Speaker 1: Welcome to mid Rats with sal from Commander Salamander an
Speaker 1: Eagle one from Eagle Speak at Seer Shore your home
Speaker 1: for a discussion of national security issues and all things maritime.
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Speaker 1: Won't cost you a penny and we'll be waiting there
Speaker 1: for you at a time of your convenience. And for
Speaker 1: today's show, it's we worked on scheduling this for a
Speaker 1: few weeks, but we'd be hard pressed to have found
Speaker 1: a better time to come on to talk about if
Speaker 1: we're looking for a firm and lasting piece cease fire,
Speaker 1: something involving the Russio Ukrainian conflict that started over three
Speaker 1: years ago this weekend, that's been part of the shop
Speaker 1: top shelf of the news. Is everybody after that meeting
Speaker 1: in the Oval Office at the end of last week,
Speaker 1: what are we looking at going forward? Can we find
Speaker 1: a way to get the parties to the peace table?
Speaker 1: What would that piece look like? Who will be involved
Speaker 1: in it? Or is the slog just going to continue
Speaker 1: going on? And the best way to get that piece?
Speaker 1: Is it the West? Is it bilateral? Is it something different?
Speaker 1: And how do you have that piece ongoing? And is
Speaker 1: that ultimate solution where it is with most nations internally
Speaker 1: to Ukraine. And we're going to pick up that topic
Speaker 1: with a great reference point with our guest today. It's
Speaker 1: her most recent article is titled Ukraine must guarantee its
Speaker 1: own security and coming back to mid Rats is going
Speaker 1: to be Emma Ashford, Emma, welcome back to.
Speaker 2: Mid Rats' so much for having me.
Speaker 1: It's great to have you on board. I forgot to
Speaker 1: mention that can congratulations later on this year. You also
Speaker 1: have a book that's going to be coming out first
Speaker 1: amongst equal US Foreign policy for a multi polar world.
Speaker 1: Hopefully events won't catch up with you too much. But
Speaker 1: I mean your article and we'll put a link to
Speaker 1: it in the show page. It came out on the
Speaker 1: eighteenth of February. But I think what's really nice about it,
Speaker 1: and I know it makes you happy, is, in spite
Speaker 1: of everything that's gone on in the last forty eight
Speaker 1: hours at the Paul Mill level involving the Ukraine conflict,
Speaker 1: a lot of the issues and the points and options
Speaker 1: that you bring up in your article, they still are
Speaker 1: applicable now is today you wrote them, and I would
Speaker 1: be remissed to our guest and everybody else if I
Speaker 1: didn't ask you. Here we are on late Sunday afternoon,
Speaker 1: forty eight hours after that Zelenski dvance and President Trump
Speaker 1: meaning the Oval Office all the back and forth that
Speaker 1: we've seen in the late breaking news. How do things
Speaker 1: look from your perch?
Speaker 2: Yeah, so, I mean it has been another just really exciting,
Speaker 2: unexpected in the Ukraine crisis. I appreciate what you're saying
Speaker 2: about the article that it still holds true. The thing
Speaker 2: is that doesn't actually make me happy, because, to be honest,
Speaker 2: I've written similar things going almost all the way back
Speaker 2: to the start of the war, and other folks have too.
Speaker 3: You know.
Speaker 2: I wrote an article last year for the Stimson Center
Speaker 2: of the think tank where I work challenging sort of
Speaker 2: some of the big assumptions or talking points about the
Speaker 2: war in Ukraine that still applies too. I think we
Speaker 2: are still in a place in this war where we
Speaker 2: are having many of the same arguments we've been having
Speaker 2: at least back to February twenty twenty two, and sometimes
Speaker 2: even further, things like security guarantees for Ukraine, things like
Speaker 2: NATO membership, things like US spending in Ukraine and where
Speaker 2: it actually goes and whether it's worth it. And you know,
Speaker 2: so we are still having these debates and they're really
Speaker 2: not new. What's new is the context in which we're
Speaker 2: having them. I think That's where the last forty eight
Speaker 2: hours becomes really interesting.
Speaker 4: Right.
Speaker 2: So I'm sure everybody has by now seen that clip
Speaker 2: of Zolensky Trump Vance in the Oval office. Violensky came over.
Speaker 2: He was meant to be signing these minerals deal that
Speaker 2: the Trump administration that hammered out. We can talk a
Speaker 2: little more about that deal if you want. It's really
Speaker 2: was kind of a nothing burger. So the fact that
Speaker 2: didn't get signed is not all that important. But we
Speaker 2: ended up in this spat right where Zolensky very much
Speaker 2: kind of stood his ground and argued back with Trump,
Speaker 2: with Vance, with others in the room in a way
Speaker 2: that foreign leaders I think have learned over time it's
Speaker 2: not particularly wise to do with Donald Trump, and ends
Speaker 2: up getting in this big argument with the Vice president
Speaker 2: and after that meeting ends up leaving before the follow
Speaker 2: up press conference before signing it. It was it was
Speaker 2: a huge spat and Zelensky then went off to London.
Speaker 2: I believe he had tea with the King today. But
Speaker 2: also you know, the British government's been hosting an emergency
Speaker 2: summit of European leaders, trying to get them together to
Speaker 2: talk about how they can do this potentially without the US,
Speaker 2: but I think you know, again, I'll make sort of
Speaker 2: a point. I'm sure we're going to pull on more later,
Speaker 2: which is I think it's really notable that what came
Speaker 2: out of that, you know, Vice President sorry, Prime Minister
Speaker 2: Kiir Starmer said basically that Ukraine kind of needs to
Speaker 2: get on board with peace. We need to figure out
Speaker 2: the details, but you know, we've got to work with
Speaker 2: the Americans on this. I'm not sure that was necessarily
Speaker 2: for the Ukrainians. We're hoping that this would come down. So,
Speaker 2: as I say, very busy weekend, happy to talk about
Speaker 2: whatever from that sort of giant pool of things you're
Speaker 2: interested in.
Speaker 5: Well, one of the I guess I would like to
Speaker 5: start at the very back end of this thing. When
Speaker 5: Ukraine became independent and had nuclear stockpile, we signed an
Speaker 5: agreement with the Russians and the Ukrainians, the Budapest Memorandum.
Speaker 5: Could you kind of talk about what happened to that
Speaker 5: and is that one of the reasons the Ukrainians tend
Speaker 5: to feel entitled to some kind of secure I mean,
Speaker 5: it was a security promise more than a security guarantee,
Speaker 5: but talk about what the effect of that agreement. As
Speaker 5: on the Ukrainians, Yeah.
Speaker 2: I mean so much of this, so much of the
Speaker 2: issues surrounding this war, the war in Georgia in two
Speaker 2: thousand and eight, the issues of NATO expansion and Russia's
Speaker 2: unhappiness about that. This all goes back to the immediate
Speaker 2: aftermath of the Soviet collapse. And in the case of Ukraine,
Speaker 2: Ukraine was not a member of the Warsaw Pact. It
Speaker 2: was an actual integral part of the Soviet Union, and
Speaker 2: it fell into this very unique, strange category along with
Speaker 2: Kazakhstan and a few others where it was not Russia,
Speaker 2: but nonetheless it had nuclear weapons. They were still under
Speaker 2: the control of the Soviets in Moscow. The Ukrainians couldn't
Speaker 2: have used them. But this is actually one of these
Speaker 2: successes of early US diplomacy in the post Cold War period,
Speaker 2: is negotiating with these countries to remove these weapons, send
Speaker 2: them back to Russia proper, and so we don't have
Speaker 2: like three or four more nuclear states on the world stage.
