Is America's National Defense of Ukraine Vital? | Michael Anton vs. Noah Rothman

roof and I'd like to welcome you all to tonight's debate this debate is sponsored by the Diana Diana Davis Spencer foundation and it's the last debate in isi's annual great ideas debate series I'd like to thank the Diana Davis Spencer foundation for their generosity and making our debate series possible and for helping restore a culture of rigorous debate on college campuses we are excited to be finishing our debate Series this year here tonight after another successful year of bringing debates to campuses across the country focused on some of the most pressing issues in America today and tied to the deepest commitments and principles that have sustained our civilization and when universities have forgotten these things by committing to radical theories that divorce us from our history and traditions it's so essential to restore and participate in forums like these so thank you for being here isi for the last 70 years has been educating for Liberty through our various offerings of debates like these seminars which we've hosted in the past year here at UT oncampus lectures sponsorship of Campus groups and our various National programs if you would like to become more involved with isi and help us restore the principles of virtue and freedom and ordered Liberty in America and on our college campuses come see me after after the debate or visit our website at ii. org and I'd also like to take a quick moment to thank our partners at The civitas Institute who have done a lot of the work tonight to make it possible for you all to be here the civitas Institute is a community of Scholars dedicated to the principles that enable a free Society to flourish like isi cass's core values are constitutionalism individual rights and free enterprise and we at isi are proud to be co-sponsoring this event with them and I'm told that the feeling is mutual and if you're local to the area I highly encourage you to get more involved with civitas Institute a quick note on the order of operation for tonight each speaker will have seven minutes for opening remarks first from Noah Rothman and Then followed by Michael Anon and then Dan McCarthy will lead a moderated discussion and Crossfire for about 30 minutes and then we'll get to your questions uh in the audience uh Dan will remind you of this I'm sure but I'll say it now don't give a statement as a question uh keep your questions short make sure there's a question mark at the end of it so we can get to as many as possible and then at the end each speaker will have a 5 minute closing statement uh which will then be followed by voting and for those of you who signed up at the isi website there is a QR code that will go to your email um whether you're watching at home virtually or here in person um and if you need the QR code or you don't get it in your email it's in the back um when you come in so you can scan it on your phone and fill out your vote cast your vote before you leave tonight uh um and with that without further Ado I'll will introduce the speakers and then turn it over to them arguing in the affirmative tonight is Noah Rothman who's a senior writer at National Review he's the author of two books first the rise of the new Puritans fighting back against the progressives war on fun and unjust social justice and the unmaking of America arguing in the negative Michael Anton as a lectur and research fellow at Hillsdale College a senior fellow at the Claremont Institute and a former National Security official in the Trump Administration he is also the author of The well-known Flight 93 election which helped make the then candidate Trump a more intellectually respectable candidate as well as author of the stakes America at the point of no return and our moderator moderator tonight is my colleague Daniel McCarthy who is the vice president for the Collegiate Network at isi and editor of isi's Journal Modern Age which has a new website modern AG journal.com which features more daily content there are also copies of modern ages recent print edition at our table out in the back in the back when you walked in and Dan welcomes you to take a copy home with you tonight and with that I will turn it over to these three gentlemen who will lead us in our debate I hope you enjoy thank you very much shall I begin I'll begin thank you very much to uh civitas and isi for hosting us Dan for moderating and Michael for sparring with me today at the risk of being a cliche I'm going to begin with a brief quote from Ronald Reagan's 1985 State of the Union Address we must stand by our Democratic allies and we must not break Faith with those who are risking their lives to defy Soviet supported aggression and secure the rights which have been Ours from birth the United States must rebuild its credibility and its commitment to a Soviet encroachment on us interests and those of our allies and Friends Soviet Union may be gone but Russia's interest in subsuming its Partners rather its neighbors into an imperial Covenant is not gone this appeared this quote seemed axiomatic to me in 20082 200920 when I was getting a graduate degree in international relations with a focus on the post-soviet space and security policy this is right after George Russia had invaded Georgia carved up portions of that Country and uh created little foms which were functionally part of the Russian uh Imperial design and I was in my graduate program and I was arguing at that point for something approaching something resembling a containment strategy for the modern Russia and I was getting looks for my professors as though I was a crazy person this quite obviously had nothing to do with Russian imperial Ambitions this is at the height of the Obama era R Russian reset policy where we were sacrificing obligations to for example the Czech Republic in Poland in exchange for nothing at all uh and it seemed to me that it was necessary to uh contain obviously Russian aggression and my professors informed me my in my uh naive that Russian aggression was purely a species of a reaction to George W Bush's cowboy hat unilateralism it was quite obvious to them that Russia was doing nothing other than following the precedents that America had said now this rang true to me uh I'd been in conservative media for some time this remark s sounded to me like a kind of familiar Progressive chauvinism a belief that the United States is the author and the Arbiter of all bad things that happen abroad and it's a sort of thing I was used to hearing from progressives and I increasingly hear it today from the populist right uh Russia's war in Ukraine did not begin in 2022 did not begin in 2014 when Russia invaded Crimea and deniably in the donbass following the pro-russian president at the time effort to um ignore the uh the uh efforts by the dbass the parliament at the time to integrate the country into the European economic sector it began in 2004 and 2005 when Russia began a campaign of uh covert operations and economic Warfare and energy Warfare designed to destabilize the state did not um did not stop at Ukraine's borders indeed um Russia had been engaged in pretty aggressive cyber attacks in places like Estonia and even in 2014 when they invaded Crimea Russia that same year uh inaugurated a rather Brazen cross border uh campaign in which it used radar jamming technology and smoke signals or smoke grenades rather and infiltrated the Border captured a Border guard brought him back to Moscow and put him on trial because Moscow has not ever observed this bright red line that supposedly delineates NATO allies and those states that are on the periphery that we have ignored today there is a lot of consternation over what Ukraine's war aims are and that the idea that they are no longer achievable but we should focus in as as much on Russia's War aims uh and we do not at the risk I think of a coherent strategy the notion here is that the only obstacle to a negotiated settlement of this conflict or continued stalemate even on the battlefield is Ukraine's will to resist and I don't see any evidence of that in Russia's conduct Moscow seems to have as its objective drawing going as far into Ukraine into towards the nepro and even towards NATO's borders as it can and the prospect of Ukrainian collapse is something we should be very concerned about the idea that NATO's allies on the frontier and the periphery would simply accept that strikes me as fanciful I think there would be a panic the like of which we probably have not seen and the the threat is that Moscow gets close enough or Engineers the prospects of something like a failed state in Ukraine that our NATO allies in Bulgaria and Romania and Poland and Hungary and the Bal States would simply not accept indeed we might see something like an Insurgency in what would appear to from the outside to be a failed State and you can look it up in the New York Times prior to Russia's invasion in 2022 this was the Biden administration's plan according to the New York Times reporting they were lobbying the government in keev which they expected to fall very quickly to open up the arm stocks just let the civilians have at it and create some sort of an Insurgency inside Ukraine this strike me is absolutely mad because I don't believe that the states that remember Soviet domination would accept something like a failed State on their borders that Prospect introduces infinite more complexity to this conflict far more chance for a configration that we cannot manage and ties down America's assets and resources in Europe at the request of our allies uh and prevents us from having the kind of freedom of movement uh that we would need to navigate the 21st centuries uh growing conflicts there's a reason why a lot of our allies in the Pacific Soul Tokyo uh taipe are all lobbying very hard for us to continue to support Ukraine the world's land hungry dictators are watching this conflict very closely and they're taking their cues the idea that we will have more security if we abandon Ukraine strikes me as fanciful it will tie us down there even more it will introduce more chances and more opportunities for dictators across the world to seek out their advantages at our expense and it will make us more tied more tethered to European security not less the costs of this conflict and our support for it are very high but the prospect of failure introduces the Notions of the idea that we would have to commit even more resources and those costs May in fact be unbearable keep sure because I I don't know if I went over no it's fine all right uh I have four points to make let's see if I can get through all four I need to at least get through the first three I think they're important um if we back up just from Ukraine for a second what we're really talking about at a macro level is something you'll hear referred to as the liberal International order or perhaps the rules based International order what do people mean when they say this what they specifically mean typically is this set of Institutions constructs mental constructs but also actual institutions like the World Trade Organization in in embryo anyway the United Nations born specifically in 1944 NATO established in 1949 that were built more or less during this 1945 to 1950 period as a response to a completely new world order that the world had not seen before the so-called bipolar World Order and as a US response uh to the potential for Soviet aggression which was what everyone feared at the time okay now the Lio we are told is wonderful because it succeeded it bound the transatlantic Alliance together it actually welcomed countries outside the transatlantic Alliance into into it it upheld