Call Me Back - with Dan Senor - What does Biden mean by “as long as it takes”? - with Richard Fontaine

Episode Date: February 27, 2023

On the topic of geopolitics, international flashpoints and the state of the war, a surprisingly optimistic Richard Fontaine returns to our podcast. Richard is the CEO of the Center for a New American Security (CNAS), a bi-partisan foriegn 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. He serves on the Biden administration’s Defense Policy Board – which advises the Pentagon. Richard’s oped discussed in this episode: https://warontherocks.com/2023/02/of-strategy-and-schnitzel-munich-security-conference-2023/

You know, how did we get into the situation where we can't produce enough munitions to resupply even one country fighting the Russians? We never thought there was going to be state-on-state land war in Europe again. We thought that war in, you know, the future was going to be information-intensive hybrid attack kinds of things with intelligence operations and unmanned and insurgency tactics and all these other kinds of things. We didn't think we were going to see tanks and fighter jets and mortars, but that's exactly what we see now. A new access between Russia, China, and Iran, a year into the Russia-Ukraine war, in which President Biden says, we will stay in this and back the Ukrainians for, quote, as long as it takes. How long is that? To try to get answers to some of these questions, we called up one of our go-tos, Richard Fontaine. Richard is the CEO of the Center for New American Security,

a bipartisan foreign policy think tank in Washington, D.C. Imagine that, an institution that's bipartisan these days in D.C. Prior to joining the Center for New American Security, Richard was foreign policy advisor to Senator John McCain. We worked for him on the Senate Armed Services Committee, traveled all over the world with him, including year after year to the Munich Security Conference, where Richard just returned from, which we'll talk a little bit about. He also worked at the State Department, the National Security Council, and on the staff of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. He currently serves on President Biden's Defense Policy Board, which advises the Pentagon. So he is close to a lot of the decision making and analysis and forecasting of the Biden administration in global affairs. This is

Call Me Back. And I'm pleased to welcome back to this podcast my friend Richard Fontaine, who is a fan favorite. He's also like a burst of positive energy after we just had neil ferguson on last week as as you referred to him what do you say is dower scott dower dower a dower scott lovable but dower scott yeah yeah yeah right endearing charming but dower uh there was a lot of doom and gloom. I got a lot of reaction from it. People were, I guess, appropriately flipped out by some of what he said. So I thought we'd bring you on to cheer us up, maybe.

Breath of fresh air, so to speak. Okay. All right. So, Richard, let's start with the line that we are hearing from our president, from President Biden. We're hearing from European leaders. We're hearing from NATO. They're all singing from the same talking point sheet that we, the West, will be there for Ukraine for, quote, as long as it takes. That's the line. We'll be there for as long as it takes, which is being met with mixed reactions from a number of corners, some on the American right, and actually some Ukrainians. And some Ukrainian leaders are reacting, as long as it takes,

that's a long time. How about we'll get you whatever you need now to win, which is a lot different than saying this is going to go on a long time. How do you react? Well, I was at the Munich Security Conference, and to a person, this was part of the points that almost all the leaders and defense ministers and foreign ministers from NATO countries, from G7 countries, would emphasize. And the point is a good one, which is that Russia cannot wear down their support for Ukraine, especially given that part of Putin's gambit seems to be here that his ability to destroy the Ukrainian economy and Ukrainian infrastructure will last longer than the West's generosity in rebuilding it and aiding the Ukrainian economy without which it will not function. So yeah, it's a good thing

to support Ukraine for as long as it takes. On the other hand, in Munich off the stage, there was a lot of anxiety about just how long this war might go on and who is favored if it goes on for a long time. So stockpiles are dwindling in terms of military materiel in the West and in Ukraine itself. The United States has done over $100 billion in aid to Ukraine over the past year. How many years of $100 billion infusions does it have? Europe has been quite generous as well. Can we just pause there for one second? $100 billion.

So the United States is indirectly, via proxy, taking on one of the largest, most influential, most menacing geopolitical threats to the United States and to the West, Russia, without American men and women risking their lives. American equipment is being used, but not American men and women risking their lives. War is being fought far away. I mean, it is Reaganite in a way, right? Fighting through supplies of weapons and funds to quote-unquote freedom fighters, a lot of what we did in the 80s, you know, through what were proxy wars in various parts of the world, in Latin America, parts of Africa, in the case of the 80s. And so one could argue we're doing something similar now.

And if that's true, is $100 billion, I'm not asking this rhetorically, how should one think about $100 billion in the scheme of things, given what's at stake and what we're dealing with with Russia, and that this is a country that's trying to wreck the Western alliance or degrade the Western alliance and degrade Western defenses? Is $100 billion a good investment, an outsized investment? How does one think about that? It's a great investment.

It's a great investment because, well, as you're saying, the Ukrainians are on the front lines of upholding this abstract but very real thing we call the rules-based international order. It's a wonky kind of set of rules that foreign policy types point to that undergird the interactions between states, but the cardinal transgression against it is territorial acquisition by force. That's precisely what Russia is trying to do in Ukraine. We don't want to live in a world where a big state can exercise might makes right and decide that it would like to have some of the territory of a neighbor or some other state go in with force and keep it without eliciting a major response

from everyone else. Now you're seeing precisely that major response, but that major response has to be resourced by countries like the United States, and it has to be successful. And so if we can aid in that success without American boots on the ground, American casualties, the threat to the American homeland, but rather the expenditure of our economic resources. It's a great investment. And so then the question comes back to the as long as it takes, though. Exactly. So for how long is it a great investment? Is it a great investment this year? What about next year? What about the year after that? How about the year after that? And the short answer to all of that is nobody knows. The Ukrainians have two major concerns when it comes to the time dimension of all this. One, every day that goes by, they're losing infrastructure and personnel, military personnel and civilian casualties and everything else.

