Endgame with Gita Wirjawan - Karen Donfried: Will America Pull Back from Ukraine?

Episode Date: July 14, 2024

Thank you to The Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs at Harvard Kennedy School for supporting this episode. Visit the link below to learn more about research, ideas, and leadership programs for a more peaceful world: https://www.belfercenter.org/ ------------------- Evil and atrocity exist in this world. Therefore, the US must overcome its political dysfunction—which Karen Donfried aptly describes as a "soap opera"—before it loses the trust of its allies entirely and can only stand by as the world descends into chaos. #Endgame #GitaWirjawan #KarenDonfried ------------------- About Luminary: Karen Donfried is a Belfer Center Senior Fellow and Former Assistant Secretary of State for European and Eurasian Affairs. She served as a special assistant to the President and Senior Director, European Affairs, National Security Council under Obama’s presidency. In 2003-05 during Bush’s presidency, she worked for the US Department of State's Policy Planning staff, handling the Europe portfolio. About the Host: Gita Wirjawan is an Indonesian entrepreneur, educator, and Honorary Professor of Politics and International Relations at the School of Politics and International Relations, University of Nottingham. He is also a visiting scholar at The Shorenstein Asia-Pacific Research Center (APARC) at Stanford University (2022—2024) and a fellow at Harvard Kennedy School's Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs. ------------------- Earn a Master of Public Policy degree and be Indonesia's future narrator. More info: [e-mail] https://admissions.sgpp.ac.id https://wa.me/628111522504 Visit and subscribe:  @SGPPIndonesia  @Endgame_Clips 

Of course Russia is going to do this. We have been telling you for how long Russia is an aggressive power. Yes, they're going to do this. Karen Dunfried. Karen Dunfried. Dr. Karen Dunfried, a very senior administration official from the State Department.

She is the U.S. Assistant Secretary of State for European and Eurasian Affairs. I'm just curious as to what the dynamic would have been in the State Department pre-February. it was not enough of a hint. The summer of 2021, Vladimir Putin wrote a very serious article about his view of the Russian world, essentially. And in that article, he is explicit in saying, Ukraine's not a sovereign state. And he felt that Ukraine along to Russia. And I said, no, no, no.

No, light doesn't make right. You need to know we're watching. I don't know if John Meersheimer is right or if I am right. None of us know what is in the mind of Vladimir Putin. There is an observation that there is some sort of a divergence now between policymaking and public opinion. You cannot make this up. It is such a soap opera. How do you see this ending? Most wars don't end actually through negotiation. Hi friends, I want to take this opportunity to thank you for being with us ever since we started Endgame some years ago. The conversations have been invariably elevating and animating. At least from my personal point of view, it's been a tremendously rewarding experience.

and I'm hopeful that you could be further supportive of us by way of clicking on the subscribe button, watching every episode as much as possible, if not as fully as possible, and also joining us as a member of the Endgame channel. I can only promise you that whatever we're going to be doing going forward will try to make Endgame a better experience. for all of you. Thank you. Hi, friends. We're honored today to have Karen Donneuxre, who is the former

assistant secretary of state and also a senior fellow at the Belford Center. Karen, thank you so much for gracing our show. Gita, it's such a pleasure to have you here at Harvard and to be with you on the show. Thank you. I want to start off with a personal question in terms of where you were more in the U.S. and how you grew up and how you picked up, you know, this way. wisdom on international relations. Please. So at the time I was born, my father was a student at Harvard Divinity School. But I was not born in Cambridge or Boston because his mother was dying in New York City. So my mom was in New York City helping and I decided to come early. So I was born in New York, New York. And how did you get

