A lecture by Timothy Snyder at the Humanities Institute at Stony Brook, October 19, 2022.

[Music] foreign [Music] absolutely delighted to be able to introduce Timothy Snyder um Richard C Levin professor of history and Global Affairs at Yale University and permanent fellow at The Institute for the human Sciences in Vienna his scholarship has had a very wide reach Tim's books have been translated into 40 languages and won the countless Awards uh let me note that his own work is distinguished by his command of multiple languages he speaks five languages fluently including Ukrainian and reads 10 languages which undoubtedly contributes to his nuanced understanding of multiple National contexts and complicated histories his historical work focuses on Central and Eastern Europe the Soviet Union and the Holocaust from his first Publications to the most recent ones Ukraine has played a central role in his work three of his Works in particular the Reconstruction of Nations Poland Ukraine Lithuania Belarus 1569 to 1999 bloodlands Europe between Hitler and Stalin which appeared in 2010 and has since been translated into 20 languages Black Earth the Holocaust has history and warning from 2015. uh these three books established his position as a leading expert on Central and Eastern European history Timothy Snyder has also offered two New York Times bestsellers on tyranny 20 lessons from the 20th century in 2017 stayed on the best sellers list through 2021 the road to unfreedom Russia Europe America 2018 um Timothy Snyder is one of the great public one of the greatest public intellectuals of our times when I was thinking about this term public intellectual I searched and found an essay by um Ralph Waldo Emerson in 1834 he wrote The American American Scholar Snyder is truly The American Scholar in the emersonian sense of the world um coincidentally Timothy Snyder was also awarded the Emerson prize in the humanities among very very many other prizes uh to use the energy Italian language an intellectual who understands the mind of the past is not merely a bookworm uh quote for this is worse than it seems as Emerson says the ideal intellectual possesses an active Soul which allows him to continuously engage in scholarship to ask difficult questions and looked for most effective ways of communicating um for Emerson just as important as erudite knowledge are the Civic Virtues Of The intellectual uh he has to be Fearless Brave engaged I have had the privilege of knowing Professor Snyder for well over addicting and I can attest to the fact that like the emersonian intellectual he is a whole person in addition to being a university of knowledge he is also a good citizen a great neighbor a decent human being um Snyder lives by the principles that he has embraced in his writing he is someone who finds the time to travel to his native Ohio and go door to door and Campus before national elections he is someone who gets in the car and drives for over an hour to teach a class on freedom the understandings of freedom to a group of prison inmates um Professor Timothy Snyder has also the rare gift of attracting the attention and admiration of many of his readers and millions of online listeners and actually antagonizing very few of those uh once again greatest honor and pleasure and welcome Timothy Snyder [Applause] all right um so I'm gonna I'm gonna start by turning my my phone off and if the rest of you could make sure that your various gadgets are are off um or your computers are are your screens are down I'm not going to lecture to any computers I'm going to lecture to people the lecture of democracy the idea of democracy is actually closely related to this and I'm gonna I'm gonna start by asking you to think about the shape of this room where we all are so what does it mean that um that the human being is supposed to be in the corner right that where I'm supposed to lecture is from here and the reason that I'm supposed to lecture from here is so that that machine can have a clear line to this room rooms weren't always designed like that this is a rather recent phenomenon um but the the demotion of the human being um and the notion that in interactions which were once thought to be normal direct human interactions what we're going to do instead is look at some form of Animation some kind of some kind of mechanized entertainment that is actually relatively new for your generation I understand that it's normal but it's quite a dramatic change and when I want to begin by suggesting is that this change has a great deal to do with the decline of democracy I'm not going to blame the decline of democracy on this particular lecture hall at Stony Brook that's not my that's not my point well I guess I don't know what else has been said in here right um but um but what I what I am trying to suggest is and what I'll be trying to argue is that democracy is not the sort of thing that has a future so I've been asked to I've been asked to speak about the war in Ukraine and the future of democracy but I think that this can only be sensibly done if we start from the assumption that democracy is not a thing that has a future or doesn't have a future democracy is a set of Human Relationships which only exist insofar as humans name them and value them and as we move into a world where we expect that the human stands in the corner and the machines are going to do the work we're also moving into a world which is ever less Democratic um so I I'm taking seriously the idea of the future of democracy it can sound like it can sound a little bit cliche like oh the future of democracy surely democracy is going to be around in the future I'm going to take this seriously in a couple of ways one one of the one of these ways is the obvious way does democracy have a future which I think is an open question the odds are against it I think at the moment but the way that I want to take even more seriously or I think the more interesting question is do we have a future without democracy do we as a not just as a country I mean we belong to different countries I assume but but do we as a species have a future without democracy because the there's there's this interesting you know tendency especially in the U.S um to say well you have to make these terrible choices between freedom and security right you've got to be tough you have to understand the way that life really is and sometimes you just have to give up your freedom because there are these considerations of security and that's mostly not true like there are examples where it's true but it's generally not true when I was in Ukraine a month or so ago I was struck by many of the things that president zielinski said but one of the things he stressed which I think is very important is that when you liberate a village people can be more free and more secure at the same time and that goes for a lot of situations if you have health care you are both more free and more secure at the same time if global warming were removed from all of our minds removed from reality we would be more free and more secure freedom and security generally work together so what I'm trying to suggest is that if we're going to get out of the things that most oppress us like the future of global warming that I take it many of us are afraid of I think it's going to be as in democracies one reason I think then don't worry this is all going to come down those of you who are worried about whether I'm going to talk about Ukraine I am it's gonna it's gonna sneak up on you and it's going to hit you before you know it um what so so the the people who are in favor of global warming and there are lots of them um the people who are in favor of global warming tend to be the oligarchs right the people the people who tend to deny when I say in favor of I mean deny him and ha whatever they actually love the people who are in favor of global warming also tend to be the people who are against democracy vast majorities including in this country when polled believe the global warming is true and want to do something about it right so if we were more democratic we would be handling global warming better than we do right now nationally and internationally um the people who are the people who who make this difficult are a category of people that I'm going to call hydrocarbon oligarchs or more perhaps more concisely fossil oligarchs now watch this I'm not going to talk about Ukraine so who is the who is the most important hydrocarbon oligarch in the world that's I'm not I'm now asking right right so the richest person in the world is also the most important hydrocarbon oligarch in the world is also the person who's leading this conflict which is the the most destructive conflict we've had in decades with the potential to do many awful things in addition to the awful things that have already happened this regime run by this fossil oligarch this hydrocarbon oligarch could not exist without the hydrocarbons the whole structure team is based upon hydrocarbons the the hydrocarbons can be weaponized abroad as they are against Ukraine and indirectly against Europe at the moment but also the entire vertical structure of the Russian regime where foreign payments that come in because of the export of hydrocarbons are used to make sure that people are directly dependent upon the central government all of that is only possible because of hydrocarbons so the entire regime rests upon that where does this lead you so