Call Me Back - with Dan Senor - 100 Days: The Tide Turns Towards Putin

Episode Date: June 11, 2022

After the 100-day mark of the 2022 Russian war against Ukraine. we assess some grim facts of this war, and try to understand how they should inform what to expect in the next hundred days. Richard Fontaine, CEO of the Centar for a New American Security (CNAS), returns to the conversation. Richard is a member of the Pentagon’s Defense Policy Board. CNAS is a bi-partisan foreign policy think tank in Washington, DC. Prior to CNAS, he was foreign policy advisor to Senator John McCain and worked at the State Department, the National Security Council, and on the staff of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee.

What has happened is that the Russians have redeployed, regrouped, and adapted to something that is far more favorable to their style of war and their geography. What they tried to do in Kiev seemed so unlikely because no one could figure out how it would be successful, and it turned out that that's because it wasn't going to be successful. What's going on in the East is much more like the Russian way of war, which is very artillery dependent. Their supply lines are a lot shorter to Russia than they were before. They're a lot more secure than they were before. And this is the kind of war that Russians know how to fight better than the kind they tried in the beginning.

We just passed the first 100-day mark of the 2022 Russian war against Ukraine. Here are a few things we know so far. While some analysts had feared that extending NATO to Central Europe and the Baltics would provoke Russia, in a sense the opposite is true. It was Putin's invasion that actually accelerated NATO expansion and catalyzed some countries that had historically shied away from being under the NATO umbrella. For starters, just look at Finland and Sweden. And then there's Germany, whose new government has abandoned the post-World War II limitations on its military. Based on new commitments made by Chancellor Olaf Scholz, the German military

is poised to be one of the more important militaries in Europe and beyond. In the U.S., there's an encouraging bipartisan consensus on supporting Ukraine. Look at the recent vote in the Senate on the $40 billion military and humanitarian aid package. Or read the interview that Senate Republican Leader Mitch McConnell gave to the New York Times on May 21st. Well worth a read. We'll include it in the show notes. Then there's the reality that Russia has faced the toughest sanctions imposed on any major economy since World War II. And so far, there do not appear to be any major cyber attacks in the context of this war. And the Ukrainian military

has performed surprisingly well, as we've talked about from time to time on our various episodes. The Russian military has suffered major setbacks with disproportionately high casualties, including among senior generals, as Fred Kagan chronicled for us in a recent conversation we had here. And yet, there's a growing sense that the Ukrainian military morale is facing its own challenges. That is a newer development. For example, there's this reporting from the Washington Post, and I quote, reports of Ukrainian troops refusing to fight and surrendering en masse, previously confined to Russian state television, have made their way to Western media. In a video uploaded to Telegram on May 24th, members of the 115th Brigade 3rd Battalion announced that

they will no longer fight due to a lack of military equipment and proper leadership. We are being sent to certain deaths, said one of the Ukrainian volunteers, according to the Post. We are not alone like this. We are many. This was one important insight among many in a recent piece I read by David French in The Dispatch. David's piece gave me a lot to think about. So as we pass this 100-day mark, we'll assess some of these grim facts that he refers to and try to understand what the next 100 days could look like. And to help us make sense of it, Richard Fontaine of the Center for New American Security returns to the conversation. Richard is a member of the Pentagon's Defense Policy Board and is in regular contact with the

Biden administration's national security team. He's a former top advisor to Senator John McCain and the Senate Armed Services Committee, and he served on the NSC and at the State Department in the George W. Bush administration. This is Call Me Back. And I'm pleased to welcome back to the podcast my friend Richard Fontaine, who we always bring on to the conversation when we're looking for some good cheer. So Richard, thanks for coming back. Thanks. I always know I'll be invited back when there's trouble in the world. So I guess I'm pleased to be here. It's like guaranteed lifetime employment. So the reason I wanted to, I had like a sense of urgency.

I texted you the other day about coming back on was two reasons, really. We just passed the 100-day mark since Russia's invasion into Ukraine, the invasion on February 24th. And you and I have talked on this podcast in the past about how there was tremendous and almost inspiring nonstop coverage, almost minute to minute, of the war, and the West seeming to root for the Ukrainians and cover every single development with great concern, and the world seemed to be captivated by this war.