So they would like to succeed in a short time frame rather than a longer one, simply because of the human and physical destruction the war is causing. The other one is the Ukrainians are dependent on the infusion of weapons and economic resources from the West. And the longer this goes on, the if-year, that might start to look, the politics starts to change in different countries and so forth, including our own, by the way. And so their plea is, whatever it is that you're going to give us, whatever it is you're willing to give us, give it to us now. Get it here now and let us try to triumph in short order rather than have a very long, dragged out kind of conflict in which the commitment of the West is not always going to be as certain as it is today. I think that's a pretty reasonable request. Are you surprised? So President Biden,

you know, said powerful things in Kiev. I think it was terrific that he was there on the one year anniversary of the war. He was in Poland. You know, so much of the talk about protecting the quote-unquote Western alliance, the first country on that front line, or one of them, I guess, is Poland. And there's this sense that if Russia marches through Ukraine, it will then bump up and into Poland. And that's one of the reasons we have to stop. And Poland is as much for this war effort or backing Ukraine as anyone is. And yet Poland falls into this category of nationalist right parties that have gotten elected into government over the last decade, decade and a half

in countries in Eastern and Central Europe that have been very controversial in Western eyes, and they seemed to be indirectly kind of unwilling to take on Putin. How do you think about the Polish government generally? And then are you surprised specifically by how they've been reacting to Putin's aggression in Ukraine? Well, there's nothing like a major external threat to sand down some of the perceived differences between political parties or governments and so forth. And so you see this not just in Poland, but among, for example, NATO allies writ large. I mean, we spent many years fighting with each other over who was contributing 2% of their GDP to defense and who was free

riding and all these other kinds of things. And all that's essentially gone out the window because of the unity fomented by the Russian threat. And you see that to some degree in Poland as well. And so whatever qualms Western Europe or the United States might have about the domestic affairs in Poland, those kind of pale by comparison with Poland acting as a frontline state and the corridor through which so much military and humanitarian assistance is flowing. I mean, Poland is taking a risk by hosting the supply lines in the Ukraine.

Russia has not attacked those supply lines, but it could at some point. And so it stands to reason, given the geographic proximity and the nature of the Russian military threat now, that Poland is quite aggressive in pushing for great aid to Ukraine in as short order as possible. All right. I want to, this whole theme of as long as it takes, I want to play for you something that Neil said, or Dower Scott said on this podcast last week, because he said a couple of things that were pretty disheartening. I want to play one of them for you when a war has lasted about six months it's really really hard to get it to stop within the next six

months historically wars are much easier to stop when they've lasted days or weeks but once you get into half a year plus that then it's really hard to stop, partly because of sunk costs. You just have body counts that are really high on both sides, and everybody is filled with hatred towards the other side. If I view the conflict from a Ukrainian point of view, the commitment from the United States seems remarkably good. And if you keep asking, you get somewhat better hardware each time you ask. So you get the tanks. So then you ask for the jet planes, you'll get the jet planes. And what next? From a Russian vantage point, Putin is counting on the West not to have stamina. He's counting

on there being divisions between Europe and the United States. He's counting on Americans getting distracted because we are Americans. And at some point, there'll be the presidential election circus. So both sides think that they have time on their side. And that's why both sides are preparing or have already launched offensive operations. Okay, so what's your reaction to that? We've passed six months. We're well past a year. And is Neil right that if you look at history, it means there the very beginning that this was going to be a long war for a very simple reason, which is, tell me at what point the Ukrainians decide this is not worth fighting for anymore and they'd like to stop, and tell me at what point Putin decides this was all a mistake and he doesn't want to fight anymore. Well, isn't the answer to the question from the Ukrainian side, or wasn't Russia's calculation, Putin's calculation from the Ukrainian side, when

if the estimates are right, it's something like 100 plus thousand casualties from Ukraine? Yes, but yes, but the Ukrainians- So at some point they say, well, 100,000, we'd rather not be at 150,000 or 200,000. I'm just saying, if Putin's calculation is I'll bomb these people to smithereens and some at some point they'll fold. Yeah, but I think that's wrong. And I think the Ukrainians are far they're further away from folding today than they were the first few weeks of the war for two reasons. they perceive that they've been winning. They've done far better than anticipated a year ago, certainly, when the Russians were closing on Kiev and they were expected the last 48 hours and all of that. And then two, the nature of the Russian atrocities against the Ukrainian people. If there was some sort of negotiated outcome to be had that involved Ukrainian neutrality or

agreeing to disagree over Crimea or something like that, Maybe in the first few weeks of the war, Zelensky could have agreed to that. But after the Russians rounded up civilians in Bucha and shot them in the back of the head with their hands handcuffed or began attacking children and apartment buildings and everything else, I mean, quite understandably,