the thing about hydrocarbon oligarchs they tend to be in favor of global warming but there's a there's a broader problem here which has to do with with oligarchs so I'm trying I'm talking about Ukraine but I'm trying to talk about Ukraine in such a way that we can understand that the problems in Ukraine are very often intensifications or forecasts of problems which are true for the rest of the world right that Ukraine is not some isolated thing where you can say oh that's a far away country you know which we know little that Ukraine is actually a kind of Center a Showplace um for you know a testing ground if you like for some of the things that will happen or are happening around the world so um the the one of the things that happens with oligarchy is lies big lies right and this is a phenomenon which has been known um here's my conservative moment this is a this is a phenomenal it's been known since Plato they're going to be others um there's a long tradition from Plato down through George Orwell um talks about this of of explaining how oligarchy warps conversations right it makes the notion of freedom of speech as we as we take it for granted kind of kind of ridiculous um Russia is an absurdly extreme example of this it's it's unusual for one person to have command of all the television networks and the television networks to all say the same thing that is admittedly an extreme example right it's unusual to have the kind of radical forms of censorship which block out Independent Media the way one has in Russia nevertheless Russia provides a kind of Ideal type and we are moving in that direction in general the world is moving in that direction we're inundated by what we think of as information but which is only information in the digital sense there are ever few ever fewer human reporters who are actually chasing down the facts in this country right so we talk about the news all the time but we don't produce it what the oligarchs do aside from suppressing the voices of others are warping the conversation in general is they fill up the discourse with crazy ideas about the future bad ideas about the future and I'm going to like you can come in Q a and say no I've got counter examples but in general the idea is that we have to spend a lot of time on which have to do with the future are both anti-democratic and nuts like for the example that you know you're going to live forever right these are American examples that you know some of us are going to live forever or you're going to go to Mars where you're going to live forever right these things are not going to help us survive um and they're not going to they're not going to help democracy survive so Putin as an oligarch also has a crazy idea right he is he is like other oligarchs he's actually been in touch with one of our oligarchs very recently um but like other oligarchs he has his e-day fix which are generally anti-democratic and wacky and his is that the country next to him doesn't exist right so we can look at all this in Regional terms we can think of this as some kind of regional specificity that all comes down I'm very happy to talk about this it all comes down to you know disagreements about kievan ruse a thousand years ago but it doesn't really what it all what it comes down to is the capacity of someone who is the richest person in the world commanding a media regime and commanding the state to bring his absolutely indefensible ideas into some kind of Reality by starting a war the idea that Ukraine is not a real place the ukrainians are not a real people that Ukraine doesn't have a history is wacky the same way that we're going to like save ourselves from global warming by going to Mars is wacky right it's the kind of thing that you can get yourself to believe if no one tells you the truth it's the kind of thing you get yourself to believe if nobody is willing to challenge you it's the kind of thing that you can believe if maybe you're good at some things but not good at everything which is a general description of oligarchs and like the way that they the role that they play in our public conversation so so this is I mean this is a this Wars itself very serious and I will talk about how it's serious but the premise upon which it is based that Ukraine is not a real people the Ukraine is not a real country that's not serious right that's just idiotic it's like it's like you know there's there's like a saying that like you have to be a PhD to be that stupid okay I'll I'll take it but there's there's actually a higher level of this which is that you have to have you know 20 billion dollars to be that stupid right um and uh and and Mr Putin has attained that so the idea that Ukraine isn't really a country or the ukrainians aren't really a people it's not that that's wrong it's not even wrong like it's a total misunderstanding the way history works is what Mr Putin is doing is that he's saying I understand the past he actually wrote a 7 000 word essay um which you know you undergraduates whatever um I kind of I've now boxed myself in here write a better 7 000 word essay um because uh because so so what he his idea about the past is he can see a straight line from a thousand years ago where human agency doesn't matter where contingency is entirely excluded and where the things that he happens to think um are abs are absolutely true right and in this scheme and now we're now we're moving more directly to the war in this scheme um it's very easy to say that other things don't exist so if if um if I'm allowed to say Russia has always been there right and I know what Russia always has been and Russia has always included these territories of Ukraine well if I'm allowed to say that and believe it what follows from that is that the things that seem to be Ukraine are not real they're not really part of History they're artificial they're exotic they're corrupt they shouldn't really be in the picture and from that logic it follows that I have the right to eliminate them first rhetorically and then physically and that's the way that Ukraine is actually talked about the things so from Putin's point of view the things that he believes in are real right they make very little contact with reality which means that reality has to change that's what follows from this so Ukraine as a society it's defined as being not real it's just about the poles or the habsburgs or the Germans or the European Union or the Jews or the Americans or whoever at the moment is going to be given is going to be named as the Exotic external Force which created this thing right that's what you say and that means I have to get rid of all the people in Ukraine who believe in this idea but once you start doing that then you slowly realize that actually it's quite a few people or actually it's pretty much the entire country so this oligarchical Whimsy right because I refuse to dignify it by giving it like any more credibility than it is um this oligarchical Whimsy can help us to understand the initiation of the war it can also help us to understand certain Global features of this war the fact that this war is being principally led by a hydrocarbon oligarch in a moment of oligarchical Whimsy helps us to to make sense of some of the things which again might just seem like Regional catastrophes or you know accidents relating to this war um for example uh the the racial struggle for resources right so so so Putin like many people on the far right is obsessed by the idea of a democratic demographic crisis that he doesn't care about a democratic crisis about a demographic crisis um this thing that shows by the name of replacement theory that there are too many people who are not like us and so on and so the way that the war is being fought and it sometimes escapes attention is perhaps less for territory and more and more for people so the way that the Russians are fighting this war is that they are sending in their the men from their own indigenous groups to be killed in Ukraine and they're exporting back into Russia fertile women and children who they see as candidates for russification if not in this generation than in the future right so and they have they have by their own count they have brought into the Russian Federation more than 4 million Ukrainian citizens which is roughly one-tenth of the population of the country so that is that is a genocidal act on a self-confessed one on on a very large scale or the the world food crisis right because Putin is a hydrocarbon oligar carrying out this kind of War he's giving us a sort of preview of what the wars for resources will look like in the future if we let if we let global warming continue so by by fighting this war by by occupying the Black Sea by blocking the trade from Ukraine by blowing up um by by executing Ukrainian Agro business Executives by blowing up tanks filled with sunflower oil has happened a couple of days ago but but chiefly by making the export of food very difficult Russia is starving the world which is bad enough but it's also a preview of the kind of war that we can expect later on if we start from this idea that um that that this war has to do with a moment of oligarchical Whimsy which has very little contact from reality you can understand its Origins its features but also something about the course of the war and its difficulties from the Russian point of view so this has not been this war has not been a success for Russia this war has not gone well at all from