Ukraine Update | Frederick Kagan

hello everyone i'm speaking once again today with dr frederick w kagan who's the author of a number of books related to history and foreign policy he also worked as an assistant professor of military history at west point from 95 to 2001 and as an associate professor of military history from 2001 to 2005 he holds a phd in russian and soviet military history from yale after we spoke a few days ago and you can refer to that video for more in-depth discussion we decided that an update on the situation in ukraine uh now and then might be useful and so this is perhaps the first of those and so thanks for talking to me again dr kagan and i'm all ears what's what's happening in ukraine what's happening around the world how do you see the situation where are we going well thanks jordan thank you for having me on and thank you for having me back um it's a it's a privilege to be with you um and speak with your uh with your audience about this uh thank you for staying on this topic um so amazingly the ukrainians are still in the fight uh in the conventional war against the russians uh a week into it no one who uh is familiar with the militaries of either side uh or who is familiar with basic practices of net assessment um would have would have guessed that the ukrainians would still be in a position uh whether they have held their capital they've held kiev uh they've prevented the russians from taking the second largest city in ukraine harkeef they have lost ground in the south they've probably lost the city of harassan they're probably going to lose the city of mariupol but they have not lost any other major city and they've inflicted fearful losses on on the russian invaders um and have been able to beat off repeated russian mechanized attacks and airborne attacks um how have they been able to manage that and why is it such a surprise well you know when you do when you cast a sort of a basic net assessment uh you you count things like tanks and aircraft and artillery tubes and rocket launchers and stuff and you look at the degree of modernization of both sides and what kind of equipment everybody has and then you look at the numbers of troops and so forth and by all of those measures the russian superiority is so overwhelming that you you know all of your basic net assessment calculations would say that the russians should have been able just to roll over them and the russians seem to have thought that they would just roll over them and that's a big part of the explanation for why things have gone the way that they did it's really become very clear that the russians just did not expect that they were going to be in a big fight here they they thought that they were going to roll in the ukrainians were going to run away or surrender and they russians thought they were basically going to be able to drive into kiev and other cities and and do their will and i think they've been very much surprised by the fact that the ukrainians have just decided to fight like lions um and have been also very skillful at it and then there are some other factors that are important here too that um it's not obvious to me that when the russians when the russian military put the forces in place that have conducted this invasion they actually thought that they were going to have to conduct the invasion i think that it's very possible that the initial deployments that they made were actually done more to generate psychological effects on ukraine in the west in support of other things that putin was trying to do and certainly we know that russian soldiers were surprised when they were told that they were actually going to invade ukraine but i i think it's possible that there were there have been points over the past few weeks when russian more senior officers were told that they were really going in and and were um you know were probably taken aback because they really they just the russians made a lot of mistakes in the way that they've set up to conduct this operation and they've made a lot of mistakes in the way they've conducted it and the ukrainians have made them pay for almost every one of those mistakes so what's happening in russia more broadly there were demonstrations which is always surprising to see in russia what do you have information about the the spread of those demonstrations their effectiveness their unexpectedness any of that and and then on the world front what's happening there people seem around the world seem to have united in a quite remarkable manner uh in a manner that isn't working out in russia's favor let's say and so let's talk about the russian domestic situation first and then the international situation well we've seen unprecedented uh sort of wide large protests uh against the war um including some prominent personalities and also just a lot of russians um on the streets the you know the russians uh purportedly arrested thousands of people um in these protests and or that they claim were involved in the protests i you know i don't i don't know how many of them actually were um and and it is surprising it's just it's you know russians have been conditioned to know that if you go out and protest the odds of being arrested are high um and those are not jails that you want to spend any time in so um it says a lot about the degree to which putin had just really failed to prepare his population for this war uh i think they didn't i think russians didn't think this was going to happen for the excellent reason that russian officials were telling them that it wasn't going to happen right up until the moment that it happened just about uh days before like within 36 hours of the actual russian invasion russian senior officials were still mocking the west for saying that the russians were going to invade so the russian people were caught by surprise and i think there's a there's an element here that's very important because it also it helps it just contextualize a little bit the conversation about how much the u.s should or should not do to help the ukrainians here including whether we want to go to ukraine and fight and so on which no one is really suggesting and which i'm not advocating now either you know russian people we've seen polling please as good polling as you can get from russia russian people see america as an enemy they see nato as an enemy by large margins there's an old cold war hangover and then there's what putin's been doing for 20 years to stoke that they don't see ukraine as an enemy in the in the same way and of course all of the narrative and rhetoric coming out of the kremlin has been that