Speaker 2: The document signed in the case of Ukraine is this
Speaker 2: Budapest Memorandum, and in it the countries that signed, including
Speaker 2: the US and including Russia, promised that they will assure
Speaker 2: Ukraine's future security, and there's been some back and forth
Speaker 2: about what this actually meant. There's nothing concrete written in
Speaker 2: the document. It's notable that in Ukrainian the word for
Speaker 2: a shurer and guarantee are very similar, they might even
Speaker 2: be the same, So there's some jubaiety here. But if
Speaker 2: you listen to the diplomats who actually negotiated this thing talking,
Speaker 2: they will tell you there was no guarantee to provide
Speaker 2: truth in case of an invasion of Ukraine in the future.
Speaker 2: So that is kind of the background here, and you
Speaker 2: can see why today the Ukrainians are very wary of
Speaker 2: anything called the guarantee that doesn't actually include a concrete,
Speaker 2: explicit guarantee, because they have this in the back of
Speaker 2: their minds.
Speaker 1: And I think that's and I'm glad that I actually
Speaker 1: had on my list of things that I wanted to
Speaker 1: ask for you to comment a bit about the nineteen
Speaker 1: ninety four Budapest Miner Memorandum, because it's there are a
Speaker 1: lot of people here, you know, we're in the fourth
Speaker 1: year of the war, who still aren't familiar with it.
Speaker 1: And I think you hit the high points perfectly because
Speaker 1: a lot of the same people that are in high
Speaker 1: warrible about how they want to commit people to do things,
Speaker 1: are the same people who are constantly hitting on this,
Speaker 1: you know, rules based international order, okay, nineteen ninety four
Speaker 1: of the Budapest Miner Memorandum. Twenty years later Russia in essence,
Speaker 1: I think if they called the world bluff and stepped
Speaker 1: right in there. So when we're looking at if you
Speaker 1: want to be you want to be charitable for what
Speaker 1: happened at the end of the week in the Oval Office,
Speaker 1: you can understand, especially from the Ukrainian point of view,
Speaker 1: and if you go back with their history, don't have
Speaker 1: to go too, but I'd just go back to the
Speaker 1: battles and the wars from nineteen seventeen on up through
Speaker 1: the nineteen nineteen early nineteen twenties in Ukraine that there
Speaker 1: is a long and deep history of them signing agreements
Speaker 1: and in not going anywhere, and the meeting they had
Speaker 1: in Europe with a lot of those same players. There's
Speaker 1: a lot of talk, so to speak. So when you
Speaker 1: look at the environment of trying to get people to
Speaker 1: the table, I'm not sure the same worldview, the same procedures,
Speaker 1: and the same players that we're working in the nineteen
Speaker 1: nineties from Ukraine through the Balkans, are really going to
Speaker 1: pave a smooth pass for anybody who wants to have
Speaker 1: a serious conversation at a table to try to stop
Speaker 1: this war.
Speaker 2: Well, I think the interesting things here is from the
Speaker 2: point of view of folks in Eastern Europe, not just Ukraine,
Speaker 2: but you know, the Poles, the Baltic States, et cetera.
Speaker 2: Their reason for wanting to join NATO in the in
Speaker 2: the nineties and the Twosans was exactly this history. It
Speaker 2: was the fact that Russia, Germany, et cetera had rampaged
Speaker 2: across their territory, you know, killing for centuries, and they
Speaker 2: were trying to find a way out of that by
Speaker 2: finding a guarrant tor and a number of those states
Speaker 2: made it into NATO. They're inside that Article five guarantee.
Speaker 2: Now the Ukrainians have remained outside it. And that's I mean,
Speaker 2: in large part geographic right, they are on the edge
Speaker 2: right between you know, Eastern Europe and Russia. And so
Speaker 2: they never made it inside that umbrella. There are plenty
Speaker 2: of reasons why US policymakers didn't want them to. But
Speaker 2: even as the West is talking about liberal values and
Speaker 2: standing up for democracy and all of these things. It
Speaker 2: really is very much a real politique calculation for the
Speaker 2: Eastern European.
Speaker 5: Yeah, it's been among other things that are going. I mean,
Speaker 5: Europe on one hand says where we stand Ukraine sort of,
Speaker 5: but we're going to continue to business with the Russia
Speaker 5: because we've we've bet are a lot of our energy policy.
Speaker 5: I'm getting stuff from the Russians. You know, how do
Speaker 5: they as I see now that the Brits are threatening
Speaker 5: to send six aircraft of unknown type maybe helicopters to
Speaker 5: help Ukraine, how are they justify I mean the Germans,
Speaker 5: how do they justify taking any kind of stance here?
Speaker 5: They're going to be playing both ends against the metal.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I think this is particularly true of the Germans.
Speaker 2: I am somewhat less critical of the Brits, who have
Speaker 2: a fair amount considering their budgetary issues, the French a
Speaker 2: little more. The Germans have been particularly bad, but they
Speaker 2: have always been bad about stepping up on defense, particularly
Speaker 2: when it comes with any implications for their federal budget
Speaker 2: and for you know, having to take on state debt.
Speaker 2: So you know, what we've seen over the last three
Speaker 2: years in Europe is European states very much committing to
Speaker 2: standing up support Ukraine, bolstering their own defenses. You might
Speaker 2: even remember in Germany there's this whole thing about the
Speaker 2: Zeit and vendor right, the changing of the times, we're
Speaker 2: going to start looking at the world differently. This was
Speaker 2: a speech that the Chancellor gave just after the invasion,
Speaker 2: and then a lot of that spending didn't materialize, and
Speaker 2: that's actually quite common across Europe. So you know, we've
Speaker 2: got these very strong pledges of assistance that have been
Speaker 2: met with, you know, some assistance, and Europeans have stepped
Speaker 2: up a little more as the US has become you know,
Speaker 2: less likely to do so, but they're nowhere near ready
Speaker 2: to stand on their own feet. And what we have
Speaker 2: is pretty much three years of squandered time that they
Speaker 2: could have been building armament's capacity, and that's simply not
Speaker 2: been doing it.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I think that, you know, here we are in
Speaker 1: twenty twenty five, and there's a great graph that I
Speaker 1: wrote about a few weeks ago. It's has the percentage
Speaker 1: GDP spent on defense per nation. But you know the
Speaker 1: reply you get from a lot of people, well, it's
Speaker 1: not how much you spent is what you spend it on.
Speaker 1: So the vertical axis is the percent of that defense
Speaker 1: budget that's spent on weapons and material. So you know,
Speaker 1: if you have a military that's basically a social welfare
Speaker 1: program and you're not buying any weapons, you know you
Speaker 1: don't get the credit. And the bottom left hand corner,
Speaker 1: you've got Canada, you've got Belgium, you've got Slovenia. A
Speaker 1: lot of nations had made progress to try to push
Speaker 1: above two percent, and you know, there's nothing like reality.