Decades of peace and relative Prosperity it eventually won the Cold War all right and from this success we are told this is where I get a little skeptical that everything great about the Lio should we just need to kind of double and triple down and keep all of it going because what worked in one context Works in another but what we had in the that 45 to 50 period and then in the we could take this all the way to 1989 or 1992 whatever date you want to give for the end of the Cold War was an extraordinary emergency that no longer pertains today right the Reagan quote was 1985 let's think back to 1985 for a second Soviet Union was a lot more dangerous than whatever Russia can conceivably do to us today and also 1985 is just two years after the most dangerous year of the Cold War the most dangerous three months of the Cold War uh September October November 1983 since the Cuban Missile Crisis of October 1962 my only Point here is that times have changed I'm not here to condemn the liberal International order I feel about it sort of the way I feel about the Republican party if it's coming to the end of its natural life it deserves a dignified death I'm not saying euthanize it just let it pass out of the world I'll go to the funeral if I'm asked to speak I'll say nice things about it I won't get up at the podium and denounce it but it's time has sort of been here and it's maybe time for it to go if it is time for it to go second of all I don't think it's in our interest it was clearly in our interest to do what we did in the 45 to 50 period and then in the decades thereafter I don't think it's necessarily in the United States interest could be as active in the world as we are today or as those who run American foreign policy in both parties would like us to be right I think we have gotten overextended we are gotten involved in places that are peripheral to us interests overcommit in these places and underd deliver and at a tremendous opportunity cost for things that really matter both domestically and internationally and third I think even if you could convince me hard to do but maybe it's possible I try to keep an open mind that this all isn't our interest I don't think we're capable of doing it anyway right if you look at what's going on in the United States right we've got a lot of Big Time domestic problems we got a lot of Big Time International problems look at what's going on just in the Navy right now right just just last week the Navy I'm going to get the details wrong so I'm sure since this will be live stream someone will correct it and say that I'm an idiot that's fine I accept it I'm an idiot but what what I know that one ship was dispatched to go to the Middle East and before it got a couple hundred nautical miles it had an engine room and had to turn around and go back right and I don't mean to bash the Navy I grew up around the Navy I love the Navy this is why I follow the Navy and pay attention to what's going on is they've been not performing at the level that they should be it's sort of like if you follow what's going on with you know let's just say pick one oh Boeing um some of the other airlines right this is endemic to our society and the as our capabilities erode we seem to have our appetite for intervening and doing stuff gets greater so I think even if you could convince me or anyone or for all of us this is absolutely in our national interest it's like saying well it's in our national interest to you know for every um 15-year-old boy to bench press 500 pounds okay how are you g to get there how are you gon to put the muscle on all those kids to make them do it we don't have a plan for that in fact our capabilities are degrading they're not increasing and if I have time just to address Russia specifically right uh we can go into this at length and and I'm sure we will the problem talking about this and I've experienced this so I I know from firsthand experiences if you say anything anything whatsoever that casts any doubt or just speculatively wonders about another possible interpretation of events one will immediately be called a Putin stooge of this of that or the other thing in League with him an authoritarian or whatever it's very difficult to talk about because the climate of um the intellectual climate the rhetorical climate surrounding this issue is is is is very very very clouded there's no question Putin invaded Ukraine's Sovereign territory in 2022 and he shouldn't have done that and he should be blamed for it there's no question about it but if we're going to go backward we can go back to 2014 we can we can go we can go back further than Noah did right we can go back to promises allegedly given at the end of the Cold War there's still some debate about this what promises were actually made to Russia what weren't we can go back to the redrawing of the map during the kushev era of the Soviet Union that included in the Ukraine SSR territory iies which had never been part of the historical conception of Ukraine going back to you know the the 9th century ad now I'm sure someone Pro Russia would say Anton is repeating Putin's talking points well you know just because Putin said it doesn't mean all of it's wrong some of the points that he's bringing up are valid and actually historically accurate not every single one of them but some of them are but this leads me to sort of my my most important Point here is that what's going well two what's going on over there first of all it's really complicated and there's an 1100 or so year history between these two people's countries civilizations Etc that we Americans don't really understand but we're asked to intervene and take a side as if it's cut and dried and it's just obvious who's right and who's wrong and where Justice and morality Lies when I would submit to you humbly that the foreign policy establishment really doesn't fully understand what it's doing or what it's gotten into or what it's trying to get America further into um and finally this may be the most controversial thing I'll say all night because it sounds callous but I don't see a Core US interest over there I have sympathy for the Ukrainian people I have sympathy for everyone who has suffered in this war as I have sympathy for everybody who suffers pretty much in any War right it's it's terrible it's awful if you think you think about the scale of the destruction it took the United States 10 years to lose 58 ,000 soldiers in Vietnam I'm sure all of the casualty numbers that have come out of either Moscow or Kev are fake in some way or another but the low estimates on the Russian side the low estimates are 100,000 dead in two years on the Ukrainian side it could be as high as 75,000 it could be less it's harder it's much there's many more civilian casualties obviously on the Ukrainian side than there are on the Russian side but the scale of this destruction is unbelievable and I don't mean to minimize that or not have sympathy for it but if sympathy is going to be the um criteria I mean there's all kinds of conflicts there's all kinds of struggles going on everywhere in the world the United States should or should not intervene in these kinds of things based on a calculation of interest and whether you're not you I I don't believe there's a core United States interest at stake there okay you can disagree with that but here's a point that it's really hard to disagree with that I think is just axiomatic whatever our perceived interest there the Russians perceive their interest there is about 10x 100x a THX ours and whenever you get in that's that that's just conceptually an asymmetric conflict right it's more important to them by a factor of a lot they're M they're much more willing to put a national effort into it than we are and stay the course and it's always in mistake to take an adversary to the wall over something that that adversary in particular thinks is a vital organ absolutely Poe to his being and that's peripheral to you and that's what I think we're at risk of doing in Russia over Ukraine right now and I think it's it's a mistake of an elementary mistake of statecraft so I'm going to ask each of you to expand on something that you said during your remarks uh just in order to flesh out uh your vision of US foreign policy especially as it relates to the Russia Ukraine conflict I want to begin by asking Noah and I'll kind of combine uh the uh remarks that Noah made at the start of his comments with what the point that Michael ended on um Noah you pointed out that Russia has uh it's a bad neighbor the very least it is a country which has you know a history of um bullying and you know dominating uh any number of states around its borders and um the United States obviously finds that to be reprehensible Behavior Michael is questioning whether this is really in our national interest however to take a direct hand in stopping this my question for you is what is the US national interest is the does the US have a sort of general interest in being Anti-Imperialist towards any power in the world that may be aggressive or is Russia some kind of special case I would say our foremost interest in supporting Ukraine's sovereignty and its desire to defend itself against aggression not just being a bad neighbor um which I understand is you know a euphemistic way of saying murdering people in Mass uh separating families truck you Trucking off children into the Russia to be uh re-educated we shouldn't deny the moral case although I don't know that I don't say that we should predicate American intervention on the moral case moral cases move story Ries which move armies it's not something we should see to our adversaries nevertheless a very dispassionate perfectly uh you know rational assessment of American national interests I believe in this case has everything to do with Alliance structure American Alliance structure especially the Atlantic Alliance particularly robust one of the most longest live defensive alliances in the history of the planet and it serves our interests quite well and the same logic that would sacrifice that conflict and that Alliance structure can be applied anywhere else in the world we if we're going to say well Russia has a vastly more interest in in subsuming Ukraine into the Imperial structure what does that say about China and Taiwan does that say about Israel Egypt and Jordan I mean you could say half a dozen other countries have a better interest in these countries in their na in their neighborhoods just because they happen to have some proximity that doesn't mean we have no interest there we have a profound interest in preventing the establishment of inviolable spheres of influence the sort of thing that existed pre World War II that we don't want to see return turn that would choke off waterways that would make Commerce more difficult that would increase the necessity of our defense spending and increase the necessity of our support for remaining allies the Allies the alliance structure in Europe is applicable in the Pacific Too part because we're talking about the same countries France England the Dutch these are Pacific allies as much as they are European allies and then we have a profound interest not just in those that you know Naval powers in the Pacific but also in states like Poland for for example which is a profoundly valuable Ally not just in terms of uh its uh diplomatic and economic power it's rapidly becoming one of the biggest economic powers in Europe but it's military power there's some estimates that uh you know there's this 2 per of the GDP threshold that you're supposed to meet as a NATO Ally and quite a lot of the European powers do not meet them but most of them on the periphery do including Poland which by some