And I've always felt that there's a point at it the intense coverage in this modern media day age drops when it drops it drops hard where I saw it drop was on March 27th which you may remember was the academy awards when there was a when there was like an altercation on the stage and then suddenly that became the new that that sort of supplanted all the all the coverage of geopolitical events in this case of war and then we were consumed with sort of supplanted all the all the coverage of geopolitical events in this case of war and then we were consumed with sort of as the return to the silly season and there are other issues being covered right now i don't want to i don't want to suggest there are other important issues but this one is extremely important and so we've passed 100 days it seems

like the west is and the world generally is paying less attention and then there was this piece i read which confirmed my concerns or not confirmed but but certainly was consistent with my concerns was a piece by david french in the dispatch uh in which he wrote uh the tide the title is the tide is turning toward russia it's time to face some grim facts about the war in ukraine that's the title of the piece which he wrote about a week ago. And I just want to quote from the piece. David writes that, and I'm quoting here, I write none of this to denigrate Ukraine's early victory or the cost of Russia's early defeats. I write none of this to say that Ukraine should sue for peace. Instead, I write to help us focus our minds on what a long war could look like and the necessity for creative and imaginative thinking to help Ukraine stop the Russian advance and reverse

the fortunes of war. He goes on and says, when Russian forces retreated from the outskirts of Kiev, meaning early on, leaving hundreds of shattered vehicles in their wake. And we all remember those images of the abandoned assets. There was a flare of hope that we were watching the beginning of the end of Russia's invasion of Ukraine. Instead, he writes, instead, David French writes, we may have merely witnessed the end of the beginning. A long war looks likely.

And while the Biden administration deserves credit for its indispensable efforts to help stave off an early Russian victory, the strategic challenge only grows more difficult. So are we, is what David French is writing here correct? Are we only in the early of the beginning? Is this war of attrition that we, this war that we thought would be over and we were inspired early on, that it would have this sort of flash of lightning response to Russia actually setting into a long war of attrition

that is going to become part of our new normal? Yeah, it is going to be a long war. And I think you can see that by looking at the objectives of both sides, such as we know them, Putin evinces no change in what he would like to accomplish in Ukraine. The Ukrainians certainly wish to defend their territory against Russia seizing it. There's no negotiations going on. One side or the other is not about to impose a dramatic defeat, askilometer-long front in the east in which there's just a tremendous intensity of fighting going on between the Ukrainians and the Russians. And this is the Russian way of war, very artillery-heavy.

The Ukrainians are defending themselves valiantly, but both sides are taking very big casualties and killed in action. And it's moving back and forth incrementally. So I think we may have passed the end of the beginning rather than the beginning of the end, to paraphrase a great war leader. Churchill, right. So what did we get wrong about the beginning when there was all this enthusiasm about both the incredible Ukrainian military response, which most military analysts didn't expect, and then what seemed like the

complete collapse of the Russian military, including Russian generals getting killed in action and these considerable setbacks, it seemed to be on one trajectory., why wasn't it on that trajectory? Like what, what did we get wrong? Well, personally, I thought it was going to be a long war from the beginning. So, and, and I did not think that, you know, the Russians were going to just, you know, take their ball and go home after they failed around Kiev. And so I think all the signs pointed from the beginning to a long war of some kind. What has happened is that the Russians have redeployed, regrouped, and adapted to something that is far more favorable to their style of war and their geography. And what they tried to do in Kiev seemed so unlikely

because no one could figure out how it would be successful. And it turned out that that's because it wasn't going to be successful. They tried a lightning grab. Special operations forces were going to land at this airport just outside the city. They were going to move in, decapitate the government, isolate Kiev from the rest of the country, move those armored personnel carriers and tanks down from the north and the whole thing. And again, in spectacular fashion, we saw how that failed. Russia clearly is not good at that, but it's never been good at something like that. It's not been the Russian way of war. And of course, the Ukrainians, both civilians and military personnel, fought and defended with huge bravery, and Zelensky stayed and rallied his people and rallied the world and everything else. What's going on in the East is much more like the Russian way of war, which is to say very, very artillery dependent. So bombard cities, towns, villages

to the point where there are few, if any, civilians left only after you've been able to bombard the other side, either into submission or to flee or to make the place in the territory in which you'd like to move permissible? Do you move your troops in? And that's a very slow, incremental, maybe a mile or two a day kind of thing. Their supply lines are a lot shorter to Russia than they were before. They're a lot more secure than they were before. And this is the kind of war that Russians know how to fight better than the kind they tried in the beginning. And in terms of what do you estimate is the number of Russian casualties in Ukraine so far, roughly? Yeah, probably. Well, casualties, it's hard to say.