the point of view of Russia it also hasn't gone well at all from the point of view of the people who thought that they knew what was going to happen that's something I'm going to return to we're not going to escape blameless here from the point of view of Russia um the idea is to destroy all the ukrainians right that's the premise but then as you move into the war As you move into the country as time passes there turned out to be far more ukrainians than you thought Russia's operational assumption at the beginning was that there were just a few thousand ukrainians it was like a thin crust depending upon the Thinker a thin crust of you know Jews Like europeanized individuals whatever Americans a thin crust gaze it depends on the Thinker it depends on the day of the week but people who could be who could be characterized as being somehow from outside and so we're just going to go and this is literally the plan we're going to go in storm an airport take Kiev and we're going to murder them all and then the rest of the country will just revert to being our people right but that didn't work right and it didn't work because ukrainians resisted and the more ukrainians resist the more the logic comes we have to kill more of them ever ever more of them that's the way the logic works but that logic doesn't necessarily lead to to military victories so what we've so the political the ideological assumption that Ukraine doesn't exist leads to a very flawed military plan which is one of Russia's problems not the only one but it also lends to a genocide which steadily escalates because the target group of people you have to get rid of has now been extended essentially to the entire population and this is not just me saying this this is Russian national television um which you know if you're not watching it that's why I'm here to help you out um but you know about a week ago on Russia National Television a Russian fascist a man called gubarov came on and said we so the ukrainians are possessed this is interesting they're possessed so they're not they don't know who they are they're really Russians they don't know who they are they're possessed and so we're going to tell them they're possessed and if they don't accept that they're possessed and are really Russians which is I mean let's face it that's a lot to ask of someone right I'm not I mean I'm not even gonna try it um but but so but if the if you don't accept that you're possessed then I'm going to kill you and then he goes on to say We'll Kill a million if we have to and they're closer to a million than the ukrainians like to admit I'm afraid we'll kill a million if we have to we'll kill 5 million if we have to we will kill every single Ukrainian if we have to right and and so this is the logic of escalation if did the more ukrainians there are the more one has to get rid of now this raises what I think is a really interesting question of what it means to exist what it means to exist as a political side society and perhaps what it means to be exist as a political society that could become Democratic what is that thing that the Russians are running into right what does it mean to to what does it mean for society to to exist and and uh this is not this is not at all straightforward the next point that I want to make the next big point that I want to make is that when we make the move to try to define whether Society exists or doesn't exist we are we're very often um doing something which has to do with the Imperial character of knowledge okay that might sound a little bit abstract but it's pretty important because when when we start from an imperial position I'm going to say more about what I mean by that in a second but we start from an imperial position and we we give ourselves the right to say who exists who doesn't exist and under what criteria um we are then not only failing to notice some important things about existence but we're also failing to decode what other people are doing okay I've been very abstract let me try to be clear about this one example of what I'm talking about is history so so take Crimea I mean actually yeah take Crimea um the Crimean Peninsula a lot of people would probably accept I'm not going to like make you raise your hands or anything but the idea that like there's Crimea has always been Russia right it's always been Russia it's something certainly that Russians say it's always been Russia but it's the Imperial position which allows you to find always and never the the dependent the Crimean Peninsula actually had a state which existed for about 600 years which is not a short period of time 200 years part of the cold or 400 years as the Crimean Hana right much longer incidentally than any particular Russian state has existed um that state is taken over by the Russian Empire at the end of the 18th century and is renamed the territory is renamed new Russia and now the nice thing about being able to say that something is new is that you are thereby obliterating everything which is now defined as old right and so Crimea is always Russia in the sense that you get to say when never and always start right you get to say whenever an always start the moment that you inquire a little bit into the history of Crimea you find well there was not only a Tatar State there for hundreds of years you also say well the native the entire native population is something very familiar from American history of course the entire indigenous population was deported the entire every last person I mean it began in late 18th century but it was completed in 1944 when every single Crimean Tatar every man woman and child was deported by force in a matter of three days in Spring of 1944 every single person right and so when that's done then you can say oh this was always Russia right this was always Russia something similar I mean Crimea here so I don't think Crimea in Ukraine are very different in this respect the same this when you say that Crimea was always Russia you're in the same mode as when you say Ukraine and Russia were always together right the always if you have the power to Define always that means that you're the one who's in the Imperial position in fact there are hundreds of years of very interesting political history in Ukraine most of the territory that's now Ukraine had very little to do with Moscow for most of its existence it's a long story we can go into it um but more interestingly uh the center of Ukrainian political activity was also defined as new Russia very it's a very powerful idea right I get to say something is New Caledonia or New England and or new Russia um but what's now Southern Ukraine where the fighting is taking place right literally herzon which was which was invented and named by Empress Catherine those places had before they became new Russia were the site of Ukrainian Cossack political activity for quite a long time but the moment that you name something as new that history that history goes away so this is a problem I mean I'm trying to suggest in general these things apply everywhere so this business of always and never is of course Very powerful in American history the moment that I say the founding fathers started something new I'm exerting the same kind of magical power right the found there was still a lot of things that happened before the founding fathers right and there are a lot of you know so when you say that the founding fathers you know immediate you know like these laws that we have in America which say that you can't dismiss you can't dismiss the reality that the founding fathers from nothing started I'm not citing this word for word but the basic idea is you can't dismiss the reality the founding fathers starting from nothing created the perfect democracy right that's the same kind of idea the power of defining what's always and and what's never and these memories that's not a joke like the memory laws are very closely associated with associated with conflict in Russia it is literally illegal and you can now be imprisoned for saying the wrong things about certain parts of Russian history right that wave of memory laws has now come to the United States and without going to the details of what the memory laws say it's the same basic idea you're always you're always removing innocence from yourself okay so what the main point I'm trying to make is that is that when we think about how these wars start and what it means to exist when it has to be very wary of this business of always and never because the history is always going to turn out to be much more interesting the second thing that in this war and in general I think would ought to be careful about is ethnicity and language and here's one where Americans I think are just hugely guilty um so we it's fine for us to be Multicultural right that's cool but if anybody else shows any signs of being Multicultural that's a big problem and our brains immediately break right so so you know it's cool for us to be but look at Ukraine they have two languages right I mean immediately like we're done we're like okay well wait if some of them speak Russian they must be Russians or if they speak Ukrainian they must be nationalists and they speak both then I just don't want to hear anything more about it right and that and that is of course a problem not with them but a problem with us it's a problem with us there's a problem with you know being monolingual but it's also a problem of thinking we're a good