the ukraine has sort of lost russian brothers in many respects and the ukrainian government the russians have terrible things to say about but ukrainians they say are you know our slavic brothers and and fundamentally you know belong in russia and so i think if this had been a war against the u.s or a war against nato uh putin could have expected to have a certain resonance among his population but i think the fact that this is very purely a war against ukraine uh undermines a lot of the messages and runs counter to a lot of giving's people and i think a lot of russians are just saying themselves why why are we doing this i mean that is what they're saying people are saying why are we doing this and as the sanctions hit and as the the economy gets worse um i have sanctions ever been effective in a situation like this before or is there ever a situation like this before well look i mean in so in a certain fundamental sense i don't think there has been a situation like this where we had uh you know a u.s administration that was saying very clearly we think the russians are going to invade and our strategy to to prevent them from invading is to threaten them with sanctions and we're and saying we the us are not going to enter the war so there's no military deterrent on the table and it's as pure and pristine a test as you could really ever hope to have of the theory that the threat of crippling sanctions will deter large-scale military action and in that sense it has demonstrated the the weakness shall we say of that theory and it is about as pristine an experiment as you could hope for i'm not surprised by it i never thought that the threat of sanctions would deter putin if he had decided to invade and and they clearly didn't and i don't think that they're going to by themselves uh persuade him to stop this fight the ukrainians are in the process of making a strong argument about why you know continuing this war is not a good idea from uh putin's perspective uh but i'm i'm not optimistic that he's gonna you know come to that conclusion soon and have you been surprised by the response on the international front i've been very gratified by it i mean when you see the russians lose a vote in the u.n general assembly by 141-5 you you i mean putin that is that is an astonishing failure of russian messaging information operations and public diplomacy when listen the only former soviet state that voted against that resolution was belarus which has 30 000 russian troops in it you know even even the kazakhs even the armenians didn't vote um against that resolution they abstained that that's that's a sort of a repudiation of a sword with even within the within the russia dominated world and then the the virtual unanimity of the general assembly um like you know on that resolution is a devastating blow to putin's you know narratives over many years that he believes in collective or in in um in multi-polarity that he believes in the u.n that the un should be the you know the arbiter of all of these things he's thrown that back at the u.s uh for decades and to be repudiated by the u.n as thoroughly as he just was is a devastating blow for him informationally now it's not going to change his calculus um why did that happen what do you think is oh sorry go ahead with that you know why did that happen it happened because you know as we talked about um on on the last show where we discussed this you know i think the biden administration very skillfully conducted uh an information diplomatic uh campaign that stripped away from putin all of the efforts that he was uh making to give himself any kind of informational cover and make it look like the ukrainians had started this or prompted it or or generate any ambiguity and then he decided to just big fat invade anyway without any kind of a fig leaf and that has just made him so clearly the aggressor even before he started uh rubbling harkee what do you think the biden administration did on that front that was particularly effective so along with the threat of sanctions which was not effective in deterring him um the bidet administration did really work hard to learn about to penetrate russian plans to conduct information operations to conduct false flag attacks to try to assassinate zelinski to try to conduct a coup d'etat and they publicized what they learned they really were very very fast to declassify intelligence and publicize all of the russian attempts to create this this fictitious universe to gaslight us and persuade us that this is somehow ukraine's fault of the ukrainians had prompted this um and it was a very skillful campaign that the bible administration ran now you know i need to be careful we need to be careful about over crediting them because i think that they did think that by doing all of that they would deter putin from attacking because they were presenting him with the reality that he would have to go in without any informational cover and at the end of the day putin decided he just didn't care and he was going to go in anyway so that the campaign failed from the perspective of what it was i think intended to do which was to deter him but it did put him in this very bad spot where he's stripped of informational cover he is nakedly the aggressor and the international community at least in the first week of this war has largely with a couple of notable exceptions rallied against him in a way that we really haven't seen it rally against anyone since osama bin laden and that's quite an accomplishment what do you think might have constituted a more appropriate strategy of deterrence or let's say a more effective strategy of diplomacy that might have avoided this altogether or is that even possible look my my view all along has been that if putin was willing to conduct this invasion in order to achieve his aims the only way that we were really going to deter him from doing that would have been by making it clear that we were going to fight with the ukrainians and we were going to guarantee his military defeat um i don't think anything short of that and that's a tough that's a tough game yeah because of course the more that's put forward as the strategy the more the fear let's say that's driving him of of the west what of the westernization perhaps of ukraine the more that also appears justified in his eyes yeah i i mean you know candidly i'm happy to discuss that with you but candidly that that counter argument wasn't the one that impressed me the most because he's was already where he was on that this is the putin is a guy who understands force and although i you know i and that and the