estimates underestimates the amount of GDP it contributes to G to to defense because it doesn't want to scare everybody it has really been putting a lot of energy and effort into creating a world-class military not because it wants to make us happy because it desperately fears the prospect of Russian domination it's in our interests to support that its independence because this Independence uh advances our interests and our broader Alliance structure and if we see that crumble in Europe I don't know how that strengthens it in the Pacific or in the Middle East or elsewhere Global hegemony means just that Global hegemony a challenge to American Supremacy abroad anywhere as a challenge to it everywhere and yes that makes people very uncomfortable who believe that American hegemony is not is not something that advances American interests but I would challenge you and look at the history of this planet prior to 1991 and look at the prosperity and relative security that we have lived in since and I would challenge you to to to explain to me why the status qu anti in the Cold War and the 20th century was better than what we've lived under in the last 25 years well that tees up very nicely the question I wanted to put to Michael which is you've talked about the demise of the liberal International order um are you concerned about what's going to replace that order uh could it not be something far worse of course it could but we have to deal with the world as we find it there's no there's no going back to the heady days of let's say the 50s and 60s when America was an unquestioned or even 1945 when America was the unquestioned global power right the Chinese are here to stay I don't mean that just as a civilization obviously it's a multi- year old civilization I mean as a great power with a strong economy with sophisticated technology and a really powerful military that fact alone makes it impossible for the United States to exert the hegemony that it used to exert and that many people today would like to see it continue to try to exert um Russia is obviously a completely different case a far smaller country far smaller economy but the uh the extent of territory the oil and gas reserves the cultural diplom IC influence over uh Eastern Slavs and all the Orthodox who look to M the patriarch of Moscow and just the nuclear Arsenal alone plus the alliance Network Alliance is maybe a little too generous a word but the influence Network it's managed to build over the last 20 years make Russia a force to be contended with that will prevent and and then the more these countries tie themselves together and cooperate with one another I'll give you an example of how we have really screwed this up badly I think um some of the the what the United States likes to do is use various uh levers within the inter so the the liberal L International order part of the conceit of it all along was we're going to build these institutions and they're going to be neutral and they're going to treat everybody fairly so everybody can come in you can trust them and that used to be basically true the United States didn't use its influence Within These U organizations to score political points in the moment it it used them in a kind of neutral way or LED them in a kind of neutral way they're like these are umpires you're going to get a fair deal well lately we've not been behaving that way we you know we uh just going back to some of the sanctions that we uh put on the Russians but also excluding them from Swift just one example this is a it's a banking organization that clears Financial transactions stuff like that supposed to be administered neutrally well the dream of Russia and China for the last 20 years at least has been can we create something parallel to the American internet liberal International order and they've had or at least the financial order and they've had trouble doing it because they can't find anybody who wants to be in their club right and they can't really find anybody who trusts them but when other countries see us my my colleague um Christopher calwell put it this way I'll get the quote wrong but it's it'll be close enough he said something like the United States suddenly began using this power like a blind drunk right in 2022 in ways that it had not before and it starts scaring other countries and now and driving them into the arms of this wished for would be Russia or you know Moscow Beijing access to create create a parallel order that would exclude the US and its allies right what that's counterproductive why why are we doing that right if we want to maintain the Lio for as long as possible and I'm not predicting it's imminent demise all I said was if I got invited in the funeral I would go if I was asked to speak I'd say nice things um I do think it's decaying but if you're going to keep it alive for as long as possible you wouldn't behave the way that we're behave I don't think well that raises a good question for Noah does uh the American public have the will to sustain the liberal International order especially after the experiences the country has had with Iraq and Afghanistan well I think they do um I I do see the signs that there's something of a Vietnam syndrome accompanying anything that has to do with Iraq you mention Iraq and you get a visceral reaction um but the notion that the American people uh don't have that where they don't have the wherewithal to follow through with uh America's commitments is I think in fact a product or at least contributed to by the utter lack of confidence in the voting public that are political leaders have in us they do trust us to to endure and support conflicts for very long they believe that we will do as we have over the last 70 years get tired and just kind of go home and give up on our allies and sacrifice them to the Wolves at their door we did it in Afghanistan did it in Vietnam he did it to the Kurds and it's pretty reliable uh trait but it has less to do I think with voting public than it does with our leadership which just doesn't have the stomach to make the case for the liberal International order or even on a narrower scope for just the uh the tailored conflicts that we are supporting not you know Prosecuting supporting abroad from individuals country countries and members of those states that want to defend themselves and aspire to join the Li International order you know part of the problem that countries like Russia and North Korea and China and Iran are experiencing is that they're terrible countries the model that they're presenting to the world is not one that a lot of Nations aspire to part of the reason why they have to subsume these countries into it by force is because they experience a lot of resistance to that they're not creating a model to which people want to join naturally um our advantage is that the liberal Democratic order is in ideal to which most of the planet still aspires to uh that is a natural advantage that we can exploit and support and just because the American public gets weary and I think frankly less weary than their leaders do is no reason to abandon the geopolitical mission to which the United States has been blessedly bequeathed as the leader of a free uh a free liberal Democratic uh status quo that is that is the world over the the better model just by virtue of the number of nations that aspire to membership in it so Michael Noah has pointed to the risks to our alliance structure that is posed by what's happening in Ukraine that if Ukraine is defeated this is going to you know first of all create conditions of instability uh in Europe itself it's going to send a signal perhaps to the entire world that uh the liberal International order that we have created an Alli structure to defend is uh uh no longer something that we are willing to invest the resources in to save um are you worried about what's going to happen to our alliance structures L less because we pointedly did not make Ukraine an ally and one of the reasons why we have this conflict now is the United States's on again off again ambiguity are we you know we're not going to formally offer you NATO membership but we're going to constantly hint that it's coming around the corner soon Russians would object there had been times in the past when the United States at least internally uh you know you can you can find sure everybody's seen this right if not look it up you can find the current head of the CIA back when he was the number three at the state department Bill Burns um writing that the NATO membership for Ukraine is a red line to Moscow and we should stay away from it it's it's you know it doesn't get us much and it only antagonizes them and that's that's just been jammed down the memory hole and you're supposed to forget that one of the most stalwart uh you know officials in the B Biden Administration right now once said a thing that is now only attributed to Putin stes right um so I don't it doesn't make sense I mean I know that I know that Noah is partly right some people will interpret it this way but it they shouldn't right if I make a commitment to you and I break it okay that's one thing that should worry everybody else to whom I have made similar commitments if I didn't make a commitment to you then I didn't break anything we didn't we don't have an alliance with Ukraine we didn't admit Ukraine to Nato you might argue that we should have I would argue the opposite we should not have but it should be fairly clear to the core members of in our alliance structure you know what the difference is I I just want to say that Michael's absolutely right about that and I would say that it's I'm going to command Deere it as a point from for me because um it is absolutely true that we had a map Ascension process for States like Georgia and Ukraine in 2005 it stalled out in Bucharest in 2008 they said you know Ascension is sort of a thing that you're going to do you're going to get it eventually but you got to work on this corruption internally and until then you're not going to ascend it was stalled out virtually indefinitely there really is a correlation there I think between the Bucharest Summit in April of 2008 and the Georgia invasion in August of 2008 um I think you can draw a pretty clear line there because of these mixed signals that we were sending these these memb states or as you know aspiring member states and by being wishy-washy on that um we have given green lights to our adversaries to say okay well I have a window to act and that window isn't going to be open very much longer so it sounds like your solution would be to say firmly that we're going to admit all these countries rapidly that meet them the criteria yes and I'll give you one example of why that is successful um Montenegro which ascended to Nato membership under the Trump Administration along with North North Macedonia um which was subject to a russian-led coup violent coup uh during the accession process and afterwards Russia backed off why because it does observe NATO as a threat now it tests the boundaries it's the the the big threat the biggest concern I have is not that Russia will execute some sort of full the Gap style invasion of of of Russia is that it will engineer a crisis in the swalsky gap or in in uh Estonia that would uh compel NATO members to lean into article four even Article Five and then we get the are we going to die for Danzig debate do we really want to confront this nuclear power just for tiny Talen at which point the NATO membership functionally collapses if the Mutual Security guarantees are not worth the paper they're written on then neither is the alliance and the Atlantic Alliance subsequently collaps whether it continues to exist or not it's a paper