enough country to be Multicultural but other people ethnicity is good enough for them right and if they speak Ukrainian they must be ethnic ukrainians whatever that means and if they speak Russian they must be ethnic Russians whatever that means and the moment you apply this quote this quasi-scientific term ethnic to someone you are saying who they are as and it's over you've categorized them it's quote unquote scientific and it's all done but that of course is not the way that language or or identity work right um I mean of course it's much more important what you say than I'm speaking English so I just want to like everyone from England who wants like I'm not English right I mean this is like this is totally obvious right it's totally obvious the fact that you speak Russian does not make you Russian right I also speak Ukrainian that doesn't make me Ukrainian I mean this stuff is like mind-boggling the obvious and it's only this notion that like oh I have the power to categorize you that makes it seem even at all plausible right so it's much more important what people say than in what language they say it right um that's that's the fundamental thing but we're also we're on interesting territory here because we can move towards a more positive argument the fact one of the things that's most interesting about ukrainians actually and is on display in this war and is generally on display in Ukraine and politics is that almost everybody is bilingual and that bilingualism allows for forms of expression which any kind of monolingualism does not it allows for code switching it allows for change which is something I'm sure many of you are familiar with and do in your daily life it involves it allows you to change the language that you're using in different settings and use different languages deploy different languages for different purposes right um and I have lots of cool examples of this from the war but I'll I'll save them but that you know remembering that people are bilingual so if you think they're bilingual therefore you're not sure who they are okay that means that you're imprisoned by this Paradigm of ethnicity and language but if you recognize that bilingualism maybe allows them to do things that you can't do if you're not bilingual then you're closer I think to the truth of of what it means to exist as a society because what the ukrainians are doing in this War I will give a couple examples really does depend upon playing with language the way that they're messing with the Russians depends upon them knowing Russian and the way that they've jumped into American pop culture right and they've mobilized American pop culture in their own Communications shows a general capacity to mess around with other people's languages they're not as good with it as they're with the Russians but they're surprisingly good at it right the Ukrainian comms are surprisingly good and that partly has to do with the habit of code switching and having a certain kind of distance on on language so it's not that language defines you it's more that what you do with language defines defines who you want to be seen as as being so I'm not trying to move towards a more positive example of what it means to exist right um what it means to exist as a society and I now want to say a word about what it means for Ukraine to exist um and then maybe more broadly about what it means for a democracy to have a chance or for democracy to have a future so um they're I'm sure they're ukrainians here and they'll have their own their own views about this but it seems to me that some of the most important characteristics of Ukrainian social existence or national existence now um have to do with uh recent experiences which one can name so uh Independence in 1991 a defense of democracy in 2004 2005 a defense of a European choice in 2014 and the war of 2022 itself in other words more important for existing are the things that you've done in the last 30 years maybe than the things that might or might not have happened in the last thousand um the the the in 2014 which was the time of the maidan which were major protests in Ukraine and in 2022 the obvious thing that one sees in Ukraine which one sees less of here and much less of in Russia is this mysterious Beast Civil Society so Civil Society is an old category and it can sound it can sound a bit abstract but what I mean by Civil Society is the is people leaning forward into forms of cooperation which have political consequences so the assumption that you're going to take responsibility along with other people for doing something important this was this has been hugely important during the war because it's not that the Ukrainian state is matched up against the Russian State it's that the Ukrainian State plus Ukrainian Civil Society is matched up against parts of the Russian State and by Civil Society I mean it's it's something if you everybody I know in Ukraine who's not in the armed forces spends a lot of time driving a van that's what you have to think of you have to think a bunch of people who figure out like where what is needed raise the money collect those things and then drive to that part of the front or drive to the city that was just bombed like when you're thinking when you're looking at the pictures of Kiev and you're asking yourself okay or any City Chutney you have any cities that have been bombed and you ask yourself okay how much is how do the ukrainians repair so much so quickly some of it's the state but a lot of it is that people come and try to help so I was in Chinese last month it's a this is an ancient city seventh century probably just north of Kiev it was bombed at the beginning of the war um and I was in villages and suburbs around it too and people's houses which had been shelled by the Russians as their obesity in the city are all very often partly repaired and why are they partly repaired it's because the neighbors came and they did the things that they knew how to do which is striking right also sometimes it's people from Kiev coming that's all that's meant by Civil Society it's like leaning forward to do the things that you can do so Ukraine exists you know you I can talk about history of people one but Ukraine exists because of experience because of Civil Society it also exists because of democracy democracy in the very simple sense of choosing rulers there was a longer tradition of this in Ukraine but the last 30 in the last 30 years ukrainians have successfully defended their basic right to choose their rulers their presidents at least by direct election which direct election is something that we don't have in the United States and it's unclear by the way that we'll be able to even to defend the kind of indirect election of presidents that we have that could fold in the next eight years or less so ukrainians have this like if you talk to ukrainians about democracy and again I'm happy to be corrected but the direct election of the president which has been defended over and over again has also being defended now I think is something very something very important and with that is the is the tradition of of the of of the peaceful exchange of power or the exchange of power this makes Ukraine very different from Russia where this has not happened that you lose an election you walk away and the next guy comes in when zielinski won the election the guy before him walked away and this very not that they like each other or that everything is entirely kosher and hunky-dory between them no but that you have a succession of power which actually works this has to do with national existence but most of all and this is something that struck me um with the president but pretty much with everybody that I that I talked to the last time I was in Ukraine I think Ukraine exists largely in a notion of Freedom which has to do with the future which I think is very important to democracy so look I've gotten back to the word in the title the future I think Ukraine largely exists because of the future when people talk about the war they're not just talking about something which has to end they're talking about something which got in the way of the future and when people talk about their notion of Freedom it isn't just freedom from the Russians like freedom from this terrible occupation it's also freedom to do like to realize the plans and projects that we had for the future that notion of Freedom which ins which insists that there is a future right that politics is fundamentally about the future I think that's one of the ways that that Ukraine actually exists now it's not something that you can point to it's not you know it's not it's not quote unquote objective in the way these other things are but I think that it's very important and it's now moving me towards this definition which I wanted to try to give of what it means to exist as a nation or what it might mean to exist as as a democracy um I think it has to I think I think a nation exists largely in a future or in a common conversation about what the future might be and this raises the question I'm going to turn things around a little bit this raises the question of whether Russia exists as in I mean so in in our sort of Baseline American you know Imperial framework that we fall back to when we're stressed Russia is of course a real country it's a great power didn't we have a cold war with Russia um we take for granted that I mean Ukraine we're not so sure but Russia that must