Call Me Back - with Dan Senor - 'No off ramps for Putin' - with Fred Kagan

Episode Date: October 14, 2022

With increasing talk about nuclear threats, we have three questions in this episode: What do we know from Putin’s past behavior that could inform how high up the ladder of escalation he is prepared to go? What are the next rungs up the ladder of escalation before the nuclear threat is real? As Putin moves up this escalatory ladder, what are the calculations of Zelensky, Europe’s leaders, and President Biden? Military analyst and Russia historian Fred Kagan returns to the podcast. Fred is the director of the American Critical Threats Project at the American Enterprise Institute and a former professor of military history at West Point, where he taught for ten years. Fred regularly advises senior US military commanders. He earned his PhD in Russian and Soviet military history at Yale University. Fred has a contrarian take on possible off-ramps for Putin (spoiler-alert: he doesn’t think there are any). And Fred also has a contrarian take on President Biden’s recent comments about a “nuclear armageddon”. To follow Fred Kagan’s work, the easiest way to do that is to go to AEI.org and understandingwar.org.

Putin will have been paying very close attention, I guarantee you, to anything that Biden says about possible Russian nuclear use. And what he's going to have heard is a president saying, however far up the Russians go the escalation ladder, I'll have to go too. And if the Russians get to the point where they're launching a full intercontinental strike on me, I'm going to have to launch a full intercontinental strike on them. In other words, the United States is actually going to engage in executing its requirements in the deterrence escalation ladder that has been underpinning deterrence theory for six decades, and that Biden is committed to that course of action. With increasing talks about nuclear threats, I have three questions. What do we know from Putin's past behavior that could inform how high up the ladder of escalation he's prepared to go? What are the next rungs up the ladder of escalation before the nuclear threat is real? And as Putin moves up this escalatory ladder, what are the calculations of Zelensky,

of Europe's leaders, and of President Biden? To help us think through all of this, military analyst and Russia historian Fred Kagan returns to the podcast. Fred is the director of the American Critical Threat the director of the American Critical Threats Project at the American Enterprise Institute and a former professor of military history at West Point, where he taught for 10 years. Today, Fred regularly advises senior U.S. military commanders. Fred earned his PhD in Russian and Soviet military history at Yale University. I was especially interested in checking in with Fred because he has a contrarian take on possible off-ramps for Putin. Spoiler alert, he doesn't think there are any. And Fred also has a contrarian take on President Biden's recent comments about a

quote, nuclear Armageddon. Fred thinks that however ill-advised the approach President Biden took in making those remarks, they're actually having an important effect in Moscow. I hope he's right. We'll talk to him about that impact at the end of this conversation. This is Call Me Back. And I'm pleased to welcome back to the podcast my longtime friend and fan favorite on the Call Me Back podcast, who tends to emerge on this podcast whenever things are going to hell in the world, which is sort of like his calling card, Fred Kagan. Fred, thanks for joining us.

It's great to be back with you, Dan. I gave a more fulsome introduction in the intro to this podcast, so I don't only refer to you as the guy who's available when all hell is breaking loose. No, I get it. I look forward to having no opportunity to speak. Exactly. Okay, so Fred, I want to start, we have a lot to cover. I want to start with two questions.

One is, we're going to get to why you are skeptical that Putin will actually escalate in the direction of deploying a tactical nuclear weapon and what the U.S. response should be on that escalatory road, even if he ultimately doesn't escalate to actual deployment of a nuclear capability. Before we get to that, I want to start with, one, if you were to make the case that Putin is rational and wanted to make the case why escalating to some kind of nuclear threat or the use of a nuclear threat made sense to him. I guess my question is, what would that case be? And then my second question is, also please, for our listeners, just describe what a tactical nuclear attack is. We hear this term, tactical nuclear weapon, tactical nuclear attack. This term is sort of thrown around, and I don't think it's been defined in layman terms.

The last time there was a nuclear attack that we know of was 77 years ago, 1945, and we obviously had nuclear brinkmanship but not actual use of a weapon in 62, the Cuban Missile Crisis. But other than that, we haven't really had to live in a world in which these kinds of threats are real. And now we're throwing around this term tactical nuclear weapon.

I don't know if there's much understanding on what that actually means. So those are my first two questions for you. All right. Thanks, Dan. Well, look, I mean, the first thing is, right, we've been living in a world with nuclear weapons for 77 years. But it's been a very long time since we thought seriously about nuclear war. And we need to get thinking seriously about it now,

because we have guys like Putin who are regularly threatening to use nuclear weapons. And we're in a different world from the Cold War world. We really have to get serious about nuclear strategy again in the way that we were during the Cold War, but haven't been since then. So it's actually not that easy to define what a tactical nuclear weapon is, or more technically, a non-strategic nuclear weapon, which is how the military refers to them. It can mean one of two things.