tiger and that's my biggest concern well I'm GNA turn just as you took mine and used it against me I'm going to turn your point against you the dumbest thing we can do it seems to me is to make formal promises that we we know or ought to know we can't keep I'm not going to name any names here because that'll just get me in even much more trouble but I believe the United States has done that in certain parts of the world World we've said all right we will guarantee X or Y or Z when you look at the capabilities array on both sides of a potential crisis here and everybody knows or should know we can't do it we can't we would either try and fail okay or we would look at it when the crisis came if the crisis came and we would have to say h sorry you're on your own and then those consequences would follow I agree with that but who would really be at fall I would I would say at least 50% of the blame maybe 51% of the blame at a would be on the people who made the promise in the first place who should have done let's talk about that question of capabilities so uh Noah do you see any risk of America being stretched too thin by investing very strongly right now in Ukraine potentially having to invest as much or more in Taiwan if there's a conflict that breaks out there in the near future uh there are any number of hotpots around the world including the Middle East of course where us resources should you know are being called upon to be deployed and um it seems like that's a lot to do Michael has expressed some skepticism as to whether we have perhaps the arms the industrial capability the resources to meet uh all of these needs are you concerned about that or do you think that you know we have the ability to uh rebuild these kinds of structures well yeah I the answer to your question is in the question itself yes I am concerned about our resource deficiency and the remedy to that is to build up our resources to contribute to the defense industrial base which is part of the reason why we have the legislation on the table that we're discussing right now uh to rebuild the defense industrial base and provide um for example Ukraine and Taiwan with the ordinance they need to defend themselves and defend ourselves if we are struggling to provide our allies in Korea Taiwan Ukraine with artillery shells what does it say about us it's not like we won't need these things it seems like that should be a blinking red light for us to commit to redevelop the defense industrial capacity and by the way just because we haven't appropriated these funds to right now doesn't mean the logic of the demand side of the economy isn't taking hold uh companies like Boeing and Lockheed are investing speculatively in the development of big facilities in order to meet the increasing Demand by a deteriorating threat environment as you would expect on spec because they fully expect to be remunerated U by virtue of the fact that these conflicts are not going away and the right to do so likewise the bill on uh that we're looking at now invests heavily in the submarine uh submarine defense infrastructure and we need that in part because 40% of our attack submarines right now are in dock they're they're not in in the field because boats are really difficult to maintain Michael's right about our our Navy preparedness Navy preparedness is something that should keep everybody up at night um the the delays in getting for example our new frigate classes into blue water is something that is very disheartening but the answer to that is not to say well I guess we just can't do it it's to do it Michael you've become a supporter of industrial policy do you see uh support for Ukraine and other conflicts uh being something that can help rebuild America's uh defense industry no not not as far as I can see because most of first of all nearly all of what we've G physically given to Ukraine will simply come out of existing stocks which have been drawn down badly and and not replenished second of all most of that stuff the vast vast majority has have not been the kind of Big Ticket items that Noah's talking about which are have been excluded for all for political and and other legal reasons and and for reasons of not wanting to appear to be or to actually be escalating the conflict and I have not seen evidence of any sort of backfilling of well okay we got to get our you know production lines up and running for this that the other thing in fact what I see is the evidence of the opposite not only are we not doing that we're not even building we're not even remanufacturing the ordinance artillery drones um cruise missiles rocket those kinds of things at the clip that we would need to just to break even with where we were when all of this started back in February of 2002 I mean it's one thing to say I agree with this we should do it okay we should do it but for some reason the United States doesn't seem capable of doing a lot of things right now I I could I can name five or 10 things off top of my head the United States government ought to be doing that it isn't doing either because it doesn't want to it doesn't know how it's politically tied in knots whatever but just saying we should do it doesn't get it done as a matter of fact it's not getting done right now and these problems aren't getting better right now they're getting worse and until they do start to get better it seems to me I think we ought to be much more careful about husbanding our resources for a conflict when a if and when a conflict comes where a core National interest truly is at stake well Michael do you would you would you vote if you were in Congress for the for the three separate to take the fourth one out the three separate defense industrial based bills and the foreign aid bills not unless like I don't know I'd have to I'd have to look at them very very very carefully you know the way these sort of legislation works yeah you can vote yes or no on something and and you know what is it the famous Nancy Pelosi line what we have pass the bill before we can see what's in it I would actually want to see it before I voted on it that's fair General yes I would I'm not I'm not you know I long ago shed my old conservative economic dogmatism about the United States having industrial policy intervening like that I wouldn't care about that as a m as I wouldn't be opposed on ideological grounds I would just want to be to see the details and make sure that it actually does what it's supposed to do and doesn't just shift a bunch of money over into places that that get spent and and no result comes out of it I would worry about that because I think a lot of that happens in defense procurement yeah I don't disagree with that um and I think we're in heeded agreement about the necessity of rebuilding our defense industrial capacity not just for our allies sake but for our own sake but there is only one mechanism to do that and that's through the Congress so you had raised the concern about um escalation Michael uh Noah do you think there's a risk of nuclear escalation in uh the United States continuing to support Ukraine and you know it seems to me that if Russia starts uh suffering even worse in terms of its you know Invasion and the failure to uh secure objectives the more success the ukrainians have the more likely it is that the Russians will escalate even further and the Russians have an escalatory spiral that leads all the way to nuclear weapons is that something that we should think about when we consider the Strategic risks involved in the Ukraine conflict of course absolutely we should think about it we should observe it um the risk is not zero however I think the Biden Administration in particular has been cowed by a conception of uh Russia's nuclear propaganda as being far more um sincere than I think it is uh nuclear deterrence as a concept works both ways um the United States maintains a nuclear deterrent posture and Moscow knows exactly what it is they know exactly what our op plan is they they vladim Putin knows our nuclear history uh the scops in the 1970s and the targeting strategy which would Target Moscow directly and the leadership directly um there was a very famous commentary art article where I used to work by Daniel pipes 1977 um which articulated the logic of the Soviet um Soviet High command at the time in so far as they believed they could win a nuclear conflict which would consist of uh First Strike targeting uh offensive weapons and then relying on the concept of self-d deterrence so your first all our all our uh icbms are known where they are we don't have Road Mobile missiles right we have icbms 400 of them they're in North Dakota you hit them hard they're out they're gone so if you were to mount a retaliatory strike we would just hit your value targets we just hit your cities there's no point in you retaliating at all at that point you're self-d deterred that was the concept that was um that was a live uh vision of how to win a nuclear war in the Soviet theory of nuclear war fighting in the 1970s um we've we've since adopted that Doctrine to the point where the Russian leadership understands that there's no surviving a nuclear conflict and we discount that inducement in ways that I don't quite understand why it's a very powerful inducement if you know that you will use nucle if you use nuclear weapons there's no surviving that there's no outcome on the other side of that that advantages you that is something that we should internalize when we're talking about deterring Russian aggression nuclear aggression the Biden Administration and by Joe Biden in particular is very scared of the prospect of uh of a Russian first use which I think is far more remote than this White House does and it has cowed them to a degree that has not not helped us particularly in the fight in Ukraine I think it's part of the reason why he's been the dribs and drab strategy where it was not going to give him tanks so we'll give him tanks not going to give him cluster ammunition so we'll give him cluster ammunitions not going to long ring Rockets High Mars attack them and then eventually they do because they get over this thing that they talk themselves into which is if we overly commit the Russians might might use a tactical nuclear weapon first and I just and they've SE they they can they get close to realizing that that's fallacious and then they pull back they get close and they pull back but a full understanding of nuclear deterrence would understand that the American deterrent works just as well as the Russian deterrent I mean only look I there's a lot one could say about all of this um I think Noah is skipping to the end of the or the top run of the escalation ladder which is an allout exchange between the two Powers you can never rule anything out but that's the least likely outcome of what could happen here what the Biden Administration what anybody who' be looking at this has to worry about is something on a much more limited scale than that but that's devastating enough that if it were to happen everyone would regret it and be you know trying to untangle answers for the next 50 or 100 years to figure out how it came to this the same way people still read about July 1914 and haven't you know and it'll be the most studied month until the end of time or something bigger happens to try to figure out precisely how to World War I start right I don't think it would go to an allout nuclear exchange I don't think that's necessarily what Putin thinks about I think I agree that the risk of nuclear use by Putin right now is low but that's because he thinks he's winning and as far as I can tell he is winning he's paying a terribly high price for it it's taken him a lot longer than he thought