Call Me Back - with Dan Senor - Putin-Ukraine Escalation: Lessons from an Obama Pentagon official & a NY Times columnist - with Evelyn Farkas & Bret Stephens

Episode Date: January 28, 2022

Is it too late to deter Russia from invading Ukraine? It certainly seems that way. And while it should be obvious that it does matter, at least as far as US interests are concerned, we are struck by how many pundits and political actors are questioning the stakes. We have received these questions in response to our recent episodes on the Russia-Ukraine crisis – the conversations with Walter Russell Mead and Richard Fontaine. On this episode, we attempt to answer them by calling on two experts, who come at global affairs from somewhat different perspectives. Dr. Evelyn Farkas had a direct role in the US response to the Russia-Ukraine crisis of 2014. She was Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense for Russia/Ukraine/Eurasia, Balkans, Caucasus and conventional arms control. Prior to that, she was Senior Advisor to the Supreme Allied Commander Europe and Special Advisor to the Secretary of Defense for the NATO Summit. Earlier, Dr. Farkas was Executive Director of the Commission on the Prevention of Weapons of Mass Destruction Proliferation and Terrorism. She was also a professor of international relations at the U.S. Marine Corps Command and Staff College and is now president of Farkas Global Strategies. After Dr. Farkas, we’ll be joined by Bret Stephens of The New York Times. This is part II of our conversation with Stephens. In this episode, we talk to Stephens about the Biden administration’s handling of the Russia-Ukraine crisis, pivoting off President Biden’s troubling press conference.

many Americans just don't understand that if Putin gets away with getting control over Ukraine, he's not going to stop there. He's going to try to have control over other parts of the former Soviet Union. He's going to try to continue to weaken NATO. He does not want democracies challenging him and his autocratic system. Is it too late to deter Russia from invading Ukraine? It certainly seems that way. And while it's obvious to me that it does matter, at least as far as U.S. interests are concerned, I'm struck by how much people are posing versions of this question. Does it really matter? What are the stakes of a Russia invasion of Ukraine? In fact, these are some of the questions I've received in response to our most recent episodes

on the Russia-Ukraine crisis, the conversations we had with Walter Russell Mead and before that with Richard Fontaine. So on this episode, we attempt to answer these questions by calling on two experts who come at global affairs from somewhat different perspectives. Dr. Evelyn Farkas served as a top defense policy advisor in the Obama administration. Evelyn was Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense for Russia, Ukraine, Eurasia, Balkans, Caucasus, and conventional arms control. Prior to that, she was Senior Advisor to the Supreme Allied Commander Europe and Special Advisor to the Secretary of Defense for the NATO Summit. Earlier, Evelyn was Executive Director of the Commission on the Prevention of Weapons of Mass Destruction, Proliferation, and Terrorism.

She was also Professor of of international relations at the U.S. Marine Corps Command and Staff College and is now president of her own consulting firm, Farkas Global Strategies. After Evelyn, we'll be joined by Brett Stevens of the New York Times, a return guest. This is Call Me Back. And I'm pleased to welcome a former top Pentagon official in the Obama administration overseeing U.S. defense policy for Russia, Ukraine, and Eurasia, Evelyn Farkas. Evelyn, thanks for being on the podcast. Thanks for having me, Dan.

You have had a long career, not just in the Pentagon in the Obama administration, but also a range of tours from the Senate Armed Services Committee to working on the ground in Europe with NATO leadership, and I can go on and on, some of which we went over in the introduction to this episode. But just to get started here, can you lay out what you believe to be the stakes in this escalating crisis, the stakes for us between Russia and Ukraine and the stakes for us between Moscow and Washington? I mean, I think the stakes are the same in the sense that what Vladimir Putin is doing is challenging the international order. What you have to understand, I guess, if you can,

is how Vladimir Putin thinks. He wants to make sure that he can preserve his autocratic political system and the associated kleptocratic economic system, which is very corrupt. In order to do that, he feels that he has to have all of the states around Russia, especially those that made up the former Soviet Union, because he's also a bit of a Russian imperialist. He wants them all to have the same system. He doesn't want people in Russia looking across the border and seeing a successful democratic Ukraine. So he believes that he has the right also, again, hearkening back to this Russian imperial vision and the Soviet experience

to a sphere of influence. Well, Dan, we got rid of the sphere of influence after World War II because sphere of influence is when you have no international rules of the road that might makes right, and sphere of influence led to the competition that led to World War I and World War II. After World War II, we set up the UN Charter, the UN as an institution, and we said that borders cannot