this has radicalized the Ukrainian people. And the last thing in the world they want to do is cede part of their territory And the last thing in the world they want to do is cede part of their territory and the cause of peace to Putin. So if you accept that, then there's no negotiation in sight. There's no peace in sight. And as a result, unfortunately, I think you get a lot more war. And Putin, from his calculation, we don't know what kind of casualties they've, we don't really know the Ukrainian casualties, right? When we hear this number of North 100,000. Yeah, I mean, there are estimates the Ukrainians, but it almost certainly is North of 100,000. Now

that casualties are killed and injured. So the killed would be some component of that. But by any measure, it's very, very high high and of course on the russian side it's probably 200 000 casualties including somewhere in the neighborhood of 50 of 60 000 killed which is just an astonishingly high number with with with nothing to show for that tremendous expenditure of uh of blood on the russian side and and sadly more and more supply i mean it's like he he can he can putin could just keep sending from you know rounding people up from the regions and sending them to the front lines in ukraine right so they may do another uh partial mobilization as they did uh a few months into the war where they essentially conscripted

a couple of hundred thousand individuals and sent them in. Of course, the Wagner group has gone prison to prison and said, you can get out now. If you survive six months, you'll be free and don't have to serve out your sentence. And then turn many of these people into cannon fodder and put them right on the front lines in the eastern part of Ukraine so as to draw fire from the Ukrainians with the notion that that in turn would expose the Ukrainian artillery positions and the Russians could then bomb them. So, I mean, it's this very cynical expenditure of human life, again, for essentially nothing. But, yeah, it doesn't look like the Russians will run out of manpower. So just so I get this right.

So so so the Russian military are going into prisons. Well, the Wagner group, which is, you know, reports ultimately to the government, but as a separate, you know, paramilitary organization and, and, uh, Progozhin, the guy who runs the Wagner group, also known as Putin's chef. He long time ago moved out of catering into, uh, killing, uh, maybe probably did both at the same time back then, but anyway, he, uh, yeah, they went around prison to prison and told the prisoners there, if you want to join the Wagner group and report out to the front lines, if you survive for six months, then you don't have to serve out the remainder of your sentence. A lot of people took that. Thousands of people took that deal and thousands of people paid with their lives for that decision as well. So Russia, not neither.

I mean, there was I i mean you listen to the rhetoric of zelensky it's like we're not you know any end cessation of war will not be with us making any territorial concessions right but of course there are no negotiations going on so you couldn't expect him to say anything but that because otherwise he'd be negotiating against himself. So, and there's no, if he at any point is going to make any concessions, for example, to say that they won't fight on to liberate Crimea, now is not the time to do that. And publicly is not the time to say those kinds of things. I don't know that that means forever that will be like. Do you think there's a world in which Zelensky would agree to that? Potentially. I think part of this is going to turn not just on the Ukrainians' decision,

but also the willingness of the Europeans and the Americans to continue to back fighting, even if it returns to the February 24th status quo ante of last year. So imagine for the sake of argument that the Ukrainians are able to liberate every inch of territory that the Russians seized a year ago. So you're right back to where you started a year ago. The Russians have gained nothing. Well, that would still leave Crimea in Russian hands, and it would leave some portions of the Donbass and Eastern Crimea in Russian hands, de facto Russian hands. So what do you do then? Well, you basically have a couple of choices. And Ukraine's position now is we want all that back too. Correct.

It's all Ukrainian. And of course, it's recognized internationally by the United States and everyone else as all Ukrainian territory. No one, or very few. I think Nicaragua recognizes the annexation of Crimea, but that's pretty thin gruel when it's Nicaragua and Belarus or something. So it is Ukrainian territory. The question is, and Ukraine and the United States and Europe would not accept Russian sovereignty or seizure of Crimea. The question is, having gotten back all of the

territory that you lost since the beginning of this war, do you fight on against a very difficult military target, which would be Crimea, in an attempt to liberate that? And it's only speculation to say now what they would do. I mean, they haven't reached that question yet. They might not reach that question anytime soon. But ultimately, I think the US and Europe and the Ukrainians themselves are going to have to have a view. Right now, the Ukrainians say they'll fight on until it's all liberated. But that's a different thing than actually doing it and seeing where the battlefield is at that point. And just before we move off the Wagner Group, so aren't like a majority of those recruited into the Wagner group dead now?

I don't know if a majority is, but I would wager that a majority is. I mean, they've just had astonishing losses and, you know, they've been trying to capture these areas around Bakhmut and stuff like that. I mean, even if they do, who cares? I mean, it's amazing the human price they're willing to pay. And I think part of this is related to the war and trying to make advances where you can. And also you're seeing some political kind of give and take between Prokofiev and Putin with Prokofiev, who runs the Wagner Group, having come out into the public, having previously denied he had anything to do with the Wagner group or the existence of the Wagner group. And now he wants to show, you know, that his guys can actually do what the Russian regular military has not been able to do, which is capture and hold territory. So you have this kind of destructive dynamic there

as well, which is a little bit hard to understand. But nevertheless, if you are looking for something to do over the next year, I would not recommend signing up for the Wagner Group as one of your top sort of choices. I think you could rearrange your sock drawer for a year and probably do yourself better. The, you mentioned, we talked about some kind of potential negotiation. China has entered the breach. China has inserted itself, saying it could try to facilitate some negotiation.