team at the institute for the study of war have written for years about how clever he's been with information operations and hybrid war and lots of other things at the end of the day putin understands force and if you take force off the table and you tell him that he's not going to have to worry about a forcible response that shapes his calculation in a certain direction if you put force on the table and tell him that maybe he does have to worry about mixing it up with the american military or nato then that would have changed this calculation in a different direction and i think at a minimum because by the way i want to be very clear that i wasn't you know i wasn't advocating and i'm not advocating now that we should have said that we would have in you know gone into ukraine and fought in ukraine against the russians i thought it was a very complicated series of decisions we needed to make here and i'm not going to second guess the decision not to do that i will say that it was in my view unfortunate that president biden said and kept repeating that we would not fight in ukraine because i think that leaving ambiguity in putin's mind on that question would have been a good idea i don't know that it would have been sufficient though since he had decided that he was prepared to do this and why do you think the threat of economic sanctions wasn't as it wasn't a sufficient deterrent were was the threat credible and yeah why do people who make such threats assume that the threat of economic sanction which i suspect in some sense hits the ordinary population harder than the leaders why is that viewed as a credible deterrent look i mean on the one hand there's a certain sort of mirror imaging here that we you know we think about you know what would we how would we think about the world if we were facing the kinds of sanctions that we're imposing on russia um and you know how would sort of any normal or ordinary person in putin's position think about these things because we can we are in a position to devastate the russian economy and we are devastating the russian economy and that will matter to putin uh russia's foreign reserves are not infinite and they're not even that extensive honestly and uh war is incredibly expensive especially when you're losing soldiers and equipment at a rate he appears to be uh he's going to need cash and having his economy wrecked is going to make it very hard to continue this war among other things that he needs to do and it's going to make his people very unhappy and that will ultimately matter to him so if this it's this in the short term it affects ordinary people and oligarchs but in the longer term it will affect him also in his ability to do stuff but here's the thing once somebody has decided that they are prepared to try their luck by force of arms they've made a mental and psychological shift that it's easy for people on the outside not to recognize because what you're saying is i'm prepared to go in and i'm prepared to kill a lot of people and i'm prepared to lose a lot of my own people and i'm prepared to run the risk however slight it might be that the war won't go my way and really bad things will happen if you're in that mindset then the threat of economic sanctions is not what is first and foremost in your mind and i think we just you know i think we a lot of people collectively missed that putin had gotten into that mindset and then overestimated the sort of rationality that is required then to think about the long-term effects of economic sanctions of a certain variety so what do you think is going to happen and what do you think we should want to have happen in like if this could end in a relatively comparatively non-catastrophic manner and does that mean that putin has to see a way forward that still involves him retaining control of russia is there a way that he can do that without that would be acceptable to the west in any real sense like what would be our preconditions for saying this is over and we can move on what should they be well i mean i think at this point our basic precondition is russians get the hell out of ukraine um and stop attacking it and then stop threatening to attack it um you know there will be there are russian war crimes being committed there will be war crimes trials conducted it's important to hold russians accountable for the terrible things they're doing um beyond that you know i i would personally be prepared to accept it if putin accepted the military defeat withdrew his forces um and returned uh you know returned ukrainian territory to ukraine i'd like to demand that he returned you know donetsk and luhansk that he had all you know uh occupied to begin with as well as crimea um if i had to accept a piece that had a russian military defeat but that had russian forces still in crimea without of course recognizing crimea or changing our position on that in any way i would i would be inclined to accept that because at the best outcome that we could hope for and i'm not optimistic that we will see this um would be that the ukrainian military with no more assistance than the provision of weapons and supplies and so forth that it's getting now maybe a little bit more of that defeats the russian military conventionally and putin accepts the defeat that that's the best possible outcome that we could hope for it will be a humiliation of the russian military of a sort that it hasn't experienced since the japanese russo-japanese war of 1904 1905 and that's why unfortunately i don't think putin can accept it i think putin will feel obliged does feel obliged to secure some military victory of some variety because as he keeps saying weakness is lethal and being defeated by the ukrainians he will regard as intolerable but that's the best outcome that we that we could hope for and it's what we are working for right now and it's what we should continue to work for as long as you think that what do you think he might be pushed to accept as a minimally acceptable military victory i've got to tell you i'm i'm beyond the point of being able to claim that i really understand putin's thought process at this point except to say that i'm pretty confident that he will not be able to accept emotionally and mentally a straightforward defeat by the russian military of the ukrainian military without trying to escalate more uh which i think he's doing right now and so what do you hope that we continue to do in the world outside ukraine and russia i hope that we continue to flow uh weapons and supplies to the ukrainians as fast as they need them and i hope that we continue to provide them