I mean, killed in action action the numbers seem to be around 15,000 or something that NATO and other Sources, I mean the Ukrainians quote a higher number rather than that, but I so it's hard to say but by any Accounting they've lost more in a hundred days and they lost in the entirety of their war in Afghanistan that spanned a decade and over the entirety of the American wars in Iraq and Afghanistan over 20 years. And about a third of our total casualties since, say, the Vietnam War. Yeah, I mean, it's a devastating loss. But that said, the Russians also conscript, you know,

something on the order of 125,000 new troops every six months. And so if you are Vladimir Putin and you care not a whit about the safety and security and lives of your own soldiers, nor the derivative effects of all those you've displaced and the food crisis around the world and everything else, then you've got human capital, so to speak, to work with. But yeah, it's a shocking level of loss. And why hasn't that contributed to a more significant impact on morale of the russian military we we were told early on that morale among ukrainian military was high ukraine uh morale among russian military had reached its limits at best and certainly with these kinds of casualty numbers and when you put them in perspective like you just have comparing them to other wars including russia's own

war in Afghanistan. And by the way, I'm reading now that there's Ukrainian morale problems, Ukrainian military morale. First of all, is that based on what you're seeing and reading and hearing? There is a Ukrainian military morale problem? Yeah, not as great as the Russian morale problem. The Russian morale problem has been and remains significantly higher than the Ukrainian one. But to, you know, be in a forward position and be bombarded relentlessly from the air indefinitely is not not exactly great for morale. And so the Ukrainians, although they are obviously

defending their own territory, you know, it's created some morale problems there as well. Um, and again, you know, the part of this turns on who's doing the fighting. If, you know, folks are from the West that have come out and now are fighting in the plains or in the villages of the East, then that's a little bit different than when, you know, you're repelling a grab on your capital city. So you say the Russian form of fighting, certainly in the east, is more familiar to students of Russian military history. So that's a point that David French also makes in this dispatch piece, which I'll quote from. He says what we're seeing now quote fits patterns in russian's

warfare dating back more than 100 years after early battlefield humiliations the russian military regroups and turns back to its strengths firepower manpower and willpower it doesn't always win it regrouped from early losses in world war I, yet still lost. But its history in the Winter War with Finland, its apocalyptic confrontation with Nazi Germany, and even the arc of the First and Second Chechen Wars show that it has no reluctance to apply overwhelming firepower and take immense losses until its enemy cracks. So is what we're looking at now comparable to the war against Nazi Germany? Yeah, it is, more or less. This is a Soviet-Russian way of the war, but the part about they do that until the enemy cracks suggests that the enemy always cracks, and it doesn't. So the

Russians, of course, did not actually defeat the Finns in the Winter War. I mean, they extracted a territorial price, but who would have thought that Finland, which I believe at the time had a population of three million, would repel Joseph Stalin's Red Army. And they kept a hold of their territory and their sovereignty. Of course, in Afghanistan, the Soviets went home having not achieved their objectives and having taken losses over a long period of time. So it's not always successful. In Chechnya, it was more or less. I mean, they leveled the capital city of Grozny,

said within 24 hours, all civilians must leave there by logic. Anyone who remains is a combatant, so therefore can be targeted. And so that worked in the sense that they destroyed one of their own cities and moved in. But it's a very brutal, very drawn out, very munitions intensive, very firepower, artillery, rocket intensive kind of warfare. The other thing that the Russians are doing, which again is a page from some of their

previous playbooks, is with respect to the population and the areas they're seeking, so they've set up these filtration camps to try to discern who the Ukrainian nationalists might be, the patriots versus those who they can work with. And they're deporting huge numbers of people into Russia, huge numbers of Ukrainian civilians into Russia, including local officials and things, replacing them, abducting them and replacing them with loyalists or with Russians themselves and so forth. In terms of Russia's naval strategy, the Russian Navy controls the Black Sea. What is the implication of that? I mean, French has written about this others have written about this that just russia's ability to just maintain a total blockade of ukrainian ports for you know as as far and as long as the eye can see uh and and which obviously has impact on food supplies and a whole range of other supplies that Ukraine depends on. How dominant is Russia in the Black Sea?