be altered by force. Okay, and granted, we've had lots of wars, but we haven't had global wars. So this system has worked to keep us safe. But Vladimir Putin, especially when he went into Ukraine, and he annexed Crimea, that was a real game changer, because that was the first time since Hitler that borders in Europe had been changed using force when he said Ukraine now belongs to Russia. And believe me, there are one second, you know, pull you back to your own personal experience in Iraq. If you recall back even before you were there later in 1991, we went to war with Iraq. Why? The reason was because Iraq went in and occupied Kuwait and said, this is part of Iraq now. Now, yes, we had economic interests at stake, oil and all that.

But we went to war to push Iraq out of Kuwait to say you cannot alter international boundaries using military force. That bedrock principle is what really matters. So two questions on that front. So some, I think on the fringe, are arguing, well, you know what, if Putin goes into Ukraine, it's not pretty, it's probably not good, but it's not really our problem, as though Putin occupying even just a piece of Ukraine is where it stops. That if he is not deterred, that let him, let's just kind of concede part of Ukraine, and that's where this ends. And we get back to our business and he gets back to his business in our respective backyards.

You, I think, believe that there's no way that's where it stops. That's correct. So right now, what he's done, he already in 2014, as I said, he sees Crimea. Then he started another war in Donbass. And he thought that those two things would be enough for him to take control, political and economic control of the Ukrainian government again. Because don't forget, in 2014, the reason he went into Crimea and into Donbass, this other part of Ukraine, was because the Ukrainian people went to the street, and they scared their leader, who was a Kremlin crony, pretty much, out of the country. He fled to Moscow.

Why were the Ukrainian people going to the street? Because they wanted to join the European Union. They saw their Polish neighbors, who they were used to actually being less strong economically, they saw them as wealthier. And they said, wait a minute, we want to live like that too. And a lot of them were younger people. So in essence, what's happening here is that Vladimir Putin in 2014, 2015 said, I want to reverse that. I want them to come back into my fold, not into the European Union. Again, because he doesn't want a flourishing democracy in Ukraine that he views as a threat to his regime. The Russian people have already demonstrated that they are watching. And if they see that they can achieve a better life because the Ukrainians can, they may well want this for themselves.

And so 2014-15 didn't work. And that's why Putin's trying again. Some foreign policy hands, both some, although not all, obviously, in the Biden administration, and certainly many on the right, are basically arguing the great power conflict of this century is going to be U.S. and China. It's going to be Cold War II. And any distraction from U.S. versus China is bad for the United States. And so it will undermine our strategy with China to get bogged down with an escalating crisis with Putin. Putin and Russia are a sideshow. Well, that's wrong. It's wrong because Russia has been threatening the United States actively, I would say for sure since 2016 when they started

interfering in our domestic politics, when they started interfering in those elections in 2016 through Facebook, through stealing information and weaponizing it, exacerbating the differences that exist already in our society, but making them worse, and then continuing to do that. They started to threaten, and of course all the cyber attacks, they started to threaten our democracy. We can't ignore that. The other thing is, as I said, this international order, our alliances, they keep us safe. And finally, if we don't stand up to Vladimir Putin, don't you think the Chinese the next day are going to turn around and say, well, those guys are weaklings. Let me see what I can get. I mean, the Chinese are watching very closely to see how we react to Russia.

And in fact, they've said, well, we kind of agree with Russia. There shouldn't be a NATO. Right. So that to me is the biggest concern as it relates to China is just like how while they're assessing, if they are assessing, assuming they are, when to strike against Taiwan, I got to believe the combination of how we withdrew from Afghanistan and then if we don't, if we just let Putin roll into Ukraine, those are important data points in how they assess their next move. So I just think this is all, this all has massive signaling effect. In 1994, Russia signed the Budapest Memorandum, which, as you know, Ukraine yielded something like 1,900 nuclear weapons on its territory. And Russia agreed to, and I quote, respect the independence and sovereignty and existing borders of Ukraine.

