fighter pilot shooting down Russian targets inside Russia and what if the Ukrainians took those long range missiles and used them not only in Crimea but fired them into Russia itself then you'd have a NATO missile being shot at Russia and we would be the aggressors.
• 33:42
  Yeah that's here is real the Ukrainians have tried to address that by saying that we wouldn't use any Western weapons across the border in Russia we would use only our own homemade Ukrainian weapons when we try to take out Russian airfields in Russia for example.
• 33:56
  And if they betrayed that then we would have all kinds of tools to punish the Ukrainians like not giving them any more weapons yes the west could stop sending that weapon immediately.
• 34:05
  Well that would be the last time the Ukrainians ever got up to you and other weapons if we wanted to and others and so far the Ukrainians have stuck to those agreements so for example those French and British cruise missiles have been used only against Russian targets inside the Ukraine's borders and Ukraine has been using homemade drones for example in its attacks on Moscow or in a Russian air bases.
• 34:24
  Now to the escalation point yes I think there are two big thoughts that have been holding back the U.S. and Germany who are really the two key actors on the western side.
• 34:35
  From supporting Ukraine more decisively and enabling an actual Ukrainian victory the first is the number one priority of the U.S. and of say Germany and France has been avoidable with Russia.
• 34:49
  No one wants a war with Russia because that could very quickly escalate into World War III and a nuclear exchange and however much sympathy people feel for Ukraine and however much of a strategic interest people see in Ukraine not being defeated not falling to put in the west state in Ukraine is not so big that we want to risk World War III.
• 35:10
  So the number one goal is no war with Russia. I think the second powerful thought is that Russia will still be around however this war ends Russia will still be one of the major powers in the world and the West needs to find some way of coexisting with it.
• 35:31
  And the fear is that all out the war would make it almost impossible to really come to terms with Russia's existence.
• 35:41
  The policy makers are looking beyond the war and wondering how they can possibly find a way to a more stable coexistence with Russia and China is very important in this context too.
• 35:53
  There are many policy makers who think that really trying to defeat Russia and inflict punishment on Russia and potentially even bringing about before the Putin regime risks driving Russia ever deeper into China's arms.
• 36:09
  And deepening this Russia, Russia with Chinese access of anti-Western revisionism and the still an idea I mean this is highly disputable whether it's you know as any realistic prospect that's you know by looking for a long run motor says any with Russia we can keep Moscow and Beijing.
• 36:27
  On the question of escalation let's just take the first bit first the not wanting to stumble into World War III is that credible what do we know about the way that Putin responds to provocations.
• 36:42
  In a regime that depends so much on one man and a man whose decision-making has been erratic and unpredictable above all the decision to invade Ukraine in February 2022 being exhibit a it's an extremely difficult and dangerous game to try to read his mind nobody knows ultimately nobody knows when and whether he might go nuclear.
• 37:12
  So you know what Western countries given the limits of their direct stake and interest in Ukraine have tended to be very risk of us especially the French the Germans and the US as well absolutely Biden and his national security council have tended to sink you know we want to stay with it well within a margin of safety so we're not entering the zone where we believe.
• 37:38
  Putin might do something crazy and even crazier even more extreme like use nuclear weapons but there is a fear that if Putin use nuclear weapons in Ukraine against the Ukrainians that the US would somehow have to respond militarily perhaps with probably with conventional military force because you cannot allow nuclear use to happen and just become accepted well that would open the floodgates to you know a very very dangerous.
• 38:06
  It's been assuming that there's some kind of cyber or other sting that the Americans have put on the table and said if you do this then we're going to do that and it will be devastating or financial impediment.
• 38:19
  So maybe we don't know what they would do because a part of an important part of deterrence is also to keep that very right the others to maintain.
• 38:28
  But also I mean it would be catastrophic for him because there goes the Alliance with Beijing China would turn and turn on Putin if Putin used nukes I mean the whole world would unite in the most massive sanctions I mean all of the all of the outlying countries who are currently not engaging in sanctions against Russia would.
• 38:45
  But Russia would genuinely become an economic basket case right I mean it might will be the thing that tips Russia in over into outright ice international isolation which is something that Putin has been able to avoid so far it really has been the way anyway.