it would it's cost him a lot more than he thought it would but as long as he doesn't feel like he's losing he's not going to go there at least that's the estimate us planners have the reason why they get worried about escalating you know this is the problem that we face if we the more we escalate or the more we give or the more we get involved or the more we encourage allies to get involved and so on if it really were to turn the tide I happen to believe that's basically impossible um absent some massive step from us I don't think we would contemplate but let's say it were possible right and then Putin really starts to feel that he is losing then our action will have upped the likelihood however by however much that he might go to nukes if he feels that the he might lose the war his regime is at stake or or some core russian interest were at stake now it's then easy to say oh so you're saying you know we shouldn't do the right thing because if he does X it'll be our fault are you blaming America for I'm not putting words in your mouth but I do hear this from Brother all the time you know you're blaming well no but you you know it's like you got to think through the consequences of your action the way I said this in an article that I published in the clemont review books you should all subscribe by the way I get a little cut for everyone that if you put in a little code that says you're at this event that's like it's like a 50 cents or so per subscription so keep it in mind um I said this is this is like going into an ethnic neighborhood and and and and shouting slurs and then you get beat up and you and you say well but I have free speech well you do have free speech but you also did something really stupid you went into an ethnic neighborhood and you shouted slurs about the people who live in that neighborhood and somebody beat you up you kind of had it coming in that respect or at least consequence followed action you're not blameless in this right people want to people want to be able to say well we can whatever we do we do the right thing and then this bad action is on that guy over there and I bear no responsibility for it but if the bad action is nuclear use or a nuclear exchange well you know I don't know I kind of think we ought to be looking at uh causality all the way around last thing I would say on this point another thing that deters Putin on this is nobody wants to go first with new right the last time a nuclear weapon was used at least in a hosti not in a test was August 9th 1945 right whenever it happens again whoever does it is going to get appr probium for a century easily even if they were totally in or they can make a great case but why they were in the right it was necessary they had to survive it and everybody who's ever contl at this or has ever done any of that kind of Rand Corporation Game Theory thinking about it knows this from Square One start one if you go first on one level you lost right even if you save some even if you save some everything else and by the way no one's going to accept your or half the world is not going to accept your explanation that you were justified in doing this and you would have been ruined had you not done it and so it was excusable that thought alone probably deters Putin at least as much as anything else that might follow on from it so now you uh said in your mark at the beginning that um America should think uh at least as much about Russia and its you know aims as about what victory would look like for Ukraine uh Michael however has just said that he thinks that uh in terms of conventional support we give Ukraine no amount of support is going to suffice to secure a victory for Ukraine so my question for you is what does victory for Ukraine look like and is it a goal that can be obtained by uh what kind of support would we have to give them in order to obtain victory this is a question that I don't know if I have a satisfactory answer to because I am not close enough to the ground at a tactical level to be able to tell you how to get to XYZ I know what keev says it wants keeve says it wants the 1991 borders I know what Moscow is acting like it wants Moscow is acting like it wants the 1989 borders this seems to be the impass at which we're at um it's incumbent on us not to define the terms of victory for it's incumbent on us to support keev in its effort to resist a naked attempt of of to subsume this country into a federation that it does not want to be a part in to erase the culture of Moscow in a war that it started nakedly and aggressively without a Cas Bell that's it that's really where I'm coming from and I don't think that the same logic applies Michael's absolutely right the appr probium that would be heaped on the country that used first they used nukes for the first time since 1945 would be positively unendurable the only countries I could see looking past that would be the anti-American axis that's forming around Russia the Chinese the uh your your Iranians and the constellation of terrorist networks that orbit around these these organizations but the same applies conventionally this is a conventional war of Conquest to erase the Dignity of and the humanity of the ukrainians their sin is to say hey you want to help out here that's the extent of their offense that they have caused that seems to have so rankled their their critics in in the west and I just don't see it a conventional war of Conquest is as odious as the use of nuclear weapons as a deterr Michael what does the end of the war look like for you so uh it seems as if you're saying that regardless of how much support we give them or don't give them not regard I mean if the United States wanted to and and a coalition of allies wanted to commit major GR forces that could turn the tide at least for a time but then the Russians would have to go all in and you could see that qu nuclear quickly I'm think my operating assumption is that we are not contemplating that and would not contemplate that I do believe based on what I have read that the power imbalance between Russia and Ukraine is so great population economy resources military technology military capabilities size of Army and so on that simply pouring ordinance and and and equipment and even if we were to up the equipment you know better tanks more Fighters this kind of thing you know Jets and so on so forth but without actual natal forces going in and biting I I don't think that any amount we could do on that level can correct that power and Val it can keep the war going up for a long long time but I don't see how that help I mean that's pretty terrible thing for the people in that region and I don't see how it helps our our interest the ukrainians want to fight we do have a profound technological advantage one of the reasons why Ukraine is is Los now as they have to triage ordinance and Russia is winning in part and on the ground in part because they're conducting what are quote unquote called meatwave assaults and they're exactly what they sound like very stalinist approach to gaining ground throwing men at at these overwhelmed Defenders who just don't have enough bullets and ammunition to defend themselves that is a target-rich environment for a properly equipped Force well here's another thing this you know this is unpopular but needs to be said I think there's been I think Noah is presuming a level of Ukrainian Unity that doesn't exist and this gets back to something I said very early on it's a complicated situation that's been about 1100 years in the making that Americans don't really understand I don't pretend to understand it I didn't study Russian history I've read some books I've been in government I had to read a lot of documents so I am some rudimentary understanding but it's a divided country it's not a 50-50 country necessarily but there are large numbers of people who speak Ukrainian identify as Ukrainian and look West want to be part of the EU want to be part of NATO but there is a non-trivial portion of the population of this country it's a third it's maybe two fifths but non-trivial it's not 5% okay and in some areas it's 80 90% that speak Russian that look to Moscow that look to the patriarch of Moscow that think of themselves as sort of if not Russian as quasi Russian or you know Brothers with the Russians so it's not like Russia there's this wholly separate country with a completely separate culture and a totally different language over here and Russia just went in against the wishes of everybody why has Russia been able to operate in the donbass as effectively as it has not saying morally just effectively as it has since 2014 because it's got a lot of support in there why was it able to take Crimea basically bloodlessly and then win a referendum okay he maybe he cheated to a certain extent on the referendum but it's been quiet that was 2014 it's eight years no G I lose track of time it's a decade later there's no Insurgency going on in Crimea right it's because this is part of the old Russian Heartland part of Ukraine and when we get involved in stuff like this we don't really know who's who and what's what I mean there are American experts you could find them at some desk in the state department or in the intelligence community and they could tell you all of this but most of the people even the so-called experts and especially the people at the top of a pyramid pulling the levers and making policy they don't really understand this I just think that was far more true in the last decade than it has been in this decade roughly we have polling public polling of this country where I've been and to whom I speak to and I don't see this disunity in the polling nor do I see it in the religious culture there's this Breakaway Ukrainian Church that's the Ukrainian Orthodox Church the Russian patriarch um the Russian Orthodox Church to which they would presumably the Russian leaning ukrainians would Aspire only 14% according to polling uh are members of the Russian Orthodox Church as oppos the Ukrainian Orthodox Church the the cultural distinctions there that were very visible in the early 2000s and the 1990s between the the Russian side and the Ukrainian side very distinct they've been erased over the course of the last decade of Warfare by Russian aggression I don't know about erased I signicant all I all I all I can tell you is what I've read and and people I've talked to and I you know I I Russian war has created I don't think the country is half Russian but I also don't think it's 95% Ukrainian identifi ukra I I couldn't put a number on it that's true um but the Russian war has created a sense of national nationalism and nationality among ukrainians that while there prior was not nearly as pronounced as it is one of the interesting phenomenon that that has backfired so profoundly on Moscow is that its Invasion has created the sense of Ukrainian nationhood that was far more nassin before this war well you asked about the end for me I mean look I would let's just begin from one premise since there is no physical way short of a conflict with Russia that we either can't win or that would go nuclear to go back to the 1991 borders can we begin from the premise that we're not going back to the 1991 borders so the border is going to look different somehow it doesn't have to look like it's not going to be the reincorporation of a Ukrainian SSR with a vice Roy from Moscow sitting in Kiev okay but it's going to look something different there are parts of the country that in a settlement will either go back to Russia and be formally part of Russia and or be recognized something along the lines of the Minsk Accords where they're part of sovereign Ukrainian territory but all these minority rights are