The Peril of Slowness: American Mistakes during Russia’s War of Aggression in Ukraine

ladies and gentlemen if uh I could have your attention we're going to get started um Mr Chancellor we have a a special place for you right here please we have the chancellor of the cuni system and his wife please please join us right here I'm no Latif president of the foreign policy Association and I want to welcome you to our annual Michael reesman distinguished lecture on international law and diplomacy Michael is with us today and I want to congratulate him for the impressive Milestone of 50 years of teaching at Yale law [Applause] school his students numbering in many thousand thousands certainly speaking for myself Revere him and are in awe of his far-reaching impact on American and international jurist Prudence Michael has served for nearly 30 years on the FPA board where his Council has been indispensable to the board and to myself but Michael's greatest accomplishment has been his close-knit family family and I'm delighted to welcome his wife manou in our own right a distinguished practitioner of public international law and their daughter Diana an upand cominging lawyer who is currently serving as a law clerk to judge Jose Alberto cabanis of the US court of appeals for the second [Applause] circuit I'd like to recognize several of uh the diplomats who are with us uh today uh Ambassador maito Masari permanent representative of Italy to the United Nations and our highly esteemed uh partner in the important work of un Security Council reform Ambassador Masari Ambassador Sergey kisl Ukraine's permanent representative to the UN who is also with us today Ambassador Marco swazo uh head of unitar uh the New York office but I don't see him I don't think he's arrived yet and um from the FPA side I'd like to recognize our former chairman Paul Ford who is also a renowned uh corporate lawyer at Simpson Thatcher Paul [Applause] Ford our director uh CUNY Chancellor Felix Matos Rodriguez who did an amazing job of moderating our global migration panel at the American Museum of Natural History last month Bruce Bruce Weber we have a seat for you right here uh Edward swi who has made possible the uh Edward swi Scholars Program at the foreign policy Association Ed where are you right there and uh Charles weight who in his capacity as chairman of adirondac Trust Company uh was very helpful to FPA during the pandemic and continues to be uh a very important part of the leadership of this organization Charles and last but not least uh our fellow Bruce Weber dean of the zland School of Business uh who was decorated at our financial services dinner last month with the FBA medal [Applause] Bruce we are delighted to have with us today uh as our speaker Professor Timothy Snider Professor Snider is the Richard Levan professor of history at Yale Unity University and a permanent fellow at The Institute for human Sciences in Vienna where he co-directs the documenting Ukraine project the author of 13 books including the bests sellers Black Earth on tyranny and bloodlands Europe between Hitler and Stalin his work has been translated into 40 languages without further Ado I'd i' like to turn the floor over to Professor [Applause] Schnider so if the University Club doesn't invite you back um that will be my responsibility um I caused a brewhaha at the entrance by not dressing properly um you're very welcome uh and it got me to thinking about why I I'm dressing the way that I'm dressing because it's sort of half conscious when I um in September 2022 when I went to visit president zalinski uh in his offices you know semi clandestine behind sandbags he he wasn't wearing a coat and tie I knew he wasn't going to be wearing a coat and tie and I thought why make the man feel awkward by wearing a coat and tie and there's also perhaps something inherently ridiculous about going into a war zone um wearing a coat and tie although I realized that the professions of many of you call upon you to do precisely that and then I got to thinking about the shoes so I'm not wearing a jacket and I'm not and they also I got signal signal out for my shoes on the way in and I realized well why am I wearing these shoes these are the shoes that I bought in September 23 which was the last time I was in Ukraine and which I wore when I was visiting um recently deupi territories in heton O blast so I bought these shoes because they wouldn't stand out too much in a conference setting but that I could also go to a place and be comfortable and this in a way Bears on the subject of my lecture which is failures of American foreign policy during the Russo Ukrainian War because I think there is a sense in which we have distanced ourselves found ways to distance ourselves from the reality and I guess I should apologize in advance for the fact that this isn't a very American entric talk and so if I say we that is not the US in this room we but more of an American we although I also take for granted that in general non-americans don't mind when Americans stand up for for half an hour and criticize America so I I take it that you won't think your evening has been completely poorly spent if um is if that is what I do so it's important um the subtitle of this lecture American failure was important to me because it's um and I I I I thank nol and and colleagues for for taking it on without questioning because I think most American policy discussions begin from the assumption that either we're doing the right thing and we've been misunderstood or it's somebody else's fault and that and I think part a characteristic of being American you being this kind of late Imperial moment that we're in and being American is that that's what it feels like at the time our first impulse is always well we must be doing the right thing maybe not fast enough uh but we must be doing the right thing someone else must be doing the wrong thing it feels like that I think inside the Biden Administration right now and I I speak on the basis not just a Vibes when I say that and I think it's worth questioning that feeling because if you look back historically at say the last 75 years of US foreign policy there were several moments where it felt like we were doing the right thing and then with just a few months or a few years or sometimes it takes a few Decades of retrospect we realize we weren't doing the right thing at all and I think the spring of 2024 if spring this is is one of one of those moments I think it's a moment where it feels as though we're doing the right thing but we're really not doing the right thing at all the title of my lecture is about slowness um and and uh it's so it has to do with time and the way that time is very a very important dimension in foreign policy you'll have to Pardon Me for thinking this because I'm a historian and time is what I work with and when I work on the hisory the history of forign relations and the history of Wars I can't help but notice how important the passing of time is and the understanding of time and the way that people think about time and I believe that one of the ways that we have been disarmed um rendered stupid in foreign policy has been that we are less and less capable of thinking in time mastering time making time work for us I think there's several colloquial sources of this one is the one is the internet that which which renders life into a kind of Perpetual Groundhog Day in which everything starts a new every morning and everything that you ever thought you believed you have to prove again every day and in that in that kind of Timescape it's very hard to to make any sort of progress I think another another source of this kind of of this kind of thinking about time um is um is is the way that history has been been rendered into just a series of analogies and sometimes sometimes instead of duration so sometimes analogies can be helpful but very often what I find is that people say well this is like that but if this is like that that means it's already happened and it means we know how it's going to happen and it means that we can't really do anything so whenever anyone says history repeats it not only takes a year off my life as a historian and a human being but I also understand that a confession of impotence because if history repeats that means we're not agents in history we're not capable of doing anything so there there are other sources of this but my my contention at the beginning is that we're we we we've we're losing or we've lost an ability to think in time and when you can't think in time um this creates very serious problems when you're trying to fight a war so let me let me try to consider some of these problems one of these problems is that um we have lost track this this war has been going on for more than two years and when one thinks of how Americans Mark the time of the war you know we we try to say okay it's been two years it's like an anniversary it's like a birthday it's like something let's find something to say on this round anniversary as opposed to it's two years how do we bring this thing to an end how does how