interested in international relations? So the only grandparent I knew was my dad's father. And my dad's parents had come to the United States in the 1930s. They were German. And they were looking for a better and more prosperous life in the United States. Germany was suffering economically at the time. My grandfather worked for Mercedes outside of Stuttgart. And he came to New York City and opened a garage and repaired. cars. And there was a very large German community in New York at the time. So my grandfather's English was never particularly fluent. He really grew up in a German-speaking community in New York City. My father, as I mentioned, was a theologian. So he went to Harvard Divinity School, but then decided to go to Heidelberg, Germany, for his PhD. His area of focus is the New Testament. And there was a group of New Testament scholars in Heidelberg at the time with whom he wanted to study. So as a little baby until four years old, I lived in Heidelberg. I went to

kindergarten and we had a German babysitter. So I learned German as a small child. And my dad then got a teaching job at Smith College in Northampton, Massachusetts. And we all moved there. And And I actually had a German accent in my English. No kidding. And I started school and all the kids teased me. You know, Karen, say ring. And I would say ring. And the laugh at me.

And I was forced to go to speech therapy, which I hated. And I vowed never to speak German again, which I pretty successfully did until I was in high school. And then I was fortunate that my high school actually offered German. So my German is quite good, but initially it was very much a small person's German. And so what I had to do was learn the grammar and learn the appropriate idioms for a grown-up. So I had this familial introduction to Germany, and I remember very vividly in high school, my dad had many friends in East Germany. So this is, of course, when Germany is divided, and we were going to East Germany to visit these theologians. And as you know, there was very little

civil society, well, in most communist countries, in East Germany. But these Protestant theologians were arguably a significant or the most significant part of civil society in what was called officially the German Democratic Republic. And it was so interesting to the visit, where these theologians are listening on these conversations at that time. And for me, when I was writing my dissertation, it started out and it ended up, it was a political science dissertation, but near the end of that dissertation, we had German unification. So I felt like overnight, my political science dissertation became a history dissertation, because I was looking at the U.S.-West German relationship. And that was so powerful because even those of us who

followed Germany very closely didn't foresee that East Germany essentially would crumble. We didn't realize how weak, how economically bankrupt, how politically bankrupt that system was. And so it was a powerful example of the fact that all of us have agency. And citizens matter. Did you anticipate that it was going to happen that soon in 89? No, no, I did not. And it was so powerful to see those protests in East Germany. And it was interesting because last summer I was back in Leipzig and Dresden.

And I've been back over time, but I was with my husband, whom I actually met when I studied in Munich, Germany, right after college. Alan had not been back to East Germany since unification. And it was so fun to take him because Leipzig is now this vibrant city. And you see the change. But we also were remembering the history and going to the church where these citizens of Leipzig would meet. and they'd go on these amazing protest walks through the city. And that history is still so fresh. And it was wonderful to be reminded again of what played out there. If you've been advisory to three presidents, right,

and you've been quite, if not very central to what happened in 2022. Talk about this Ukraine situation. I first want to appreciate that you said I worked for three presidents. A lot of people focus on my most recent role, which, as you mentioned, was Assistant Secretary of State for Europe and Eurasia. And we'll come back to that for what happened in 2022. But the first time I served in the executive branch was in the administration of George W. Bush. So I worked for a Republican president. I was in a non-political role there.

there's the opportunity in the U.S. government to go in and serve as an expert. You can be in the State Department of Career Foreign Service Officer, a civil servant, or these sort of two-year appointments for experts. And in the Bush administration, I should say I started my career at the Congressional Research Service, working on foreign policy. So I knew a lot of folks who worked for the House Foreign Affairs Committee, the Center of Foreign Relations Committee, but also there was an interagency community. And one of the people I got to know was working for then chairman of the joint chiefs of staff,

Colin Powell. And this friend would call and say, hey, Karen, need to do something for the boss on a piece process in Northern Ireland. Have you written anything recently? No problem. You know, let me fax over with the days of fax machines, the most recent thing I've written. So we all know, Colin Powell became Secretary of State. So this friend is now the deputy director of the policy planning staff at state and calls and says the person covering Europe is a queer foreign service officer.