respected and the Russians have certain ability to monitor things in there to look after people that they consider to be their their friends and allies who look in their Direction it's it's actually not that difficult to Think Through what a settlement might look like the problem is talking about it because as soon as you say any of these things you're admitting that aggression will be re you'll be accused of admitting that well aggression will be rewarded well I mean almost anytime almost any peace settlement to some degree anytime a map has changed you can make that argument so well on the outcome of every war for for justice to be prevailed is status quo anti well if the status quo anti is simply not possible because of the power and balance and facts on the ground then what do you do I don't think sticking to a point and saying that it's moral and everybody else who won't stick to that point is a bad person who's excusing aggression uh is the answer it'll keep the conflict going for a while to as far as I can tell uh no well maybe not nobody's benefit but the very few people's benefit so Michael two points that Noah brought up which I think are worth uh your addressing U first of all that you do have a heightened sense of Ukrainian nationalism as a result of the conflict also that a number of America's allies in Eastern Europe Poland and others are also deeply invested morally in this conflict so my question for you is if the scenario you've envisioned comes to pass uh that there is a uh you know an Armistice or some agreement that leads to a sess of immediate hostilities but you've had a Ukraine which has been deprived of Crimea the donbas perhaps other territories as well wouldn't the rump basically of Ukraine be very strongly anti-russian very strongly aligned with many of America's Eastern European allies and wouldn't there be a very powerful pressure to admit that Ukraine to Nato there might be but I don't see how you could make that a settlement how do I put this I I I don't mind getting it I'm like U Sam Spade in the males Falcon I don't mind a reasonable amount of trouble but I have to limit the amount of trouble I get myself in so sometimes I pause and look at the ceiling and think carefully about exactly how I Le something um I don't see how you get the Russians to sign on the any Russian doesn't have to be Putin Putin could drop dead tomorrow and whoever whoever the new zaret they replace him with would feel the same way I don't see how you get them to sign on a dotted line without a pledge that there's no NATO Ascension for Ukraine or you could lie to them and make the pledge and then do it later anyway that's probably not a great idea either so you're right we will have a big problem with Poland we won't have as much of a we won't really have much of a problem with Hungary though and I don't think that I don't think the Eastern European situation will be as bad as you think the poles will be extremely angry for reasons you know I mean listen I I don't feel uh I don't hold that against the poles let me put it that way if you were polish and you had to deal with the Russians the way you've dealt with them for the past 400 years you wouldn't be particularly uh ropic either um uh the Germans would be very very upset but more for sort of Less Direct reasons or less kind of you know feeling it in their heart than a kind of abstract this violates the 1945 consensus um I think that the Italians and the French and the British would make a lot of noise but at the end of the day it would just be Sound and Fury and they would quiet down fairly quickly because I don't think that they at some level they realize this isn't a core interest and the war that that what the West has been trying to do over the last two years has failed or at least hasn't succeeded and it's better to get over it so we're going to turn to audience question and answers in just a moment so as you think about questions let me uh go back to Noah for a moment and ask him about something that Michael said uh just a few minutes ago if it does turn out to be the case that something more than supplying tanks and aircraft but actual boots on the ground from NATO are necessary in order to win the war for Ukraine is that something you would support no and my it's one of my fears is that we get removed from that equation um in part because we are we convince ourselves at the fiction for example that we have some capacity to arbitrate a uh a bifurcation of the country we don't it's not in our capacity to do so uh if we were to overstretch in that sense diplomatically overstretch our bounds it would weaken the alliance if we were to allow Ukraine to to descend in some into some sort of a status of a failed state with an Insurgency on the doorstep of our of the NATO Frontier it would weaken the alliance it would create all these inducements among our partners some of whom are speculating openly about the need to introduce troops not in a combat capacity right if you're macron uh Emanuel macron was actually just speculating on this very publicly and got wrapped on the wrists pretty hard by the NATO NATO alliances is saying look we should probably put some troops in here right but that was a warning sign to me that was a source of profound um disqui for me because it demonstrates the challenge before Joe Biden it's not just keeping the Russians contained in so far as they can be contained in the parts of of Ukraine they currently occupy and rolling them back hopefully it's keeping the alliance together it's keeping the alliance from freelancing its way into something we don't want stumbling its way into a conflict overstretching and ending up in a configration as a result uh balancing these 31 Powers is its own own full-time job let alone keeping that uh conflict contained so to answer your question no don't support it don't think it's necessary frankly the if we were to provide the material and Financial Resources but material mostly uh I don't think that it would be a necessary contingency and I fear not doing so makes that more likely not less so let's take some questions from the audience now Tom has a roving microphone so let me call on you make sure your question is a question and then we'll proceed from there we'll take the gentleman there in the middle there andj sports jacket I promise it's a question um what is what is the limit of what we give up looking at historically a lot of things um Korea the Korean Invasion the sudon land going back for the Kuwait where the dictators make the miscalculation about how when we are willing to stop so regardless of Taiwan if Ukraine is required to U surrender give in give up whatever it is what's next malova the Baltic states where do you think that would stop I mean if you're asking where I think the Russians would go I honestly don't think they would go anywhere now that could be proved out and and I could be proved a fool and you know they'll go to Warsaw or whatever uh I I I I I just don't believe that that's actually an appetite or it may be in it's some kind of grand you know half a bottle of vodka in and thinking big uh but nobody's really thinking about it as a kind of realistic Prospect and I think even if they tried they wouldn't get anywhere I mean look at look at how much trouble they've had against a much weaker country much weaker Civic institutions much weaker military and every that's on their border with these close cultural ties and so on like you know we maybe have a dispute here about how quite United or nationalistic Ukraine is we don't have a dispute about Poland Poland would be it wouldn't even be 99 to1 it would be 10 nothing stop the Russians and I I don't think they could deal and then you actually have the uh you know crossing the Article Five threshold so I don't I just don't that's not something that keeps me up at night I'm a little less sanguin about it uh I think that if Moscow had its DS it would drive to adessa it would uh ignite a conflict in transnistria which is this the separate Breakaway portion of Moldova with the design of destabilizing and eventually subsuming mova into something resembling the Imperial Soviet Compact and then it would turn its eyes on the swsi corridor which separates Colin inrad from um uh bellus and cut off the Baltic states let's take more questions see one there yes it's another question for Michael uh you noted that uh American aggression with sanctions and Swift uh pushed you said countries towards the Russian fold how do you reconcile that with swimland and Sweden and Finland ascending to Nato in the recent protests in Georgia well um I don't they're just two separate issues I mean Sweden and Finland or European countries that have been you that stayed out of NATO for historical Reon reasons that but that have genuine historical and present reasons to fear Russia what I'm more worried about is the country I'm most worried about is India okay which is not going to be involved in this in any way except peripherally although you note that India who the United States has been working to cultivate as an ally or at least a sort of Proto Ally for a long time has been more than cool toward Western assistance to Ukraine and will basically unwilling to criticize Russia and even occasionally say friendly things toward Russia what I'm especially worried about we're only seeing the first baby steps here and maybe it won't go anywhere maybe we'll fix it but right now I'm worried about it is it you know Russia and China alone trying to create the next Reserve currency probably aren't going to make it happen they're not going to create the entire web of forget the liberal International order just the financial tools like Swift and others but all of a sudden you add India to that mix a country that big that many people that big an economy uh a serious military you know a dominant power it starts to look a lot different now there's a lot to overcome there India and China have their own problems that they going to need to work out and I don't think those are going to be easy or quick to work out but it's just um it's something that worries me and it's and it's and it's other countries sort of more in Asia or in other parts of the world than in Europe that I think we are at risk of dropping out of our system or at least of joining both clubs at once for a while and seeing how the waters are and the more you know if it works out that these guys are are treating me a little bit better than the Americans or they're they're less moralistic and hectoring about well maybe I'll put more in my business over here I mean uh we used to be able to take for granted completely take for granted that um every us every oil transaction every day was traded in US Dollars it's happening less and less I don't know the numbers off the top of my head but the share of oil being traded under US dollars is going down down down by the day and this is something that China and particularly Russia China as consumer Russia as a producer have desired for years get the oil Market off US dollars I we're finally starting to see that because other countries are willing to deal in other currencies and they hadn't been used to before no that's to escape us that's to escape one reason is to escape the potential leverage that we have over them over things that they consider to be none of our business what's your thought of that scenario Noah I think it's 100% right um my it's a not only is that happening and it's a concern but the concerns that Michael raises are absolutely correct um it doesn't seem to me a rationale for shrinking from the world stage it seems to me a rationale for engaging with it more directly but the threat that Michael outlines is 100% true so we