We talk about a strategic nuclear weapon based on its range and based on its size. So in general terms, the intercontinental ballistic missiles that we have aimed at Russia, that Russia has aimed at us, are strategic nuclear weapons because of their range and their size. In general terms, when you're talking about a non-strategic nuclear weapon or tactical nuclear weapon, you're talking about a weapon that is a shorter range and is smaller um there it actually takes a lot of advances in nuclear weapon weaponeering to make smaller weapons uh and there's been a lot of effort put into that and the russians have them and we have them including weapons that are smaller than the ones that we dropped uh on japan in terms of their yield.

And the reason why people have developed small nuclear weapons, well, there are a number of reasons why people have developed small nuclear weapons, but one of them is because people have wanted to be able to use them on the battlefield to affect the course of combat. And if you're going to do that, you can't drop a huge warhead because it'll just incinerate everything, including your own troops. So the tactical nuclear weapons that people are talking about are relatively short range in the sense that they would be Russia to Ukraine, not intercontinental. And they're relatively small in the sense that you could drop one. And to give you a sort of a sense of what I mean by small, the immediate lethal radius of a tactical nuclear weapon can be as small as a mile or two, as opposed to, you know, a large intercontinental weapon could have a lethal radius much, much greater than that.

And therefore, its effect is more shock value and demonstration of power rather than as a complement to conventional forces one has on the ground. Well, the issue of its effect actually has to do with what you drop it on. So if you drop it on a field somewhere in the rear, then the point is shock value. If you drop it on a city, in the rear then the point is shock value if you drop it on a city then the point is terror but the weapons are actually designed to be used and this is the the answer to your first question is is what would the rational case for uh russian use be uh they could be used against concentrations of ukrainian troops uh concentrations of Ukrainian equipment, logistics nodes, other things like that, that have operational significance to ongoing fighting, but are far enough away from the front line that the effects would not be immediately felt by Russian soldiers.

So a whole lot of caveats there that actually help explain why I think Putin is unlikely to do this. But that would be the theory. So the rational case for Putin using them would basically be that his army, the Ukrainians accelerate their counteroffensives in such a way that his army in Ukraine breaks and begins collapsing. And he decides that in order to stop the route and prevent the Ukrainians from just chasing them all the way to the border. He would use tactical nuclear weapons against Ukrainian concentration points and logistics centers near but behind the front line in order to paralyze the Ukrainian counteroffensives

and give his troops time to recover and reestablish themselves somewhere that's the most that that's the most straightforward rational uh way in which he could uh decide to use tactical nuclear weapons in uh in Ukraine other than for demonstration effect okay so now let's talk about where things stand right now. There's a there's a I feel like much of the discussion analysis, public discussion analysis about the provocations coming from Putin, although it's not clear that they're actually coming from Putin or they're coming from people around Putin. We can talk about that. And then obviously the U.S. government, the administration's response to those provocations. Where where do you think things stand now? Before we get into where we think they're going to go, where do you think things stand now? Well, you're right to make the distinction between what Putin has said and what the people around him have said,

because Putin's statements have generally been much more cautious, much more veiled, and much more indirect than the statements of some of the people around him, including people around him who are getting a lot of attention, but who are not decision makers and are not necessarily even in the inner circle at this point. So it is important to parse those things. But he has made nuclear threats, so we do have to take that very seriously. Putin has been proceeding up the escalation ladder at most rung by rung, in some cases half a rung at a time. You know, there's no this image that Putin is somehow a gambler, which is the opposite of the truth.