He's going on to his next assignment. Would you be interested in throwing your hat in the ring for this? And this was in the immediate wake of the Iraq war. And I said, Barry, U.S. European relations have never been worse in my lifetime. why would I want to do this? And he said, actually, you just gave me the reason why. If you really care about this relationship, what more important time to go into government than when things are bad? And he said, come in and talk to Secretary Powell's chief of staff, who was this fascinating ex-Marine Larry Wilkerson,

who made the case that the secretary was committed to rebuilding these relationships. And I think it's obvious now I am a Democrat because I served in a Senate-approved position in the Biden administration. But I believe deeply that there are something called American interests that begin at the water's edge. And we had a former senator who used to talk about that. He had this aphorism about politics ending at the water's edge. And I have been fortunate to work on Europe throughout my career where there has been abroad by partisan consensus. That is in the interest of the U.S. to have strong allies, that NATO is our most important alliance. There have been some basic agreed beliefs across the aisle.

And I worry so much now that with the political polarization, we're losing that. So I have worked in administrations of both parties because I do have this belief that we are stronger as a country if we

pursue a bipartisan foreign policy. So I just wanted to speak to that point that we made. Now, served in Bush administration then was well, and actually this is probably worth saying. In the Obama,

administration, when I went back into government, my first rule was as the national intelligence officer. And I never thought that much about the intelligence community, but when I served at the State Department under Colin Powell, many of your listeners will remember that Colin Powell testified in front of the United Nations about Iraq having weapons of mass destruction. And he believed that there were multiple sources backing up what he said when he testified. And it turned out, all of that intelligence information went back to one source. And this was a terribly challenging time for Colin Powell, who was one of the most respected individuals in the United States. And so when I was asked about, might I be interested in serving as national intelligence officer for Europe on the National Intelligence Council, which sort of sits atop all of our intelligence agencies, I thought, well, I'd normally thought about working in the intelligence community, but actually, I'm interested in understanding how we collect intelligence, because fundamentally, that is the basis of our foreign insecurity policy.

So I thought, yeah, let me compete for this. And I then went into that role, and it was so fascinating for me, Gita, because most of the people who work in the intelligence community do grow up in that community. And here I am this outsider coming in, in a relatively senior role. And people were interested in what I was bringing, and I was interested in their backgrounds. And I learned a lot. And I think I also contributed. But that experience proved so important when I then went to the National Security Council. Because within a month of my getting to the NSC, the Snowden Disclosures broke. And I thought, huh, I have some insight here because I just had this experience in the intelligence community. And the Snowden Disclosures were sensitive in Europe, particularly in Brussels for the European Union, and particularly in Germany, where Anglomerical was going to be up for a re-election in that fall. So, you know, this is all by way of backdrop. And when I was at the N.S.C., we not only had the Snowden disclosures, we had the last chapter of Ukraine.

Because, again, your listeners will remember that in 2014, Russia illegally annexed Crimea, and then also occupied part of southeastern in Ukraine, the Dumbos. Okay. Now let's get to 2022. So I will tell you, Pita, when Tony Glinkin called me in January of 2021, and he had been deputy national security advisor when I was at the National Security Council, and I've known him for a long time, I did not think I was going into the administration. I was working in a nonprofit, the German Marshall Fund, which is not political.

We work with all parties. But Tony Bluthan called. That afternoon, he was confirmed to Secretary of State. So I wasn't yet calling him, Secretary Blinken, and said, look, I'd love you to join my team at State. If you had asked me then, Karen, do you think Russia will undertake a full-scale invasion of Ukraine while your assistant secretary? I would have said, Gita, fair question, but no. I don't think that's going to happen. So I think the collective mindset was not that Russia was planning a full-scale invasion of Ukraine.

And I remember 2008 when Russia took 20% of Georgia. Sure. And we debated, wow, okay, Russia did that. But maybe Georgia in prison, Saakashvili, in some ways. voted him and, well, 2014 also complicated. February 2020 was not complicated from our perspective. This was an unprovoked attack where a bigger, stronger country is taking the sovereign territory of its weaker neighbor.