And then I quote again, to refrain from the threat or use of force against Ukraine. So this was a very important agreement. Why was this agreement so important to Ukraine? And it feels to me like it's now in tatters or on the cusp of being in tatters. Yeah, it's an interesting agreement because you had the nuclear powers. The other signatories were the United States and the United Kingdom. And then France and China decided not to sign the Budapest Memorandum, but they had side agreements. So interestingly, they're also sort of implicated in this. The nuclear, the major nuclear powers said to Ukraine, if you give up your nuclear weapons, because we were worried about loose

nukes and, you know, nuclear proliferation, proliferation of material. And Ukraine was a poor country. And, you know, but we basically said, you don't need them for your security, because we'll guarantee your security. Of course, again, Russia now has gone back very hard on its word. And the implications are bad, not just for, you know, the credibility of Russia, but frankly, the credibility of the nuclear powers who said that we would come to Ukraine's defense because we haven't sufficiently come to the table. We have helped them, but I think we need to continue everything we're doing to include fighting at the United Nations for a peaceful resolution of the situation in Crimea. Henry Kissinger famously said, who do I call if I want to speak to Europe? That's a great quote. So NATO, you worked with NATO,

NATO has 30 members, but only something like 10 of which are fulfilling the requirement to spend at least 2% of GDP on defense. So at best, in this situation, it seems like we, the U.S., want to defend against Russian aggression more than Europe does. Or at worst, it seems that Putin has successfully sowed divisions within Europe and between major countries in Europe and Washington and the United States. What's going on? Why don't we have, you know, like Kissinger's line, who do I call to work with Europe? Like, Europe feels like a mess to me in this crisis. And when you were in the Obama administration, you were dealing with a similar crisis in 2014. Did Europe seem as dysfunctional in responding to this kind of aggression? I mean, look, Dan, there have always

been divisions in Europe. There are divisions in the United States, too. So, you know, I mean, I understand you can call the White House and I guess you get someone in power, but you can also call over to Capitol Hill. But not to minimize what you're saying. Of course, there are differences among the allies. And certainly those frontline allies, the ones on the border with Russia have been more concerned about Russia than the Western European countries. The other aspect of it, of course, is the reliance on Russian natural gas in particular, but also oil. That does impact the willingness of the Western Europeans to confront the Russians. There are also commercial interests, trade involved. And then in Germany's case, certainly with the Social Democratic Party,

there's a history of kind of thinking that they need to find a way to get along with Russia. It's more of a political cultural thing. But at the end of the day, nobody likes what Russia's doing in Europe. I mean, nobody likes it. They may not be responding exactly the way that we want, but nobody likes it. And if Putin does launch some other incursion, invasion, attack on Ukraine, you will find that Europe will be united and there will be transatlantic unity. Really, even from Berlin and you have hopes for Germany. Yes, I have hopes for Germany. In this crisis, not generally. Yes, you know why?

Because even in the last two weeks, we've seen some movement. So where the foreign minister from the Green Party, they're pretty hard firm on Russia. They understand clearly what Putin's up to and what he's capable of. She spoke out very clearly on the Russian threat. And she may have even said something about the Nord Stream pipeline. The chancellor was hesitant, but then finally said something that, yeah, we will have to reassess the Nord Stream pipeline if the Russians take further military action against Ukraine. So it's not, his statement wasn't quite as strong as I would have liked, but there was a statement. And again, as I said,

I think if there's further aggression by Russia, there will be further statements coming out of Germany. And so at this point, I'm optimistic. Writing in the Financial Times, Megan Green of Harvard's Kennedy School said, quote, she wrote, quote, Russia is already heavily sanctioned. And then she goes out to go on to explain there's no discernible improving effect on Russia's behavior as a result of sanctions that they've been subjected to over the years, including during the Trump administration. And there's still cyber attacks. There's still the assassinations of Putin's opponents abroad. There's still obviously extremely aggressive clampdowns on domestic civil liberties inside Russia. What's the case at this point for sanctions? Is Putin actually afraid of sanctions? Here's the thing. We have been very incremental and cautious when it comes to sanctions, we the United States and the Europeans. There is a huge space between the sanctions we put on Russia and the kind of sanctions we have

on Iran and North Korea. Okay. The sanctions the Biden administration is contemplating now are serious sanctions. And I believe that they've communicated even in concrete terms to the Russians what those sanctions would be. So they likely include cutting off access to sovereign debt servicing, including past sovereign debt. That would hurt the Russians. They likely include blocking access to the West by Russian banks, major Russian banks who support the Russian government, Spare Bank, VEB and VTB, for example. They may well also include keeping Russia off of the swift interbank transfer system. Obviously, more sanctions on oligarchs. They probably don't include sectoral sanctions because we'd have to find a way to provide oil and gas to the Europeans in that

case. But they are much stronger than what we've done so far. We should have implemented these harsher sanctions, frankly, earlier. But now we are contemplating them and threatening them. And I would imagine it has to make the Russians stop and think. But I don't think that they are sufficient. And so everything we're doing to show the Russians that if think, but I don't think that they are sufficient. And so everything we're doing to show the Russians that if they roll into Ukraine, it will be militarily painful, that is actually, I think, more important. And in 20, the last time you dealt with this crisis like this firsthand as a policymaker in the Obama administration. Can you just explain the internal debate about how aggressively to crank up sanctions?