Actually, Putin historically has been extremely cautious and has done things that look like gambles i do assess out of a mistaken belief that they were not actually risky must and the invasion of ukraine being uh the prime example i don't think he had any idea what he was getting into and i think let's let's spend a minute on that because i want you to expand on that because i when when people say wow you know to your point putin's a madman putin's a gambler if you look at his behavior over the last couple decades and how the west has responded to his behavior one could make the argument that his february his most recent invasion of ukraine was totally, it was logical, but it wasn't rational,

if I can use the distinction of rationality being connected to reality in some way. Okay. Look, at this point, we do have to talk about a kind of bounded rationality because Putin is making logical decisions, but on the basis of a skewed perception of reality. And that is what led him to invade Ukraine, I believe. He really did think that the Ukrainians wouldn't fight. I think he had drunk his vodka-laced Kool-Aid

on the subject that Ukrainians really wanted to be liberated and a whole bunch of other nonsense that his intelligence community had presented him with in the echo chamber that he was living in. So I really do believe that he thought that Ukraine would fold up in a few days and that this would be easy. And so he didn't think that he was engaging in a gamble. And in this sense, he is the opposite of Hitler, because Hitler was continually engaging in gambles and trusted his luck. And by the way, he's the opposite of Hitler in my judgment in

another important way. Hitler was an apocalyptic thinker. Hitler embraced the apocalypse. Putin is not in any way an apocalyptic thinker. Putin desires this worldly success. And he's not interested in, you know, irradiating the world and then being the last guy standing. That's not okay for him. So in that sense, it is a bounded rationality, but it's rationality. But the key thing is, look, if you look back over the past two decades, Putin pushes. And when the West or his victim pushes back, he tends to pause and recalibrate and rethink. He's been generally very cautious and very deliberate. And he's shown a lot of those same characteristics even in fighting this war, where he has been slow to escalate, slow to change what he's doing, slow to take more risks, cautious about

testing. I know it doesn't look that way, given what he's doing. But this is the same cautious Putin fundamentally, who really does not want to gamble any more than he has to. When you describe him as the opposite of Hitler, and that he's, he doesn't have this apocalyptic view of the world in which he's the last man standing. What if his choice is between that and defeat? If he is defeated and all the risks that come with defeat, meaning there's no, quote unquote, easy off ramp. He can't market the defeat to his local population as a win. It's a flat out defeat, which puts his position in the Russian political ecosystem in jeopardy, and he could feel like a cornered animal. Why wouldn't he kind of have a burn-it-down

mindset? Because you actually have to be a crazy person to decide that you want to end the world if you can't be in charge of something anymore and i we just don't have i i just don't see reason to think that putin is that kind of crazy person there was plenty of reason to think that hitler was that kind of person um but there's not a lot of reason to think that putin is i don't look the his his rhetoric regarding Ukraine is interesting. I love parsing it. You know, it will oscillate between explaining that it's existential to Russia or it's not existential to Russia. The truth is it isn't existential to Russia. He can lose in Ukraine and there can be a game that continues after that.

And as long as that is true, which it always will be true, because there's not a world in which Ukraine invades and conquers Russia, it's not actually existential. And, you know, one of the things that's important to remember about Putin, and this kind of long distance, you know, sort of psychoanalysis is always fraught, right? So I mean, I offer you all the caveats that are appropriate. But Putin has caused us to know a lot about himself, including his, you know, he's a judo master, or the Russian version of judo. He doesn't think in terms of being backed into a corner. He thinks about being in a difficult place and finding a way to use the enemy's strength against him and continuing to play. And we're not going to back him into a

corner. Because again, no one is going to put the survival of Russia on the table. Now, the dynamic is that ironically, and I think unwittingly or reluctantly, Putin is putting his own continued rule at risk by the way that he's mobilizing, by what he's doing in Russia, by pushing this war further. And he is facing a always very low, but much greater than ever has been the case, risk of instability in Russia that could ultimately overthrow him. But if you think about, and that's the only scenario in which it makes any sense to talk about, you know, ending the world because otherwise he's, you know, otherwise he just loses. But if you look at that scenario, now you're imagining Putin facing a serious challenge from his inner circle or his inner circle breaking in some way. And by the way, he's been doing a lot to alienate the military, which still controls

Russia's nuclear weapons, among other things. So now you're imagining a circumstance in which the inner circle is fracturing. Putin's reign is at risk. He decides he's had enough and he quote, pushes the button. Okay, well, there is no such thing as pushing the button, that Russia has the same kinds of safeguards on the use of its nuclear weapons that we do. So now you have to assume that the people who would actually be responsible for executing that order would blow up the world rather than risk Putin going down. Maybe. But that starts to get dicey. And frankly, i think in that circumstance he was much more likely to be preoccupied with trying to stay in power than he is with thinking about

blowing up the world okay so fred because you know your your contribution to the to the study of what is going on uh with this war has facets, not the least of which is not only are you a military historian and analyst who actually works with U.S. and other Western military commanders, but you're also a Ph.D. in Russian history. referenced and you you and i just talked about this earlier uh not on the podcast putin recently referenced this peasant revolt in the late 18th century like what's called pukachev's rebellion and you found this very interesting revealing that this is what he was talking about and he was meeting with some school or school teachers or something in russia and you and the institute for study of wars you know tracking um a lot of movements and a lot of commentary and a lot of public statements coming out of russia to try to make sense of this i we will put the links to various resources as we always do in our show notes um you're a russian historian so first of all, what is Pugachev's Rebellion?