What is China's actual angle? It's funny. So in Munich, Wang Yi, their top top diplomat he's the state counselor for foreign affairs was was there and he dropped this notion that they were going to within a week or so release a peace plan for ukraine everybody said wow peace plan peace plan from china that's gonna be interesting this was at munich this is at munich where he said they were going to do this and you know there were a lot of skepticism by everybody, but thought, huh, peace plan. I mean, it's one, it's unlike China to come up with a concrete peace

plan. And two, China does occupy this kind of unique geopolitical position among the players in this and all of that. So they did, they came out with this thing a day or so ago, and it's not a plan. It's a statement of principles, things like, you know, all countries should enjoy territorial integrity. Uh, fighting should stop. There are a lot, there's a lot of passive tense, uh, uh, you know, the, the, the, the, the, the fighting should stop territorial, which should be respected. Nuclear wars should not be fought. Right. You know, all of this.

And, you know, so there's nothing operational in this. There's nothing that would actually close in any way the gap between the parties. There's no proposal here. And I think what the Chinese are trying to do, on the one hand, is continued to support the Russians, who they are in a sort of strategic alignment with opposing what they believe to be a Western-dominated international order that doesn't accord to either Russia or China their rightful place, given their power and standing and all of this. And so they're united in that. But China also doesn't want to be seen, particularly in Europe, as merely siding with this blundering savagery of the Russians. It wants to look like it's constructive or that at

least aspires to an end of this war. And so it puts this out there, but I don't think it buys them really anything at all. You know, the Chinese, I think, see Europe as a severable power from the United States. And so they worry quite rightly that having sided with the aggressor at Europe's time of peril is going to cost the Chinese in Europe. I mean, Wang Yi and Munich exhorted the Europeans to seize strategic autonomy, presumably from the United States. But I think the Europeans see the role China's playing here and the role that China might play if it provides lethal assistance to the Russian military. And so it's put them in a jam in that respect. And I think they've sided ultimately with the Russians. So given that China sided with the Russians, given that China is buying oil from Russia

at, from what I understand, a discounted rate, which is a good deal for China and a good deal for Russia, Iran is supplying drones to Russia that we know about. They could be supplying other stuff or they could be in the future providing other equipment. And so then this discussion begins about what is actually going on here and getting you to respond to Neil again. In our podcast, Neil says this is the closest thing to an axis that we have seen, an axis of enemies iran china and russia but i guess north korea would be part of that too it is north korea's

part of it yeah as uh as an axis and it was it was much more of an axis than the axis of evil that we talked about in 2001 after 9-11 in terms of a real axis in many respects neil pointed out if you look at the history of World Wars, particularly World War II, this is what Victor David Hanson, you know, wrote that book, The Second World Wars. You know, so there were a bunch of wars and then they kind of got, they were sort of all rolled up into one big war,

but they didn't start out that way. And that this, what we're dealing with now is much more, is much farther advanced than these small little wars, quote unquote little wars that existed that became what we talk, we call World War II. And so let me just play what Neil said and then get you to react. Hang on. We might think of this as the war in Ukraine or the Russian invasion of Ukraine, but maybe it's just the first part of World War III. And part two is going to be in the Middle East, when Iran escalates its war against Saudi Arabia. And part three is Taiwan.

And if those things happen in roughly the same time frame, then we're looking at something much more alarming than Cold War II. I'm fine with Cold War II. Cold War II is good because Cold Wars, where we don't actually do that much fighting, are an incentive to innovate technologically. It's better for us to recognize we're in Cold War II and that it is primarily a technological race and we can't lose it. But if you end up in World War III, where you actually have to have an enormous number of shells available, missiles available, where you have to replace the ships that get sunk in the Taiwan Strait very fast, then the United States is in a very weak position, I think. So our Dower Scott raises a couple of issues there. One, should we be really thinking

about, because we're not right now, we're really not thinking about Iran and China and Russia as a real access, the way we ultimately thought about the Italians, the Japanese, the Germans, and the Soviets for a period during World War II. Certainly not comparable to, as we talked about post 9-11, North Korea, Iran, and Iraq. Do you think this is much different, A? And then B, the question Neil raises at the end, are we the U.S. ready for this? Yeah, I mean, it's different in a lot of ways, but I think there is something like an axis there with severe limitations, but also some pretty big threatening activities. And this is, of course, not the beginning of it really either, because, you know, when Iran's client Bashar Assad looked like he was going to be overthrown by the opposition in Syria, who went to Moscow, but Qasem Soleimani, and who invaded or who intervened in Syria on behalf of Assad to bail him out? Well,

the Russian Air Force. And so it was the Russians and the Iranians that worked together to preserve Assad in power in Syria and did it quite publicly and quite proudly. And so now you're seeing the Iranians give drones to the Russians. There are reports of missiles potentially in the offing from Iran to Russia and the provision potentially, again, reportedly of fighter jets from Russia to Iran and this sort of transactional relationship they have there. China has not played a role in providing, as far as we know, direct military equipment and things like that. But it certainly has a diplomatic role at the United Nations has taken the Russian position sort of as a, with other countries has taken the Russian position and everything else and,

you know, economically and so forth. And so it's not a very coherent axis, but certainly those countries are bound by at least one big thing, which is opposition to what they see as a U.S.-led order that they find threatening and not in accordance with the role that they should rightly play in the world. And that, I think, is enough to get them acting together. There's a big difference here, which scrambles everything, though, which is the economic relationship between China and everybody else, including the United States. So there's diminishing economic relationship between Russia and the members of outside the Axis and Iran. That's been the case for quite a while and during the peak of the cold war the the economic relationship that the u.s had with

the soviet union was a joke i mean relative yeah i mean we we uh we sold grain to the union until there was a grain embargo under reagan there was a uh some pepsi uh i there there probably was something the united states imported at some point from the Soviet Union, but I don't know what it was. So, I mean, it just wasn't a meaningful factor. And of course, you had the Western economic bloc and the Eastern economic bloc, both of which pretty much traded and invested with each other. And those were also coherent geopolitical blocks. And here you have increasingly coherent geopolitical blocks, but completely scrambled economic blocks that are trading with each other. And how that nets out is in a way kind of the big question of this era.