Speaker 1: Wake people up. In Poland, Poland has really taking a
Speaker 1: leadership position here and seeing the environment along with the
Speaker 1: Baltics and stepping forward. It's I think they're north of
Speaker 1: three and a half percent. They're going to push to
Speaker 1: four percent or more. And there's a real interesting comment
Speaker 1: when we look at Europeans, as many of us for
Speaker 1: two decades have been asking them to take a firmer
Speaker 1: role in the security on their continent. Polish Prime Minister
Speaker 1: Donald Tusk had a neat phrase that he did on
Speaker 1: the tarmac. Quote, five hundred million of Europeans are asking
Speaker 1: three hundred million Americans to defend them against one hundred
Speaker 1: and forty million Russians. The Europe today lacked the belief
Speaker 1: that we truly are a global force. So it's not
Speaker 1: just individually, it's Europe itself and Poland stepped forward in
Speaker 1: a leadership position, but besides some smaller nations. When he
Speaker 1: looks behind him, who has his back? France and Germany
Speaker 1: and even the UK in many ways, the sense of
Speaker 1: urgency just isn't there. So Bz to the Poles, but
Speaker 1: the rest of continental NATO, it's a lot of their
Speaker 1: statements have been a little hollow recently.
Speaker 2: I don't want to say track us too much into
Speaker 2: the NATO debate. I think is also worth noting here
Speaker 2: right that Europe does a series of collective action problems.
Speaker 2: We talk about Europe as if it is thing, and
Speaker 2: it is not right. It is a collection of smaller nations,
Speaker 2: some of the many of them jammed together into the
Speaker 2: European Union, and the problem with that approach is they
Speaker 2: share divergent threat perspectives. Right, One of the lowest spenders
Speaker 2: in the Alliance, aside from Canada, which you noted, is Spain. Right,
Speaker 2: And if you're sitting in Madrid, this situation looks very
Speaker 2: different than if you're sitting in Warsaw and so you know,
Speaker 2: the divergent threat perceptions don't help. The lack of a
Speaker 2: common institutional structure doesn't help. You have the US as
Speaker 2: partly guilty here. We've spent years insisting that all defense
Speaker 2: stuff has to be done through NATO rather than the
Speaker 2: European Union. That only changed in the last sort of
Speaker 2: maybe one two administration, and so they don't have clay
Speaker 2: institutional structures for doing it too. And so I fully
Speaker 2: upset and acknowledge that it is difficult for European states
Speaker 2: to step up on defense. It is easy for countries
Speaker 2: like Germany to just pass the bot back to the
Speaker 2: United States or even to other European states. The problem is,
Speaker 2: you know, it's kind of a chicken and egg problem, right.
Speaker 2: If they can't solve this problem, then the US can't leave,
Speaker 2: can't pull back, can't shift the burden. But at the
Speaker 2: same time, what will actually take to make them do that?
Speaker 2: Maybe it's the US leaving, And so I think that's
Speaker 2: one of the active debates in trying to understand how
Speaker 2: to make Europe step up more. And then Ukraine, of course,
Speaker 2: is another complication because I think I would probably be
Speaker 2: remiss if I didn't point out that there are trade offs,
Speaker 2: right for some of these NATO states, particularly ones like Poland,
Speaker 2: Arm yourselves or armed Ukraine. That's a tough.
Speaker 5: Choice, yeah, those of us who had to deal with
Speaker 5: NATO forces and the various caveats that their countries place
Speaker 5: on their participation in events. I'm amused today or that
Speaker 5: there is a talk about some kind of European armed
Speaker 5: force that would be jointly run by all these countries.
Speaker 5: I mean, you know, the largest militaries and in Europe,
Speaker 5: I guess France and Spain and Italy. I mean, I
Speaker 5: think Italy's got the biggest staring forces in the area.
Speaker 5: You know, they don't seem to be designed to really
Speaker 5: confront the Russians in any stage. They do participate in
Speaker 5: various NATO activities, but not necessarily at the level we want.
Speaker 5: So I was struck by one of those phrases in
Speaker 5: your piece called bluff and prey. Talk a little bit
Speaker 5: about bluff and pray.
Speaker 1: Well.
Speaker 2: I cannot claim credit for this. This was actually come
Speaker 2: up by the folks who wrote a report at the
Speaker 2: German Claudia Mayor, who's an analyst at the big German
Speaker 2: Foreign policy think type SWP. Please don't make me say
Speaker 2: it in German, I cannot pronounce it. But she suggested
Speaker 2: this bluff and Prey, basically saying, look, if you want
Speaker 2: a European security force to guarantee peace in Ukraine, and
Speaker 2: again to be very clear here, we're not talking about peacekeeping,
Speaker 2: We're talking about detendance against Russia in the future, right,
Speaker 2: so it's preventing a future war. And she basically says, look,
Speaker 2: there's a couple of options, right. You can either bring
Speaker 2: them into NATO, rely on Article five's to terran abilities,
Speaker 2: and then you probably don't need as many troops on
Speaker 2: the ground because the Russians will believe the US will
Speaker 2: come in swinging if they as they attack. You can
Speaker 2: if that's not an option, she says, you can send
Speaker 2: an adequately resourced force to do this. And I think
Speaker 2: her estimate was about two hundred thousand, but I've seen
Speaker 2: estimates all the way up to half a million European
Speaker 2: troops and all the enablers that they need to actually
Speaker 2: get there, which they don't have all of necessarily, But
Speaker 2: that's another option for deterrants. And then the third option,
Speaker 2: which is the one she calls bluff and prey is
Speaker 2: the one where the Europeans send forty thousand troops. That
Speaker 2: is doable given their current military staffing, given the resources
Speaker 2: they have at hand. It'll be tough, but it's doable.
Speaker 2: But then they're basically bluffing, and they're saying they're hoping
Speaker 2: that Russia doesn't test that bluff because if Russia does,
Speaker 2: then what is actually behind those forty thousand troops to
Speaker 2: flow into theater. You know, if this is just a
Speaker 2: trip wire force and it gets wipes out by the Russians,
Speaker 2: the Europeans don't actually have the forces to backstop fighting
Speaker 2: the war that that would cause. So that I think
Speaker 2: is why she she went with this very evocative phrase
Speaker 2: because it's not a realistic approach. It's just an approach
Speaker 2: to hoping that the problem doesn't occur.
Speaker 1: The I'm flipping ahead a bit because you mentioned something
Speaker 1: trigger later on in the in the article is you
Speaker 1: have the theory, you have things that are signed, but
Speaker 1: you know, wars have their own own logic. And you
Speaker 1: make a good point about even if there was an
Speaker 1: all European mission to eastern Ukraine and let's use the
Speaker 1: usual suspects, the UK's got boots on the ground. Maybe
Speaker 1: maybe the French are there, Uh, maybe the Italians are
Speaker 1: are are thrown in a couple of troops that have
Speaker 1: the real fancy feathers that come off the top of
Speaker 1: their hat, you know they're there. They're on a trip tripwire.
Speaker 4: And.
Speaker 1: Stuff happened, and conflict breaks out, and little quote that
Speaker 1: you had here under the foreign Entanglements section quote. What's more,
Speaker 1: in all, European mission in Ukraine would still rise raise
Speaker 1: the risk that the United States would be pulled in
Speaker 1: to a future war in Ukraine. This is particularly true
Speaker 1: in the case of a small European deterrent force that
Speaker 1: doesn't have sufficient reserves to call on in a crisis.
Speaker 1: That was just you're referring to. Even if US policymakers
Speaker 1: were clear upfront that NATO's Article five would not apply
Speaker 1: to the deployed European troops, the pressure to respond in
Speaker 1: the event of a Russian attack would be overwhelming, potentially
Speaker 1: pulling the United States into war. End of quote. That spotlo.