And by any measure, that is wrong. And in a world where your country, my country, the majority of countries in the world have come together the United Nations and agreed to a UN charter that talks about respect for sovereignty, respect for territorial integrity, the right of each of our countries to determine our own foreign insecurity policy. I mean, fundamentally, that Mike doesn't make right. If we believe in that, we need to stand up for it. And that was very much the feeling in the Biden administration that, okay, maybe we got this wrong up until 2022. But we now have to stand up and say, no, this is not acceptable. And we, the United States, as the leader in this global community, need to lead that response. Special thanks to the Belfour Center for Signs and International Affairs at Harvard Kennedy School for providing support for this episode.

Check out links in a description to know more about research, ideas, and leadership programs for a more peaceful world. was there I'm just curious as to what the dynamic would have been in the State Department pre-February there was not enough of a hint by way of maybe the article that would have been written by Putin

and some of the rhetoric that came out of Moscow great because the prelude to February is very important so in January of 2021 I would have said I don't think Russia is doing this. In October of 2021, we started seeing the intelligence that Putin was planning this. I was one of the senior officials who was asked to engage with allies, share this intelligence, and start planning.

And that was so fascinating, Gita, because when I would talk to allies in Central and Eastern Europe, the Malds, the polls, and say, look, it's a very serious conversation through intelligence channels, we're going to be sending you some intelligence about Russia's plans with regard to Ukraine. But the bottom line is, we think Russia is planning to undertake a full-scale invasion from the north, from the east, from the south. And we need to think forward about what we do. You know, the malls, the polls, they were like, of course Russia is going to do this. We have been telling you for how long Russia is an aggressive power. Yes, they're going to do this. The West Europeans said, look, really appreciate your sharing this. We'll look at it with care and we'll get back to you with our assessment.

And their assessment was, at the end of the day, Putin is not going to make the decision to undertake this full scale and patient. Because we believe she has more to lose than to gain. he will fundamentally alter his relationship with us, Western Europe, and we're important to him, economically, politically, in other ways. So that was a challenge because we didn't have unity of assessment in the transatlantic community. And I think it was very important, starting with the president, President Biden, but CIA director, director of national intelligence, that the decision was made to share the intelligence that we did share, not only with allies, but also with partners in the European Union and other places, and much of

that we also made public. That was also part of a strategy to try to deter Russia from invading, because we thought, if we shine a spotlight on what Putin is planning, maybe, it becomes less likely that he does that. We also undertook diplomacy to try to provide a diplomatic offer for him. So, okay, we're working on the one hand with allies. What do we do collectively to try to deter him? But also, even if we all don't agree he's going to do this, we said to our West European allies, if he does it, then what? And they said, well, if he actually undertakes this full-scale invasion, that changes fundamentally the European security landscape. And yes, we need to respond. So he said, okay, then we need to start planning something now.

So that if he does it, we got a plan to be. So that's how in the run-up to the invasion, we were able to agree on an unprecedented package of sanctions and export controls that we could implement. And that's why very shortly after the invasion on February 24 of 2022, you saw the U.S. and the EU roll out these sanctions and export controls. I mean, we'd never sanctioned the central bank of a G20 country before. That was, I mean, there were a variety of instruments. in that package we had never deployed before. Okay. And we also, so we're working that with the Allies. Then you have the track with Russia. And I was one of the senior officials who traveled with CIA director Bill Burns in early November to Moscow. And Bill Burns is one of our

most accomplished diplomats. He had a very distinguished career at the State Department, including serving as ambassador to Russia. Now he's at the CIA, so he also has full command of all of the intelligence. So we go and he meets with senior officials, and he also had a secure video conference with Vladimir Putin who was not in Moscow. At the time, none of us were in the room with Bill Burns when he had that video chat with President Putin. Of course, he fully back-briefed us. And I will just say that it was an extremely sobering trip. There was nothing that led us to believe. Russia was not planning this. I think our interlocutors were surprised that we were coming to say, you need to know we're watching. And if you do this, it is extremely serious. We will