And what about as this escalates? And by the way, you're seeing it cut both ways because it's driving US policy in the sense that, I mean, you're closer to this than I am, but the breakdown in the talks with Iran about returning to the JCPOA, the Iran nuclear talks, have really ground to a halt in part because of, it seems, the Biden administration's frustration with Iran cooperating with Russia. So, yeah, I mean, if there was a chance pre-Iran-Russia cooperation to get back in the JCPOA, which was pretty limited because the Iranian government or Raisi doesn't seem keen to do so and to adopt, well, to re-enter the same terms that previously existed. That, I think, is pretty much out the window now, not only because of the American view of Iranian behavior, but also the European view of Iranian behavior. I mean, the Europeans, with the exception of the French, were always kind of more pro-JCPOA, pro-diplomacy, pro-let's-work-out-a-deal-with-Iran, if they could do one thing to change European minds,

they have now done it by sending drones to Russia to kill Ukrainians while Europeans are trying to help Ukraine defend itself. And I would say also clamping down in an extremely aggressive way this revolution or quiet revolution not quiet this revolution on the streets yeah uh yeah so i mean in that sense the iranians if the iranians ever had any aspiration return to jcpa they've done everything wrong i mean they they are violating the the prohibitions against uranium enrichment as we all know, they are evincing very little, if any, inclination to actually return to the deal under any circumstances. They have repressed

these protesters that merely want to exercise their basic rights across the country and hanging people to make an example out of them. And of course, now they're helping the Russians as well. So even if you only needed one reason, now you've got three. Right. And what about our capacity to keep replenishing weapons and defensive capabilities to Ukraine as the conflict could conceivably escalate in weird twists and turns the way Neil talked about, where we're suddenly either just supplying to that front or supplying to more than just that front, whether it's the Taiwan Strait or it's to Saudi or to Israel or, you know, anywhere in the Sunni Gulf, like parts of Europe.

You worked on the Senate Armed Services Committee under Senator McCain. Do you worry about our investment in our own capabilities? Yeah, I do. And it's because in a war of attrition, which is what this has become, a big part of it is a contest of industrial production. And again, in Munich, it was interesting, the German defense minister observed that, you know, they're supplying munitions to the Ukrainians, mortars and so forth. And the Ukrainians are shooting mortars at a faster rate than they can come off European production lines. And that's across all of

Europe. And he said, you know, how did we get into the situation where we can't produce enough munitions to resupply even one country fighting the Russians? He said, well, it was pretty simple. We never thought we'd see this again. We never thought there was going to be state on state land war in Europe again. We thought that war in, you know, the future was going to be information intensive hybrid attack kinds of things with intelligence operations and unmanned and insurgency tactics and all these other kinds of things. We didn't think we're going to see tanks and fighter jets and mortars, but that's exactly what we see now. And so there's some areas in which the United States stockpiles are not going to be able to be replenished in short order. If you're talking

about javelins or some of these other stingers, some of these other things, there's of course other areas where stuff hasn't even gotten to the Ukrainians yet, like tanks from Germany and from the United States and potentially from other countries. But this is a wake-up call, I think, for the United States and for Europe, that if this is what, you know, industrial production looks like in a Ukraine versus Russia fight, God forbid, what would it look like in a U.S. versus China fight or even a Taiwan versus China fight? And so, you know, in a way, I think many of the measures that are going to go into place, and some of them have started already, are wise and prudent given the kind of national security challenges we're going to face in the future. Again, we're just

not used to thinking this way. We fought the Taliban. We fought Saddam Hussein for a while and insurgents in Iraq. We fought ISIS. We fought Qaddafi's army, you know, Losevich, if you go far back enough. You know, great power war is an entirely different endeavor, and that's what we're learning right now. —Churchill said the, quote, the story of the human race is war. I just was thinking of this quote as you were speaking, so I pulled it up. The story of the human race is war. Churchill said, except for brief and precarious interludes, there has never been peace in the world. And before history began, murderous strife was universal and unending. Close quote. You're trying to become a dour New Yorker to go with

Dower Scott and Churchill's dour words. No, I just, the way you were talking, I was thinking of this quote of Churchill, which is why I pulled it up. Yeah, now look. Which is like, war's with us all the time. War's with us all the time. And we have this false sense of yeah, there's war, but it's war that looks like what you were describing, which was

you know, taking out Gaddafi, taking out Saddam Hussein and his sons and occupying Iraq for a little period of time. But this is not great power trench warfare where huge swaths of the planet are engaged in hand-to-hand combat and, you know, aircraft carriers and, you know, one period nuclear weapons. I mean, that is what history is actually defined by more than any of this kind of Fukuyama end of history era that we thought we were experiencing versions of over the last several decades. Yes, but, and so yes, you're right. War, unfortunately, seems to be part of the human condition. And there's I don't think there's been a period in human history when there's been no war anywhere in the world. But there has been an absence of great power war since 1945. And that's very remarkable. I mean, that's the longest stretch in modern history that's been the case. But in the scheme of things, it's not that long. I mean, so we made it through, you know, 70 years of no great power war, but for that to end and then we get great power war again, a lot of people died during great power wars. Well, right, exactly. And so one has to be prepared for something even as destructive as Great Power War.