does one how does one win um another another problem that losing track of time creates is that it it it works it works directly against the logic of War fighting so War fighting is very much about time War fighting has everything to do with anticipating what the other side is going to do getting there first and as I'm going to conclude War fighting has everything to do with an imagination of how you win the war you have to be able to think in terms of the future that you are trying to shape and get to and I think there's there are many reasons why Americans have difficulty speaking about victory in this war but one of them I think is just the basic inability to think in terms of a future that you're a future contingency that you're aiming for so um this is so this you know is my is my basic is my basic premise that we're having trouble with time that we're moving very slowly and as we move very slowly um approaching the kind of zenos paradox point where we we do nothing at all we again this is my American we um we maintain the typical American view that it's we who are doing everything and that other people should be grateful to us whereas if you look at if you look at the numbers in this in this issue of the Ukraine war this was barely ever true and ceased to be true if it was true quite a long time ago it's been 475 days or so since Congress passed an authorization to allow any funding for Ukraine it's been more than six months since President Biden asked Congress to pass legislation for Ukraine in the meantime the Europeans depending on how you count are are spending more than twice what the Americans are spending and in that in that statistic which of which Americans are so beloved um which is per capita GDP spending on things we really like to hit people over the head with that particular statistic especially our fellow NATO members if you look at the percentage of GDP which is spent supporting Ukraine which I submit is a much less abstract and more downto Earth and realistic measure of your commitment to Security in Europe than defense spending generally if you look at that statistic we're behind Cyprus we're behind Malta we're behind all those European countries that you forgot existed as well as the ones that you remember we're behind pretty much all of them we're behind the Czechs we're behind the slovaks we're behind the bulgarians you name it we're behind them and we're not even vaguely competitive with the Norwegians or the estonians or the lithuanians or the latians or the poles so this we we so my point is that as we slowly slowly slowly do less and less and less accompanying this deceleration is a kind of self assurance which over time as time moves ever more slowly blurs into and I think we now see this a kind of defensiveness right well perhaps we're not doing anything at all but somehow we're still the leaders somehow somehow we're still the best somehow we're doing the right thing so what's the right way to think about time it's an interesting question and one of the things I there I know there are a number of diplomats here and one of the things that I try very hard to do when I write diplomatic history is to keep in mind the everyday difficulties that diplomats and others go through and the way that people are pressured by time and the way that there are many things coming in at once and how from a distance that can all seem very abstract but one I think helpfully correct way to think about time is in terms of conjunctures and then durability so a conjuncture is a moment when things come together and where what you do perhaps has more impact more effect than it might at some other moment I'll give you an example of what I mean by a conjuncture one conjuncture was February of 2022 when Russia invaded Ukraine that was a moment when many different things came together and no doubt historians in 50 years will still be arguing about what exactly it is that led to that conjuncture but I think it's fair to say that was a moment when many threads came together many causal forces came together into a moment where things could have gone and this is the important part in very different ways when you're at a conjunction that means that events can spread out wildly and radically um to use the terminology of the Marvel Universe which I'm sure is very familiar to all of you this is where I look for the guilty Smiles um there are various timelines that spread out from each other with creating great distances so if you'll recall February of 2022 I mean think hard about February 2022 not the way people talked about it afterwards but the way that people talked about it at the time and February 2022 the entire American foreign policy establishment was convinced that Ukraine would be defeated in 72 hours there was Zero difference between the American foreign policy establishment's View and the view of the Kremlin about what would happen in this war now imagine now the reality the timeline if you will in which that was true in which Ukraine was defeated in 72 hours in which zilinsky did flee and the government did flee the country in which all the resources of Ukraine were now in Russian hands and so on that is a very different world than the one than the world that we're living in and I think one has to think in terms of time and conjunctures and the way realities spread out if we're going to have a sense of just how significant that is events spread out one possibility from another possibility and then the funny thing is when you're on that better timeline you start to take it for granted you start to think oh well we we have to be here this is the only way things could have turned out maybe it's because we're such good people that were on this timeline right so one thing that you very rarely hear said in American foreign policy discourse sometimes you do hear it said by some smart people and apple bom's an example um but rarely do you hear it said that the two years that we've just had we owe to the ukrainians that would be like this almost it's impossible to say that with an American accent isn't it these two years that we've had we owe to the ukrainians it could have been a very you know that the wall my American accent bounces off these panel walls and they protest that that was said in American English frankly like it's such an odd thing to say isn't it for an American we owe all we owe and what do we owe in particular these are the things that we've forgotten right the greatest human capacity is the capacity to take things for granted and once you move onto a timeline which is a better one rather than a worse one this is what you take for granted What specifically what concretely do we take for granted we take for granted that there hasn't been a spectacular genocide in Ukraine of course in the territories that Russia occupies there have been mass deportations of children there's been um perhaps as many as half of the population of Heron was that was under occupation was tortured local leaders all over Ukraine that were under occupation were murdered um there has been genocidal policy but what has been held off by the Ukrainian Armed Forces is a general destruction of Ukrainian Society we take that for granted what's been held off is um a terrible strike against International legal order the basis of international legal order or one of the bases is the notion that one country can't invade another country for no reason and take its territory the ukrainians by defending their borders are defending that Prin principle had they given up I think the the status the robustness of that principle would be very different a third thing which ukrainians are holding up is the entire European Union model the model of the European Union is that post Imperial countries can engage with one another in prosperity and peace without war that is a model which seems still plausible because the ukrainians are fighting had the ukrainians given up that model would seem implausible I think to the point of laughability do Europeans see it that way I submit they do but very but very rarely another thing that we are taking for granted that's normal about this timeline is that Ukraine is fulfilling the NATO Mission extraordinary thing to say but it's true the mission of NATO is to absorb and deflect an attack by the Russian Armed Forces one country is doing that now and that country is not a NATO member we take that for granted but it's happening happening every day another thing perhaps the final thing I'll mention oh no two more because they're important war with China you might have noticed there hasn't been one in the last couple of years one of the reasons and I I note that for the the our foreign policy discourse for the prior 25 years has been chiefly orbiting around the risk of a major conflict with China the Ukrainian resistance to Russia makes it clear to the Chinese and if you don't believe me ask Taiwan makes it clear to the Chinese that offensive operations are unpredictable and difficult thereby deterring China but not only that deterring China in a way that the United States cannot deter China