respond in a fundamentally different way than we did in 2014. And we very much hope that you don't undertake this invasion of Ukraine. So it was both, we're watching. This is very serious if you do it. And please, let's figure out something different. I returned to Mothold. I returned to Mothold. in December. The primary reason for that visit was I was meeting with the main Russian negotiator on the Minsk process, which had been a Franco-German, Ukrainian, Russian negotiating process about how to resolve the Russian occupation of that part of Dombas, Dornetsky, Luhansk. We had not been involved in that process, but our concern about what Russia was planning, let us to engage with the French and Germans and say, do you think it would be helpful for us to

try to energize this process and see if we can resolve some of the underlying concerns? The Russians approved that trip and then asked if I would add an additional meeting. At that meeting, I was handed draft treaties that the Russians had prepared, a draft treaty between the U.S. and Russia, a draft treaty between NATO and Russia. And essentially, the Russians were saying, these encapsulate our concerns. And if you can agree to all this, that would be great. So we looked with care at the U.S. Russia treaty. We shared the NATO-Russia treaty with NATO Secretary General against Stoltenberg and others. And we then communicated. And we then communicated back to the Russians, look, there are some things in this treaty that we cannot

agree to. We cannot agree to close NATO's open door because we believe each country has the sovereign right to decide their foreign security policy course, and we would consider those applications to NATO. So that's not going to work. But there are other things. in these treaties that we do want to talk to you about. We are interested in talking to you about risk reduction. We are interested in talking to you about how we can enhance strategic stability, arms control. So, you know, we had this dialogue. We agreed that we would have essentially a week of diplomacy in January of 2022. Some of that was U.S. Russian. Some of it was Russian NATO. There was also a meeting at the OSCE, the Organization of Security and Cooperation in Europe, on the U.S. side,

that this was led by our Deputy Secretary of State, then Wendy Sherman. And we had these series of talks. The Russians then came back and said, okay, could you put everything you've told us in writing? So put your responses to these treaties in writing. So we dutifully worked on the U.S. Russia, NATO worked on the NATO Russia. We then sent these to our Russian near locketers, and very quickly, our replies were published in El Pais. I will simply say it was not the U.S. government that leaked those responses to El Pais, and we had strongly communicated to the Russians that we felt and feel that,

that diplomacy in that instance is best conducted in private. But in any case, those were then published. And we were increasingly concerned that the Russians were just fusing time based also on what we were seeing through intelligence channels. And of course, we got our answer, our ultimate answer, on February 24 in the Russian invasion. But yes, we were very active as soon as we started seeing that intelligence in October of 2021. I just want to say you mentioned the article Putin wrote, which is very important. And not everyone who's listening may have followed this. But in the summer of 2021, Vladimir Putin wrote a very serious article.

about his view of the Russian world, essentially. And in that article, he is explicit in saying, Ukraine's not a sovereign state. And Ukraine is part of the Russian world. And this mindset of his is very important, I think, in understanding that he, I think, saw him as writing an historical wrong. And he felt that Ukraine along to Russia.

And I think that thinking very much informed what he was planning and that what ultimately he did. I want to present a view by an academic who would have basically presented the argument who would have basically presented the argument that, you know, there's a need for some sort of a buffer state. I'm curious as to what your views are with respect to that sort of a view. Okay. I think you may be referring to John Meersheimer, and there is a very well-regarded international relations theory of realism.

And John Meersheimer is one of the leading proponents of that strain of our theory. We have a brilliant professor here at Harvard, Stephen Walt, who is also a realist. And interestingly, both of those academics also argued that the U.S., NATO, bears some responsibility for Russia's full-scale invasion of Ukraine because they would argue, listen to Vladimir Putin. he has said publicly, NATO has gotten too close to Russia's borders. And we, Russia, cannot have a Ukraine that is a member of NATO. So we are going to take preemptive action here and fully invade the country and absorb it into Russia. Okay. I do not think that is fundamentally why Putin did what he did. And as I noted, I think his view of Ukraine is he doesn't respect Ukraine sovereignty. I also think there was very little to suggest that NATO was close to offering Ukraine-NATO membership. That issue first came seriously onto NATO's agenda in 2008.