be okay I'm not I'm not saying the Russian Federation doesn't exist as a state but as a nation I think that's really been called into question at least in the sense that I'm talking about the the president of Russia never talks about the future there is no vision of a Russian future the dominant political thinkers in Russia don't talk about the future they talk about a politics of us and them they talk about the past they talk about being a great power but they they don't talk about the future almost to the point of taboo and when one flips the the view a little bit and asks if Russia exists as a nation you then can ask to a related empirical questions and I'd be interested if anyone can think of answers to these but is there an example of a war thought in the name of a Nation where more members of that Nation have fled abroad in order not to fight in it that strikes me as really significant right um in early 2022 when you know late 2021 even early 2022 uh Ukrainian men were leaving their jobs around Europe whatever those jobs might have been and they were going to Ukraine on the assumption that they were going to have to fight when Russians have to fight when they're mobilized they leave the country right on a very large not all of them but on a very large scale does what does that say about the imagined future of a country right when something like that happens another empirical question and again I don't know so somebody can help me out but is there another situation where so quickly in a war a country has had to empty its prisons in order to take the convicts to the front and have them fight and die I can't think of another example like that that's what the Russian army in its defensive position in Ukraine right now the lines are made up of first prisoners second recently mobilized people and then what remains of the regular army is is the third line I can't think of very good precedence for that but those are things which call into question um the existence of Russia as as a nation and when I when I when I think about these arguments overall I'm drawn to the conclusion this now I'm shifting from existence to democracy that the the arguments for the existence of Russia very much depend upon the arguments for the non-existence of Ukraine right that it's in naming Ukraine is not existing that we prove that Russia does exist and if that's true that would be a very significant problem I think for Russia for the very basic reason that Ukraine does exist and is capable of Defending it's a it's its existence um but generally you see you know where I've gone with this which is that it's um it's if we think about the quote-unquote like objective factors like if we say oh like is there a language well sure there's a Russian language I mean does it have an ancient history well it claims to um you know then then we think well of course like Russia Russia exists but if we shift the definition of political existence to something else like the ability to think of a future right or the ability to take risks they're willingness to take risks then the existence starts to become I think a lot a lot hazier okay but the the point but okay but okay one important thing here that I forgot to say if I if my existence political existence is depends upon the denial of your existence there's a name for that kind of politics um that kind the name for that kind of politics is fascism fascism is a politics of of us and them where I Define my Us by defining who the them is Carl Schmidt the most intelligent political theorist of Nazism makes this very clear in his writings um politics begins with naming the enemy and that removes the very difficult question of saying who you are which is a difficult question because it turns out I I believe it's impossible to say who you are with these objective things that you can only say Who You Are by making some kind of commitment taking some kind of risk risking to advance some vision of the future right but you can skip all of that you can make it much easier on yourself if you just Define who the enemy is right so if Russia exists by virtue of negating the existence of its neighbor that is a politics of Us and Them which is a fascist politics okay but I don't mean for this to be all about Russia and Ukraine as I keep saying I actually mean for this to be deeply about us um I want to I want to I want to end by inquiring about um where we got things wrong or why our own what our own sense of the objective factors was such that art we could lose track of democracy in this country as I believe we have done um but also so that we could misanalyze Ukraine and and Russia and what I want to say here and this is the last argument what I want to say here is that the the moment 1991 when Russia and Ukraine became independent countries um when Russia by the way brought about the end of the Soviet Union there are lots of funny rumors about now about who brought about the end of the Soviet Union I was there at the time and it was American policy to keep the Soviet Union going it was it was it was Boris Yeltsin who brought about the end of the Soviet Union Russia took itself out of the Soviet Union and that's how the thing came to an end but that's just a parenthesis that 1991 the moment when Ukraine becomes independent country Russia becomes independent country is also the beginning of of our story that's my American hour an American story about objective factors an American story about how objective factors outside structures um abstract Concepts brought about democracy what are those Concepts what are those abstractions what are those structural factors the structural factors this is going to sound really familiar is the idea that there are no Alternatives right there are no Alternatives the world is just such that there are no alternatives to democracy and it's therefore it's the absence of other things which is going to lead to democracy Now imagine you're in a relationship and you say to the person you care about well you know what like I'm as good as it gets there are no alternatives like that relationship is not going to last very long right because the person you're talking to is going to find someone who has much better pickup lines than that so it's a little bit like with demo so with democracy if you say there are no Alternatives first of all it's obviously wrong there are plenty of alternatives it's worse than that when you say that there are no alternatives to democracy you are directly contradicting what democracy means when you say there are no Alternatives the structural factors are going to bring it about what you're saying is the people don't matter and if the people don't matter then it's not democracy it can't be democracy something which is brought to you cannot be democracy right it can't be they I mean because as we've all you know as you all very well understand talking to the young people now the structural factors don't work in your favor that's not how it goes at all democracy and freedom have to be worked against the structural factors you know with knowledge of what the structural factors are democracy and freedom have to be human undertakings best upon some based upon some kind of ethical commitment the moment that you say it's the structural factors you are you're you're you're losing the habit of struggle you're losing the Consciousness that any of this is a struggle and you're abandoning ethics because if you're saying the objective world as it is objectively brings democracy then you're abandoning the entire moral part of the world you're bending ethics entirely it's it's it's all gone so the structural factors it's it's it's not it's empirically wrong right so what were the structural factors the structural factors aside from Alternatives this other structural Factor was capitalism capitalism supposed to bring democracy but you know I'll make this very quick Russia's capitalist China's capitalists there are a lot of countries that are capitalist it's been a great Century for Capital is a bad Century for democracy happy to talk about the details but that's the way it basically looks um the idea that capitalism is going to bring democracy just like any structural factor is going to bring democracy means that it's not the people right and if and if you and and the structural factors then become the things which are which are sacred right now oh and finally if you think that the structural factors have to bring about democracy that there aren't any alternatives you lose the ability to think about alternative Futures good ones bad ones whatever if there's only one possible future capitalism brings democracy then you don't why you're going to be thinking about all the other possible Futures there's only there's only one and if you lose that capacity to think about multiple Futures then you lose the capacity of your Democratic person because a democratic person is someone who can Envision multiple possible Futures and try to make some of them real in in the world okay so I want to now just bring this up to the moment when this war starts uh so um in February of this year I'm going to make this personal because I think it works best that way in February of this year I did an interview for 60 minutes which for those of you under the age of 75 is a um is a television program which seems to still air I I have to I would actually it wasn't so I didn't I lost track myself um now I'm going to be now I'm never going