But it's also worth asking what it is that restrained the great powers. Because, you know, from up until 1815 at the end of the Napoleonic Wars, it was Great Power War all the time, all across Europe and everywhere else. And then there was this long piece, long-ish piece from 1815 to 1870, and the Franco-Prussian War broke out. And of course, you fast forward to 1914 and World War I through World War II, everybody knows the story there. So what's the difference? What's the difference from 1945 until now? And I think there's a couple of differences. One, the great powers armed with nuclear weapons had internalized just how destructive a war could become.

And that was a price too dear for even people like Stalin and Mao and others to pay. But there are also this abstract thing, this international order, the kind of basic rules of the system in which countries internalize that wars of aggression would be met with a counter effect by other parts of the world. And you're seeing that in Russia, but that's exactly why Ukraine has to be successful in preventing Russia from taking its territory. Because if it looks like you can now get away with those things and that's going to incentivize the next would-be aggressor to believe that he she could do the same thing so uh you know the famous line of course is you know if you want to prepare a war you then prepare for

it um and yes you have to be prudent but you also have to i think tend to the lessons that are being learned along the way that are going to shape the decisions of the next would-be aggressors. Fast forwarding, do you think victory in this war for Ukraine and the forces and the countries backing Ukraine is possible without NATO committing aircraft, which could risk direct conflict with Russia? Yes. I don't think NATO will commit aircraft. If by that you mean NATO pilots flying over Ukrainian skies and shooting at Russians, which would be war against Russia, NATO-Russia war. Nor do I think that it's necessary. I think that the Ukrainians have ultimately the kind of personnel and will to fight and set of incentives to defend the homeland

that is necessary for them to fend off and beat back the Russians. The thing that they lack and what they've lacked from the beginning is sufficient quantities and qualities of weapons to do that effectively. It's amazing that each time they ask for something uh they say can we have high mars no then we give them high mars can we have long range missiles no we give them long range missiles can we have uh tanks no we give them tanks can we have fighter jets now we're like well that's where we're drawing the line. Just just just wait. Can I ask you a question? You're you're you're close to a lot of these conversations with this administration. What what is that with this? Like they ask the Biden administration says no.

Then the Biden administration says yes. Like your your whole, you know, sequencing here. Then they ask for something else like why because the ukrainian so the administration i think has two objectives one is to assist the ukrainians in defending themselves against the russians and the other is to avoid escalation meaning avoid russia attacking nato territory supply lines running through nato territory um touching a nerve and that in some way shape or form would lead vladimir putin to do something that he has not yet done i don't know launch a tactical nuclear weapon whatever the form of escalation is so if those are your two objectives you got to try to figure out the provision of weapons system X, Y, or Z. How much of that is going to help the Ukrainians, but not be escalatory?

And how much of it is going to help the Ukrainians, but would be unacceptably escalatory? Well, there's no chart you pull out and you say, well, Putin would object to A, B, and C, but D, E, and F are going to be okay. So we'll just give D, E, and F for now. And then if he changes his mind on A, B, and F are going to be okay. So we'll just give D, E, and F for now. And then if he changes his mind, an A, B, and C. So this is an art, not a science. And it all gets back to really one's personal risk tolerance and trying to make a judgment. And what they have done over time is made a judgment that particular weapons systems

would be escalatory. And then as the Russians have not escalated against the provision of other things, they've sort of towed, sort of put their toe in the water on additional ones. It's the bit of the frog in the boiling pot approach to providing weapons. So I think the underlying assumption is if you did it all at once, that would be more escalatory than if you sort of gradually acclimatize, I guess you could say, the Russians, the provision of these weapons. Now, that said, I think the problem with that approach is that you drag this war out. You make the Ukrainians have to fight longer. If it were up to me, I think generally speaking,

the administration's done a very good job, the way it's handled this war and this effort. But if it were up to me, I would give them everything that we're going to give them all at once and have them be able to launch the greatest possible offensive against Russian forces. So that would be the tanks, it would be the fighter jets, it would be the HIMARS, it would be long range rockets that could reach into Crimea, into Russia if they're being attacked from those locations and so forth. Okay. I want to pivot to a piece you wrote coming out of your trip to the Munich Security Conference, and then I want to ask you about one other part of the world you traveled to. But first, you wrote a piece saying McCain won Munich. This was your boss, your mentor, your friend, your partner in crime, Senator John McCain, a hero of mine as well. What was winning the Munich

Security Conference about? I first went to the Munich Security Conference back in 2005 when I first started working for Senator McCain. And I'd work on his speeches every year. And we'd go year in, year out, and all of this. And there became this almost formulaic kind of experience there where McCain would go up, and one doesn't need to take my word for it, go back and look at his speeches if anybody's curious, and he would say, Putin is becoming repressive at home and aggressive abroad. Keep an eye on Ukraine.