What was the resistance to these kinds of more aggressive sanctions that you're talking about? Well, you're always worried about the impact on your own economy, on your own markets, and certainly we were always doing everything lockstep with our European allies because the Europeans do so much more business with Russia. If you want the sanctions to have teeth to hurt, then you have to implement them with the Europeans.

And so the Europeans, of course, you know, they go along with some sanctions, but they didn't want to take the pain. You know, when I brief, I'm also a consultant, as you know, and when I brief investors, you know, I tell them often, like, look, sometimes you have to be willing to accept some pain, because you are protected by the rule of law and democracy in this country. And if it's too much pain, then go to our government, and maybe they can help you alleviate some of it. But at the end of the day, we need to put sanctions on Russia, we need to make them feel the pain, even if sometimes, you know, our own companies have to absorb some of the shock as well. We had Walter Russell meet on a couple weeks ago, and he just made the point, if we are laying out very aggressive sanctions, very punitive sanctions that we would put in place, Republicans are doing this, Democrats are doing this, I want to go, I want to go through some more of these sanctions in a minute but if putin is not afraid of these sanctions what good is it imposing sanctions saying we're going to impose sanctions

on him after he goes in goes in farther to ukraine like because you then to your point like europe has to absorb a lot of pain we potentially have to absorb some pain at a time of inflation, tightened supply chains, rising oil prices, etc. So if Putin's not afraid of sanctions and we impose all these sanctions and he goes in and we and Europe are suffering economically,

I'm just trying to imagine where we are at that point. Well, we don't know that he's not afraid of sanctions. I just worry that it's not afraid of sanctions. I just worry that it's not sufficient. So I would, you know, again, pile on all the deterrent military action and also diplomatic deterrent action. But you must punish him so that he doesn't continue, and they will hurt, and they'll hurt other people besides Vladimir Putin himself. And that matters.

You know, they'll hurt the oligarchs around him. You also need to demonstrate to other would-be transgressors of international law that this is what we're capable of doing together. The House Republican Study Committee has put together, which is a committee of about 150 conservative lawmakers, they've put together what they're calling the Putin Accountability Act, which has something like 30 co-sponsors right now. The bill's been sponsored by Jim Banks, congressman from Indiana. And it really goes after Putin personally. And Josh Rogin writes in The Washington Post, one thing we do know that Putin cares about is his own

illicit fortune. The U.S. government has never really tried to go after the people who launder Putin's allegedly stolen billions and profit from his gangsterism. And then he goes through about how that the House committee is pushing the Biden administration to do this now and not wait for Putin to go into Russia, but really impose the pain on him personally, his personal financial fortune, and that of the people around him. Yeah, there are some sanctions, Dan, that we can sanction action that we can take now, that we should take now. And I would agree with that. That's a sanction we can take that's not going to hurt us. It's not going to hurt our European allies. It's going to make a strong statement towards the Russian people.

Look at your irresponsible, corrupt leader. And so I think it could help create some turmoil for Putin in his backyard. So that kind of sanction makes sense. The other sanctions I would hold off on because, again, you're threatening them, you know, in an attempt to get him to stop and think twice, him or the people around him. In 2018, the Trump administration authorized special forces to confront, I don't even know what to call them, security contractors. Let's call them that. Russian security contractors.