Speaker 1: We can all see the news reports and the questions,
Speaker 1: and in many ways such a force would be and
Speaker 1: I'm going to be a little snarky here, but it
Speaker 1: privatizes European virtue signaling about their desires for peace, but
Speaker 1: americanized as risk because Article five or not, it will
Speaker 1: create it own logic. And what everybody's trying to avoid
Speaker 1: is you've got full scale warfare on the European continent
Speaker 1: again with Americans.
Speaker 2: And I'll be honest, you know, I don't know which
Speaker 2: way this would go. I think if you had asked
Speaker 2: me this question, you know, five ten years ago, I
Speaker 2: would have said absolutely, this would pull the US in.
Speaker 2: Now I think there's some chance, depending on the administration
Speaker 2: that was in office, that instead it would just collapse nate.
Speaker 2: But neither of those is a good outcome for the US.
Speaker 2: One one is far worse. But neither of those is
Speaker 2: a great outcome for the US. And it's certainly not
Speaker 2: a good outcome for these European countries. And I think
Speaker 2: it's again it's very notable that we are conflating I
Speaker 2: think the notion of keeping the peace right, so something
Speaker 2: like a UN peacekeeping mission or OSSEE monitoring that's you know,
Speaker 2: focused on some kind of demilitarized zone, on keeping weapons
Speaker 2: in their appropriate places. We're kind of conflating that with
Speaker 2: we're going to send Europeans to defend Ukraine in the future.
Speaker 2: And I think, you know, in addition to that, the
Speaker 2: other thing that's really worth pointing out here is this
Speaker 2: is offering something that has not been offered to Ukraine previously.
Speaker 2: This is something that was not offered to Ukraine prior
Speaker 2: to the war. This is something that was not offered
Speaker 2: to Ukraine during the war, the idea that foreign forces
Speaker 2: would go and fight. And you know, from my point
Speaker 2: of view, maybe I'm just cynical, but if I feel
Speaker 2: like I'm sitting in the Kremlin and I'm looking at
Speaker 2: this and I'm saying, well, you know, the UK and France,
Speaker 2: they weren't willing to send troops to die for Ukraine
Speaker 2: during a war. They're gonna flinch and they're not actually
Speaker 2: going to fight when it comes to it, It's probably
Speaker 2: fine to me. It increases the risks of this kind
Speaker 2: of deterrence failure.
Speaker 5: Well, I think earlier in that same section you point
Speaker 5: out and I think you've just commented on a little
Speaker 5: bit earlier. Is it you know, these European forces talk big,
Speaker 5: but they can't do anything without us support. I mean
Speaker 5: that we have created this thing for command control, are refueling, intelligence, surveillance, reconnaissance,
Speaker 5: all kinds of good stuff that's useful in war fighting
Speaker 5: or even peace monitoring that our European allies haven't developed
Speaker 5: for themselves, or if they have developed it, it's not
Speaker 5: quite the same level as the US.
Speaker 2: So the US policy for a very long time has
Speaker 2: been basically to prevent European states from actually building their
Speaker 2: own independent military capabilities. This vaties by administration. It was
Speaker 2: much stronger in the early Cold War, the idea that
Speaker 2: the Europeans should step up, and then it sort of
Speaker 2: trails away after the Cold War to almost nothing until
Speaker 2: about twenty eleven or so when the Obama administration really
Speaker 2: broached it again. But if you go into the nighties
Speaker 2: and you look at speeches from you know, folks in
Speaker 2: the Clinton administration, Madeline Albright had one infamous speech to
Speaker 2: where she talked about the three d's, and one of
Speaker 2: those ds was we need to avoid duple, by which
Speaker 2: she meant European states should not build the infrastructure that
Speaker 2: they would need to actually fight in a contingency on
Speaker 2: their own, because this might weaken NAIL. And that was
Speaker 2: the you know that this might weaken the US role
Speaker 2: and the continent. So this was actually again part of
Speaker 2: the strategy until as little as ten years ago. But
Speaker 2: the problem is you say that means that the capabilities
Speaker 2: to deploy at scale and then manage that deployment. The
Speaker 2: European states have some of them, They definitely don't have
Speaker 2: all of them. And I think that you know, you
Speaker 2: mentioned a couple you mentioned ISR being one of them.
Speaker 2: I think that's very likely they would need US support
Speaker 2: on that. But also logistics, the Europeans really don't have
Speaker 2: the capability to deploy forces and keep them supplied the
Speaker 2: way that they would need to for some kind of
Speaker 2: long term deployment like this that would ploy acquire US capabilities.
Speaker 2: So again we're talking you know, maybe there's no US
Speaker 2: troops on the ground, but I think what what Europeans
Speaker 2: are still asking for or insofar as I read all
Speaker 2: the comments today and this weekend, they're still asking for
Speaker 2: the US to not just come to their aid if
Speaker 2: something goes wrong, but also to provide these kind of
Speaker 2: ancillary or enabling capabilities that are kind of on the
Speaker 2: edge of whether the US is actually involved or not.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it gives me flashbacks to one of the things
Speaker 1: that I saw in Syncom in the Summer of seven
Speaker 1: that I bring up on a regular basis because I
Speaker 1: think it encapsulates a lot of the challenges we have
Speaker 1: with our European allies. Is there's a thing in Afghanistan
Speaker 1: and called the Aviation Bridging Force that was simply cargo
Speaker 1: helicopters in essence, just being able to move stuff around
Speaker 1: and on the cjsore. The Europeans ponied up for it,
Speaker 1: but when push came to shove, they just couldn't do it.
Speaker 1: They could could, they couldn't make the logistics happen. So
Speaker 1: I think it was a combination of marines and army
Speaker 1: got together US and fixed it. And there's these assumptions
Speaker 1: that they have and their planning assumptions that those US
Speaker 1: enablers that you outlined are always going to be there.
Speaker 1: And you also brought up in your article something else
Speaker 1: that is familiar for those that are familiar with how
Speaker 1: NATO has the Our European NATO allies have these familiar habits,
Speaker 1: and I keep wanting to dismiss it, Emma, this call
Speaker 1: for bringing Ukraine into NATO, because it just doesn't survive
Speaker 1: serious follow on questions of serious people but here we
Speaker 1: have again today and an interview President Zelenski said that
Speaker 1: you know, you know, I'm willing to resign if that
Speaker 1: will get you know, NATO membership for Ukraine. So he
Speaker 1: and others keep bringing this up, and you mentioned I
Speaker 1: want to do another little quote from your article here. Quote.
Speaker 1: Kiev itself has long been insistent that the only way
Speaker 1: to resolve this concern is to provide Ukraine with NATO
Speaker 1: membership as part of an eventual peace deal. This is
Speaker 1: ideal from Kiev's point of view because it offloads the
Speaker 1: problem of preventing a future war to the United States.
Speaker 1: It would also be beneficial for European states. Cost effective
Speaker 1: is one EU leader recently put it, as it would
Speaker 1: rely less on spending arms or military deployments and more
Speaker 1: on the paper guarantee provided by NATO's Article five end quote.
Speaker 1: As an American, I read that as we're going to
Speaker 1: have another NATO nation, this time a front load nation,
Speaker 1: and we're ignoring whether Russia would ever accree to something
Speaker 1: like this, which I don't know a serious person that
Speaker 1: really can make that argument successfully today. But with that again,
Speaker 1: we have another dependent nation, this one who is one
Speaker 1: of the poorest in Europe even before the Wars, was
Speaker 1: one of the most corrupt nations, if not the most
Speaker 1: corrupt nation in Europe, so that civil society would still
Speaker 1: need to be rebuilt that would again rely on NATO
Speaker 1: read US deterrence to keep them safe. You're closer to
Speaker 1: these people in DC, the serious people, the people we
Speaker 1: respect that still bring up membership is an option. I
Speaker 1: can't understand it. Can you explain their position from somebody
Speaker 1: that has I know it's with them on a regular basis.