because every way that we deter China can be understood as provocative whereas Ukraine simply defending its Sovereign territory provokes no one and cannot be understood as provocative so the ukrainians there are doing something for us which we can't do for ourselves which is true with the last Point as well which is nuclear war probably you've taken under advisement that there hasn't been one in the last couple of years um one of the reasons why it's an important point and of itself but the but one of the reasons why and I'm speaking completely seriously now um the ukrainians are helping us helping the world here not just American us is that as a con as a as a state without nuclear weapons defending itself in a conventional war against the nuclear power they are making by their actions the argument that not everyone has to have nuclear weapons are were they to lose or were they have were had they given up then that argument would have worked the other way so the fact that Germany Poland Japan Iran you pick it um middle-sized powers are allies are not have have not undertaken a nuclear program or continued it or accelerated it as you ER is very much related to the fact that Ukraine is resisting um and again if you don't ask me push this question a couple layers deep in Berlin and Warsaw and see what you get because it's certainly something which people are thinking about so all of that from nuclear proliferation through International order through European order through the lack of genocide to the legal order in general all of that is on this timeline which we and that's an American we but not only owe to Ukrainian resistance so the ukrainians have been um you know to speak very colloquially now they have been buying us time they've been buying us time and it's not clear in what currency we are now paying them back increasingly Americans are paying them back in the currence of ignoring them avoiding them and failing to make policy and I'm going to suggest that this could have disastrous consequences because of course the fact that the the the timelines the Poss possibilities spread out like this doesn't mean that they will always stay like that they can also collapse back into another and we're heading now for a world where they will um and it's a world that we that's my American we although there are plenty of other culprits but I'm going to I think the United States is actually the most important variable here it's a world that we by way of our slowness have created we have created a world in which we could hit another conjuncture a juncture in which things look very different in Ukraine to be clear a conjuncture in which the front collapses in Ukraine a conjuncture in which Ukraine loses this war and a conjuncture in which all of the things I'm sorry to say that in the presence of Ambassador kitzia but a conjuncture in which Ukraine loses the war and a conjuncture in which all of these things which I've enumerated flip and instead of not having all of those things we suddenly have all of those things and then we ask ourselves how did we get to that world how did we get to that world and the answer is what we did or didn't do in 2023 and 2024 the answer is what we're what we're not doing right now so why do I speak of a of a of such a conjuncture if you haven't been following the news I'm sure most of you had Russia is preparing now for a major offensive in Ukraine it's using tear gas on Dugout Ukrainian positions up and down the line trying to dig Ukrainian soldiers out so they can be killed in preposition for an offensive they are using Glide bombs massively on Ukrainian lines as well as on Ukrainian cities theyve begun a program of the destruction of the city of harv which is the second largest city in Ukraine seeking to do to harv what they did before to Aleppo into marup into G um this is all happening right now um and it's happening at a time when the ukrainians are very short on anti- aircraft Munitions and short on artillery short on precisely the things which the West should be able to provide them so um why do I speak of this now why do I speak of the Americans as the variable um because what Russia is going to do is predictable they have been telling us over and over again they're fighting a war to destroy Ukrainian society and Ukrainian State that's their behavior is predictable Ukrainian behavior is also fairly predictable ukrainians say over and over again we're going to try to defend our territorial integrity and we're going to fight on despite the various difficulties including the ones that you the Americans cause for us we will continue to fight the least predictable player major player is the United States of America we are the source of most of the unpr predictability in this war we're the source of most of the contingency and it's our actions unexpected sometimes even to ourselves which have created conditions where this war could actually take a rather fatal turn so let me examine that in in a little bit of detail and then I'll make one conclusion and then and then we can talk so let's look at the three branches of government um the first branch of government of course is um is uh social media so in what what has what has social how has social media behaved in this war and how has it led us to where we are um this is a war in which the ukrainians have as well as one can from a position like theirs use social media quite well and they continue to do so and I would want to give them credit for that nevertheless social media in general is not good at maintaining attention spans it's not good at focusing people's attention on the medium or long-term trends that are essential for understanding War making um and Twitter in particular is now owned by a pro poutin who not only in by way of how he manipulates the algorithms but also by his personal interventions moves the conversation very much in a Putin Direction so that's social media summarizing very briefly oh but there's one more important Point um which leads us to another branch of government in September 2022 as I'm sure some of you will noted at the time Elon Musk personally took the decision to cut off Ukrainian AR Ukrainian armed forces from starlink at a time when they were on the offensive and on their way towards um the Black Sea in a moment by the way which was probably the best hope for ending the war um the owner of a big social media company took a decision on his own for reasons of his own which were a huge miscalculation based upon I'm not sure what um but in any event made the decision to cut off Ukrainian forces from their own Communications thereby changing the course of the war and deliberately changing the course of the war okay so that's the first branch of government second branch of government um the executive so if we follow the way the executive has treated this war the executive branch to its great credit correctly predicted what was going to happen in an unprecedented way it released intelligence which almost to the day um correctly anticipated when Russia was going to invade Ukraine and that should be and and they used that and and they you and and also the Biden Administration I think with great intelligence and subtlety said at the time there this is coming and we can't handle it on our own which was the correct I think approach and led to a renewal of euroamerican cooperation which I think was was very was very promising the error though comes in and this now you can get from Memoir material of people who were involved in the time um the error that comes in is the notion that it's our job to get the prediction right and then of course and and we if we get the prediction right then what we have to do is stop the Russians from invading and that was the policy the policy was to stop the Russians from invading but there was not any discussion or very little and I say this with some Assurance at the time about how you then help Ukraine when Russia invades so you move from so you're so you're right about Russia invading and you take the credit for that and then when Russia does invade the policy was to be on the right side and that may sound nice I mean it's better to be on the the right side than to be on the wrong side of course but it's and I remember this vividly from the time because I was having discussions about this at the time which were sometimes very Vivid discussions being on the right side is not at all the same thing as thinking about what it takes to win a war and in by March of 2022 it was clear that Ukraine could win but we were very very slow I mean perhaps infinitely slow in taking that on board um and and that there was a moment of great fluidity from Spring to Fall of 2022 when the where Russians knew that they could lose and ukrainians had a notion that they could win but pretty much nobody inside the Beltway was using that vocabulary either way either that Russia could lose or that Ukraine could win and in this way and and and there are reasons for this of course um which one could get which I'll leave for Q&A but in this way we spent the 6 months when the war was