to get another interview on 60 Minutes um so so I had I did an interview on 60 Minutes uh and the week before the war was going to start and they they asked me a bunch of questions but the thing they kept returning to because I wanted to hear me say it over and over again was is zelinski gonna flee and I said no he's not gonna flee and my analysis for what it was worth was I said he's a little guy he was used to staying up to big guys he's not going to flee he's going to stick um and um then much laughter ensued like they made me record it multiple times like to like get their laughter off the shot like much laughter ensued much mockery on social media than ensued that was a class at Yale um where one of my colleagues brought in Obama security advisors and Trump security advisors on the screens and he replayed this clip from 60 minutes and they were like you know professional enough not to laugh at me but they said you know Professor Snyder with all due respect your historical achievements and so on he's going to run he's going to run they all said he was going to run no exceptions no exceptions why was everyone so sure of that right I think I know why I mean like not to be too odd persona but you know it's because they would have all run um but but but to make it more to make a more structural point it's this if you think democracy is about the structural factors and the structural factors turn against you what are you going to do you're going to run because there's nothing in the world except those structural factors and writ large that is what has happened to us the structural factors have turned against us or maybe they were never really on our side in the first place and so then what do you do right then what do you do you adapt you normalize you just you just go along and when you know when an acute crisis appears as with as with Russia invading Ukraine it simply doesn't occur to people I mean I'm sure it would occur to some of you but it doesn't occur to people in general that you might actually do something right it doesn't occur to you that you might actually just stick because if you think it's all about all about structural factors locally well you know here's this russian-speaking guy you know in this country that Russia says is Russia and why would he why would he say anything else well because locally it's not about the structural factors and looking at it globally um well it's a smaller country facing a bigger country with what's supposed to be a much better Army how could he possibly stay all the larger factors say he should go but he didn't right he didn't and the fact that he didn't go right the fact that ukrainians chose to fought to fight reminds us of something essential about both social existence and democracy which is that it depends upon working against the larger conditions it depends upon injecting ethical commitments taking corporeal risk one little point about this um so a few days after that so obviously as you all know zielinski stayed the ukrainians fought and they're they're now defeating the Russian army um the uh which which pretty much no one thought was possible you know I've been comparing America and Russia a little bit and I'll just put make this final point the analysis in Washington was exactly the same as the analysis in Moscow everyone thought the ukrainians would be done in three days I was writing I was publishing articles in February about Ukraine and my friends who were connected said Tim start publishing this stuff because in three days you're gonna look like an idiot um right that was what people thought was the wisdom in both Washington and in Moscow three days and my view is that fundamentally we were neglecting the same thing right we were neglecting the sense in which Ukraine actually exists or the sense in which Ukraine is actually a democracy but the thing I wanted to add is about free speech so on campuses there's a lot of talk about Free Speech there's a lot of talk about free speech on campuses um I'm gonna give you an example what I think Free Speech actually is when a couple of days into the war zielinski comes out of the administrative building um it's the evening there are there are bombs are still falling on Kiev there are assassins in Kiev who are tasked to kill him personally he comes out of the building he takes out his phone and he and he and he and he says president suit the president is here right and then he goes to his crew and like they all they're all there right and why is that so important why like why is that well first of all he's telling the truth that's important but secondly he and he's denying Russian propaganda because the Russians had invaded and of course the thing they said is zielinski fled the government flood it's all over so he's denying Russian propaganda but there's something more fundamental here I think which is is essential to freedom of speech which is that it isn't just that you speak the truth it's that you speak the truth to power taking a risk right that's what freedom of speech is actually for the long argument for freedom of speech which begins with euripides says that freedom of speech is there to in order to speak truth to power taking bodily risk so yes you can come to campus and you can say obnoxious things and then when people criticize you can say it's my freedom of speech but that doesn't make you a defender of freedom of speech it just makes you a coward right you can take advantage of freedom of speech to say all kinds of crazy things to make people upset fine that doesn't make you a champion to the freedom of speech it makes you a consumer of the freedom of speech right what zelenski did was demonstrate what freedom of speech actually means um and it's a it's a it's a it's a minor example of the larger point of what I'm trying to say which is that if there's going to be democracy in the future that democracy is going to have to be defended not just in the practical sense that Ukraine is defending it but also in a kind of sense of moral commitment right where we say we want a democracy right I mean the reason that I'm fascinated by this is that no seriously is that if it's like I don't want to be over here right I don't want to be over here I want to be here talking to you like democracy really is falling apart in the United States it really is falling apart in the rest of the world um and we could spectate right we could spectate we could say the larger forces were with us now they're against us what can we do right or we can actually say we the P we want to rule right we want to rule it's better than other systems we we want to rule so Ukraine is defending democracy in the obvious senses it is it is an imperfect democracy it's defending itself against the Tyranny um it's uh it's resisting the precedent that Russia is setting about a tyranny attacking by force of democracy which is no small thing that hasn't happened very often recently um what happens in this war will set morale for authoritarians everywhere right in this country and around the world it will have it has major effects for example in China what happens in this in this war um but fundamentally and you gotten the point is that if if if if the ukrainians lose then what is being lost is this idea that you take risks right that democracy is a kind of ethical commitment and we will have missed our chance to notice this kind of thing that the people have to to have to want to rule um and that and that you know when rulers say that they represent which is a war that's a word that zelinski was obsessed with and kept returning to represent represent represent um that When leaders represent there it's not just the representing interests they're representing also what they think they're what they think their people is like what the people are how they exist what they what they actually mean so I think this war does have to be won not just for the future of democracy I think this war has to be won so that there can be a future right I think I think this war has to be one so that we will be able to see some kind of a future um and that's in a way like that's what this is all about the question I've tried to say you know does democracy of a future isn't just some kind of rhetorical throwaway the notion of democracy in the future are very very closely very very closely connected we have to recognize as a possibility that Ukraine will lose this war we have to recognize as a possibility that democracy will fail in this country which I think is a very proximate possibility we have to recognize those possibilities we also have to be able to see better possibilities Ukraine can and should win this war they will win it unless we let them down at this point right that is possible um it didn't seem possible to most people who mattered just a few months ago but now it's not only possible it's probable but it's only probable because people did things which it seemed like the structural factors would have prevented them from doing that's that's the basic lesson so democracy in the future are very closely connected to one another we have to not only to see that democracy is at risk and that bad and there could be there could be undesirable Futures we also have to be able to imagine the desirable ones um and I think Ukraine has done something to help us with all of that so I have taken a lot of time now um there's a you know there are like I have to catch a ferry before too awfully long