• 39:01
  This is an extremely unlikely scenario I mean the you're being diplomatic about talking about the legitimacy of Western countries trepidation when it comes to provoking Putin but I also know that you're a bit skeptical of of our concerns and then feel that maybe in the past Putin has shown that he talks a big game but when you actually push him.
• 39:24
  He doesn't go crazy and that it's a calculus game isn't it what would you what percentage likelihood would you need of world war three to make it worth giving the Ukrainians the jets and the long range missiles that they need to just get the job done right now at least just to get the Russians out of southern Ukraine you know would you tolerate a one half of one percent chance that Russia flips out and treats that as an active aggression.
• 39:54
  Three is three percent is five percent like me of these are the calculations but I get the sense that you think that we're actually being too cautious.
• 40:00
  Well so two thoughts one is that all the actual evidence we have about Putin's behavior are that he tends to test the West's reaction and if he sees strength then he steps back and if he sees weakness then he exploits it.
• 40:17
  And this is something that he has in common with another Russian leader he greatly admires which is Stalin.
• 40:23
  In other words they were both deterrible leaders they have been deterrible leaders and so the many people in the West say if you look at how he's actually behaved so far in the last 20 years weakness is escalatory.
• 40:37
  It isn't a strong reaction against Putin that risks escalation its weakness because it encourages him to go further and the sequence from 2014 to this invasion is prime evidence of exactly that.
• 40:49
  A weak Western reaction that did nothing much about Russia seizing Crimea and Nombass encouraged him to think oh well the West hasn't really done anything much some moderate economic sanctions but maybe I can go further.
• 41:02
  And of course there is a risk of course it's possible that decisive military aid to Ukraine would in fact lead to the escalation that the summer warning about but the the other side argues that the problem is that the constant under reaction by the West has brought about ever more dangerous situations in Europe in involving Russia so that we we are incurring ever higher risks of perhaps accidental escalation into our right war with Russia.
• 41:30
  Right and so at the same time as you have to balance the risk of of escalating with Putin by arming the Ukrainians with more aggressive weapons than the ones that we're getting them now.
• 41:43
  You also have to balance that against the probability that not doing so and thereby allowing the stalemate to continue probably possibly for years and allowing Putin to regroup and.
• 41:57
  And take Ukraine and possibly take Ukraine eventually then what is the percentage likely that that outcome leads to some sort of World War three because then Putin is emboldened and he tries something in a stone the Baltic state or Poland or wherever might be and then we actually do face the real question of is NATO.
• 42:18
  It doesn't exist or doesn't it and not exist are we willing to go willing to declare our value yeah yeah exactly for talent for Estonia or Latvia like will the American people countenance full scale war with Russia in order to defend yeah Latvia yeah and Putin may well think no the West behavior shows that they are not willing to die for telling and that I can get away with this.
• 42:45
  So it may be worth tolerating the small risk now of escalation by giving the Ukrainians everything they need in order to avoid the possibility of further escalation down the track.
• 42:57
  The argument is really you cannot avoid the risk when you're dealing with an aggressive expansionist power that is willing to go to the brink because they think you want there is no risk for strategy here we're in a very very dangerous world.
• 43:09
  We're dealing with an aggressive expansionist power excuse me the United States invaded Iraq in contravention of international law they were the ones who went into Vietnam they were the ones who went into Afghanistan.
• 43:21
  They have insisted on their right to essentially control the Western hemisphere they didn't want mix in Cuba they've meddled in Honduras and Guatemala and Haiti and Nicaragua and Granada.
• 43:37
  Of course Russia thinks that Ukraine which has only been a real country for 30 years is it is part of it and of course Russia is going to care more about it that we will ever care about it and of course they their interests will outlast ours.
• 43:52
  So hypocrite anyone you know it is absolutely fair criticism that the U.S. has fought wars of choice that were not necessary for self defense and that had very poor justifications and rationales.
• 44:09
  The Vietnamese in the Vietnam war has and can be profoundly criticized as a mistake from the beginning and the Iraq war possibly even more so there was no real causes belly in Iraq and the invasion of Iraq arguably did deep damage to the rules based international order that the U.S.
• 44:32
  Professors to be the champion of defending and Putin has exploited that damaged international order and a site of these U.S. actions as precedents however I think people have to recognize that there's something pretty unique in post-war war two times at least about what Russia is doing here this is an old fashioned war of conquest of trying to actually conquer another nation state and make it your territory.