Speaker 2: Because I'm lost, I tend to fall back on theory,
Speaker 2: because you know, people are people are people everywhere, right,
Speaker 2: And I think one of the easier ways to actually
Speaker 2: explain this is socialization. You know, D see foreign policy
Speaker 2: folks spend a lot of time talking to their European counterparts.
Speaker 2: They go and work for NATO for a few years,
Speaker 2: they interface with them in jobs at the Pentagon, and
Speaker 2: when you get to know people, it becomes very hard
Speaker 2: to think purely in terms of national interest, and European
Speaker 2: states have a real incentive to talk about our common
Speaker 2: interests are common defense, implying that there is no divergence
Speaker 2: in interests between the US and its allies. And I mean, look,
Speaker 2: this is something that we've seen kind of over and
Speaker 2: over in this in this conflict. We saw Violensky do
Speaker 2: it again on Friday in the Oval Office, you know, saying,
Speaker 2: you know, if Ukraine falls, the US will be next.
Speaker 2: You know, your security depends on our security, and you
Speaker 2: know you can I think saell a very weak version
Speaker 2: of that argument that it would not necessarily be good
Speaker 2: for US security in general if Ukraine were to be
Speaker 2: conquered by Russia. Right. I think that's a reasonable argument,
Speaker 2: But the idea that Ukrainian security is you know, an
Speaker 2: absolutely essential thing for the US, I can't sell that right,
Speaker 2: That to me doesn't make any sense. And so I
Speaker 2: just think socialization. Hearing these points repeated again and again,
Speaker 2: I think goes at least some way to explaining why
Speaker 2: folks are so bought in on NATO in terms of
Speaker 2: the you know, Ukraine in NATO part of the debate.
Speaker 2: I agree with you. I mean, my brain says that
Speaker 2: this is off the table, and it's been off the
Speaker 2: table for you know, a decade or more, and yet
Speaker 2: people in Washington talk about it a lot, and I
Speaker 2: think it's a fundamental you know, either misunderstanding or purposeful
Speaker 2: obslustication of the fact that you know, NATO as it
Speaker 2: currently stands is almost entirely dependent on US and military
Speaker 2: four and NATO expansion in the post Cold War period
Speaker 2: has been in some ways almost a Ponzi scheme. Right,
Speaker 2: we admit new members, we don't necessarily have the troops
Speaker 2: on the ground to adequately defend those countries. What we're
Speaker 2: relying on is that the US thinks Article five is
Speaker 2: so important that it will come in swinging with lots
Speaker 2: of troops if something were to happen in one of
Speaker 2: those states. And to be frank the you know, the
Speaker 2: debate over Ukraine and NATO. The White House has always
Speaker 2: had an effective veto on this, because if the US
Speaker 2: isn't willing to go and defend Ukraine, then it's not
Speaker 2: going to happen. But it's very notable. I think as
Speaker 2: well that other states in Europe have kind of resisted
Speaker 2: this behind the scenes, particularly the Germans, because I think
Speaker 2: there's a real acknowledgment that, you know, if you start
Speaker 2: to extend the security guarantees so far out they become questionable,
Speaker 2: then maybe the whole enterprise gets called into question, and
Speaker 2: so I mean again, I do think the politics suggests
Speaker 2: that NATO is just not on the table for Ukraine
Speaker 2: at this point, and that's why they're pushing for compatible guarantee.
Speaker 2: But yeah, it is a debate that just won't die.
Speaker 5: Yeah, I'm still laughing at sal saying that Ukraine was
Speaker 5: one of the most corrupt countries in Europe, because that's
Speaker 5: setting a very low bar. I just cut myself off. Sorry,
Speaker 5: my fingers reset. Let's talk a little bit about what
Speaker 5: we look forward to. In the title of your thing
Speaker 5: is Ukraine must guarantee its own security. Let's talk about
Speaker 5: how we do that. How will we turn Ukraine into
Speaker 5: a hedgehog, a ceasefire and total rearming. What are you envision?
Speaker 2: Yeah, so, I mean, look, I think the article that
Speaker 2: I referenced earlier, where it talked about, you know, three
Speaker 2: ways to guarantee Ukraine's security, every single one of those
Speaker 2: ways relied on external actors, and to me that that
Speaker 2: isn't credible. I actually continue to think, and I know
Speaker 2: other people have said this too, that the closest parallel
Speaker 2: to what Ukraine has been going through for the last
Speaker 2: three years really is the Winter War, in which the
Speaker 2: Soviet Union in nineteen thirty nine, I believe, attacked Finland
Speaker 2: and again very similar to the Ukraine case, right, they
Speaker 2: made these massive demands about giving up on various kinds
Speaker 2: of Finnish sovereignty. The Finnish government said absolutely not, and
Speaker 2: the Soviets invaded. They fought an insurgency for a couple
Speaker 2: of years, very successfully, and then this sort of rolls
Speaker 2: into World War Two. But at the end of the day,
Speaker 2: the upshot was the Finns. After the war, the Soviets
Speaker 2: were like, I don't really think we want to keep
Speaker 2: doing this. That was pretty brutal, and they managed to
Speaker 2: actually negotiate a form of neutrality in which the Finns
Speaker 2: basically were armed to the teeth. Their entire population was
Speaker 2: ready to fight if it came to it, and you know,
Speaker 2: that was enough to, along with some of these foreign
Speaker 2: policy concessions, to deter the Soviets from coming back in.