but in the time between now and then I want to be able to answer your questions because you're going to ask me things I can't predict and I'm looking forward to what those things might be so thanks very much [Applause] foreign doesn't exist yes you you couldn't doesn't believe that the private people exist how what is the future of the former Soviet Republicans I think there is I think the question is absolutely Justified a few days ago the president of Tajikistan raised a kind of furora by suggesting that Tajikistan was a country that Russia should respect which of course was a notion that was found you know was greeted by wide surprise in the Russian media um and but um and and by the way that is also a result of this war that the fact that Ukraine has resisted Russia has made it easier for other people to assert their own sovereignty in various in various ways I think though there is a difference between the way that the specific Obsession that Mr Putin has with Ukraine he I I believe that I have this idea that like people who are cynical about everything are naive about one thing and I think he really is naive about Ukraine I think he has a kind of I think his views about Ukraine are childish um I think he really does believe that there's something special about this baptism in 988 by the Scandinavian warlord I I think he really does believe that um and I don't think he has that kind of mystical view about the former Soviet Union so I think he thinks the former Soviet Union are they're like Imperial Imperial objects of course but he doesn't have the same view which says like the Russian they're the same that we're the same people as them that's I think that's a specificity he has towards the ukrainians I want to make sure we hear from students too the relationships but with the relationship between them um you know democratic government and religion should be because of course the U.S we have a lot of like government relationships Etc but earlier this year um it was a lot of ban on the proportion but a ban on the law that said like a motion should be for everyone and whatever view you have on that it's definite that a lot of views come from religion and so I'm I I'm going to get to that but it reminded me of something which is really interesting about Russia and Ukraine so it just indulge me for a second um this whole idea that ukrainians are possessed it actually it rolls back for it rolls back to a form of Christian fascism so you know I'm not like everybody has fascism you know but this happens to be Christian fascism it's the the in which is at the end of it anti-semitic but the view is something like Russia is the only Power that's capable of restoring the innocence of the world and therefore anything Russians do along the anything Russians do including war and you know destruction doesn't matter is Justified because it's it's an act of restoration of the world and people don't understand the special Russian Mission they're possessed and so like the liberal West like the things that we think of like pluralism and ideas and facts and all that that's just actually possession and ukrainians thinking they're Ukrainian is also its possession and I raise this because that this is actually going on like this is actually a not insignificant factor in the Russian political conversation um but but the but the cues are not always picked up so when this guy gubarov talks about murdering millions of ukrainians because they're possessed that's not as far as the from the mainstream as one might wish that it were there was a lot more discussion in Russia about Satanism and how people are possessed by devils and therefore then the mom would really like to hear and and it's it's funny because it's religion but it's like it's by it's religion it's a kind of self-worship because it's by a bunch of people who never go to church and you know their version of their version of Christianity is you know hard to recognize um which leads me to your question I so I I believe in this I mean I think the separation of church and state is a very good idea and I think we're certainly run a big a great risk in this country where when we pack the Supreme Court with people who have obviously religious views which they are unable to defend in any kind of coherent way which is persuasive as jurisprudence which is where we are I mean we have we have a kind of special interest domination of the Supreme Court which makes the law on the kind of things that you're you're talking about so that's I mean that's that's where I see the problem we don't we the the places you know the Constitution is supposed to separate church and state but if you pick if you make the Guardians of the Constitution um in their majority of people who represent it's a long story about how big money came to capture much of the Supreme Court which I can't tell here but if you if you make the Supreme Court basically captured by special interests which hurt which hold quite I think very difficult to defend views on this issue then you end up where we are now okay thank you my name is my question would be the next speaking about the future of Russia news said that he wants a new world record I'm sitting who are Ukraine basically isn't the only goal of this we will definitely see World change you right certainly you're right absolutely they talk about geopolitical futures but um I would defend my view by saying that the the geopolitical part is a device to avoid talking about the future for Russians so Russia gets to be a great power forever is sort of the future but that version of the future means we're not going to talk to you about you know poverty in the countryside or you know massive corruption or any of the other things we're not going to talk to you about oligarchy the difficulties of starting a small business these things we're not going to talk about because we're going to talk about how we're a great power and there's going to be a so that's how that's how it's all connected I'm actually hopeful I mean as I said you know as I think the ukrainians are going to win and I think Imperial I think it's good I mean it's horrible there's a war but once there's a war on and it's Imperial in this Imperial War that's always a chance for the Imperial side to lose and uh and the Imperial side should lose um this is not this is not a situation where you can say war is terrible and so therefore like let's you know it doesn't matter who wins yeah war is terrible but the side who started it should lose and they should lose in a way which discourages them and people like them from fighting similar wars in the future so I can't say which way it's going to go but what I do think is that there is that a lot hangs on who wins if if the Russians win you know if the Russians had already won we'd be in a much darker place than we are right now and like this kind of talk that I just gave would be seem completely otherworldly um maybe it did anyway um but but it would seem insane basically um the fact that ukrainians fought and resisted means that we can have these conversations about what is democracy and so on the Russians had won we would all be in the mode of like oh well the authoritarians are better and they're more efficient and they're technocrats and so on and like we just have to yield um so a lot hangs on who wins but I'm I if the ukrainians win and a couple of other things happen which might happen I think we could be looking at a world where we'll look back at this and we'll say Okay that was the that was the last blush of like territorial Empire because in the law like in the I didn't talk much about history here I talked about the future and ethics and so on but in the long span of European history we're at the end of 500 years of Empire I think and historically speaking I think this is like one last try at an Imperial War and I think it would be good for the Russia just as it was good for the French and the Germans and the Portuguese and the Spanish and so on to lose Imperial to lose their Imperial War and that gives them a chance to try some other form of regime oh you want me you want me to choose okay I'm going to choose so please yeah see you in the in the jean jacket yeah but you are insane um so how do you think philosophical like kind of grand scale how do you think of making sure that the structure is there to enable democracy practitioner that's a brilliant brilliantly put question and I agree I agree 100 like because it's not that structures don't matter they do matter it's just not that the ones that happen to exist in 1991 or at any given point were on our side right so so it's democracy if democracy doesn't happen by itself which it doesn't then and freedom doesn't happen by itself but it doesn't that means that you have to have these this is this kind of ethical conversation which precedes the conversation about what kinds of structures you want to have so and and then here it wouldn't just be about the obvious things like we should have truly representative democracy and there shouldn't be money you know there shouldn't be money involved like that that stuff is kind of obvious but the deeper question is how then do you so you say insane but like how do you raise people who care about their own freedom and are capable of making value choices and thinking about Ethics in this way right so this is going to sound like a big jump but one of my preoccupations is early childhood development I