Yes, the Wagner Group. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And I don't know, you know, 300 different reports, something like 300 of these Russian security personnel were either killed or injured, something at least over 80 killed based on public reports. What did, what was Putin's reaction to that? Because that was, I mean, confronting Russian forces,

even if they were sort of informally tied to the Russian government, to the sovereign, confronting Russian forces was pretty aggressive on the battlefield and with real casualties. And how did Putin respond? Well, what happened was that the place where our troops are is of interest to the Russians because there are, there's oil there, and they would like to have access to it under some sort of arrangement that they would probably make with Assad. So the Americans are in a strategic area there. There are other reasons why it's important, but that is one that would appeal to contractors who might make money there, aside from for their military mercenary activities. The Wagner Group attacked the special ops, the special operators there. And that's why the

special operators lashed back and killed hundreds of them. I mean, I think it was more than 100, maybe even more than two, but in any event, it was more than 100, maybe even more than two. But in any event, it was more than 100. And the lesson there, I think was understood because I haven't seen any accounts of Russian contractors or Russian troops, you know, trying to attack Americans. If you attack Americans, they will fight back in self-defense. So I don't think that Vladimir Putin wants any kind of kinetic engagement, any kind of war with the United States or with NATO or with any of our allies. And he does understand what Article 5 means. And the Russian military is not a match

for NATO. So you, about a little over a week ago, President Biden seemed in his press conference to concede that there will be some kind of Russian invasion, small, but an invasion of Ukraine. And that there was, you know, the body language and the language suggested, at least the administration's view, was there was little we could do to prevent that. Now, since then, you, and we, in this podcast, we're also hearing from Brett Stevens, who was weighing in on that exchange at the press conference, but you since then have come out quite publicly for a pretty aggressive approach, some of the items you've alluded to in this conversation. Can you talk about what prompted you to come out so publicly and what kind of reaction you got from folks on Capitol Hill, folks in the administration, to what you're proposing? And actually, first tell us what you're proposing and then talk about why you did it and what the reactions were. Yeah. So what I proposed in this Defense One piece in particular was that we undertake a firm, united response against

Vladimir Putin, that the president provide the highest level of military support to Ukraine. I can't recall if I put in there about air and maritime defenses, but certainly subsequently I've mentioned that, and I do believe it's important, but that we provide assistance to the Ukrainians so that the Russians will know that it will cost them, that we sanction Russia and- And just to be clear, so to make clear that the Ukrainians have the resources to, this is not going to be a cakewalk for the Russian military, that Russia will know, wow, the Ukrainians are actually really armed here. They have the capabilities to fight. Right. That they will lose lives, that the Russian, that there will be Russian body bags going back to Russia. And the reason for that is, of course,

in 2014-15, we saw that it had an impact on the Russian government. So that was part of my argument. The part, the real reason, I mean, the part of the argument that I put last was that President Biden needs to go to the United Nations and organize a coalition of the willing. Now, a coalition of the willing to undertake diplomacy, not to force Russia militarily to leave, as we did with Iraq in the case of the Kuwait annexation. But because it's a similar situation, we need to mount as energetic a diplomatic response to this one as we did to the Iraqi invasion of Kuwait. Again, I'm not calling for military force because Russia is a military nuclear power. We don't want to engage in war with Russia. But we should put the full force of global pressure on them because they are challenging

the international order. And this is the part I think that many Americans just don't understand, that if Putin gets away with getting control over Ukraine, he's not going to stop there. He's going to try to have control over other parts of the former Soviet Union. He's going to try to continue to weaken NATO. He does not want democracies challenging him and his autocratic system. The administration, the Pentagon has recently said that they would deploy 8,500 U.S. troops on heightened alert, quote-unquote, for possible deployment, I guess. But it would be under the NATO response force. And what that means in practice, again, I'm quoting Josh Rogin here as well from the Post,

is that the Supreme Allied Commander in Europe would have to request their deployment from NATO itself before they could carry it out. So we're sending, we would be sending U.S. troops to NATO, but those troops couldn't be deployed without the 30-member, you know, North Atlantic Council voting unanimously to approve the use of our forces. Does that worry you that, like, our forces are subordinated to some system now that's up to 30 countries to decide if they're used? And does that also just create a bureaucratic mess if we're in the middle of a crisis that if Putin went in to Ukraine, we're sitting there having these like debates and discussions in Brussels about how to get 30

governments to vote to allow U.S. troops to be deployed? It doesn't concern me because what I'm hearing out of the administration is that they haven't taken anything off the table, that they could send additional U.S. forces by, you know, just on our own without the NATO request or the NATO umbrella. I think doing it as part of the NATO response force demonstrates, again, that it's the full force of NATO, even if it's not a large military force, right? So I think there's political advantage to doing it under the NATO umbrella, but we're not tied to that operationally. I want to just ask you one question before we wrap here, which is your own—so you've been a longtime policy wonk, I say that not in any pejorative way, in the Russia-slash-Ukraine-slash- European sphere, and you don't just come at it as a wonk or an academic, although you have a lot of experience in both, but also your personal story, your family's history.