There was a NATO summit in Bucharest, Romania. And the upshot of it was NATO saying, essentially one day, Ukraine and Georgia will be members of NATO. 2008. That day didn't come in 2018. It didn't come. I mean, it just, no one thought this was a near-term challenge. And I think it's really important to remember all that NATO did at the end of the Cold War

to try to reassure Russia. First, maybe we should go to a belief that many of us had, that economic liberalism would lead to political liberalism, bringing China, bringing Russia into the G20, the G7 becoming the G8. We believe that, okay, the first step to political liberalism, of is economic liberalism, creating middle classes, seeing economic prosperity. And, you know, so you saw that. No one believes that today. We've been disabused of that notion. But we also,

at the time, thought the future was Russia coming closer to, quote, unquote, the West. And so interesting. Just last week, there was a conversation here at Harvard about a new book that David sang or is written. David is a New York Times journalist, and David has this wonderful vignette in the opening of the book. He takes us back to 2002. Another River. George Bush and Vladimir Putin are on a lovely boat ride on the Never River. and the conversation is about the future and how Russia and the U.S. can work together. And they talk about imagining Russia becoming a member of the European Union and even one day NATO. And in the NATO context, there actually is an agreement forged between NATO and Russia, already in 1994, where

NATO says, okay, so it's clear NATO was enlarging. We understand you have some concerns. So we're going to agree that NATO would not station forces in any new NATO country that was part of the Warsaw Pact. We won't station nuclear weapons there. It's really interesting to read that today because it just reminds you that. that the U.S., NATO, we weren't cavalier about Russia's security concerns, and we tried very hard to be explicit about NATO being a defensive alliance. So yeah, we'll agree. We want station troops in those countries, our nuclear weapons. We don't want to do anything that leads you

to feel threatened by this alliance. So, I won't go through the whole history from the end of the Cold War to 2022. But my point simply is, I do think it is important that when one listens to the Russian narrative about NATO enlargement, one makes sure to look at the other side of that ledger and be thoughtful about how NATO enlarge and the reassurances that were given to Russia. All that said, I don't. don't know if John Meersheimer is right or if I am right. None of us know what is in the mind of Vladimir Putin. But it's important to try to understand that when you respond to it. Why?

Because there's a debate today about whether Ukraine should be a NATO member. And if you don't think that's what was at the core of why Putin invaded, you can make a pretty strong case. for why, well, at the end of this war, it might be very good for European security for Ukraine to be a member of NATO. Because at the end of this war, the most important thing we want is for it never to happen again. And how do you then deter Russia? How do you restore deterrence? So it is an important conversation to have. Oh, let me say that. The other point I want to make here is if for Putin, this really was about a NATO enlargement? What a strategic failure, Russia's invasion of Ukraine, has already been, because Finland and Sweden are now NATO members.

These are two countries that for decades have firmly believed military non-alignment was in their interest. and for the then president of Finland, Nistito, that calculation changed overnight. And this man who knows Russia extremely wet, let's all remember, Finland has about an 850 mile border with Russia. He, when Putin did that, said, we're done. Deterrence failed.

I, as the president of Finland, believe that I have to join NATO for the security of my country. And that was mind-blowing for someone like me who never thought I would see Finland and Sweden joined NATO in my lifetime. So that was a strategic miscalculation on the part of Vladimir Putin that is quite stunning. So I think this period of history and how certainty, that we all held have been challenged in fundamental ways is something all of us, whether in the policy world or in the world of academia, will be sorting through for a long time to come.