knew that early childhood development is absolutely essential for democracy and like the things that we know about early childhood development if we if we applied them would make it much easier for people to be what you say less insane and more likely to be the kinds of people who could take part in conversations about about multiple Futures so I can give you a bunch of other examples but like I take the premises being absolutely correct it's not just that any old structure is bad it's that if you want democracy you have to think about what are the structures which actually make it more likely um this is like this is what my problem with the American conversation about freedom in general like we think that freedom is just like get off my back that's not Freedom like Freedom means being the kind of person who can evaluate various different kinds of choices and apply different kinds of Ethics to them and make and then having made choices change the future and so on right that's not so easy but it requires then thinking about okay what kind of child rearing do you need for that and what kind of schools do you need for that and do you need clean water for that and you have to get rid of poverty for that right there lot of things you have to do to get to that point where you can really talk about Freedom seriously so I appreciate the question um I'm going to go uh you please yeah uh there was a peace deal that Russia would go back to his February borders I trade would enjoying it up some kind of recognition dumbass how do you feel about this deal and how do you feel about the U.S and UK's involvement in the museums and that America it would not back up uh I mean you're talking about particulars that I don't have anymore porn yeah yeah yeah yeah no I follow but I'm yeah so I'll tell you my basic view is that um my basic view is that the ukrainians are fighting this war and the Amer the Americans are in the nice position of being a supply line and the ukrainians are now doing all kinds of things that are really important for the Americans but you know what we're doing for them is actually quite minimal and it's pretty important to keep that in mind like the you know the weapons is you know the weapons that we're giving them doesn't make any difference to us that we're giving them it doesn't change anything right and what they're doing with the weapons is they're changing not only um the balance of power in Europe but they're also making it much less likely that China is going to make a play for Taiwan you know so the ukrainians are doing a lot for the Americans and like as Americans our first move is to always say like we're doing a lot for you like that's like that's like breathing for us basically but in this case the ukrainians are doing a lot for and I kind of fear that we don't really recognize even how much they're doing for us like we like they're not like for what we're giving them from our defense budget is honestly it's like a rounding error our defense budget is almost a trillion you know it's 800 billion dollars a year what we're going to be the ukrainians like if our defense budget were bigger or smaller by that amount we wouldn't even really notice honestly so my my basic idea here is that the ukrainians are the ones who were attacked the ukrainians are the ones who are fighting this war and the ukrainians are the ones who are going to negotiate um and they'll negotiate you know they'll negotiate what they negotiate when they negotiate it I don't believe that there's any way to end this war so I like I would like this war to end you know I did I would like this war to end but I don't think it can end in any other way than the ukrainians winning it I think that if you like if you try to go for some kind of Middle Ground then you're just going to be replaying the whole scenario again before very long and maybe not just on the skill of Ukraine so my you know Mike I'm not going to comment on like on particular things my basic sense is that the ukrainians want to win and we should be doing and that would be the best outcome for everybody and as I said in response to your question also for Russia it'll be really good for right I mean we have this we have this weird we have this like weird attendance you say well what about Putin's feelings um you know like when like maybe Putin's going to fall from power and I think like that's such a strange thing to care about you know like what like of all the things in the world like a guy who has 60 billion dollars and he's been running the country for 20 you know 20 years like I I got undergraduates with real problems you know like he's going to fall from power I don't care and like but more importantly they always fall from they always fall from power so I think the way that I see this is that we should let this we should let the ukrainians win and or help them to win as quickly as possible and then there will be negotiations which will be of a much simpler character I think for the Russians it would be best if all the Russian troops got out of Ukraine I think that would be a fresh start for them I think it would be a very good thing for them I think the you you know the Ukraine allows Russia to be imperialist and without occupying Ukraine Russia will not be imperialists I think that will give Russia a fresh start so I I realize I'm not commenting on a particular deal I'm just like revealing my own like what I think about this what do I think about this in general which is that I think the way for this for this war to end is for us to recognize just how much agency the ukrainians have in it just how much they have suffered just how reasonable it is for them to think they should try to win if they reach the conclusion that they can't win in the sense that that we this like you might have noticed about a lot of my talk was about like latent imperialism you know and and a lot of it is also then about like listening to ukrainians themselves on these things and my view is that if they decide they can't go any further then okay then let them negotiate with the Russians but that is really not where they are right now like they're they're you know it's not just the lenski has 90 approval ratings it's also that roughly 90 of ukrainians think they're going to win back every bit of Ukrainian territory not just win the war but all of it right like maybe they'll be wrong but I've noticed that so far in this war they've tended to be right and we've tended to be wrong so you know let's let's let's let's wait and see but I don't think we should be pushing the ukrainians to do the things I mean to do the things which um which they don't which they don't want to do while they're fighting a war on their own territory I think if they reach the conclusion that it's gone on long enough and this actually has to do with democracy in a funny way like zielinski the Democratic elected president it's quite clear that he thinks that he's representing his people and fighting the war the way he's fighting it if he sees his people taking a different view I think he'll also take a different view but I think like the war itself has to play out so and then and see what the Ukrainian what view the Ukrainian people actually take so I'm like closing on I'm closing on kind of the theme that I led with which was the Democratic the Democratic theme it's um I think you know the the the the record of the war shows thus far that the people who from far away tried to pick the conditions on which Ukrainian is going to Ukraine is going to survive have not done very well and then the people who are actually fighting the war much to our surprise have generally done pretty well at predicting what was going to happen next like back I talked about the 60 Minutes things but back in the back in the early summer I was saying there's going to be an offensive in herzon and an offensive in hariki and they're going to win and that's what I think still but that was not like in again like back in April nobody thought that was going to be true either right so I think and I'll just close with one more thought because we're out of time there's a weird way in which people on the left don't believe in winning anymore and I think that's kind of unfortunate um because there's like there are times when you really have to win like they were taught like and I'm speaking of course about America too right there are times when you have to win like there are times when it's not enough to be on the right side like they're and are and I can say this from like first person knowledge the American approach to this war was not that we're the ukrainians had a chance to win the American Approach at the beginning was we want to be on the right side and then it moves to well maybe we can help them in negotiations um and it's been it's only very recently that it's dawned on people in positions of responsibility United States that Ukraine might actually win the war only only very only very recently but this category of winning I think it's unfortunate that Trump has kind of taken it away like it's unfortunate that that we don't like people don't think that we can win because sometimes you just sometimes you actually have to win um so I'm gonna I'm Gonna Leave You I'm Gonna Leave You with that thought thanks foreign

Channel: The Humanities Institute at Stony Brook University

Views: 70,892

Keywords:

Id: 5TURs7rk2Jc

Length: 77min 4sec (4624 seconds)

Published: Wed Dec 07 2022