with all of the support short of actually deploying you know combat forces or aircraft uh to fight with them and give them what they need i hope that we continue to unite the world against uh putin for this uh outrageous unprovoked act of aggression um and that we make it very clear to putin that his choices are going to be accepting this defeat and making the best he can of it um or really beginning to stare down the barrel of the of the collapse of his regime um that's but that all of that's very tricky because when you start talking about when you start putting the collapse the regime on the table right now we have a wounded angry bear and animals like that are very unpredictable and still can do a lot of damage and i so this is something to be managed very carefully and thoughtfully but i think helping the ukrainians fight off this attack if forest comes to worst in ukraine or one of the worst helping them prepare for and conduct an insurgency against russia are important and then just continuing to tighten the vice on putin and make it clear we will squeeze russia to death if he does not back off uh but we will not squeeze it to death if he does back off i mean that's that you know the off ramp here is if you do stop this then we can you know we can return to some kind of and you you think that is a reasonable off ramp and there's anyone that you regard as credible suggesting any other alternative to that in terms of off-ramps um no um and my problem with that off-ramp is it requires putin to make a psychological shift that i think is going to be almost impossible for him of actually accepting that he's been defeated here um and that's right now i'm focused on you know what can we do to make it clear to him that he's not going to win this without ourselves escalating in a way that that will change this in a bad way and i think that's the balance that that everybody's trying to strike um in terms of where putin will go looking for off-ramps or other things at that point i'm nervous about a variety of ways that that can go one of the things that putin could do is he could really try to return this more into a russia-nato conflict which would likely rally his people more enthusiastically than just a war against ukraine and i don't think that he's in a position to attack nato militarily right now given the problems that he has but i think we should expect to see a possible change in kremlin rhetoric and posture to try to make this more of a war to or preparation to defend against nato and rally and i think here again we need to not repeat the mistake that we made that contributed to this didn't cause this putin you know we need to blame the enemy for what the enemy did this was putin's decision to invade biden administration is not the blame for putin's decision we need to be very clear about that that would be true if trump were in office or bush or anybody else at the end of the day putin made this decision and he's to blame but the mistake the miscalculation that by the administration made about its ability to deter him we need to not repeat that mistake in when it comes to deterring him from testing nato i think we need to recognize that he is engaged in a gunfight and we need to be prepared to bring a gun to a gunfight so the u.s has started to mobilize forces to defend its niece to eastern nato members we need to keep doing that there will be more and more discussion about how escalatory that might be and how that might trip putin into further activity i don't think that's right i think what we need to make clear to putin is that if he starts something with nato we will finish it quickly and there is nothing there for him and not allow him to imagine that there is any even initial military success he could achieve against nato because we just need to foreclose that option preventing this from becoming a russia nato war is a very big priority right now as well as helping ukrainians defeat the russians in ukraine yeah well it also means failing in some sense to take into account the u.n decision because it's not just nato that's right rallying behind the ukraine but behind the brain it seems like in the most real of senses it's the entire world most of it and i think we need to get after the parts of the world that aren't rallying um i think look we need to look at the at india and say listen you know it's actually not okay that that india abstained on that resolution it's not okay um you know i understand various countries have various calculations but this is this is not a time for those kinds of calculations so i'm thrilled that it was 141 to 5 but there should have been more countries voting for that resolution and i i think we need to focus on doing everything we can to increase that isolation that putin feels and have the countries that abstained going to him and saying listen you know listen for the diminutive of of vladimir but you know listen forever this isn't going to happen for you and we we can't we can't carry water for you even in this limited way you're going to have to make a decision to end this on terms that you don't like that message has got to be coming to him from all of his friends and all of the people who are straddling right now as well so i think you're absolutely right jordan that finding ways to continue to strengthen this global uh block against him is important okay all right well i think unless you have anything to add to that that seems like a reasonable update um the news could be worse given how bad the situation is and uh it's quite remarkable i think to see the essential unity of the world in response to this and the fact that it didn't that ukraine wasn't as easy a bite to chew as might have been expected to begin with and i can't see that really getting much better for for the russians for putin in the near future hopefully not um ukrainian slave glory to ukraine thanks very much for speaking with me again and we'll be in touch again when it seems like the appropriate thing to do thank you so much jordan all right

Channel: Jordan B Peterson

Views: 836,507

Keywords: Jordan Peterson, Jordan B Peterson, psychology, psychoanalysis, Jung, existentialism, maps of meaning, biblical series, free speech, freedom of speech, biblical lectures, personality lectures, personality and transformations, dr fredrick kagan, dr frederick kagan, nato and russia, the west, ukraine crisis, ukraine jordan peterson, jordan peterson russia, jordan peterson ukraine situation, ukraine vs russia interview, russia vs ukraine interview

Id: YDElXTPm3VQ

Length: 27min 30sec (1650 seconds)

Published: Fri Mar 04 2022