much easier to win I think it's very much still winnable but the time that was most winnable was late summer and and fall of 2 of 2022 so what we did was during that time we we followed the rhythm of Russian propaganda we listened to we we waited for each wave of Russian propaganda took it in thought about how we were going to react to it had public had discussions which were woefully public and painfully leaked about how we were dealing with various kinds of Russian propaganda we trotted out American weapon systems um after having again weirdly public and massively leak conversations about each weapon system we gave the weapon systems to Ukraine in symbolic qualities I'm going to emphasize that not in war-winning quantities in general but in symbolic qualities um qualities of course with air defense that made a real difference in people's lives but when it comes to things like um longdistance fires symbolic qualities we gave them high Mars in the wrong order of magnitude um 10 to 20 is the wrong order magnitude 100 to 200 and this war would perhaps be over um but the symbolic word is very important because we in the executive branch did this but every the Press is maybe the main culprit here we talked about Western weapons as though they were somehow superpowered and so thereby if we give a one you know 10 15 Bradley Fighting Vehicles we're somehow doing something stupendous right we're we're bringing the Avengers onto the scene and like everything's going to be radically transformed by this act and I don't mean to be critical of these systems some of these systems have been incredibly helpful himars is a good example of this and some of them are great I mean a lot of the stuff which is off the shelf and which which we're about to bury and pay to be destroyed would have a war-winning consequence if we actually sent it to Ukraine my point though is that we we treated this our own weapon systems with a kind of religious reverence and like are we going to send tanks how many tanks and then sending one tank or 10 tanks was thought to have some kind of very meaningful consequence when it came to an offensive in this in the in the early summer of 2023 we talk our we talked ourselves into a notion that that we in the west are magicians when it comes to our weapon systems and that a small quantity of them is going to make a big kind of difference and then once we given a small quantity and as I say when it comes to tanks and Bradley Fighting Vehicles those are good examples of symbolic qualities quantities we then imagine it's going to make a huge difference and then when it doesn't we think well the ukrainians must be doing something wrong and we don't return to the discussion to say well how about 200 at high Mars which of course is what that's the immediate lesson I remember when we first gave when we first gave the you know the 10 or 12 or whatever it is um then optimistically minded Western analysts said this is just proof of this is just this is just uh proof of concept and of course after the ukrainians showed they can use these 10 then we'll give them 200 this this can't be the whole thing because that would be ridiculous um and you know to be clear uh it was so um so that's the executive that's the executive branch and so now we've got ourselves it's now two years into the war and it's not clear how the executive branch thinks this is going to end at least to me the legislative branch um we so I've already mentioned the last time we authorized funds for Ukraine was you know a long time ago um most of the war ago most of the war ago um not this year not last year at the end of the year before that was the last time Congress passed a bill to authorize funds which of course In fairness the executive branch makes things harder for the executive branch I don't want to deny that and but but part of the ways the exec the way that the executive and legislative branch interact is that by not winning the war in 2022 the Biden Administration opened up the possibility that it would be dealing with a very different Congress afterwards um it may seem a far-flung analogy but if you consider the the the the two halves of the of the Obama Administration it's very much the same way the things that didn't get done in the first half weren't going to get done in the second half and we we're now facing the similar logic and Foreign Affairs and of course within the Republican party which now has a very slim majority in the house there are many people who have a very sound and righteous sense of us interests in in Ukraine but there is also a determined and ever better organized Putin fraction and one of the things which allowing time to pass has happened has been to allow that fraction to get its orders clear and to get itself organized and to find ways to make things go very slowly and uh the presidential campaign feeds into that by allowing time to pass you move into a world where the presidential campaign looms large and what the what one of the presidential candidates Donald Trump says looms very large indeed and what happens in the House of Representatives so um now we're at a point where it's very easy for the speaker of the house to take the slowness that we already have and to manufacture it at scale to make it seem normal to move it into a kind of Kafkaesque grotesquery which is what we've had for the last six months when sure we we pass a law about Ukraine as soon as you attach it to the Border oh you've attached it to the border and now we need to have a separate vote on Ukraine oh we have a separate vote on Ukraine no you have to attach it to the border right this and each time this happens the Press treats it as though there's some kind of source for hope I'm color I'm I'm I'm skeptical so if we look at these three branches of government the tech Branch the executive branch and the legislative branch I think you know this confirms what I'm trying to say is that we have created a conjuncture when you're slow you don't feel like you're doing much of anything but maybe you are when when you're slow you lose your sense of responsibility because you're not in on the things that are happening that matter um and when you're slow you can one of the things you get better at as making excuses and you also increasingly are hard to reached by other people which is something that I notice as I try to mediate between ukrainians and Americans in these conversations I don't mean to be you know Express this in as as as posos but it is really very difficult different to be in Ukraine and see your best people getting killed day after day then it is to be in Washington and say okay well of course it's normal to have a vacation at this time of year and this is what Congress always does that that difference can lead to a point where it's very hard for them to communicate with us but it's also very hard for us to listen in so far as we treat our slowness as normal then the way that ukrainians live day after day after day starts to seem abnormal and therefore incomprehensible and therefore something that we just prefer to screen out and I think that process has gone pretty far and it's a shame that that process has gone as far as it has because now we are contributing as I say we are the we Americans are the major variable here the ukrainians and the Russians are much closer to constants we're the major variable and we've created I think we are we have we we creating this conjuncture where it can all collapse again and you know we'll be very as I say we'll be very surprised when it does it won't occur to us that this is our fault how can it be our fault for doing nothing or next to nothing but that's exactly why it will be our fault and to repeat this is where I'm going to close if we do reach another conjuncture and if this timeline collapses back into that timeline we will lose very much in indeed and we will lose it very quickly um there will be a great there will be something like genocide in Ukraine um there will be a terrible blow to the international legal order if this Invasion succeeds um the the model of the European Union will be um seriously challenged if not completely undermined um Ukraine will no longer be fulfilling the NATO Mission which raises the question of who will fulfill it and um we can look forward to nuclear proliferation and a seriously increased chance of a war in East Asia but that's not all the other thing which will be compromis to the point of collapse will be American reputation because even if we convince ourselves that Ukraine is not important because we're not really paying attention to it I can assure you this I'm sure many of you have had these conversations as well but pretty much everybody around the world whatever their stand towards the United States might be looks upon Ukraine as an incredibly easy test for us incredibly easy because we don't have to send soldiers incredibly easy because the amount of money concerned is frankly invisible incredibly easy because ideologically it's exactly the case that we keep saying we care about a democracy which is directly threatened