Can you just tell us just briefly your family's history in Hungary and how you kind of growing up came to care about these issues? Yeah, so my parents were born in communist Hungary. In 1956, there was a revolution to try to kick the Soviet Union out. I mean, they literally had tanks in there. They pushed the tanks out. The Soviets left. But the problem was that the Soviets were coming back. The United States did not want to get involved in a war to rescue Hungary. So my parents fled. And I mean, I ran for Congress in New York in 2020. And I told the story of how they left with nothing. My mother had a sandwich in her pocket, you know, literally, that's it. Can you imagine? And she was only like

17 years old. So they came to the United States with nothing. But what they came for was, you know, political freedom and an economic opportunity. And I was born in the States, my first language was actually Hungarian. I went back and visited my grandparents in Hungary. I knew very much I knew what it was like to live in under communism. You know, my parents would say, don't talk in front of that lady, because she's the spy in the building. And she'll tell on your grandparents. And I knew that something horrible would happen to my grandparents. So, you know, knowing that there are these other systems of government. I grew up in

America really grateful, first of all, that my parents were welcomed here. And they did have, they got educations in the United States, and they were able to, you know, achieve kind of the American dream. And so I feel very strongly about our democracy, because I do think you have to work for that every day. And certainly, I feel that the international order is, you have to pay attention to it, because outside actors can also endanger your democracy. And I think as Americans, since we're the greatest power in the world, still militarily, politically and economically, we have a responsibility to stick up for those smaller countries, and those peoples who want to be democratic when they're being pressured militarily by people like Vladimir Putin and his vast army and navy.

Hopefully the administration is taking your counsel here. At a minimum, I think our listeners would agree you've helped provide a crash course in why this matters and why it's not too late. So, Evelyn, thanks for joining the conversation. Thanks very much, Dan, for the opportunity. As listeners to this podcast, you know Brett Stevens, and this is part two of our conversation with him. In this episode, we talk to Brett about the Biden administration's handling of the Russia-Ukraine crisis, pivoting off President Biden's troubling press conference from a couple of weeks ago. Here's my conversation with Brett. And I'm pleased to welcome Brett Stevens back to the Call Me Back podcast. He's a fan favorite. This is technically his third appearance

on this podcast. And Brett, I want to talk to you about Ukraine, which you have written about a lot in the Times and have been a keen observer of developments there. And I want to quote from President Biden's press conference. It's almost jaw-dropping press conference. And let me preface it by saying one could argue early in the administration,

early in the Biden administration, they did some important things as it related to Ukraine. The White House froze the withdrawal of American forces from Europe early on that had begun under the previous administration. They'd expanded the sanctions against Moscow, tough sanctions already in place from the Trump administration, and the president had dispatched defensive weaponry to Ukraine, not the offensive weaponry and technology the Trump administration had dispatched, but nonetheless had done some important things. And that's where we were at the beginning of the Biden administration. Now, I want to quote or play tape from President Biden's press conference, where he says, quote, my guess is he will move in, referring to Putin, he will move into Ukraine. My guess is he will move in. And then he said, I don't think he's made up his

mind yet. If he invades, Putin that is, if Putin invades, it hasn't happened since World War II, which is actually isn't true. Parenthetically, just a little fact check here that Putin invaded the Crimea. Putin invaded Ukraine seven years ago when he was vice president. In 2014, right, and integrated Crimea into Russia. But it was just factually incorrect what he said. And then Biden goes on and says, I mean, it's almost But it was just factually incorrect what he said. And then Biden goes on and says, I mean, it's almost like he's sort of ruminating.

He says, it's one thing if it's a minor incursion and we end up having to fight about what to do and not do. But if they actually do what they're capable of doing with the forces amassed on the border, meaning the Ukrainian border, it is going to be a disaster for Russia if they further invade Ukraine. And then he was asked, President Biden was asked, are you saying that a minor incursion by Russia into Ukrainian territory would not lead to the sanctions that you have threatened? And Biden says, well, that's how it sounded like, didn't it? So that was President Biden in his press conference talking about what's likely to happen in Ukraine. What was your reaction to what he said? Well, I mean, my reaction was to imagine what Vladimir Putin was thinking

while listening to that, which is that this is an adversary who's simply not serious about stopping me, who is going to be twisted into knots like Carter over the invasion of Afghanistan or something like that, trying to reach a common position with American allies because he doesn't quite understand what's most important to reach a common position or to take a tough stand, who's prepared to accept a further Russian seizure of sovereign Ukrainian territory the third time in seven years, and who's just not a serious president. You will have noted that immediately afterwards, or at least a few hours after that press conference, the administration was being forced to walk back some of what Biden had said. moment of crisis when supposedly all the talking points have been carefully studied and written out by the principles of government, that you have a shambolic decision-making process led by

a president who hasn't gotten his messaging straight, hasn't gotten his thinking straight, and where it's unclear whether he's thinking very much at all. So why do you think the administration has landed at this approach, even if it's being corrected to some degree? What is going on inside the administration decision-making? Well, I wish I knew. Well, what could— I mean, I wish—