Why are we talking about it on this podcast? And why do you think it's important? So, look, so the other thing to know about Pugachev... We're really geeking out here on Russian history, by the way. When we're talking about, like, the era of Catherine the Great

and peasants, the greatest peasant revolt against Catherine the Great, this is... We're going deep here. And I'm grateful to you. This is... I love this. This brings me back to my roots. peasant revolt against Catherine the Great. We're going deep here. And I'm grateful to you. I love this.

This brings me back to my roots. Look, one of the things to keep in mind about Putin is he meditates on Russian history because this is a Russian nationalist ideology that he's pursuing. And so he delves deep into Russian history to pull up a lot of very obscure references to things. This one isn't that obscure, but it's weird. So here's what was going on. Putin was meeting with the winners of some student competition and their teachers. And he was talking to them. And this is recent. I mean, this is last week, I think. Time has no meaning for me anymore, but I think it was last week.

And basically, apropos of nothing, he asks a teacher from one of the towns that was involved in Puka Chal's rebellion, which I'll tell you what that was in a minute. He asks this teacher, you know, how do you teach what the cause of Pugachev's rebellion was? And you could see this teacher go, I mean, you could basically see this teacher's rock back and is like, sir, okay. And he sort of f for us around a little bit so Puka chuffs rebellion so what happened okay in the middle of the seven years war this is

the mid 18th century the Tsar the Russian Russian Tsar it's a who had been fighting the war and fighting Frederick the Great, dies. Peter III becomes Tsar. Peter III was an admirer of Frederick the Great, and he immediately ends the war and thereby saves Prussia and sets Europe up for a whole bunch of other problems to come. The Russian court is not enthusiastic about this course of action and so they assassinate him and put his wife on the throne, Catherine, who becomes Catherine the Great. This leads to various interesting dynamics but among them the rumors begin to propagate that Peter the Third didn't die, and a guy by the name of Pugachev announces that he, in fact, is Peter III, who didn't die but voluntarily abdicated

for the good of the realm and all of that kind of stuff, but now Catherine is misbehaving. And so, by 1770s, Pugachev has formed an army and is in open rebellion against Catherine, claiming to be Peter III, her assassinated husband. It's a great thing. There's a wonderful Pushkin story about the captain's daughter, right? And it's a very dramatic thing. And Pugachev actually makes a lot of trouble for Catherine, who is slow to respond and ultimately has to fight a bunch of big battles to put him down. So that's the Pugachev actually makes a lot of trouble for Catherine who is slow to respond and ultimately has to fight a bunch of big battles to put him down. So that's the Pugachev rebellion which happens the climactic events are in 1774 and 1775. Okay so Putin asks this teacher what was the cause of

the rebellion and the teacher fumpers around and he says well it was the harshness of serfdom and and a few other things and Putin gives him a hard time. Putin is not satisfied, so he gives him the answer. He said it was caused because someone decided that he was tsar. And then Putin continues. And why did that happen? Because of an element of the weakness of the central power. Okay.

Now it's not new for Putin to be emphasizing the dangers of being weak. He is saying weakness is lethal. He says this all of the time. So that isn't surprising. But there are two things that were surprising about this to me. One is that wasn't the first point he made. The first point he made is, the rebellion occurred because someone decided he was Tsar. Now that is a fascinating artifact.

It's even a somewhat strange way of articulating the cause of the rebellion. Why is that on Putin's mind? But even beyond that, why is... But your point is that he lives in fear, or at least is very mindful of some other political actor asserting themselves as leader and arguing that Putin has passed a sell-by date and there needs to be change.

Yeah, yeah. I think that was at least an externalization of a paranoia, at most a warning shot across the bow of anybody who might be thinking about that. But at a minimum, it was an externalization of a paranoia. Why is Putin thinking about a rebellion? Well, look, there is the nearest thing to a rebellion that we have seen in putin's entire tenure going on in russia right now and there are challenges manifest manifested how manifested with well in a sort of passive aggressive way hundreds of thousands of russian men fleeing rather than allowing themselves to be called up.