It's in peril. It is, you know, all of these things that you think are vestiges of the past, you know, kind of strong versus weak and good versus evil in the transatlantic sphere are not actually. It's better for the West to be strong, armed, united and resolved than to be weak and and wondering what its purpose is. And where the Europeans often had this idea that the best way to deal with Russia was to buy gas from it, to have economic interdependence that would sort of modify and moderate its foreign policy over time. McCain thought that was ridiculous. So he would denounce the Russians. He would offer huge support for the former Soviet republics that were in danger. And he would call on the Europeans to do more, to be more unified and to be stronger. And of course, the Europeans would come back and say, yeah, yeah, we know, we understand.

There's problems with the Russians, but we got to work with these guys. We understand. We're close to the Russians. We understand them better than Americans do. And you got to understand, you know, we have economic relationship. Oh, we got domestic concerns. We can't spend too much on defense and all that. Anyway, so you fast forward all these years, 2023, I'm walking around and you hear Macron

speaking or Olaf Scholz or, or any Rishi Sunak who was there, the British prime minister. And what are they doing? They're talking about Russia essentially as a kind of a mafia state, Putin as pretty much evil incarnate, the need for the West to triple down on its democratic values, which bind it together like glue and are such a distinction between the autocratic mindset. They're pledging to increase defense spending to be as strong as possible to support Ukraine for as long as it takes. I said, they sound like McCain. All these years later, they sound just like McCain. It took a long time to get there, but McCain won Munich. All right. We're going to post that piece in the show notes.

Tell me, you also recently traveled to Tajikistan and to Turkey. Why were you in each of these places? With some of my colleagues, we were doing some work looking at what U.S. policy toward Afghanistan should be now that we're as far after the year and a half plus after the fall of Kabul to the Taliban. There is a major group of exiles, including those who were in the previous government in Afghanistan, in Tajikistan, around Dushanbe. And there's another group in Turkey. And so we were meeting with those. Those groups are quite different. And this being Afghanistan, they don't have uniform views on almost anything. But the question on the table was, given the slim leverage the United States has, most of which it gave up when we left Afghanistan. And given the really terrible

situation in Afghanistan today, a third of the country is dependent on foreign aid for basic survival. Women and girls have gotten almost completely shoved out of the public sphere. As we all know, the world's most wanted terrorist, Ayman al-Zawahiri, was found in a safe house in downtown Kabul being sheltered by the interior minister before a U.S. drone took him out. Is there anything we can do? It's a hard question. And we proposed some answers to that. But that's what we were doing there.

And are you pretty pessimistic about Afghanistan? I am, yeah. I think there's multiple factions with the Taliban that are competing for influence, and the hardest of the hardline faction based in Kandahar is in the ascendance. And every week or two seems to go by with a new decree showing that for all of the talk about Taliban 2.0 or a more modern, more enlightened version of the Taliban that ruled until essentially September 10th, 2001, that doesn't really hold any water. These guys retain the same worldview, which is, by the way, a very similar worldview to

al-Qaeda, the same worldview that they had before. And we're seeing the results of that. And the influence we can have to alter that outcome is quite limited. Again, I don't think it's zero, so I think there are things we can and should do. But we have to, I think, be honest about the fact that when we decided to withdraw completely from Afghanistan, we gave up most of the leverage we had. You know, Richard, you were supposed to be our... I sound like a dour American. Yeah, you were supposed to be our... I sound like a dour American.

Yeah, you were supposed to give us the bullishness from the bayou. And now you're just kind of reinforcing the crushing morosity, as my friends at Commentary say. Here's what I will do to try to turn your sentiment around just a little bit. So if I heard Neil's sort of description of the axes, right, the United States is going to be on the back foot and in a pretty bad situation, given the teaming up of Russia, China, and Iran, if not maybe others like North Korea. And I don't think that's right over the long run. I mean, you can decide whether if you wanted to pick sides or be a citizen in

either Russia, China, and Iran on the one hand, or the entire G7 on the other, what would you choose? I'd rather have our problems than theirs. Whatever our lack of industrial capacity and weapons production and resolve and unity and potential staying power and the complications that come along with democracy. I would bet on that every time over the notion that Russia, China, and Iran really are going to dominate the international order, are really going to stick together over time and and make life exceedingly difficult for the united states and so the formation of any kind of pseudo-axis the way we're seeing the outlines of is has already begun to produce a kind of alignment closer than we've seen before between europe the united states north america japan south korea

australia new zealand singapore you can add others to that and i'd rather be on our side okay so hold the United States, North America, Japan, South Korea, Australia, New Zealand, Singapore, and you can add others to that, and I'd rather be on our side. Okay, so hold on. I'm not going to let you go then, because that was good. That's a contrarian take. But just because Russia, China, and Iran are not on the rise, they're not places that people would want to aspire to live or be on the side of, it doesn't mean they can't be on the rise uh they're not there's they're not places that people would want to aspire to live or be on the side of it doesn't mean they can't be on the march wreaking havoc globally in fact one could argue and neil and i talked about this and brett stevens and i have talked about this it's actually those countries that are that are in decline that are most often on the