had a question from the gentleman in a beard right there yes yeah [Music] um my question is for Noah Rothman um and before I ask it I just want to say that I I I find it incredibly appropriate that the question I am about to ask I'm asking it essentially in the shadow of the LBJ Presidential Library um but you've been going throughout here throughout this entire presentation talking about if we don't stop Putin in Ukraine he's going to go on and he's going to go after country X country y country Z and how is what you're saying right now any different from the Domino Theory that Johnson tried to sell us on during Vietnam well it's different in so far as we're not talking about an ideological struggle although the Domino Theory gets a lot of bad rap because in uh uh Cambodia fell and La fell and everybody says well the Domino Theory didn't work out just because Thailand didn't fall well okay I guess you can leave that where it is but we're not talking about an ideological conflict or an Insurgency or an internationally funded uh you know um uh something directed from Moscow with with no fingerprints on it we're talking about a sovereign country's military and its regime claiming this territory as its own the parallel is not Indochina or southeast Asia the parallel is um World War II The Parallel is uh half a dozen other conflicts over the course of the 20th century where one nation decided that its neighbor's territory should be its own I me frankly this the one of the the false rationale for communist insurgencies over the course of the 20th century was that they were Wars for Liberation they were the fundamental expression of the populace throwing off the Imperial yoke that they had been um you know yolked with by International capitalism or what have you uh this is fundamentally an imperialist war with imperialist aims laid out flat no one's even denying them neither neither combatant in this conflict says anything other than this is obviously an imperialist War Moscow says that this country isn't even a country it's just this strange little Breakaway province that needs to be reigned in um so the the parallel I don't I don't think necessarily applies um if I just say one thing this is an anecdote here say I wasn't present for this but I was told about it and it it might amuse you I just offer it for the amusement factor I I make no um claim to its validity or whatever so a friend of mine says 20 30 years ago I forgot when he's at a lunch with liwanu in Singapore this is the founder and later I suppose we may call him the leader or the dictator of Singapore and he says that Lewan you astonished the Gathering by saying you know America won the Vietnam War and all these people are like what what are you talking about but this guy's a genius so maybe we should hear him out he says oh yeah America won the V like you lost but you won you you you showed a willingness to fight you showed a willingness to maintain your commitments and you made it really expensive to do what they did and had you given up I wouldn't be here right now sing po would be a communist country the whole of the southeast not just southeast Asia but then you got to think start thinking about Malaysia Indonesia and the islands they would have just rolled the rest of it and they walked away not knowing quite what to make of that I still don't know what to make of it but when somebody of that you know you can't whatever you want to say about lewu um and his um let us say lack of commitment to Liberal de Democratic Norms um we would have to admit I think that he knew something about the geostrategic position of Southeast Asia did not expect to be re debilitating Johnson's reputation in foreign policy here but we we're United does that apply though Michael to the Ukraine situation where you know even if the aid we give Ukraine is not sufficient for however Victory Is defined for Ukraine nevertheless the willingness to support Ukraine is important in preventing this sense that there's no resistance to Russian aggression you know if that's true I think maybe the the demonstration has been made because what's the outcome that you wanted in Vietnam was the United States did not did not even attempt to repeat the Korea mistake that is to say um oh look the North Korean army is rolled up so let's see if we can reunite the country on with a Chinese border right which Moscow and Beijing both said no we're not letting that happen we said we're going to make the war a what what should have been from the beginning just status quo anti of an independent South an independent anti-communist South right they can maintain itself it never tried to do more than that what exactly are we trying to do in Ukraine are we you know we want to go back to what borders Ukraine hasn't fully controlled the Don besser Crimea since 2014 can we at least go back to 2014 our war aims are actually more expansive so I I I don't see the analogy as as exact either I think if the United States could and it won't at least under the president Administration there's no way it will do this because not a single person will volunteer to even say this in an internal meeting much less in public right but if the United States some dispensation could bring itself to sit down at the table and negotiate some kind of settlement where Ukraine's Got to Give something up the Russians have got to give something up the whole thing then then then maybe that outcome could be but if what we're going to continue to go for is you know time machine back to 1991 um maximalist demands we get everything we want you get nothing we want you want and as long as that's our negotiating position no one will negotiate with us and since I don't think that can be achieved on the by military force then we just this grinding conflict that goes on and nobody so we have time for a couple more questions I see Rob Coons has one down here in the front assuming that China is a bet Strat and the worst case scenario for us is a Russia China Alliance I me suppose we could make a deal with Russia where we'd say Okay eastern Ukraine we'll throw in mova parts of Estonia but in exchange for that you become you break up the alliance with China you become an adversary with China would you accept as such a deal if if not why I just think it's fanciful for a variety of reasons one it is not our place or in our capacity to sacrifice the sovereignty of these states it's again a weird form of hubris and chauvinism to think that it's in our capacity to do so these are human beings with agency and National sovereignty and ambition and we don't have control over their Destinies like wise we can make all the deals we want with Putin's Russia they ain't worth the paper they're written on and the notion that it would that Moscow would sacrifice its relationship with its foremost purchaser of its of its oil right now for what what could we offer them the notion here that we could offer what they want is prestige what Putin wants is a restoration of The Prestige that Moscow had in the Soviet Union he sees his history and terms and far less material ways than I think we do in the west there's something very tangible about National Prestige to the Kremlin under under Vladimir Putin I don't think whatever deal he would make to us would be anything other than flattery it would it would Gull us into the notion that we had somehow disarmed this threat when we had merely given it breathing space to reconstitute itself well look the flip the flip side to what you said right which is who are we to sacrifice these other countries I I agree with that but it's very abstract concrete is who are we and do we have the capability to save all these countries to protect all these countries right if we are faced with in a negotiating posture or some kind of relationship with a great power that has the power to do X and Y and Z to to Country a okay and we don't really have the power to save country a except at an enormous expenditure of national strength that may still fail and and lead to escalation beyond anything we've contemplate well well the moral case suddenly seems less compelling this is part of a I I teach classes on this to undergraduate students undergraduate students and I try to explain to them that look the unsettling thing about foreign policies that or one unsettling thing about foreign policies there's always going to be bad actors doing bad things but it's never easy to resolve any of these questions simply on the on the moral basis you have to be kind of hard-headed and think in terms of calculations of interests and also just least bad right and we tend not to not to want to do that so I would be I look another another point to make here just about what you said I agree he needs uh China is his biggest consumer and so on and so forth but there are all kinds of we don't have to go into them now take too long but there are all kinds of natural fault lines or cleavages between Russia and China that the present state of the world and the behavior of the United States in the west are not tapping those fault lines to widen them we're closing them either I I don't think we're doing it on purpose but inadvertently so that they've got a lot of reasons to want to be together they got a lot of reasons to want to be a part they've got thousand years of History together not all of it Pleasant a lot of it acrimonious they've got things there are nasty things going on right now that they both pretend aren't happening so that they can present a united front to the world but there's a we would have actually I think a lot of opportunity if we were to pursue that route but you can't pursue that route it just can't be spoken because if you say it then you're rewarding aggression and you're a Putin student and you're in the pocket of Putin and you probably support Putin electing Trump in 2016 via Facebook ads and that's you know the worst thing that ever happened or something I just want to say that it is absolutely 100% true that there must be a limiting principle with every country on the planet coming to you and saying save us save us because our are Bad actors on the planet would be uh not a strategic approach to things but I do believe that we do have concrete interests and material concerns that can be met and the notion here that our alliance Ure in Europe and 2% of our military budget which is what we're what is on the line and what we're contributing to Ukraine is hardly an expenditure that we can't afford unless you believe the United States is a spent force that it is morally bereft that it cannot provide for itself much less its interests abroad and I don't believe that and I think we should challenge those who believe that or won't say it as much but but but act as though we are a country that should be introverted inward-looking Retreat and ret trench from abroad to explain why they believe this country's best days are behind it I think we're in a lot worse shape than you do I think we do disagree about that and I would challenge you to explain why 2% is too much for us why we can't maintain the alliance we have I think we'll get into this with the closing remarks in just a moment we have one last question in the back there and let's take that quickly before we do the closes thank you it's a quick question and a followup to Michael comment uh about the settlement so why would seninsky have to do to save face and sit down and accept such a an outcome because he's been making this personal commitments right it's become a personal thing for him to not relent um to to not allow that settlement to happen so why would you C you have to relent and you would have to you know I mean if you if there's an inner conviction you can always find