But actually, there had been protests at the beginning of the mobilization that were extremely unusual in extent in Russia. And we're having regular occurrences of Russians throwing Molotov cocktails at recruitment centers and physically attacking people. And there's a degree of anti-government mayhem, which is, you know, very, very small by normal, you know, Western, by other standards. None of, you know, these kinds of things would not on the whole. Well, I mean, it is significant when you have people running around throwing Molotov cocktails at government buildings and stuff, but it's not earth-shaking stuff, but it's

earth-shaking in Russia. And it's earth-shaking to a guy who thinks that he is cohering his society around the nationalist dream that he's fighting for in Ukraine, and that isn't happening. And it's earth-shaking in the context of the explicit and growing chorus of criticism directed at his people in his inner circle, and now finally starting to be at him.

So this has obviously put in his mind a fear that he is externalized through a historical reference which was just absolutely bizarre so against that backdrop what are the next and you touched on it a little bit at the beginning of this conversation but i just want to get a little deeper into it what do you believe? If you believe he's not racing to use a nuclear capability, what are the steps that he has available to him on the escalatory ladders? As you said, he's been moving like half a step, a step, not much more than that. So let's live in a world in which he keeps escalating short of use of a nuclear capability. What does that escalation look like? Well, his problem is that he has very limited capability to escalate.

So he's engaging in a mobilization, which I think is probably slightly beyond... The targets that he set are probably slightly beyond Russia's capabilities. But they're working at a mobilization to put 300,000 guys back in the army and get them into Ukraine, which is going to have a limited effect on the conflict and a much lesser effect than the number would suggest. And then he's unleashing barrages of attacks on Ukrainian civilian targets and infrastructure and expanding the range of war crimes and atrocities that he's using to conduct those attacks is limited. Russian military industry is not able

to replenish them. And so he's not going to be able to sustain this kind of barrage. And as long as the West continues to support Ukraine with air defense systems, he's not going to be able to turn to the other kinds of things that he did in Syria of flying manned bombers over Ukrainian cities and carpet bombing them, which is what he did in Syria. But he can't do that in Ukraine because the Ukrainians will shoot down the bombers. So as long as the West continues to supply Ukraine with air defense, Putin's actual abilities to escalate conventionally are limited. Nevertheless, he's in the midst of a mobilization now, partial reserve call up now.

The Russian normal annual conscription cycle will begin. It was actually delayed by a month. It will begin on November 1st. So I think if Putin imagines that he will, well, so there will be more troops coming online. I think he imagines that those troops will make the difference. But beyond that, I think he has another theory of the case, which is that he thinks he's going to freeze Europe into submission.

And this is important for our thinking about timelines, because Russia has never yet subjected Europe to a just full energy cutoff through an entire winter. And he is certainly intending to do that this year. He, I believe, is banking on that to break Europe's will to continue to support Ukraine and at minimum separate Europe from us if we retain the will to support Ukraine and force Ukraine to its knees. That proposition is not going to be testable for months from Putin's perspective.

It won't be falsifiable until after the new year. And I think that he is very unlikely to move to a step like nuclear weapons use, unless something weird happens in Ukraine itself that I don't think probably will, before he has let these things, this mobilization, the conscription, and the freezing of Europe play out. And I frankly am not at all sure that he would escalate to nuclear use even then, because there are a lot of reasons why he rationally shouldn't. But I just, I don't think that this is imminent. Okay, so now I want to ask you about three leaders. Zelensky in Ukraine, Olaf Scholz in Germany as a proxy for where Europe will be during those freezing months, and then President Biden and the comments he made recently about nuclear Armageddon. Let's start with President Zelensky.

My sense, my impression is, and based on people who are close watchers of Ukraine and Ukrainian politics, that he feels that he has real momentum now, that he has the edge, thatin is on his back foot and while maybe there was a world in which zelensky would have agreed to some kind of cessation of hostilities a temporary peace agreement whatever you want to call it in february march or april that would have made that would have been acceptable to zelensky to make for ukraine to make serious concessions forget about that happening now he's not going to make major concessions to to Putin now and in fact any agreement he reaches with Putin is gonna have to go to a referendum in Ukraine and Ukrainian uh public opinion is certainly on the side of we're not we're not now bending to Putin if

anything he should be bending to us so we all talk about off-ramps and creating a world in which Putin can kind of gradually pull back from all this in a face-saving way, if he's being rational, but that the politics in Ukraine right now wouldn't allow for Zelensky to Well, that is true. But the entire world in which the conversation is being had about off-ramps and negotiations is a fictional world. Putin every now and then causes it to be suggested that he would be willing to negotiate, and he makes clear what his terms are and his terms are ukrainian surrender uh putin has never offered anything uh along the lines of what people who talk about off-ramps suggest putin hasn't ever indicated that he would be okay with freezing the lines where they are