• 45:00
  This is something that we haven't really seen in the world at least since Stalin and Hitler now the U.S. has done this in the past for example when it expanded its territory at the expense of Mexico for example but you have to go back to the 19th century and of course all West European imperial powers are always trying to expand their territory at these others expense but I think in the post-war war two era the whole idea of the the U.N. and the international order since 1945 has been to say we will never
• 45:30
  no longer do wars of conquest we will have a system of sovereign nation states who will accept each other's borders now there may be many still be many reasons to fight civil wars wars of decolonization wars that come about through misperception of your neighbors as aggressive wars to try and support an ally wars with various motivations but a war of conquest like this is is quite a throwback to an early war.
• 46:00
  The Americans were trying to turn Iraq into the 51st state.
• 46:07
  Although I also think it's a bit of what about is and isn't that to talk about Iraq because yeah if I were talking to someone who had been a very pro-era or a near conservative in the George W. Bush administration who is now outraged at the impunity of Russia then maybe there'd be a case to say that's a little bit hypocritical even though the cases are different.
• 46:31
  Yeah you can't say that Russia is breaching international law because you also didn't have you an authorization to go into Iraq so that's not a beer that would be a hypocritical point to make but if I'm talking to a liberal Democrat someone who opposed the Iraq war or I'm talking to someone who lives in central Europe or Eastern Europe or Ukraine and they're telling me with their hair on fire please help us we hate this guy please defend Ukraine Russia is a menace.
• 47:00
  Oh and also by the way we were never fans of the Iraq war in the first place.
• 47:05
  Yeah as many many people in Europe and even in the US were critics of the Iraq invasion now yes there is an element of what about is and to to the argument and of course two wrongs down make a right.
• 47:19
  However the fact is that the US is standing as someone who was able to call out wrongdoing by other states has been really damaged by the Iraq war and by the track record of US foreign policy and this is just a fact if you look at how other parts of the world perceive the US.
• 47:38
  The so called global south which is not it's not one thing so it's a problematic phrase but many many countries from India the South Africa to Brazil roll their eyes when the US and Western countries stand up and say rules based rules based international order.
• 47:52
  Because the track record for Western foreign policy has not been one of consistently defending the principles that we now say Russia is violating.
• 48:01
  But yes so I don't drive tanks across some neighbors border in order to turn their country into a bit of your country and and be listen to the people who are the victims of the actual war and what they want you to do yeah and if the people who are closest to the threat other ones who are asking you for help it's a bit rich for your critics to say that you're the one who's imposing your will are the people what do you make that of the.
• 48:29
  I guess the more pragmatic or realist criticism which I think is gaining currency fast in the west especially in the United States where I hear more isolation and more skepticism about our funding for Ukraine.
• 48:42
  Which basically is a sort of a meashima maybe Jeffrey sacks maybe Russell brand maybe Joe Rogan sort of point of view of like if China you know wanted to put defensive to have a purely defensive pact with Mexico and like want to arm Mexico just say oh no this is just to defend you against the United States the US would have cop that.
• 49:08
  Yeah so the energy is made with the Monroe doctrines the long standing US policy that they don't want other great powers meddling in the western hemisphere that's America's backyard.
• 49:19
  And I guess I should also just add an asterisk to this which is also what did you think was going to happen over the past 30 years when you expanded NATO right up to Russia's border like you know the Soviet Union collapses it's hugely humiliating for Putin and people who.
• 49:34
  Who love the ideals of the Soviet Union or pro Soviet and that instead of just being gracious about saying okay you guys have your sphere will have ours we we got hungry we bloated we were triumphal us and we started saying now you can be a NATO you can be a NATO and maybe you can be a NATO someday and Putin took that as a.
• 49:55
  A black eye and of course he was going to lash out therefore where some what complicit yet I mean that argument fundamentally reverses cause an effect it's not the case that Putin became or Russia became a revisionist power seeking to take back control over Eastern Europe because NATO expanded rather those countries were hammering on NATO's doors saying please take us in because they knew that Russia would try to take back control of the region once it was able to.