And is there anything that can challenge that dominance? Russia is completely dominant in the Black Sea. I mean, the Russians, I believe, would like to take Odessa if they could. They don't have Odessa. This is the major port on the Black Sea that the Ukrainians have over there in the west, on the southwest portion of that. They don't have the strength to do that by land, and I don't think that they can do an amphibious landing to take Odessa, although they'd like to. The Ukrainians, by sinking the Moskva a few weeks ago, showed that they can attack ships in the Black Sea

with anti-ship missiles, but they've also mined the areas around the coast. But the upshot of all this is that, you know, with a naval blockade, they either have to withdraw the blockade or someone has to break the blockade. Ukrainians can't break the blockade and the Russians show no willingness to relieve the pressure that the blockade is imposing. And so there's no commercial shipping going in and out. And if you add Russian and Ukrainian wheat, that's about a quarter of the world's grain supplies. And you're seeing huge spikes in commodity prices as anybody fills up their tank and their car knows, but the food crisis is going to be acute.

It already is, but it's going to get worse and worse. Was the steel factory chapter a turning point in this war? Well, I mean, what it allowed the Russians to do was really consolidate control of mariupol down in this in the southeast what the russians you know i it's always hard to say exactly what overall objective is but his objective i think is still to take kiev and what he believes to be the russian portions of the ukraine at a minimum and and you know annex them or or at least not have ukraine exist as a as that part of the country um but among the sub objectives was this land bridge from russia to crimea and by taking the area around mariupol i mean if you froze the conflict today, given where the lines are, the Russians would have that land bridge to Crimea.

And they're already trying to act on that. So, for example, there was a canal that brings water into Crimea. And after the seizure of Crimea, you know, years ago, the Ukrainians basically blocked that. So the Russians just turned that back on and cleared it so that it can bring water into Crimea. So there's things like that where, you know, you will have a you would have a contiguous amount of land territory that would go from Luhansk down to Donetsk, down to Mariupol, across and down to Crimea at a minimum that the Russians would have control over.

So that was part of what was, you know, the steel plant was a turning point in the sense that it was basically a battle for the areas around Mariupol. When you think of all the, when you consider all the ways that Ukraine could regain some momentum, one necessary but not sufficient path to regaining momentum is U.S., NATO, and more broadly Western military support, meaning not direct military engagement, but Western military supply support.

You and I were talking offline about the importance of the $40 billion appropriation in Congress to assist Ukraine, although you were not as bullish on what the significance of that unprecedented package represented? Well, no, I am bullish. I just think that that is likely to represent the peak rather than one point on an ascending level of assistance to Ukraine. I mean, $40 billion is a tremendous amount of money. There's a huge financial aid package part of that that is not just the military side, but I mean, the billions that we Americans have provided already and the billions more that will be included in that package, you can pass a lot of things now that's presidential drawdown Authority which gets kind of wonky quickly but this is basically drawing down things in the U.S military inventory or looking

to one of our allies that has some weapons that they can pass to the ukrainians and then we can backfill them with something else that's kind of akin to it. So that process, I mean, we're not close now to the limits of that process, but we will get to the limits of how many javelins exist in the world, how many pick some of these various weapons systems, how many exist in the world and that can be passed to the Ukrainians without cutting into the stocks that countries believe they need for their own security and things like that. So there's a long way to go until we get to that. But I guess it's my point about the $40 billion being the peak is commensurate with your point about the ebbing focus of the world on this.

I mean, it's still on the front pages and the front of everybody's minds, but it doesn't completely dominate everybody's minds. It doesn't completely dominate the front pages the way it did just a couple of weeks ago. Oh, yeah. One issue that some have written that is sort of like a microcosm of the Biden administration's dilemma in how to support Ukraine was the issue of the multiple launch rocket system, MLRS. So before we talk about the issue, can you describe the MLRS and why as a weapon it's so important and would be so important to Ukraine? And then wers and and why it's why is as a as a weapon it's so important and would be so important to ukraine and then we'll get into why it's controversial but yeah so the mlrs is a mobile rocket launcher so it can uh drive around and shoot off rockets but it can but and depending on which rockets you have in there then the range of those things and it's a precision guided munition so you you can aim it quite precisely at things

the administration is providing the ukrainians with high mars which are basically each one is equivalent of a 500 pound bomb so this is no small capability uh you can shoot it you know tens of miles and with precision hit some target with again the equivalent of 500 pound bomb which would give the ukrainians the capability they don't currently have because if you look along these lines, the Russians are able to bombard the Ukrainians with artillery from positions that the Ukrainians are not able to strike back against. And so that would expand their ability to do it. Although again, the stocks of those things are going to be limited and they have to be trained up on them and everything else.