that's that's that's not it's not an offer that he's made that's an offer that other people have been making on his behalf so the first thing is is that Putin's demands remain the same as they were at the start of the war, which is Ukrainian surrender and regime change. Well, no, I mean, Zelensky and the Ukrainians are not going to accept that. But, you know, Dan, it is time for us to recognize this is a genocidal war. The aim of this war is to destroy Ukraine as a country and basically destroy Ukrainians as a people. And it is based on the premise that there really is to destroy Ukraine as a country and basically destroy Ukrainians as a people. And it is based on the premise that there really is no such thing as Ukrainian ethnicity, that it's an invented ethnicity.

And what the Russians have been doing to Ukrainian civilians is, you know, there are things that the Russians have been doing that explicitly violated the Genocide Convention. Leave aside the question of whether the Ukrainians think they're winning or not. Would you negotiate with somebody who was waging a genocidal war in your country? I mean, we need to be clear about what it is that we think we're asking the Ukrainians to do here. And somebody who's made it perfectly clear that at best, they would be buying themselves time for him to get strong enough so that he could launch the next invasion and finish them off so this was when there was debate about some face-saving off-ramp agreement that zelensky

could agree to it was before the mass graves it was before the mass bombings of of civilian areas and i mean that that's look it was okay it it was right when when people were sort of floating this idea earlier on it was when it appeared that the alternative might be russian victory and if there was a way to save a part of ukraine by sacrificing another part then okay, okay, you know, maybe one has that conversation. Now, when that is not on the table, and Ukraine is going to be an independent state, but the question is, does it, you know, try to negotiate with someone in these circumstances, leaving that someone, by the way, and this is another thing that we're not talking about enough, leaving that someone with positions that would be

extremely advantageous for the next invasion. All of this terrain matters. Let me, give me just a second to make a point about this terrain, which I'm going to, I'll be publishing on, but I'll preview here. Excellent. Exclusive, exclusive reveal here on the Call Me Back podcast. Look, I've seen, you know, some people saying, why should we be fighting and risking nuclear war for these terrain, these areas in the Ukraine's far east that are only of interest to the Ukrainians? And it's just an ideological absolutism on the part of Zelensky, which is completely false to fact. First, we need to start by understanding that putin's objectives are not going to change putin seeks the the destruction of an independent ukraine and whatever he agrees to now if even if he did agree to something that was more limited than that would not be reflecting any fundamental change in his objective, which has been consistent for decades.

So it would be at best a truce in which Russia rearms and prepares for the next attack. Okay. If the Russians, if that ceasefire freezes things, something along current lines, where the Russians are on the west bank of the Dnipro River, as they are now, then the next invasion begins with Russian mechanized forces seizing the entire Ukrainian southern coast and unhinging the entire Ukrainian defensive line along the Dnipro and probably rapidly collapsing Ukrainian defenses in a way that Ukrainians will not be able to defend against. That's what the current battle space geometry leaves. Even if the Ukrainians just push the Russians back across the Dnipro River, the Russians will still be in an extremely advantageous position for a future invasion, much more

advantageous than they were in 2014 when they started this thing. And it will be much harder for Ukraine to defend itself. Then Ukraine will also be badly compromised economically and much more dependent on long-term Western financial aid than if the Ukrainians regain control of the critical industrial areas in the East that the Russians are now occupying. So this terrain matters. And where the war freezes, if and when it freezes, matters. Now, we can talk about Crimea, although, by the way,

Crimea is much more geostrategically important for NATO than it is for Ukraine in many respects. Why is that? Because the fact that the Russians have bases in Crimea and can station aircraft missiles, air defense and anti-shipping missiles in Crimea makes them a dominant power in the Black Sea and allows them to threaten NATO's southeastern flank very directly. If the Russians were actually confined to what their international border really is, they would be out of missile range of much of the Western Black Sea, have a much harder time threatening NATO's southeastern flank, and a much harder time supporting operations against Ukraine again in