• 50:22
  The roots of Russian revisionism really it date back to the fact that in 1991 when the Soviet Union collapsed Russian never made the transition from being an empire to being a nation state and that it that is something that is not the case with the US and I think that's where the analogy with the Monroe doctrine breaks down at least now we're not talking about the 19th century at least now you know the US is desired to hold sway over you know in over the international relations of the Western hemisphere.
• 50:51
  It's not in contradiction with Mexico being a sovereign nation state or Brazil or Argentina perhaps you could say it was in the past perhaps it was in Chile in 1973 you know but it but it is not now whereas Russia the Russian national security elite that's and the secret service elite that came back into power with Putin never accepted the Soviet defeat at the end of the Cold War.
• 51:16
  They accepted the failure of Marxism Leninism and they accepted that capitalism is is really a more potent system for underpinning national power but they never go up the geopolitical ambition to be one of the very biggest powers in the world and in their mind regaining Russia's lost status requires taking back control over what they long called the near abroad the former Soviet space as well as rebuilding the old Soviet sphere of interest deep into Central and Eastern Europe.
• 51:46
  In a way that is incompatible with those countries sovereignty as nation states and that is a profound difference with America's role in in in the Western hemisphere that is a neo imperial project and here you know writers like Mishima are primarily interested in the US they're primarily making arguments aimed at restraining US foreign policy which they think has been to adventureist for example in invading Iraq.
• 52:14
  They show a lack of interest in Russia so their understanding of what drives Russian foreign policy has been widely criticized as superficial and inadequate by people who are more expert about Russia.
• 52:28
  And I mean quite apart from their ineptitude or lack of expertise on Russia thinking even if they were right on Russia they display a complete completely callous disregard for the overt interest of hundreds of millions of people in Central and Eastern Europe.
• 52:46
  Yes so it's a hierarchical view of the world that says there are great powers who are actors who are subjects and then there are smaller countries who are objects and they just have to put up with being under the thumb of the bigger powers and it reminds me of the line in the Thucydides where the the Athenians tell the poor little island of Milos and the strong do as they will and the weak suffer what they must.
• 53:10
  But this is not the world order that's you know we accept any more. I mean it also deprives deprived people in smaller countries of agency which as a member of you know as a citizen of the medium sized countries is offensive it's as if you know Ukrainian like that a friend of mine was look was watching the Chinese coverage of the Ukrainian war the Chinese you know propaganda coverage I suppose and we're saying that the coverage was all about how the Americans had hoodwinked these foolish Ukrainians into
• 53:40
  thinking that was in their interest to be a war with Russia. So this is a proxy war so you basically are raising the humanity of Ukrainians in your patronizing world view where only Americans and Russians are reasonable grown ups and Ukrainians are just following what they have to follow.
• 54:00
  Yeah well they are senior secondary countries and smaller countries are simply not seen as agents in the same sense as great powers in this way of looking at the world and but in the post 1945 world order that that is immoral and also actually not realistic as a description of how the world works because there is no sovereign nation's taking the world that believes yeah we're not really an actor we just have to do what the big boys tell us what to do.
• 54:26
  Also you know Ukraine is a medium sized country with a population around 40 million people it's not it you know some tiny little statelet and as it has shown it is able to you know to find back vigorously well I mean people would say wouldn't have been able to if it wasn't for the massive influx of money and arms from the west so in that respect it's a puppet.
• 54:47
  Yeah well that is true but you know that is also a feature of the world as it works in in actual fact which is that great powers will also a come to the aid of small countries that are being attacked by the great powers and you know any realist who also wants to describe the way the world is must surely recognize that this has always been the catch.
• 55:04
  Should we have pushed back when Putin took Crimea yes I think that 10 years ago or whatever that is the prime piece of evidence for the argument with that a weak response is escalatory.
• 55:15
  So the West really needed to really lay down a marker there what could we have done just given lots of arms to Ukraine to take it back and one thing is military aid which to Ukraine so that Ukraine it so that we'd be able to defend itself against even bigger incursions but the signal that Western economic policies sent was fatal and a massive own goal there were very limited sanctions in 2014 when put into Crimea and very soon on that.
• 55:44
  And very soon afterwards and Germany rewarded Russia with the second Nord Stream gas pipeline which is this big gas pipeline that went from Russia through the Baltic Sea to Germany and the signal that is that someone the Ukrainian blew up.