and so if we can't pass a test which our allies adversaries and everyone else regards as being incredibly easy we can't expect our allies adversaries and others to think that we will pass harder tests in the future we can Bluster all we want about it but if we fail to pass this test no one's going to think we're going to pass any others but that's not all either and now I'm going to say something which is certainly going to be painful for our Ukrainian guests I have to apologize for for this in advance but when if we if Ukraine loses that doesn't mean that Ukraine disappears it means that these incredibly skilled and experienced soldiers will be press ganged into the Russian Armed Forces it means that the Technologies which Ukraine has developed on its own Technologies without being too specific although be happy to be do more in the Q&A Technologies which Taiwan very much needs will instead go to Russia and to China it will mean that Ukrainian agriculture which is the third or fourth most important agricultural sector in the world will be controlled by Russia rather than by Ukraine it will mean that rare Earths in Ukraine which are necessary on the market and necessary for lots of people will be controlled by Russia so there's a lot more to be lost here it's not a country which will disappear it's a country which will then whose resources including its Human Resources will then be pushed pulled forced in another Direction and then it will be that Russia that one has to deal with a Russia which has won a war of aggression a Russia which has proven that the rules don't matter a Russia which has gained lots of resources and a Russia which has proven not only to itself but to most of the world that there's no particular reason to take the Americans seriously that's what we have so the then just to conclude what's what's the right way of thinking about time and I'll just say this in a in a very general principled way you have to be able to think about a future conjuncture which is a better one and which you create you can't just keep sliding along and ignoring what's happening you have to think what does a victory look like how do you get to that Victory and what are the things that we need to do in order to get to that Victory and that and that thinking in those terms about time is I'm afraid what's what's missing but also what's necessary thank you very much thank you thanks is this on yeah start off with the first question here uh do you think that part of the problem too is that we are misreading uh Mr Putin's uh IR uh mission to resurrect the former Soviet Union and that if that was more clearly explicated that maybe uh the the public would take this more seriously and and other countries would too uh I mean after Ukraine do you see Poland as the next uh country that might be invaded by Mr Putin so I I two answers to the first question the first answer is I think it's a mistake to think that we have to have a full agreement about what Putin's motives are before we act I mean I so I'm somebody who wrote a book about the way Putin thinks and uh and I spent a great deal of time re Listening To His Radio addresses and reading everything he wrote back when he used to write and and tracking his language um I I know Russian and I have a view about what Putin's motives are which I'm happy to share but I think for foreign policy purposes we can get ourselves into a bit of a trap by thinking too much about what Putin thinks uh because the danger of course is that when we set our when we when we make the first question what is Putin thinking where is he coming from the Temptation is then to say well if he's thinking X maybe we can appease him by by Y and there has been a lot of movement in that direction of the American political discussion so I would have stayed I think it's safer to stay with the word with the because I think that forces one to think okay how do you stop these things I think part of the magic of dictatorship is that we get caught up in thinking what exactly is it you know what exactly is it so I mean the formulation of of of Return of the USSR motivates some people but not others you know and and the formulation of him as a fascist motivates some people but not others and I think the important thing is to kind of stick to what's really obvious and not try to not try to get that question exactly right um and also I think it's a lot of this is a lot more common sensical than we think it is because again I do think that Putin has an ideology that there one you can write about but if you look at his behavior his behavior is much more predictable in terms of stopping where there's strength and pulling back and when we when we try to figure out the deeper motives we we don't notice that he's stoppable you know it it involves a commitment to a certain kind of force rather than necessarily getting the question right Poland uh I mean the the thing that I wanted to stress at the end and I think you caught it because I heard some you know suppressed gasps in the room and sorry but the thing the thing that we have to keep in mind is that whatever the next Target is it won't be the same Russia right a Russia which wins this war is going to be a very different Russia than the Russia of February 202 22 it's going to see itself differently it's going to see the rest of the world differently maybe it'll be overconfident probably it will be um I don't think Russia can defeat Poland for example um I think that would be a huge mistake I think the the Polish armed forces were quite well equipped and now they're and now and now they're going through some um now they're practicing some things I think I think Russia would be ill advised to um to invade Poland and I want to take but I think I think way they test NATO would be much more like a few missiles over mova and oh look one crossed into Romanian territory and oh look one exploded in Romania or oh we lost track of some vehicles around kenrad and oh sorry they just happened to go into Lithuania and what are you going to do about it probe probe probe probe probe wait till the Americans lose focus and then you know I think more much more likely a Baltic state or mova um then then Poland first of all but I want to stress the point which is I'm afraid a very oldfashioned point about power politics which is that if if we let Russia control Ukraine that's a different Russia and we might want to think the ukrainians are superheroes and like they would always resist I say this with love but nobody's a superhero and anybody can be press ganged and if you don't believe that's happened that's the whole first nine months of this war the Russian soldiers who were killed in the first nine months of this war were chiefly ukrainians who had been press ganged into the Russian service and then followed the national minorities and Then followed the poor people right so it has already happened and it can happen to anybody and when we get to the point where we as Americans are saying well of course ukrainians could never do that that's an like that if you flip it around like that's a that's that shows how untenable our own moral position has become because if they we are creating the world in which that's unfortunately quite quite thinkable even though of course and I understandbly ukrainians will resist this form of this this logic but it's it's cruel but unfortunately it's it's also true anyway so I I got I can go on on all these things but I should let other people ask questions I have the bad habit of like sharing all my thoughts when there's a question good evening thank you it was fantastic lecture you delivered today uh I want to ask you few times you use term Ukraine wins or Russia wins what is your definition of victory mhm what victory you talking about yeah I love this question because we're we're in this in I think we're in this incredible moment in the culture where everyone is like wow does everyone is has anyone ever won a war has that ever happened I I find this I find it Stupify um that because people like we you people win and lose Wars all the time like it's not a big bulletin to point out that the United States has lost a whole series of Wars since 1945 okay some people did sort of sit up so maybe it is a Bolton into some people um the Soviet Union had lost a whole series of Wars the Russian Empire lost a whole bunch of wars since 1945 the larger country has generally lost to the smaller country since 1945 the Imperial country has generally lost to the post-imperial country in general not always but that is the rule and in those Wars there were winners and losers when France had to leave Algeria it lost when the United States had to leave Vietnam it lost the the Imperial Powers don't usually characterize their losses as losses right away but they did lose and what a victory and and so slightly the Trap and I I I don't know how exactly you me this question so you should fill it follow up but so the trap in this question is people want me to say Ukraine wins when you know this unit enters this neighborhood of occupied marup and you know and and