That doesn't take forever. It takes weeks, not months, but it does take some time. And so now talk about why it's controversial and how the administration has gone back and forth on what to do about the MLRS. Well, I think the administration has worried from the beginning about where, if anywhere, the sort of red lines of escalation would be for the Russians. Now, that sounds in a way ridiculous, given the intensity of the fighting in Ukraine to talk about, you know, Russian restraint or escalation. But it is the case that the war is in Ukraine, not outside of Ukraine, really. And the administration has, I think, worried that if you provide rocket systems to Ukraine with very long strike capabilities, you know, not just tens of miles but 100 miles 150 miles uh then the ukrainians which start shooting those into russia itself and with some uncertain

uh kind of reaction from from the russians and we you know and then putin has also made has established some of these weapon systems as red lines. Well, and these are the kinds of things that the Russians have actually worried about all along. I mean, this is the crazy, you know, position that Putin has got himself into, which is he's worried about, he's been worried about NATO missile systems like this on his borders in Ukraine for years. And only by invading Ukraine does he now got to have these things close to his borders. Well, okay, I'm sorry, you got what you asked for in a way. And you could debate whether it's a prudent concern, shooting missiles into Russia and potentially expanding the war in that way or not. And there's no easy answer to that. But I think the administration's come down on the side of

keep the war in Ukraine, give the Ukrainians everything you can possibly give them to defend themselves in Ukraine, but don't try to expand the war into Russia itself. But, you know, that's one argument. The other argument is no one's trying to expand the war into Russia, but Ukraine does need the capabilities, certain capabilities to defend itself, which, you know, obviously bears some risk when you give them those capabilities. But if you don't give them those capabilities, how do you reconcile that with the reality that we're talking about earlier, that we're settling in for a really long struggle, and it's a struggle that plays to Russia's strengths historically? So advantage Russia in this current war of attrition, the way it's being fought, at least how it's being fought in the East, and then square that with denying the ukrainians more advanced capabilities to defend

themselves like you're in touch with the administration regularly so how do they reconcile all of this yeah so the i mean and so that's that's one of the counter arguments right is give basically give them this because they need this to defend themselves against artillery that's being launched from russia although i think a lot of the artillery is being launched by, um, by Russians in Ukraine. So that would not, you know, it's going to be covered by a prohibition on the range of these things that would reach into Russia. Uh, but, uh, but, you know, it certainly does reduce their ability to potentially target weapon systems that are coming after them. You know, I think part of this is just a bet, I guess, on what additional firepower and sort of capability this would actually give to the Ukrainians? I mean, how much difference would it make if they were able to go after targets in Russia versus all

of the many, many, many targets that are currently in Ukraine? And then what is the risk, on the other hand, that we would believe that engenders with, you know, Putin doing something that he otherwise wouldn't do. In a way, it's just a judgment call. It's an almost impossible question to ask, to answer. But I think the administration's come down, at least for now, on the side of, you know, give them the systems they can use to go after Russian targets in Ukraine as opposed to Russian targets in Russia? Russia has proposed allowing grain exports out of Ukraine's port of Odessa in exchange for lifting of some of the Western sanctions.

Now, that's not going to happen, or at least that kind of agreement that has a narrowing of sanctions on Russia, that's not going to happen, or at least that kind of agreement that has a narrowing of sanctions on Russia, that's not going to happen anytime soon. That said, as we're talking about the world is paying less attention to the war, could you start to see some of the intensity around the need to maintain the sanctions also wither a little bit. Yeah, you could. I think not yet. I think as you get closer to the winter, you will, because you'll have a harvest that either will or won't happen in the fall.

So you're going to have a major impact on food supplies this fall. And then, of course, as winter sets in and people use more natural gas in Europe, uh, that becomes a crunch and you may have the fatigue factor that, you know, you started by talking about fatigue, maybe the wrong word, but the, uh, you know, certainly we're not at the white hot information environment, political environment on this that we once were. Now that said, in Europe in particular, this has had the effect of almost kind of a 9-11 style thing. So. What do you mean? Explain.