the future in ways that can move rapidly toward the NATO border. So it's actually, it is in NATO's interest for the Russians not to be in control of Crimea, almost as much, or in some respects, more than it is in Ukraine's interest. So all of this ground matters, and we have to get out of the mindset that is fundamentally an ignorant and just not paying attention to things mindset that says, So all of this ground matters and we we have to get out of the out of the mindset That is fundamentally an ignorant and just not paying attention to things mindset that says well who really cares exactly where the line is No, it matters that so that's that's that's the other thing and that bring that together With the genocidal nature of this war and what Putin is doing and the total objective that he's pursuing Of course the Ukrainian of course Zelensky is not going to

be willing to negotiate on anything like these terms. Okay, so now let's talk about Olaf Scholz and other European leaders. What are their incentives and how do they exist, so to speak, in their political decision making and geopolitical decision making over the next few months as we get into a what will be a very cold winter for europe they're going to have uh i think a bunch of conflicting pressures on them of course their populations are going to be unhappy with energy prices and the economic damage and it's cold and all of that stuff. And they're going to be under pressure to solve those problems. It'll be interesting to see exactly how that plays out, because normally when people are

unhappy about stuff like that, they get mad at their government for solving the problem rather than demanding a specific solution like we should make ukraine surrender so that we're not cold anymore um that will be obviously a talking point but i don't know that we'll we'll have to see how that pressure actually manifests on schultz and the other uh european leaders but the other dynamic is um this is where putin has been doing us all a huge favor because he started this war and very rapidly he sort of ripped off the putin mask and then you could see under it satan and at regular intervals as as if we have forgotten how evil he is he will do something like launch a barrage of using precision-guided munitions to kill Ukrainian civilians

and basically do it on live television. We will have the revelations of the absolute atrocities and torture and all of the things the Russians have been doing to Ukrainian civilians, mass rape, mass deportations, all of these things which have come up at regular intervals that continue to make it clear exactly how evil he really is. And that is going to create and it continues to create an environment in which even if

Schultz wanted to sort of surrender to Putin or give in in some way, the political headwind against actually doing that in a straightforward way is strong. And it's going to continue to be strong because Putin is going to continue to go down this path. And so this is why I think on balance, if you just think about this in a business perspective, if you just think about this in a, you know, economics are the only thing that matter and people just vote their pocketbooks, you will imagine that the Europeans will inevitably surrender. to be a political leader who actually has to contemplate getting up on television and saying, yes, I know that the Russians have conducted mass rapes of Ukrainian women. Yes, I know that the Russians are deporting Ukrainian children and violating the Genocide Convention. Yes, I know that they're deliberately targeting civilian populations. Yes, I know that he's threatened nuclear war and he's done all of these horrible things. Nevertheless, I'm going to surrender to him so that your heating prices will drop.

It's a difficult speech to give. Maybe he will, but I don't think we should underestimate how unpleasant that experience would be for him or any other European leader who wants to do that. That's always assuming, by the way, that they're actually not paying attention to the geostrategic situation, not recognizing how important it is not to allow Putin to win and so forth. And I think they increasingly are recognizing those things, which will make it even less likely that they will be in power. But could they make the calculation, you know, yes, it is horrible for us to negotiate with a monster, but we are, we are in so doing heading off more bloodshed, more human catastrophe in the future. So

unfortunately we have to do this deal with this monster, with this, you know, this devil, as you said, and that, you know, we will get a pause in the, in the horror that's being subjected to the ukrainian people sure you could you could make that argument and then you will immediately have to explain why you have just done something other than give away the sudetenland and why given you've had that you have somebody who has demonstrated that in many other respects he kind of is like hitler um and is willing to do these things and is determined to achieve total domination over ukraine why you would appease him that's that's also a difficult speech to give because you're likely just you are chamberlain and that you are

potentially just inviting future aggression not potentially almost certainly. So all of these things could happen. Schultz could cave, Macron could cave. But I just don't think we should that the location of where he made these comments about nuclear Armageddon and what the implications would be were grossly inappropriate. I will posit that if the president has a message to start educating and setting expectations for the American people. There are other ways and places to do it. So let's just, you know, leave that aside for now. Let's talk about the substance of what President Biden said. And let's, in fact, we'll play it. We have not faced the prospect of Armageddon since Kennedy and the Cuban missile crisis, the president said at a private fundraiser. I don't think there's any such thing as the ability Okay, Fred, so can you, you have a more charitable view of the, of what the effect of what he said. Most of the press coverage was hysterical.

Full disclosure, my reaction too was a little hysterical about what he said and what he said. Most of the press coverage was hysterical, full disclosure. My reaction, too, was a little hysterical about what he said and how he said it. But you actually think on this substance there may have been a positive effect in terms of how this analysis, if you will, or forecasting from the president arrived in Moscow. Yeah, look, I wish he hadn't said it. I don't think that it's good for the president arrived in Moscow? Yeah, look, I wish he hadn't said it.