Speaker 2: So it wasn't NATO that provided a guarantee. No other
Speaker 2: country in Europe provided guarantees. I think it's notable in
Speaker 2: that case, when the Finns asked for help, nobody in
Speaker 2: Europe sent helped because they were also busy arming themselves
Speaker 2: in the run up to the Second World War. And
Speaker 2: so for me, that's a really interesting and good model
Speaker 2: for the Ukraine case, because what we've seen in the
Speaker 2: last three years is that Ukraine can defend itself. Yeah,
Speaker 2: they're not, you know, completely destroying the Russian forces. They're
Speaker 2: not about to drive all the way to Moscow and
Speaker 2: topple put In reclaimed some of their territory they lost
Speaker 2: in the initial stages of this. They're holding the Russians
Speaker 2: even now to a very slow advance, and you know,
Speaker 2: they've built their own defense industrial capabilities pretty well. And
Speaker 2: to me, that says that Ukraine itself would be built
Speaker 2: top partly with Western aid and partly through its own means,
Speaker 2: to become so unappetizing through Russia that they don't actually
Speaker 2: want to invade. Again. You mentioned Hedgehog. This is sort
Speaker 2: of we hear about this a lot in the context
Speaker 2: of Taiwan these days. The porcupine model, the Hedgehog model,
Speaker 2: just making yourself so indigestible to an aggressor that they
Speaker 2: can't come in. And I really do think this is
Speaker 2: the most viable option for Ukraine. It doesn't rely on
Speaker 2: paper guarantees, it doesn't rely on hopes that the US
Speaker 2: will come in eventually. It doesn't rely on holding on
Speaker 2: in this war and just hoping. Instead, it relies on
Speaker 2: kind of taking what you have managed to achieve now
Speaker 2: and then building up so that you don't necessarily have
Speaker 2: to face it again.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I'm really glad you brought up the Finnish example
Speaker 1: because that's in a variety of ways, that is a
Speaker 1: great benchmark to look at what may be required for peace,
Speaker 1: and something we've had for over a decade at least
Speaker 1: once the year we're doing a few months mark. We've
Speaker 1: had Dimitri Gorenberg on here from CNA, and one of
Speaker 1: the things we always talk about is it's very difficult
Speaker 1: for an American or a Westerner in general to think
Speaker 1: like a Russian because they do have a very distinct
Speaker 1: not just history, but view of things. So the Finnish
Speaker 1: example also can give you some insight to what the
Speaker 1: Russians have as a benchmark. And Finland managed to get
Speaker 1: its independence, it had to give up some land to
Speaker 1: do it, not a whole bunch of land. I think
Speaker 1: it was ten percent or fifteen percent of their land
Speaker 1: they eventually gave up to get their peace, And of
Speaker 1: course there was Finlandization afterwards, which probably Ukraine wouldn't have
Speaker 1: to go through something like that, but you never know
Speaker 1: what will happened in the negotiating table. But a core
Speaker 1: of that is the Fins were armed to the teeth
Speaker 1: during the Cold Wars, were armed to the teeth, had
Speaker 1: their own independent They built some of the best fighter
Speaker 1: They still do build some of the best fighter planes,
Speaker 1: the best tanks out there. And you also had the Swiss,
Speaker 1: who to maintain their neutrality, did, like you said, very
Speaker 1: undigestible appearing country that regardless of what's happening around them,
Speaker 1: that somebody is just not going to mess with them
Speaker 1: or will go around them. And I've thought that regardless
Speaker 1: of what happens, if we can get people to the
Speaker 1: negotiating table, put aside what if any land exchanges you're
Speaker 1: going to do. But what would really be helpful in
Speaker 1: the US and Europe, I think is, irrespective of security,
Speaker 1: have those institutions if they can work on civil society,
Speaker 1: because even before the war, Ukraine's rule of law issues
Speaker 1: were spotty to be charitable, they also have a demographic
Speaker 1: nightmare where there's just not going to be any Ukrainians
Speaker 1: in twenty or thirty years. But I really think that
Speaker 1: that from a military point of view, and when you
Speaker 1: were talking about the ultimate answer to Ukraine's security guarantees
Speaker 1: is internal the Swiss, the Swedes to a lesser extent
Speaker 1: that bends. They've set a template in Europe for nations
Speaker 1: that have similar challenges while being a neutral party.
Speaker 2: I did a study a few years back of looking
Speaker 2: at the neutral states, and actually there's a really a
Speaker 2: great little monograph written by a guy at brook Kings,
Speaker 2: I think his name was Ibrahim carsh In like the eighties,
Speaker 2: examining the European neutrals and the different forms of neutrality.
Speaker 2: And I'm confident that like no one has checked this
Speaker 2: out of the library but me in fifteen years. It
Speaker 2: actually is really interesting because it talks through the different
Speaker 2: forms of neutrality. And I think one of the problems
Speaker 2: in today's debate is that we tend to think of
Speaker 2: neutrality as basically the worst parts of Finlandization or even
Speaker 2: potentially you know, the partition of Poland. Right, that's what
Speaker 2: neutrality does. It just lets the great powers rip you
Speaker 2: apart and play in your domestic politics. But we actually
Speaker 2: have all these other examples that are really interesting the
Speaker 2: Swiss right, they date their neutrality back to the Napoleonic era.
Speaker 2: Why didn't Napoleon fight the Swiss? Why did he negotiate
Speaker 2: with them? Because of geography and because they had basically
Speaker 2: every man in the country under arms and they were
Speaker 2: one of the few that was able to actually negotiate
Speaker 2: from this position of strength versus Napoleon. The Austrians, right,
Speaker 2: that's a slightly sadder case. That's a neutrality that comes
Speaker 2: out of being conquered at the end of the Second
Speaker 2: World War, and as a result, the Austrians are demilitarized
Speaker 2: and their internal politics are very much grown to getting
Speaker 2: interfered in. And then I think the more positive examples
Speaker 2: genuinely are you know, the Finns we mentioned, the Swedes,
Speaker 2: that we mentioned, the Irish right. They're obviously a long
Speaker 2: way off the continent, but have neutrality too for different reasons.
Speaker 2: And so I think talking a little more about these
Speaker 2: models and how you might apply that in the Ukrainian
Speaker 2: case could be a little more useful than just saying,
Speaker 2: you know, neutrality will leave the Ukrainians at the mercy
Speaker 2: of Moscow.
Speaker 1: Mark you there.
Speaker 5: I'm like, I'll take that out in post production I've
Speaker 5: only been I've only been doing this for how many
Speaker 5: years now. I think one of the things that would
Speaker 5: benefit everybody, especially Europeans, if you know, once they're going
Speaker 5: to re arm themselves, they ought to become the arsenal
Speaker 5: of Ukraine. And you know, we already see that some
Speaker 5: of the countries, the Germans, for example, we're talking about
Speaker 5: their productivity of artillery shells and stuff. But I know
Speaker 5: the Polls are also ericturing themselves into a pretty heavyly
Speaker 5: armed country because they've been through this path a few times.
Speaker 5: So talk a little bit about how this work for
Speaker 5: the benefit of the European and NATO slash NATO countries.
Speaker 2: You know, I think one of the underrated points here
Speaker 2: is that, you know, we talk in the US case
Speaker 2: about how producing arms for Ukraine, one of the common
Speaker 2: lines is right, it flows into the US economy and
Speaker 2: it helps to build up US defense industrial base. But
Speaker 2: the problem with that, of course, is we're building the
Speaker 2: wrong things. If we expect that we're going to fight
Speaker 2: a war in the Pacific, we do not need one
Speaker 2: five to five ammunition for artillery. What are we going
Speaker 2: to fire us ass out there? We need anti ship
Speaker 2: missiles and so in the US case, you know, producing
Speaker 2: those things flows in the opposite direction for a lot
Speaker 2: of the lot of the things that Ukraine might need.
Speaker 2: That's not at all true for the Europeans. Right, If
Speaker 2: the Germans wanted to build up their own defense, build
Speaker 2: up their own defense industrial base, they'd want to be
Speaker 2: producing pretty much the same things as the Ukrainians need
Speaker 2: because they want to fight a land war, that's what
Speaker 2: they need. So from my point of view, there is
Speaker 2: a there is a commonality here where some of those
Speaker 2: arguments that don't ring true in the US case about
Speaker 2: building up the US industrial base, actually I think they
Speaker 2: do work in Europe much better. There are a variety
Speaker 2: of options in states like the Czech Republic where there
Speaker 2: are decommissioned or old Soviet ammunition production facilities, some of
Speaker 2: which have already been reactivated, but others can be I
Speaker 2: do think I should you know, to be frank here,
Speaker 2: the European Union has actually begun to take some steps
Speaker 2: on some of these things. There's a new European Union
Speaker 2: funding mechanism that allows states to take out defense to
Speaker 2: do this, sorry to take out debt in order to
Speaker 2: improve their defense capabilities. So they are taking steps. It's
Speaker 2: just not nearly fast enough. And I think the biggest states,
Speaker 2: in particular the Germans, are absent from this at the moment.