then you does this tactic that's not that's not I mean there's certain basic there are certain basic strategic things that would have to happen for Ukrainian Victory like the the bridge the the carage bridge obviously has to be down that's like military history 101 and it's like Unthinkable that that bridge is still there like that's the S that's the greatest sign of the Strategic decadence that I've been talking about is that that bridge is still there it makes zero sense Wars are fought fundamentally as e as economics and Logistics and having that bridge up just makes zero sense the car sorry for the I'll come back to your question I just have to finish this little excursus here but the the the the significance of what we now call The carage Straits has been obvious to everyone in the region for 2,500 years it's in it's in the Greek sources it's like all the way through you everyone knows you have to control those Straits um the the this the Red Army the Vermont in the second world war it's strateg it's it's military history 101 and the fact that that's not obvious to people who talk about this war in what they believe to be a serious way I find incredibly striking so anyway what I'm trying to say is that there are some basic operational things which would have to happen for example for Ukraine to win and the bridge going down as one of them but in general my definition of Victory and defeat is is is Claus Vitz it's CL Vian that war you win a war when the other side's political system can't take it anymore and you lose a war when your political system can't take it anymore that's how Wars are wi and loss it's not it's not you know it's not pushing the pieces around on the board it Ukraine winning is not the same thing as Ukrainian soldiers literally driving out every Russian soldier that's not how historically Wars are won and lost it's something happens in Russia that this system can no longer take and Russia by the way won't win this war when you have Russian soldiers ordering coffee in Lille um it will win this war when the Ukrainian political system can no longer take it now I would rather be the Ukrainian political system than the Russian one I think the Ukrainian one's more robust but either one can collapse or no longer sustain a war and that's when the other side wins so that's what I mean by Victory no given the importance of time that you stress do you believe with Mir shimer that we've already lost the war or is there still time to uh to win the war I try to be a nice person so um I'm trying to I'm trying to think of something where I agree with Professor mimer to sort of make a Pleasant Bridge um the I actually over I I skipped this part of my talk um which was I skipped a part of my talk which is about the international relations view of time so part of the problem with um these so-called I mean there's a whole list of problems but part of the problems with these so-called realistic or realist views of international relations Is they don't take time into account so you each each encounter between states is a complete mathematical abstraction where the international relations theorists usually or often entirely uninformed view of what the strength of the countries is is then used to determine what's going to happen right so Professor mimer believed that United Germany would immediately invade Poland um on this logic right and you of course if you know nothing about what happened in West German politics between 1945 in 1990 um and you just think well Germany's bigger than Poland then you were going to publish a paper which says Germany's going to invade Poland which he did um and uh and so the the abstractions take you away from the very important things like domestic politics and morale and um and allies and the overall what the Soviets used to call correlation of forces so I mean Professor Miram saying that we've already lost would confirm what he said at the beginning which is that Ukraine never could win so if Ukraine never could win then it it better have lost by now right but I would I would I would point out that since pres M shim's view from the beginning was that Ukraine never could win um he's been kind of proven wrong every day since the fourth day of of of the war so no I don't think we've already lost I think that's I frankly think that's ridiculous um the the the the variable though as I've been try I've been trying to sort of I've been trying to this talk to restore American agency like that's what I've been trying to do because in my experience talking to fellow Americans not all of them there are some great people working incredibly hard on these things but in general there's this kind there's this sense that is we can just kind of drift along and maybe it will turn out or maybe it won't who knows is really but there's no reason to hurry um it's not somehow about us and you can say that like in any relationship you know a marriage a friendship whatever at any point you can say it's not really about me but the moment you say it's not about you you're taking an action which affects the other person which is going to change the relationship right not not to get too personal about it but you know if you're in a marriage and you say well it's all you know it's not about me what is it that's not going to be much of a marriage the next hour day week whatever and in international relations Is much the same thing I mean we can say the Ukraine war is not about us we can say that but if we say that we are changing the world right we're changing the world so the we are the weak ones we're the weak Link in all this and we're mainly the weak we're mainly the weak link psychologically and this is like for the this is like spectacular irony I find for the realists because I think the realists are actually taking part in something which just proves their own Theory because the United States in terms of its objective power position is better now than it was at the end of the Cold War um we're not in in most respects in some kind of multi-polar world the way that the Russians want us to be in in terms of most of the objective ways that people measure power the United States is an isn't a dominant position now but we don't talk that way about ourselves um we we don't think about what we could do in practice to change the world the way that we confidently did sometimes way too confidently in the 19 1990s or 1980s and so I think you know the the Mir Sher view that we've already lost is a symptom of our it's a symptom it's one of many of of our inability to judge our own power Ukraine could win this war with weapons that your taxpayer dollars again that would be an American you that your tax maybe I don't know do you and diplomats pay I don't know um but but Ukraine could win this war with entirely with American weapons that American taxpayers are about to spend to disassemble that we're never going to use there are a thousand there are a thousand um there there there you know there are a thousand um himar systems which we're never going to use we're not going to use them but the defense department Protocols are such that your taxpayer dollars are going to spend are going to be spent taking them apart and throwing them away the components individually rather than giving them to Ukraine that is that is not a measure of objective American power the objective American power is those systems in the warehouses that's the objective power but subjectively we're chosing not to do that we're choosing not and why and uh and so like putting away I mean the IR realist school now which you can tell I don't think much of um there's a really interesting question about why it is that we get caught up in the conversations that we get caught up in and how it is that our adversaries so easily find the psychological and institutional choke points which they do right so so much of my talk I mean there I've been trying I mean this is not I mean I generally by the way think the body Administration has done so incredibly successful things um but I've tried in this talk to sort of share the blame um of what's going on and to show how the executive branch mistakes allow the leg the legislature's mistakes to to then to then to then happen but um but the but the the the fact that we didn't think we could do it in 2022 is one of the reasons why we are where we are and we could have done it in 2022 and we still could do it so to answer your question yeah the ukrainians can certainly win this War I mean in terms of so I mean just to take a step back the the economic power of Ukraine's allies is 250 times that of Ukraine 250 times so in that Coalition a an invisible fraction of the power of its allies should allow Ukraine to turn the war assuming that you think the war is close which it is um the N I'm talking when I say allies I mean NATO the NATO economies conserv estimated are 25 times bigger than Russia so these are we're in different we're in different we're in different orders of magnitude it's a political decision not to have done more and the political decision comes from these psychological and