• 56:01
  Well see so that there is there is no conclusive proof as to who it was some unknown terrorists blew up the pipeline in order to prevent Russia from having a card to play to bribe Germany would so in the autumn of 2022.
• 56:20
  So three of the four Nord Stream pipelines because it's two pluses of two were blown up with charges and placed deep under the sea and investigators and intelligence services in the West believe it was very probably the Ukrainians or some kind of an element within the Ukrainian state.
• 56:42
  But German so Germany had been hungry for Russian gas to give chance of the Merkel whose legacy I must say has not survived this war in my mind and many others because she was so accommodationist and really thought that you could do work you could you could work with Putin and you could someday trust well not some day you could actually trust Putin yeah.
• 57:06
  And so she basically is a group if I'm wrong the avatar of non-response to the Crimean incursion and yeah she I mean she played a very ambiguous role because on the one hand she was the key politician looking nationally in orchestrating European Union economic sanctions against Russia had it not been for her doing that then.
• 57:29
  Then you know the Western response to the seizure of Crimea would have been even weaker but then very quickly she rewarded Russia with Nord Stream 2 when you say rewarded I mean she wouldn't think of it that way she of course she would just say it's a look it's a pragmatic economic deal we don't condone the invasion of Crimea but we got to get out there from somewhere yeah but the signal to Russia is Germany despite what we just did.
• 57:53
  And despite the fact that the Germans are saying publicly what was you know pulling in unacceptable Germany is now willing to double down on its imports of Russian gas making itself even more dependent on our right a Russian gas so and yeah was it feasible would we have been able to get the arms into Ukraine sufficient for the Ukrainians to be able to take back Crimea.
• 58:16
  Taking back when he fought a not anytime soon because you know the Ukrainian military at that time was a shambles and it got in a badly defeated by the covert Russian invasion of Donbass you know really what happened is the Russians created these proxy militias and armed them and financed them and led them.
• 58:36
  And Ukrainian army was strong enough to push them back and then the regular Russian army intervenes and the Ukraine military was defeated in 2014-15 so at that point you know Ukraine was military very weak in subsequent years the west especially the U.S. steadily offered arms and trading at least small arms.
• 59:01
  They didn't send heavy weapons but Obama and then interestingly the Trump administration more so send military aid and help the Ukrainians to develop their military and it turned out to be stronger when the Russians launched their big invasion than anyone had expected and better than.
• 59:18
  Right so the calculus for those who fear that if we did a big final push of long range missiles and fighter jets into Ukraine as a kind of a one time final bet in the hope that they can reclaim southern Ukraine and and end this to the people who think that that is too risky because it might provoke Russia.
• 59:41
  One need only look back at 2014 and go well yeah we also thought that was too risky but the fact that he got away with it meant that he's now come back for more and if he gets away with it now what is the limiting principle for Putin like at what point does he stop if we don't say no because I think there's a misconception in the west especially in America that we've basically been doing everything that we can.
• 1:00:02
  Yeah that we've been giving them everything we can and it's sort of news to me to learn that actually with just been no it's been a bit spending a lot of money but only on little.
• 1:00:13
  No it's a significant amount it's taken a significant amount of arms to enable the Ukrainians to stop Russia from winning but it's been a balancing act the West has certainly not done everything it could have.
• 1:00:25
  Unfortunately for the Ukrainians and for those who want to see them succeed we're now in a completely different place though because when we're now talking about about the risk that the West will withdraw military aid that it won't be able to maintain even the balancing act.
• 1:00:41
  And I want to talk to you about the I know you have to go but stay with me for another bit because I want to talk to you about the nightmare scenario that the United States does the things do turn and whether or not if Trump wins everything changes or even whether or not a Republican Glenn Congress can change everything and whether or not NATO could fracture or Trump could even withdraw the United States from NATO.
• 1:01:05
  Whether that would be in some ways a good thing because maybe the Europeans step up and start defending themselves what the consequences are I'm this will just be for our premium subscribers so if you are a regular listener thank you for listening and thank you markers so you can you can subscribe it on comfortable conversations.
• 1:01:22
  So what happens if the U.S. turns around and goes we've had enough thank you very much when I keep funding this single.
• 1:01:52
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