Speaker 2: And I continue to find this really perplexing because one
Speaker 2: of the side effects of the war has been recession
Speaker 2: in Germany. Right, They've lost a quarter of their industrial
Speaker 2: output in the last three years because they've lost cheap
Speaker 2: gas from Russia. You know, one of the ways that
Speaker 2: a normal non German government would handle that would be
Speaker 2: to take some debt on and plow it into, you know,
Speaker 2: things like building up defense production in some of these areas,
Speaker 2: switching over factories to make things our defense relevant. The
Speaker 2: Germans have not done that. Potentially they may do it
Speaker 2: slightly more under this new government that seems to be
Speaker 2: forming and which is I think a little more forward
Speaker 2: leaning than the Schultz government was. But I mean, to me,
Speaker 2: that just seems like a win win, And so that's
Speaker 2: if I were sitting in the White House, I'd be
Speaker 2: very much pushing European states to move in that direction,
Speaker 2: because again I think, you know, that's the sort of
Speaker 2: thing that the Europeans can help Ukraine with. And then
Speaker 2: also finally here Ukraine itself had a very extensive defense space,
Speaker 2: going all the way back to the Soviet period, they
Speaker 2: made a lot of the more advanced arms that the
Speaker 2: Soviet Union used in One of the horrible ironies of
Speaker 2: this conflict is a lot of the weapons the Russians
Speaker 2: are using, probably the older ones were probably made in
Speaker 2: Ukraine some of them, but they've rebuilt some of that,
Speaker 2: and they've began to produce lots of things like drones
Speaker 2: that are small, che easy to manufacture domestically, and if
Speaker 2: they are not constantly getting bombs right, they'll be able
Speaker 2: to build up that capability much more during a ceasefire. Piece.
Speaker 2: So again, I really do think Europe and Ukraine can
Speaker 2: do this together. They just need to get over some
Speaker 2: of their political hang ups, which I realize having studied
Speaker 2: Europe for a long time, that's a little easier said
Speaker 2: than done.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's funny a lot of their political hang up.
Speaker 1: I mean, I moved back to the US from the
Speaker 1: continent decade and a half ago, but I recognized the
Speaker 1: patterns and the personalities, and the response is, yeah, they've
Speaker 1: they've got some work to do when it comes to
Speaker 1: looking at the US. I have many of my theories
Speaker 1: as to why but nothing I can fix on. I
Speaker 1: was thinking in your in your reply to Mark's question,
Speaker 1: that frustration that comes when I really start looking at
Speaker 1: the responses, especially over the last few days, it really
Speaker 1: goes for a few weeks. Is in these meetings. I
Speaker 1: hope that this is helping to break some of the
Speaker 1: adhesions and open some eyes as a fact that as
Speaker 1: happens in many points of friction, is that there's an
Speaker 1: opportunity here and to push towards some enlightened self interest
Speaker 1: and to take advantage of some people looking at resident
Speaker 1: Ukrainian and European military capabilities. Because there's been a conversation
Speaker 1: going on since even before November, and I'll use because
Speaker 1: there's been a lot of debate about it involving everybody's
Speaker 1: everybody's favorite Colby, a Bridge Colby, and the debate about
Speaker 1: him coming in in his policy, and he has been
Speaker 1: a pacific primis for a long time about addressing the
Speaker 1: People's Republic China, and we can all run through the
Speaker 1: scenarios and have maybe been involved in some of those
Speaker 1: war games where should America find itself engaged in a
Speaker 1: large pacific war, Europe will become an economy of force
Speaker 1: operation even as a NATO player that we are simply
Speaker 1: because of the challenge that China will present, which means,
Speaker 1: should something come up in Europe, they have got to
Speaker 1: be able to stand on their own, not just for
Speaker 1: those things we've talked about that they are used to
Speaker 1: using US for logistics or ORR. If anybody in Europe
Speaker 1: thinks they can get on the phone to the Pentagon
Speaker 1: when we're at D plus ninety in a Pacific war
Speaker 1: and say, hey, we would really like some of your
Speaker 1: RC one thirty five's to come over here our squadron
Speaker 1: we're with the C seventeens to help us with something
Speaker 1: that's happening that's not going to happen. That Europe really
Speaker 1: should use this as an opportunity in a friendly and
Speaker 1: non confrontational way to become more independent because it's in
Speaker 1: their enlightened self interest to do so. Because of the
Speaker 1: People's Republic. As China decides to challenge the US and
Speaker 1: the specific allies, we're not going to be doing much
Speaker 1: with Europe.
Speaker 2: We did a report last year that I really enjoyed
Speaker 2: doing because we used some foresight methods scenarios to try
Speaker 2: and get it. The question of how the US might
Speaker 2: retrench from Europe and how Europeans might respond. And the
Speaker 2: fun thing about doing scenarios on this was we got
Speaker 2: to kind of vary the conditions of this withdrawal and
Speaker 2: look at different ways it could happen. And I think
Speaker 2: everybody you know, since basically Trump was in office the
Speaker 2: first time, has been scared. You know, Trump is bad.
Speaker 2: He's going to pool US out of NATO. He's going
Speaker 2: to do it tomorrow, and that's what's going to happen.
Speaker 2: But we actually looked not just at that scenario, but
Speaker 2: we looked at one in which the US presence in
Speaker 2: Europe slowly withers because of a US debt crisis and
Speaker 2: cuts to the defense budget. And then we looked at
Speaker 2: the Taimewan scenario. And one of the things that we
Speaker 2: actually found is despite all of this crosstop about you know, well,
Speaker 2: you need different things for Europe and the Indo Pacific.
Speaker 2: A lot of the particularly the high end enablers, so
Speaker 2: the ISR targeting stuff and the logistics support all of
Speaker 2: those things that we talked about earlier in this conversation
Speaker 2: that the Europeans can't provide themselves. Those have to go
Speaker 2: almost immediately and a bunch of the troops in Europe
Speaker 2: who are there right now, primarily in Europe, to support
Speaker 2: those capabilities. They also then have to go to somewhere
Speaker 2: closer to conflicts in the Pacific if this is happening,
Speaker 2: you know, whether that's back to the continental US or
Speaker 2: even further. And so you know, the scenario in which
Speaker 2: the US does get into some conflict in the end
Speaker 2: of Pacific, which I really hope never happens, but that
Speaker 2: would basically be a whol out, not overnight. But we
Speaker 2: assessed that if the war, you know, assuming this isn't
Speaker 2: a war that goes nuclear in a day, right, we
Speaker 2: assessed that within a couple of months and any of
Speaker 2: the most important capabilities would be gone from the European theaters.
Speaker 2: So you know, again I adree with you that is
Speaker 2: in Europe, it's in the interests of European leaders, in
Speaker 2: European publics for these states to step up. Again. The
Speaker 2: problem really comes back to this question of what will
Speaker 2: cause them to step up. And you know, I've some
Speaker 2: colleagues that have done some work on this over the
Speaker 2: last few years. But you know, basically people point to
Speaker 2: their two cases where you can see European states actually
Speaker 2: starting to do something on defense. One of them is
Speaker 2: immediately after the invasion of Ukraine in February twenty twenty two.
Speaker 2: You actually do see states suddenly turn around, commit lots
Speaker 2: of money to defense, start talking about it seriously, start
Speaker 2: taking steps. It then kind of withers away within about
Speaker 2: three months. It becomes apparent the Russians aren't succeeding in
Speaker 2: overthrowing the government in Kiev. The US surges a bunch
Speaker 2: of troops to the region, and so that fizzles out.