the words let you put it that way I was I was going to quote one of my favorite passages from liby but I won't do that that's tooo pedantic for even for me right now now but like if he actually had a change of heart and said all right I got to make a deal and then he thought his next thought was wow but I've said these things over the past two years that make it really hard I'm going to look like a fool like I'm totally reversing myself well stage three is since I've already decided that I need to make a deal I'll find some way to spin it I'll find some way to explain it so the only question is is the inner conviction there or is it likely to emerge I have no idea I can't look into the man's soul to coin a phrase that's not entirely Ina to this context uh but he's not talking like that right now I can tell you that I would just say the politics happens in Ukraine too and if he were to sacrifice more than the public would accept that the government would collapse because Ukraine is a democracy and it is the holding to the voters and the government has fallen before and been replaced with this the poreno government prosecuted the war against Russia in dbas and Crimea and the zalinsky government was elected on a platform of appealing to Moscow you know Russia Hawks like me were looking at L's candidacy this guy really wants to open up a dialogue with Moscow he said the poreno government was too too hostile too confrontational turns out we all had that wrong alternatively and I have no idea the likelihood of this because I haven't looked at any ping on but it's not inconceivable that at some point the Ukrainian people could do the reverse and say okay it's been two and a half years of this or whatever and we've lost x00 th000 and look at the destroyed buildings and this this and the other thing and actually we want a peace deal and if you won't give it to us we're going to vote you out and this guy over here whoever that is so on that note we'll go to closing remarks and we'll begin with Noah well I think this has been a very productive conversation actually once again I want to thank you Dan I want thank you Michael thank isi and civitas um I don't have much more to add but save something that Michael has said on a couple of occasions now that people who adopt the posture that he's articulating his support for which I think has been very productive today um they get cumy they get attacked they get called Putin Stooges or what have you and I don't support that at all I think that's aggressive rhetoric but it works both ways you got people who adopt my posture and we're bloodthirsty warmongers evil neocons the type that want to sacrifice your children to a conflict abroad that has absolutely nothing to do with American interests indeed whose interests are you serving I mean we get that stuff all the time and it's trash it's nonsense the sort of thing you need to brush off because what we're talking about here is the defense of American interests as we see it as we Define them through debate through the political process and through our elected representatives um what I suspect is going to happen in Congress is I suspect these bills will pass uh and I suspect they will pass broadly which will be reflective of as the founders defined it the national will and the national consensus and it's incumbent on the president who will sign these bills into law and then e prosecute what the Congress has given him the authority to do to explain to the country why it is not a spent Force why these countries look to the United States for guidance and Leadership and aspire to the model it IT projects into the world and why that is superior to its competitors and we have competitors we have alternative theories of social organization right now that want to topple our own and replace it and and it's been it hasn't been as Vivid a contrast as we've seen in the 20 in since the 20th century since the Cold War and I think it's very much incumbent on this President and I hope he will rise to the to the challenge I don't think he will but I suspect but I I hope he does or his successor does to explain why the aspirations of the Ukrainian people to live free to have their own culture and identity and to one day join the community of Nations within the liberal order that has brought the kind of peace and prosperity we have not known previously this is atypical it's a garden it takes maintenance and it's a sort of thing we have to commit to defend and cultivate ourselves L we sacrifice it for our children uh the United States is not a spent force and if it ever becomes one it's going to take a while because the amount of accumulated capital in every sense of that word is so high that you know we could muddle on like this for another hundred years or longer or maybe less I don't know but it's not going to blow itself out tomorrow I do think though that it's you know eyes have gotten too big for its stomach its appetite for the things that wants to intervene in that it wants to support that it or at least our foreign policy Elites want to do is greater than the United States present capability to do them in terms of Simple Resources and raw strength but also just in terms of core competence which is not as good at this stuff as we used to be and it is showing we are fraying and I don't say this I'd love to be wrong I I certainly don't say this with like joy in my heart um but you just open your eyes and look around and you can see evidence of it all around you just stick only to the foreign policy realm with the military realm and you see it and it should not be that as our ability declines our willingness or eagerness to do stuff increases right I think we oughtta kind of hit pause on the ability or on the willingness to do stuff while we rebuild our capabilities and then have a serious conversation about what truly counts as national interests no doubt no and I Define those differently he defines them more broadly than I do I Define them more narrowly but let's make one thing very very clear he I I appreciate that he didn't use this word I was sort of bracing for it but I never heard it the United States is not now and has never been an isolationist country and it never will be an isolationist country but too much of what one hears at least I hear all the time is you know that word gets thrown around a lot and usually when somebody says it what all they mean is well they mean maybe two things oh I want to do X and you don't you're an isolationist and the second thing they mean is I don't like you now the United States is as said it's never been even if you read you know the the ER statement of American foreign policiy the well portions of it the nine paragraphs in George Washington's farewell address that address foreign policy right this is where you get the people think avoid foreign entang entangling alliances that's actually in Jeffers first know but whatever I teach at Hillsdale College so we learn these things um it has never been even at its most constrain vision of how it ought to operate in the world the United States has always wanted contacts maintain commercial relations keep shipping lanes open right wanted to have diplomatic uh Commerce and and and economic Commerce with the world so the question isn't one of turning inward or burying our heads in the Sands the question is how expansively do you Define the national interest and to be end where I began I think it made sense or at least a very strong argument can be made that the great expansion in the conception of the national interest that took over American foreign policy in the 1945 to 50 period and then sustained or guided American foreign policy through the Cold War was reasonable and Justified I question whether that expansive conception is still justified in a post-cold war world that's so different in every way where our relative power not not not absolute necessarily but certainly our relative power relative to other great Powers including China has declined and where there are all kinds of things going on in the world that I don't see as core to us interests and so in a way the foreign policy that I'm arguing for is the that period the lii the creation of liberal International in the cold war is the anomaly in the history of American foreign policy the normal way the default State the way the found said we ought to behave and the way we traditionally did behave and I think the way that it makes the most sense for us to behave is not defined by that weird strange interregnum it's defined by the 100 plus 50 plus years that came before and it's being redefined now we'll see where this comes out right I I think Noah's completely right I expect all of these bills to pass I expect most people who vote for them 99% maybe 100% will not read them or know what's in them thank you speaker Pelosi right but that's because the consensus in favor of this kind of Lio forever approach is overwhelming in both political parties and in the foreign policy establishment I do think here's where we another place we disagree I do think it's losing currency with the American people I think they're rightly upset and dissatisfied by what they saw at 20 years of conflict following 911 and the failures and the high cost of those failures and they're very skeptical and they're wondering why with an effectiv all these massive domestic problems that they have that are plaguing the country they're wondering why you know you know when Mitch McConnell goes out there and says more Aid to Ukraine is the number one priority for Republicans right now what the Republican base her is my grocery bills just doubled the southern border is open there's drug cartels operating down the street you know I got there's a lot of stuff going on right here that really gives me pause and that's the number one priority for your party um I think that's a common sense approach that the founders would have agreed with and that um I hope becomes it's already the approach of the Republican base I hope it becomes the approach of the Republican Party leadership I I like breathing so I'm not going to hold my breath for that um but as I also said you know if the Republican party needs to just kind of slip off into that good night and be replaced by a party who will prioritize the interest of its voters I'm Al I'm all for that too well thank you gentlemen this has been a very Illuminating conversation and it's a conversation that will continue certainly in the pages of National Review where Noah Rothman is a main day in the pages of the Claremont Review of Books in the American mind where you can find Michael Anton as a contributor and of course in the pages of the intergate studies institute's own publication Modern Age copies of which are available in the back of the room you can also visit it online at modern AG journal.com uh I want to thank the Diana Davis Spencer Foundation again and also the civitas institute for hosting us here tonight on behalf of isi I want to thank all of you I also want to remind you that we have uh in the emails that you received when you registered you have a QR code which will allow you to vote on the winner of this debate uh there is also a copy of the QR code in the back by the copies of modern age uh so if you don't have your email with you uh do go and scan the QR code in the back and you can cast your ballot that way thank you again thank you wonderful thanks much oh I'm was gonna every time I do this I always walk off with these things and then they go hey oh my gosh e e for

Channel: Intercollegiate Studies Institute

Views: 2,087

Keywords: conservatism, conservative, us history, politics

Id: uy_Yo-Ybpng

Length: 91min 37sec (5497 seconds)

Published: Fri May 24 2024