I don't think that it's good for the president to be talking about Armageddon. And I also think that it's not good to suggest that certain kinds of escalations will inevitably lead to Armageddon, because I don't actually think that's true. But I also think that if you parse the logic of that, first of all, world leaders like Putin, dictators like Putin and Xi Jinping and stuff, don't parse context in which things are said as finely as we do. Whatever Putin says is Russian policy. Whatever Xi says is Chinese policy. They assume that the same thing is true of Biden. Whatever Biden says is U.S. policy, wherever he says it. So we need to understand that this is the way they interact with us, because there's mirror imaging that goes on there too.

So a presidential statement is a presidential statement. That's the first thing. Putin will have been paying very close attention, I guarantee you, to anything that Biden says about possible Russian nuclear use. So Biden says, basically, if Russia uses nuclear weapons, then it'll lead to Armageddon. Okay. There's a logic in that statement. The logic is as follows. If Russia uses tactical nuclear weapons, the West will escalate. The West will respond to that escalation by engaging in some military activity against Russia. And then the Russians will escalate in response to that Western engagement using nuclear weapons at a higher level, and the West will respond by using nuclear weapons, and that will go all the way up to

a full thermonuclear exchange. Okay, we'll flip that around for a minute. If you're Putin, what are you hearing? If I use tactical nuclear weapons, the West will attack me. That is an inevitable logical part of the assertion that it leads to Armageddon, because if Putin uses nuclear weapons and the West doesn't attack, then there's no escalation. So you can say Putin isn't going to parse this that finely, and I'm going to say nonsense. Of course he's going to parse it that finely. He's going to have listened to that. And what he's going to have heard is a president saying, sadly, basically, however far up the Russians go the escalation ladder, I'll have to go too. And if the Russians get to the point where they launch, where they're launching a full intercontinental strike on me,

I'm going to have to launch a full intercontinental strike on them. In other words, the United States is actually going to engage in executing its requirements in the deterrence escalation ladder that has been underpinning deterrence theory for six decades, and that Biden is committed to that course of action. That's an inherent, implicit, and inevitable in the statement that Biden made. And I guarantee you that Putin heard that part, along with all of the other downside stuff. And he lives, and you've also made the point that Putin lives in fear of Russian conventional forces being decimated. So in all of this, he hears, this means the West is going to get really involved. Like they've been

pretty involved, but now they're going to get directly involved, not kind of pretending that they're not involved, but like really involved. And what that means for Russia's conventional military capability is potentially terrifying to Putin, because if he loses his army, he's got nothing. Yeah. And look, the one thing that's very, very clear is Putin does not want a war with the West. This is just incredibly clear.

He has had all kinds of opportunities to attack NATO. In any way, from small scale to large scale. He could perfectly well have fired missiles at Poland or Romania in response to NATO provision of weapons to Ukraine. In fact, many people expected him to. He didn't do that. Why? He does not want a war with NATO because he knows he will lose it and it will end with the destruction of the Russian conventional military if nothing else so this is another factor that is restraining him and this is the answer to the question that you asked at the top of the show

that I want to answer now which is how do we deter Putin from using nuclear weapons how do we deter Putin from continuing to escalate in ways that are unacceptable? We make it clear that we actually will engage. We actually will fight him. We actually will attack Russian forces in Ukraine conventionally with our conventional forces if he uses nuclear weapons. We will destroy the Russian military in Ukraine.

If he threatens to escalate nuclear beyond that, then the answer is, okay, nuclear deterrence works. Fred, we will destroy the Russian military in Ukraine. If he threatens to escalate nuclear beyond that, then the answer is, okay, nuclear deterrence works. Fred, we will leave it there. Thank you for providing some important context and history, a history lesson. Everyone now is going to be Googling Pukachev's rebellion and also giving us what is at least a contrarian take,

contrarian to what the conventional wisdom is out there on this particular issue, which is generating so much well-deserved heat. And we'll have you back on. Great. Thanks, Dan. That's our show for today. To follow Fred Kagan's work, the easiest way to do that is to go to AEI.org or go to understandingwar.org.

That's the website of the Institute for the Study of War, which Fred is very involved with, and they produce a tremendous amount of content almost on a daily basis on battlefield developments going on in the Russia-Ukraine war theater. Call Me Back is produced by Ilan Benatar. Until next time, I'm your host, Dan Senor.