Give them the benefit of the doubt. I know it's hard because it seems, as you said, so shambolic. But if you were to give them their due, what are their options here? Maybe they're dealing with a narrowing set of options, and they're stuck. So let me try to, off the cuff, put the best possible gloss on the Biden administration's shambolic Ukraine policy. And I would say that they are very keen to maintain a united NATO front, especially given that Germany has a new, more Ostpolitik social democratic government, potentially inclined to take a very different view of Russia than the United States will. And so they would rather sacrifice or they would rather

gain diplomatic currency in NATO, even if the cost, even if the price of it is losing tranches of Ukrainian territory. So NATO diplomatic unity trumps all, I guess, is the nice way of expressing this policy. But it's essentially a nonsensical policy because achieving this diplomatic victory with NATO, that is to say having some kind of united front against Russia, ultimately simply puts NATO in a strategically much worse position. Strategically worse, because Russia has been emboldened, it will be able to have achieved objectives in Ukraine at a relatively minor and diminished cost from the West. It demonstrates that transatlantic unity is becoming a fig leaf and an increasingly torn fig leaf. It makes Eastern European frontline NATO states extremely worried about their future. And it shows that a Putin strategy of confrontation, aggression,

and naked and extraordinarily bald threats against the West works. So on every level, it's catastrophic. What I have said is that the Biden administration should be sending C-5s and C-17s in formations to Kiev, delivering every kind of weapon that can bloody the Russian army, even if it means Ukraine loses the war, that at least can deliver a real black eye to Russia, just to give Putin a sufficient 10% point of doubt in his mind that this is going to work. Then the United States— So you would cut off all these diplomatic talks, the talks in Geneva, the talks in— The talks are themselves a concession.

When a country goes and threatens to invade a neighbor, it should not be rewarded in the coin of diplomatic entente and potential concessions from the United States. So this is built up Putin in a sense, because he suddenly looks like a superpower dealing directly with the US. And there's a chance that he could win some. Let's imagine this thing comes off without a Russian invasion. It will only do so if the United States makes certain kinds of concessions. One concession that's been bandied about is the idea of

reentering the international or the intermediate range nuclear forces agreement of 1987, the INF Treaty. But we got out of the INF Treaty because Russia was nakedly violating the treaty. So we're going to reward Russian violations of a nuclear treaty by reentering into it because they were so gracious as not to invade their weak and vulnerable neighbor. That's a staggering thought. The other thing that I wish Biden would do is he should send, even if it's over the objections of Germany and other countries, he should send division level forces to each of the Baltic states, large enough tripwire forces that Russia will know that if it invades Ukraine, the threat from NATO on his Western flanks will grow, not diminish.

So you wrote in The Times, quote, it would be to America's globe, referring to a potential invasion of Ukraine from Putin. You wrote in The Times, it would be to America's global standing what the Suez crisis was to Britain's. At least Pax Britannica could, in its twilight, give way to Pax Americana. But what does Pax Americana give way? Close quote. So could you, first of all, explain the significance of the Suez Crisis? It began in October of 1956. Why was it so important to what some may argue was the beginning of the end of the British Empire. Well, the British Empire was, in a sense, a shell of itself when Gamal Abdel Nasser

nationalized the canal, triggering an effort by France, Britain, and Israel to retake the canal, leading to the debacle of Eisenhower, who was trying to curry favor a month before his re-election with the anti-colonialist forces of the Third World to strong-arm Britain into relinquishing its position, leading to the downfall of the government of Anthony Eden, the humiliation of Britain, and its conclusive diminishment as one of the members of the big three that had the victors of the Second World War. The point of all that, it's a long history,

it's an interesting history. The point of all that, it was the moment when Great Britain got kicked so hard in its pants, if I'm being diplomatic here, that it knew that even if it was going to be a country in the world, it wasn't going to be a power on the world stage. Now, when that happened for Britain, you had a big strong America that was prepared,