institutional choke points so sorry just to finish a sentence I started so much of what I'm talking about just has to do with our Baroque parliamentary rules which understandably no one else understands because no one else is living in the 18th century um yeah I think that's that's right because Putin's living in the ninth um so no one else is living in the 18 he's living in his vers of the nth I should say which actually never happened at all the way he thinks it did um we have we have Baro parliamentary rules and we have the ability of one parliamentarian to stop a vote you know and so then all you need is to have the trumpian pressure applied to that speaker of the house and the trumpian pressure is of course largely coming from a foreign country in its source and then we can't then we're unable to pass a law right despite the objective strength and so in that condition with these institutional weaknesses I think it's very important that you don't let the institutional weaknesses tell you what's objectively possible Right the ukrainians could win this war were we to help them if we're going to help them we have to decide that they need to win which means we have to think of ways to get them the stuff they need as opposed to saying oh well it's stopped up with Congress and then you start telling yourself the story about how it had to be that the ukrainians are losing and this is what I really worry about like we're you know we have we have really really really let them down I mean to an extent which is only palpable if you're if you go there and back we have really let them down in terms of the contrast between what we said and what we've done and and uh and we have we we have made we have set up a situation in which they are dying when they don't have to die and they're losing land when they shouldn't be losing land and losing limbs when they shouldn't be losing Limbs and losing territory they shouldn't be losing because of us um and if we and what I worry about is that when that starts happening we'll take the next step and say well of course Ukraine could never have won this of course they couldn't have and that's the moral Psych olical cover up for our own inaction this is where we're teetering this is why I call it a conjuncture because maybe we will pass Ukraine Aid maybe the executive branch will find work arounds maybe Ukraine will do well this year I think they should objectively but um but not if we talk ourselves into the notion that we've already lost if we talk ourselves into that then you know we're not going to then we won't think about what we what we could be doing hi um thank you very much to you and to the FBA for this uh invaluable conversation uh I wanted to know what would a defeated Russia look like defeat uh you know both domestically and in its role as a global power I mean these these things are impossible to predict but broadly speaking um defeat is a very good thing to happen to you as an imperial power uh the it's the whole history of the happy safe Europe that one has is a result of Europeans losing Imperial Wars that's the main thing I mean the precondition of the European Union is you'll notice if you follow the history the whole sequence is you lose an Imperial War the Germans lost an Imperial War for Ukraine incidentally or maybe not so in incidentally in 1945 the the the French lose in Southeast Asia and Algeria the Dutch l in Indonesia um the Spanish and the French sorry the Spanish and the Portuguese and l in Africa you have to lose an Imperial War like that's the in so far as there's an iron law of European history you have to lose your Imperial War in order to get to that position where you say oh we're a European country and now we're going to be all peaceful right the whole European um the whole European story which is 100% wrong um is we're very peaceful unlike the Americans because we don't like to fight Wars but the true story is that the Europeans did not learn from 1945 not to fight Wars that never happened that's 100% mythical after 1945 Europeans kept fighting Wars until they lost them I mean right after the second world war the the Dutch went after Indonesia I mean me there was no it's they they did what they were going to do which was to maintain themselves as Empires the decolonization happened because they lost Wars it wasn't some kind of you know objective process they lost Wars and I say this just to set up Russia because I think it's really important not to think oh like Russia is so special and mystical and something like it's an Empire Empires eventually overreach and they lose Wars that's a 200-year historical pattern Russia fits into it I would like to think more or less normally it will be awkward when they lose a war but the best chance and I believe the only chance to have something like a normal Russia is for Russia to lose this war and this is one of the things which I find very frustrating that yeah Russia has chosen to fight this illegal war of aggression it's chosen to do this but that doesn't mean that we have to think well the outcome must necessarily be worse if they lose I mean you got to lose those Wars the wars that you like the genocidal Wars those are the ones you should lose you got to lose those Wars you can't you because if you win them then you think this is the way the world works not just for you but you're educating the entire world that this is the way the world works right that's what I I don't know how cleerly I got to AC cross but this is what I meant when I said Ukraine was defending the EU model because in so far as an imperial power it loses or seems to be losing a war then something like the EU makes sense but the Russian foreign Ministry you know whatever this means is explicitly committed to the idea that the EU is an artificial temporary creation that all that really matters is Empire and that it's right good and normal for them to be returning us all to a world of of Empire and when I say that by the way I'm not saying that the Russians are the only ones who engage in imperialist Behavior just to be just to be clear so in general I think empires have to lose and I think we have to not be so um incredibly sensitive to the things that are going to happen in Russia this is my second point when the regime changes in Russia it's going to look really weird to a lot of people um but it's not going to look weird inside Russia so like Puig Goin I mean things that we forget but like Puig Goin um marching on Moscow it's going to look something like that and like when prig Goin Marches On Moscow and like he lands in a he lands in a city and everybody welcomes him and like things goes to the store and buys stuff like nothing happened it's going to be like that it's going to be uncanny it's going to look weird from the outside but it's going to feel normal to Russians and this is one of the things I think is very important that like both with respect to Ukraine and with respect to Russia we have to accept that these people have their own agency and sometimes their own way of doing things and their own way of doing things may seem odd to us and in fact I can guarantee that like the next regime change in Russia it's going to be odd like there's going to be it's going to be odd there's going to be something that seems seems strange about it but that doesn't mean that it isn't going to work in some kind of way which Russians themselves are able to accept and then the third point so there's the Empire Point there's the let's let's not try so this is a very important point for Americans too because one of one of the ways we express I think our conceit is the notion that well something that we could do might make Russia normal which is like the great fantasy of the 1990s right like that there's something we you know there are things we could have done better in the 90s and things we could have done better since but our policy has generally been to leap over Ukraine and then to imagine that there's some way that we can get Russia to to look like we want Russia to look but um there isn't a moment where that's ever worked there isn't a moment since 1991 where we have been able to reach in and say okay well you know um yelton you know don't bomb that Parliament or Putin don't you know destroy that Chia there isn't there isn't a moment where we've done that and I think that's a lesson that we should learn that this whether Russia invaded Ukraine was not up to us and what happened in the aftermath also not up to us not just in a moral sense but also in a practical sense it's unlikely that we're going to be able to affect it very much and so if we can't affect it very much it it shouldn't be the thing that is guiding or because you shouldn't guide yourself into a place where you know you're going to be impotent and so if we design our policy around like trying to be sure that what happens in Russia is going to be a normal Democratic regime change or something you're you're then aiming for a place which which which you're never going to reach because it doesn't really exist um and so like that and that's like we want the