Speaker 2: The other case that's interesting is during the nine seventies
Speaker 2: under Nixon, the US was committing significant forces to be
Speaker 2: at naw and the European states get very fearful that,
Speaker 2: you know, the US is just not going to be
Speaker 2: able to do both. Particularly, I mean, you remember that
Speaker 2: decade is just all financial crises all the time, and
Speaker 2: so they start to fear the US is going to withdraw,
Speaker 2: and states like Germany or West Germany then start to
Speaker 2: actually step up. So, I mean, look, I think the
Speaker 2: takeaway from those cases is, you know, the US presence
Speaker 2: and reassurance of the kind that we see in February
Speaker 2: twenty twenty two, that tends to suppress the ability or
Speaker 2: the willingness of European leaders to make tough choices on defense,
Speaker 2: and fears of US withdrawal or actual US withdrawal ends
Speaker 2: to elevate those So, you know, I think for me,
Speaker 2: coming out of this weekend, one of the more interesting
Speaker 2: questions is going to be whether what happened in the
Speaker 2: Oval Office on Friday is enough actually convince European leaders
Speaker 2: at last that there's an administration in Washington that's serious
Speaker 2: about burden shifting or will that take actual troop draw
Speaker 2: downs of some kind. The European leaders may see this
Speaker 2: is just about creen and not apply it to NATO.
Speaker 2: How do you actually get to that place where they
Speaker 2: make those tough choices to invest in defense. I think
Speaker 2: that's a really difficult problem, and it's one that so
Speaker 2: far European policy or US pols meekers have not managed
Speaker 2: to find an answer to.
Speaker 5: Yeah, I think it's interesting to think of President trump
Speaker 5: discussions about whether we what to do about NATO has
Speaker 5: an opening negotiation ploy for getting the Europeans to step up.
Speaker 5: But aside from that, let's let's talk a little bit
Speaker 5: about what the Ukraine cease fire agreements, whatever settlement light
Speaker 5: look like. I mean, they're going to have to give
Speaker 5: up that part of eastern Ukraine that Samuel Huntington said
Speaker 5: clashes civilization or whether it is that really don't belong
Speaker 5: to the West or more much more Russian outlook, are
Speaker 5: they going to have to just bite the bullet and
Speaker 5: accept the borders that exist at the end at the
Speaker 5: day the cease fighting, we have a DMZ situation with
Speaker 5: the North and South Korea? What are you envision?
Speaker 2: So yeah, and this is the idea of what are
Speaker 2: we actually negotiating over. I think it's getting very much
Speaker 2: submerged under just this. Oh no, Trump gave away everything
Speaker 2: when he said about NATO, which it really isn't true.
Speaker 2: So I would highlight I think, you know four buckets
Speaker 2: of things that are going to be discussed in any
Speaker 2: potential piece deal Piratory, arms, sovereignty, and finance, And let
Speaker 2: me just go through those one by one. Territory, which
Speaker 2: is the one you actually asked about. I think, conversely
Speaker 2: or strangely, is actually probably the easiest to resolve. I
Speaker 2: think there's actually a pretty widespread acceptance at this point
Speaker 2: that defacto where we are on the ground is probably
Speaker 2: going to determine who holds what territory going forward, and
Speaker 2: that there's going to be a demilitarized zone of some size,
Speaker 2: and there's a wide range of DMZs. In previous conflicts,
Speaker 2: there's been a massive range of from like five miles
Speaker 2: to fifty miles, So probably somewhere in the middle, but
Speaker 2: I actually think that's one of the easier ones to
Speaker 2: figure out. Question of sovereignty and arms, these are some
Speaker 2: of the things we've already talked about a little here tonight.
Speaker 2: To what extent is Ukraine going to be allowed, you know,
Speaker 2: again to join NATO is one question, But to what
Speaker 2: extent can they you know, host foreign troops for training
Speaker 2: on their soil? Are there going to be restrictions on
Speaker 2: Kiev's domestic politics?
Speaker 1: Right?
Speaker 2: The Minsk agreements from twenty fourteen actually included restrictions on
Speaker 2: you know, you must hold elections, you must hold referenda.
Speaker 2: They didn't, right, and so that that cord failed for
Speaker 2: that and other reasons. But those questions are liable to
Speaker 2: come up again. And then there's a question of arms, right,
Speaker 2: because we've talked about armed neutrality. But one of the
Speaker 2: things that came up in the Istanbul negotiations which were
Speaker 2: held in May twenty twenty two, was the notion that
Speaker 2: both sides want some kind of conventional arms control in
Speaker 2: the region, right, So you know, Ukraine needs to be
Speaker 2: able to defend itself, but it would be better for
Speaker 2: everybody if that were in some kind of framework where
Speaker 2: neither side could have heavy weapons too near the front
Speaker 2: that kind of thing. So that's a very tricky one
Speaker 2: to sort of negotiators. And then finally there's the finance question.
Speaker 2: The Russians really want sanctions relief. The Trump administration can
Speaker 2: probably get them some, but the Biden administration made it
Speaker 2: harder to do that because it's now got to go
Speaker 2: through Congress. The Europeans have to make their own decisions
Speaker 2: on sanctions, and they also are the final parties with
Speaker 2: a say in what happens to those like two hundred
Speaker 2: billion dollars worth of frozen Russian sets in European bank.
Speaker 2: So again, you know, complex questions and complex questions that
Speaker 2: will probably require more folks to be at the negotiating
Speaker 2: table than just the US and Russia on all of these.
Speaker 2: I mean, certainly, I think you can't do this without
Speaker 2: the Ukrainians. There's going to have to be at least
Speaker 2: a parallel track with the Europeans on on finance, because
Speaker 2: I don't think you get there otherwise.
Speaker 1: Well, Emma, that has been a great hour and I
Speaker 1: appreciate the opportunity to invest that with you diving into
Speaker 1: a topic that, well, we're gonna be reading a lot
Speaker 1: about it for a while, I think, especially at the
Speaker 1: events only of the last couple of weeks. But for
Speaker 1: the listeners, if they want to keep track of you
Speaker 1: and what you have to say about the events of
Speaker 1: the day, where's a good place for them to keep
Speaker 1: an eye on you? And are you working on anything
Speaker 1: that you're going to be putting out here pretty soon
Speaker 1: that we should keep an eye open for as well.
Speaker 2: Yeah, so you can find most of my work on
Speaker 2: the Stimson Center website. That's just Stimson dot org. I'm
Speaker 2: also on Twitter, I guess x now at Emma Ashford
Speaker 2: and yeah, most of my work. As you mentioned at
Speaker 2: the Star, I am a book coming out a little
Speaker 2: later this year, so I'm excited to start promoting that
Speaker 2: and one of the main thesies of that book is
Speaker 2: that the US would benefit from leaning into multipolarity by
Speaker 2: both bring the capabilities of allies in Europe, in Asia
Speaker 2: and elsewhere to try and you know, even things out
Speaker 2: a little with China and Russia and others. So I'm
Speaker 2: expecting I'll be rating a lot more on this topic
Speaker 2: over the next few months.
Speaker 5: Well again, thank you so much for joining it's been really.
Speaker 2: Interesting, Thanks for having me, and.
Speaker 1: Thank you everybody for joining us for another edition of
Speaker 1: mid Rats. And until next time, I hope y'all have
Speaker 1: a great Navy day.
Speaker 4: Cheer miney one to marry me and add all your
Speaker 4: being to blame.
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Speaker 4: Fair well lived, not well.
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