march so if what you're saying is true, the West and what we're calling loosely define the Western alliance here, and I know it's not just the West, but we will for simplicity's sake call it that, is the more desirable place to be and be a part of. It doesn't mean that these other countries can't cause a lot of pain on the world stage, even if they are in decline. That is true. And I don't think China's in decline. I do think Russia's in decline. The problem with declining power is that they're often highly risk tolerant. They have less invested in the way things are with each passing year. And so they have a greater incentive to gamble. And I think that's exactly what you see with Putin. China's rising power, at least

in the ways that we care about most militarily in terms of its ambitions and activities around the world, that poses its own set of problems. But, you know, in all of this, if we're looking at sort of, you know, a block versus block perspective on all of this, it is a meaningful thing that the vaunted Russian military, which we believed, or at least most people believed, would take Kiev in 48 hours that posed a real threat to Europe. And it was only restraint that kept them from being successful in military activities and so forth, can't even hold the eastern part of Ukraine. They can't even get through a year without 200,000 casualties. You know, so the Russian juggernaut, the Russian military threat conventionally, now nuclear, you're talking about a completely different thing, but the conventional Russian military threat is far less than we thought.

And the European ability to defend itself is increasing commensurately. And that ultimately is a balancing factor that you have to take into consideration here. So yes, I agree. They can cause a hell of a lot of trouble. But don't count out our axis just yet. Yeah, but I would say, even if Russia is declining, it will continue, unless the character of the regime changes there. Even if the Ukrainians, quote unquote, win, what does winning actually mean? Russia will always be a problem that they have to manage.

Unless, you know, there's this excellent podcast called I think it's called Latest in Ukraine. I don't know if you've ever heard it. It's the Telegraph here in the UK. I'm in London right now. Only listen to Call Me Back. Good plug. I don't know any others it's

called ukraine the latest and it has some journalists from um from the telegraph uh in the uk on it and they and they always have a number of ukrainian journalists or former uh members of parliament on it it's very good but they're on one of the more recent episodes uh this uh gentleman by the name of francis dearlyle, who's with the Telegraph, makes the point. At the end of the day, the behavior of regimes don't really change unless you actually humiliate the country militarily and actually occupy it for a while. He says that was ultimately the key to changing the character of the German regime after the fall of the Nazis. That was the case in Japan after World War II. He goes through all these examples of where there's just been a clear-cut military defeat, a humiliation,

often an occupation, and then you can count on the actual character and behavior of the regime changing. Obviously, I don't think anyone's planning to truly humiliate Russia on its own territory militarily anytime soon, certainly not occupy it. So at the end of the day, Russia in one way, shape or form is just going to have to be a problem for Ukraine and us to manage. And that management will be messy. Yeah. I mean, just as a historical note, that was not true, obviously, of the Soviet Union, which was not militarily defeated by the West and occupied, but you had the dissolution of the Soviet Union and the change from Brezhnev and Andropov and Chernenko

to Mikhail Gorbachev for totally different reasons. That was not the case in East Germany or Poland or Hungary or Czechoslovakia or any of those countries either, which were not militarily defeated by the West and occupied. It turned out the populations there wanted something different. And they pushed for that change when they had an opportunity to do so free of the overweening Soviet hand on their neck. But in the case of the former Soviet Union, look what reemerged a little a decade after the dissolution of the regime is Putin.

Well, in Russia, but not in the former Soviet Union. I mean, you know, the Baltic states are in a very different place. And the Ukrainians have been as well. And the Georgians and and other things. And so, you know, Stalin died in 1953 and the there was a lot of analysis that said, you know, whatever, whoever replaces Stalin must be worse because, of course, this was the guy who worked with the United States and the allies to defeat Hitler. And so, you know, he was kind of Uncle Joe in our propaganda for a little while. So, you know, he might be an absolute bloody murderer and, and, you know, and lunatic. But, you know, ultimately somebody could do business with and, and no, you know, every, anybody who replaces him is going to be worse. And of course that wasn't,

wasn't the case. So who knows if Putin departs the scene who replaces Putin? Worse? Better? Don't know. So I don't think we should just write off Russia in that sense. But we're a long way from there. In the meantime, I think the will of the country is Putin's will by and large, and we're stuck with the will of the country is Putin's will by and large, and we're stuck with the will we have.

And so, you know, threats that countries pose are a combination of will and capability. And so if you can't change the will, you got to change the capability. And as we see in Ukraine, every day that passes, Russia's capability to make war, conventional war at least, is diminishing because of the tragic deaths of its military personnel and the destruction of its equipment. So, and, you know, if they stopped today, given the export controls and their own industrial production levels and things like that, it'd probably take them six or 10 years just to get back to where they were a year ago.

So that's a pretty big diminishment in Russian military capability. And that's where the focus has to be if you can't change the will. You know what? I knew there was a reason why we had you back because you figured a way to kind of tie this thing up with a bow and- Pull a rabbit out of a hat. Yeah, and we're upbeat.

So you delivered the goods, Richard. You delivered the goods. You pulled us out of the depths of despair of dr. Ferguson so as my old boss John McCain used to quote Chairman Mao it's oh and his immortal words yeah it's always darkest before it's completely black it's always darkest before it's completely black all right we will leave it there thank you as always and look forward to having you back all right Thanks for having me. That's our show for today. To follow Richard's work, you can go to cnas.org.

That's C-N-A-S dot O-R-G. And on Twitter, he's at R-H Fontaine, F-O-N-T-A-I-N-E. Call Me Back is produced by Ilan Benatar. Until next time, I'm your host, Dan Senor.