as Kennedy would say a few years later, to pay any price, bear any burden for the sake of freedom in the world. There is no great liberal alternative to American power that's ready to pick up the pieces if the United States decides that it doesn't have the will or the wherewithal to stand up to people like Putin or Khamenei or Xi Jinping in China. And what happens after Pax Americana is that the dictatorial powers of the world will understand it's open season, that they can hunt their weaker neighbors, whether it's Taiwan or the Baltics or potentially

even Israel in the Middle East, and that the United States will not be coming to the rescue of these embattled democracies around the world. And if that happens, we're in a really dark place in the world. You wrote a book a few years ago that I would argue is somewhat prescient on this front. I would say it was more than somewhat. Okay. So bring it. Like tell me what you – so the book is called America in Retreat.

We'll post it in the show notes. America in Retreat, The New Isolationism and the Coming coming global disorder. So you wrote this book during the Obama administration. Right. It was published in 2014. I remember I held a book party for you. You did. It was a very nice book party. Glad you remember. So just briefly, what did you argue in that book and what has come to pass? I argued in the book that the United States risked under President Obama, repeating the mistakes of the 1920s and the 1930s when we decided we wanted,

excuse me, we wanted no part in policing the peace that had been arranged after World War I, and that our withdrawal from the game of international power politics is what ultimately led to the rise of the fascist dictatorships in the 1920s and 30s, and the catastrophe of the Second World War. And that American policy under Obama, and as I predicted, under an isolationist Republican president, I had a whole chapter in there called Republicans in Retreat, which I think anticipated the quasi-isolationist drift of the GOP, and now under Biden, is moving in just that direction, because we don't have, among other things, a kind of an intellectual architecture for why American power is indispensable, not only for the sake of little

Latvia or little Israel or little Taiwan, it's indispensable for our own security and prosperity. And that was the essential argument of the book. And I think seven years later, although I was wrong on some of my predictions, I think the overall thesis has been pretty well vindicated. I agree. One thing it requires to reverse this direction we're heading in, in both parties are political leaders who are running for office and who are in office to explain to the American people why these battles are important and why these challenges are important. And unfortunately, we have very little of that. Leaders explaining the stakes. If you want to do what you're advocating, for instance,

vis-a-vis Russia and Ukraine, we need a leader who's willing to actually explain to the American public what the stakes are. And we don't have people explaining the stakes. Well, you know, look, the American people are right to be skeptical in the sense that tremendous blood and treasure was invested into two nation-building programs after 9-11 in Iraq and Afghanistan, which ended, for the most part, in sand and ashes. Now, I would argue they ended in sand and ashes because of not the decision to enter those countries, but rather the decision to leave them and leave them in a way that made them vulnerable to catastrophe or to political setbacks. But I understand and I think it's important for any of us who are on this side of the argument to reckon in a, excuse me, my throat's a little

dry, to reckon in a thoughtful and serious way with that critique that 20 years of effort didn't take us very far. There were serious mistakes, again, in thought and execution made by those of us who thought, I think, a little too breezily that getting rid of dictatorship was the hard part when, in fact, that was the easy part. But there are equal and, I would say, far graver mistakes among those who think that the United States can retreat to some kind of North American fortress and be safe in the world. And we can't, and I think we've created an intellectual climate that's facilitated that kind of thinking, and it's going to lead to harms. On that grim note, which I totally agree with,

we will end the conversation. You've been very generous with your time, Brett. We hope to have you back. Like I said, our listeners say more Brett. So, you know, you won't be canceled. Thank you, Campbell and the kids. Yeah. It's more than just Campbell and the kids. We got a lot of fans who are asking for more Brett.

And you won't be canceled on this podcast, no matter what you say, no matter how provocative. So keep up the important work and stay in touch. It's an honor to be on the show, and it's always good to see you, Dan, even virtually. Great to see you. Thanks. That's our show for today. To follow Evelyn Farkas, you can track her down on Twitter,

at Evelyn N. Farkas, F-A-R-K-A-S. And to follow Brett Stevens, you can track him down through the New York Times opinion page or on Twitter, at NYT Opinion, or at the Sapir Journal, which he edits, at Sapir Journal, S-A-P-I-R-G-O-U-R-N-A-L. Call Me Back is produced by Ilan Benatar. Until next time, I'm your host, Dan Senor.