Well, just in the, in the very dramatic reorientation of threat perceptions and national security posture. So, you know, if someone asked in October or November of 2001, would the United States sustain a global war on terror at sort of maximum, you know, effort and exertion for years? You could say, well, we might get might get tired well it turned out we didn't you know well we did but it took a couple decades not a couple of years so in europe uh in particular this i think has had a an effect like that i mean you know sweden and finland i mean sweden has been neutral for 200 years since the napoleonic wars and suddenly it's not going to be neutral anymore it's going to join nato I mean, Finland has been militarily non-aligned since for a very long time. It's going to join NATO. I mean, the German reorientation is very

significant. I mean, Germany fulfills its defense spending commitments. It'll have the third biggest defense budget in the world after the United States and China, I mean, bigger than Russia, bigger than Japan. And so, you know, and even there, the sanctions, I mean, they said they wouldn't do SWIFT, and they did SWIFT. They said they wouldn't do coal, and they did coal. They said they wouldn't do oil, and now they're trying to do oil, and now gas is the last thing. Can you just rewind? On Germany, say that again.

If Germany fulfills its commitments to NATO, meaning the 2% of GDP, right? Yeah, so the Germans have pledged that and then 100 billion euros this year as a supplemental spending. But if Olaf Scholz's commitment to defense spending is enacted as promised, Germany will have the third biggest defense budget in the world. And that, in terms of how they're talking, it's one thing to make those budget commitments, which is impressive, but then the question is how do they actually spend that? And do you actually think that the appropriations within that budget are going to be towards firepower, weapon systems, armed personnel? Or will it be a lot of softer stuff and all sorts of administrative pensions, administrative funding programs?

So it's a high top-line number, but it doesn't actually mean that Germany suddenly has a very powerful military. Yeah, it's hard to say, but I think they're likely to come down on the side of capability. Now, they've got a huge readiness problem to deal with before they get to additional capability. I mean, the Bundeswehr has just not been in even an acceptable state of readiness in many ways over the past number of years. And so they've got to put money into that and then they can start to buy new capability and things like that. The question in my mind is, is less do they sort of spend it on, I don't know, social programs masquerading under a defense budget or something like that. But rather, this commitment was made in the first weekend of the war when it looked like

Russia might really take Kiev and might really capture Ukraine. Right. And really bump up farther west on the eastern borders of some of these countries that border Ukraine. And so the Russian military, as brutal as it is, has showed itself to be far less capable than almost anybody thought, including Europeans, including Americans, including Vladimir Putin himself. And so over time, does that actually diminish the perception of threat that sparked this major commitment of increased defense resources in the first place that i i just don't know i mean it i think part

of that is going to turn on uh how this war turns out over you know the balance of this year and also a perception of what putin really wants and i think as long as vladimir putin himself is in charge in Russia, then that's going to engender a certain threat perception. It's just not going to go away. But where that floor is, is hard to say at this point. I will want you to come back on another time to talk about Iran. So this question is not really about Iran, but it is sort of about Iran. You get to do all the fun places. I know. Well that's you you equal you know right um does does this our situation our standoff with russia is how big a factor is that in the what seems like the death or the or the near death

approaching death of a return to the JCPOA, a return to the Iran nuclear deal, that basically at the end of the day, Russia was such a big player in these talks, and the idea that Russia was going to be a custodian of Iranian nuclear assets in the context of some final agreement, and it's just so preposterous to imagine Russia playing a key role in all of this in Vienna over the Iranian nuclear talks, given everything we're talking about right now. Yeah, I don't think that's the big issue. At the beginning, it was a bit because the, you know, Sergei Lavrov and the clever Russian diplomat said, well, if the United States

is going to relieve sanctions on Iran pursuant to Iran's reentry into the JCPOA, then of course, you have to relieve sanctions on Russian trade with Iran, meaning you have to lift sanctions on us, including the ones you just imposed. The administration was like, no, it actually doesn't mean anything like that. And Russia doesn't really have support for that position. The administration was like, no, it actually doesn't mean anything like that. And Russia doesn't really have support for that position. The bigger issue with the JCPOA is the designation of the Quds Force as a foreign terrorist organization, which took place in the Trump administration and is on the books as of now. And the Iranians are saying that re-entry in the JCPOA, part of the price of that is the lifting of the designation of the Quds Force as a...