Eastern Europe to be I'm me simplifying a little bit but we want Eastern Europe to be Russia and then we want Russia to be its leader and then we want to be able then we want to think okay we can do something about that whereas I think 30 years have shown that the most effective US policy to Russia is an effective US policy to Ukraine that is the one way that we've actually been able to do something is by aiming for a smaller country which is more sympathetic to us which where things have an indirect effect on Russia so if we want a democratic Russia then we have to have a democratic Ukraine I mean I'm not saying there's a I'm not saying it will definitely be one in Russia if there's a democratic Ukraine but if autocratic Russia destroys Democratic Ukraine there is not going to be a democratic Russia anytime soon there has to and this is one of the reasons why Putin finds going back to Noah's very first question one of the reasons why Russia finds Ukraine so irritating or Putin does is that it is a more or less functioning more or less functioning rule of law Civil Society Democratic type thing um and that sort of thing is inimical to his way of of of of of guarding power then the third thing I'm just I'm just going to point out that Russia I've said this before but Russia's lost a lot of Wars like I assume that we're all pretty calm about Russia's defeat in 1856 and the Crimean War right we've we've all come to terms with that right we've all come to terms with Russia losing to Japan 1905 that was okay right it was we're fine with that um you know Russia Soviet Union lost to Afghanistan in 1979 I like to I I doubt that keeps anybody up at night right um big Powers lose Wars it happens and then they have to deal with it but in all of those cases I'm also going to point out those three cases anyway Afghanistan Crimea Russell Japanese war it led to periods of reform in all three cases in all three cases it opened up possibilities which wouldn't have been there otherwise time for one more question I actually I have two short questions number one on your historical context do you think there is any appetite in Washington or in the US generally to go back to Ukrainian history since 1990 such as the gore kuchma commission where they uh literally melted down missile silos in order to uh accept American Promises of help and the usaid was the third largest budget after Israel and Egypt at that point and I wonder whether that history should help in any way toward the future and secondly a small question on should we give them more air power the second one's really easy yeah of course we should give them we should give them much more air power I worry that with with the the the f-16s which lets her I mean which let's remember is I mean that's a that's like a retro technology the f-16s I mean the F6 16s were like you know the Next Generation Warfare when I was born um I'm not quite as old as I look um but we have we have moved on we have moved on from there you know when we give when we give airplanes to other allies they're not f-16s I I worry that f-16s from a US point of view have kind of fallen into this symbolic range where it's not very many and it's certainly not very quickly I hope to be proven wrong I hope that we have some thirdparty agreements where we'll be giving more but yeah we should have given them much more air power I mean they have a sovereign right to control their air space it's completely it's sad and ridiculous that these Russian planes can take off over and over again from these bases get close to the border of Ukraine launch missiles kill people fly back safely that shouldn't be happening and we could we could very easily prevent it with um with air power but also with more patriots Ian I'm not sure if I've mentioned this but you know Patriots are another good example of it's meaningful I don't mean to say it's not meaningful like you know I go to Kev is safe because of the Patriots largely but if there were more patriots more ukrainians would be safe more cities would be safe um we give them a very low number of Patriots and if we gave them more they could protect more cities better and also keep Russian planes further away from their own borders and they have every Sovereign right to protect their own airspace and I I I I really wish we'd move faster on on this question and also thought more creatively about about other air systems sys um which are which are out there and which are in the category of things that are obsolescing and we're just going to bury them in the ground anyway you know we might as well give them to Ukraine um first question the um ukrainians look back almost to a person they look back with great anger at the at nuclear disarmament because they think and unfortunately one has to admit here that they're right they think that in a different world where they'd kept their nuclear weapons um established control over them which surely in 20 years they would have figured out how to do um that was a joke they could do it much more quickly than that but in there like putting aside the merits of it for a second pretty much all ukrainians think that there was a double betrayal there where if if they had kept their nuclear weapons Russia never would have invaded and you know as you say that in ex change for that we didn't give them anything which was going to end up protecting their territory and they're quite disappointed in US I mean it's a minor thing but they're disappointed that we don't bring up the Budapest memorandum more often than we do you know I mean it's and it's a little bit cynical and disheartening for you know when when Americans say well NATO is real but when we said security assurances we didn't mean anything at all you know that's that's a little disheartening for people and for and for ukrainians but the reason why it's hard to go back to that history hist is because there's now such a strong and it's one of the many things that ukrainians suppress when they talk to us in general but like it's such a strong view that if we if they had been able to keep those nuclear weapons none of this would have happened and in a country where at this point I think it's almost literally true to say everybody has lost someone you know it's that the spect the idea that this war could have been deterred and this entirety is so is so attractive I want to make another point about the history the last 30 years and and maybe close on it in the last the last the last 20 of those 30 years have been internationally a period of the decline of democracy around the world and it's been a period not just not just of the quantitative decline of the number of democracies but the democracies we do have are generally worse democracies than they were 20 years ago including this country that's the overall trend and one of the reasons why Ukraine is so important and worthy of our attention is that it's a it's a rare example there are handful of others but it's a rare example of a country where in the last 20 years things have generally gotten better they've been bucking they've been bucking the trend since the since the 1990s since the kochma administration with many fits and starts and with some very awkward moments but in general what the the story in Ukraine has been Civil Society moving the state towards less oligarchy and more rule of law and that's a trajectory which is very valuable right and uh I didn't mention this in this talk but but one of the things we lose if we lose Ukraine is a huge amount of morale because one wants to think that we could have countries that get more democratic and that could work and they are precious few of them around right now precious few countries are getting more democratic and if the one you know the one big European country which was moving in that direction gets invaded destroyed removed from the map that's not just going to be a loss in all the other ways that I talked about it's also a terrible loss in morale um for people who think that democracy is good but also people who think that it's worth taking a small risk for democracy because of the people who take a big risk for it and the opinion like if the Ukrainian opinion polls say what are you fighting for number one is borders um and usually borders and then number two or in there up towards the top is a democratic rule W way so that is in fact what they're fighting for and if you let people who are taking big risks for democracy go you let them die you let them you let them be horribly wounded you give up on them if you let that happen then who's going to take small risks for democracy and if nobody's going to take small risks for democracy democracy is going to have a really hard time in the next 20 years Professor Schneider thank you very much for your thought-provoking thank you very much thanks uh please join us for for drinks okay maybe we need drinks after

Channel: Foreign Policy Association

Views: 137,371

Keywords: Ukraine, War in Ukraine, Timothy Snyder, Russia, Russo Ukraine War, CUNY

Id: JVs2y-YeiFM

Length: 76min 51sec (4611 seconds)

Published: Thu Apr 18 2024