So getting them lifted from the foreign terrorist organization list. Yeah. And, you know, that... And relieving all the sanctions that are associated with it. Yeah. And that's problematic for two reasons. One, they are a terrorist organization, so there's just a certain evidentiary

kind of fact-based thing. And then there's the political aspect of this, which is... Complete congressional backlash. Yeah, and then, of course, you also have the other thing, which is that from the beginning, this was supposed to be,

and the United States and the Iranians stuck to this before, to some great criticism from critics of it, which this is a nuclear deal. This doesn't touch Iranian behavior in the region. It doesn't touch support for Hezbollah or Hamas or the Houthis or any of this other kind. It wasn't a negotiation about all this, the designation of the Quds Force as an FTO is not a nuclear issue, but the Iranians themselves are linking a non-nuclear issue to a nuclear issue. Well, if you want to open up that door, well, there's a lot of things that we would like to see the Iranians change on, and so that's been the impasse where they are now.

I want to, just in wrapping up, I have two questions for you. They're connected. The first is, so we're talking to you just past the 100-day mark of this war. I'm telling our listeners now that you are committed to coming back on at the 200-day mark,

as much as I hope there's not a 200-day mark, but I am curious what you think what we'll be thinking and talking about at the 200-day mark, just generally. And then how confident are you in these next 100 days that the Ukrainian army can hold? And what I mean by that is, should we be worried? We talked a little bit. There's been plenty of public reporting about the breakdown in morale among the Ukrainian military. Should we be concerned in the next 100 days that the Ukrainian army just collapses, starts giving up, starts fleeing? I mean, it would be such an incredible contrast to what we've seen in the first couple of months. But given the public reporting, and again, I know you're in touch with administration officials that are following all

of this much more closely than the press. How worried should we be about that in the next 100 days? I don't think it's likely at all that Russia will overrun Ukraine, that there'll be a collapse of the Ukrainian military. You're not going to see in Ukraine what you saw in Afghanistan, for example. Right now, the Russians are in possession of about a fifth of Ukrainian territory, if you add it all up, Donetsk and Luhansk and down around Mariupol and Crimea and the whole thing. So if before it was, they had the Netherlands-sized territory because of Crimea and the areas in the east that they have in the Donbass, now they've got the Netherlands, Belgium, and Luxembourg. So they got more than they had before, definitely. And they could get some more in the east, or they could have some less in the east or they could have some less in the east but i think that's ultimately what this is

going to be about over the next hundred days is you know a certain number of miles west or a certain number of miles east it's not going to be can you make another grab for kiev or can you get odessa or can you take portions of the west or or see some collapse of the government or the military or something like that? The one kind of military dilemma that the Ukrainians may have is that the Russians are still trying this encirclement strategy in the East. So they're up in the North around Luhansk, they're over in the East and they're down in the South.

And what they would like to do is to surround the Ukrainian military there and force a capitulation. I think it's very unlikely that they can actually pull that off militarily, but that's what they would like to do. So, I mean, I think the unexpected bit of uncertainty here would be if they were able to do that, then you would probably see, before that happened, a Ukrainian retreat further west. But even then you're talking about, you know, moving the lines in a fairly confined area in the east, I think, over the next 100 days or the next, probably the next 200 days or even beyond that. I mean, you know, that part of the world has a lot of frozen conflicts.

If you, in a way, you could have an unfrozen conflict here. It's, you know, a huge amount of brutality and cost and humanitarian harm and everything else, but without much real change in in the lines and in who controls what all right so you didn't protest to my locking you in for for coming back on in and just short of another hundred days but hopefully we'll have you back on sooner to talk about happier trouble spots. Exactly. We should talk about

the US-India relationship or the strengthening of NATO and the transatlantic allies after we've been... Or who would have thought how these... stability in European democracies, right? Macron re-elected,

Draghi actually hanging in there, and the Italian government, you know, obviously, as you said, while the German chancellors had some defections, the government there is holding. So in the midst of all this chaos and economic pressure, these German governments seem to be pretty firm. I mean, I'm just grasping here for something for us to talk about it. Of course, our download numbers

will like plummet when we get into these topics because it may not be that interesting to our listeners, but they'll be interesting to us. Yeah, exactly. Well, nobody ever reads a newspaper and says,

ah, I love that article when it said not anything bad happened. Right. It was just like, you know, things kept going in a decent, gradual, positive direction you go all right richard thanks for coming on appreciate it and that will we'll get you back on again no doubt thanks for having me that's our show for today to follow richard fontaine go to cnas.org that's c-n-a-s.org

or follow richard on twitter at r-h fontaine that's at r-h-f-o-n-t-a-i-n-e call me back is produced by ilan benatar until next, I'm your host, Dan Senor.