Karen, I want to pick up on what you alluded to earlier. There is an observation that all the economic sanctions didn't turn out to have impacted Russia's economy, the way intended. There is an observation that the counteroffensive didn't pan out the way perhaps NATO and the U.S. would have anticipated. There is an observation that there is some sort of a divergence now between policymaking and public opinion in the U.S. And this could be manifested in what's to come, right, in terms of how the bill could

get passed or not. How do you see this ending? Is it likely to end up in some sort of a frozen conflict that's manageable for both sides or all sides? Or as one other academic my acquaintant, winning

the peace? You just put a lot on the table. So what's happened with our economic measures directed to Russia? What's happened with the military measures, what's happening in U.S. opinion, and how does this end? And I think each of those are worthy of some discussion. So I mentioned at the beginning of our conversation that we saw the package of sanctions and export controls that we put in place out of the gate after

the Russian invasion was highly significant. I think Putin, in the first instance was also quite taken. Because I think Putin also, so I think he had this mindset of, I'm going to write a historical wrong, I'm going to bring Ukraine back into the Russian world, and I can get away with this. Because when I took that 20% of Georgian territory in 2008, that wasn't really that strong a reaction.

When I took Crimea and parts of Southeast, in Ukraine in 2014, they put in some place some sanctions, but didn't really harm me. So I'm going to go for it. And I don't think Putin was expecting that Europe would remain united in terms of a strong response and that the U.S. and Europe would remain united. And I should add here, it's not just U.S. and Europe. I mean, Japan, South Korea, there are other allies and partners that are contributing to this. And I think actually Japan and South Korea have been particularly important on export controls. So, okay, but if you look at the impact of those sanctions and export controls today, you can see where they've had impact, but you can also

see that there's been a lot of leakage. And that is challenging. because countries that aren't respecting those sanctions can easily export many more laptops to Russia. And then Russia can go and take the chips out of those laptops and use them for weapons. So I think we're learning a lot about you can put in place sanctions, but the sanctions enforcement piece is very challenging. It's something the U.S. Treasury is focused on and others are focused on. but it is a challenge. You also then see a Russia that has shifted overwhelmingly to a wartime economy. And that's working for the Russian economy right now. I think when the war is over, Russia will have a big price to pay for that. So I don't think Russia's economic future looks

terribly right, but it is absolutely right that Russia has figured out in the short term how to manage this. All of the companies that decided they were going to leave Russia shortly after the war, well, Russia has seized many of their assets and is, so again, Russia has actually played this pretty impressively. We're learning some things from this. Russia's learn things from this. But yes, the devastating impact we thought this might have, it hasn't had in that way. Okay. I should also say we have to appreciate the role of China and all this as well. China's support of Russia is enormously consequential. And I'm going to set that aside for right now, but let's come back to that because I think it's important that we talk about. But let me just put

a marker on that. Because the economic support is a piece of why some of these measures haven't been successful. Okay. The military side of this war, so, gosh, I am sure all of us remember, in the first days and weeks of Russia's full-scale invasion, feel like almost every military analyst was calculating how long it would take Russia. to take all of Ukraine. You know, you have this country of 140 million, one of the most feared militaries in the world in Russia. You have a Ukraine that before the war was 40 million

does not have a military on par with Russia's. How can they survive this? And you then see the Ukrainians. I mean, yes, at that point, they had had some help from us in terms of military equipment. But you have to credit the bravery and resilience of the Ukrainians, the morale of these forces who are fighting for the very existence of their country, that they are able to push Russia back. It was stunning. And we see then Russia decide, well, we're really going to focus on the southeastern part of Ukraine and make

or we drive the neo-Nazis out. A really stunning reversal of Putin's war apes. Now, I think any military analyst, which I am not one of, will say defense is always easier than offense. So when last year, we saw the Ukrainians go on offense, that's a lot harder because the Russians had spent those intervening months, building up their defensive lines. And of course, everyone's debating, should they have done the counteroffensive differently, were they focused on the right thing, should they focus on the east, should they focus on breaking the land bridge between Russian Crimea, whatever one thinks of what went wrong. Yes, that counteroffensive did not have the success that Ukraine and supporters were all hoping it would. Were those hopes unrealistic,

perhaps? But I do think appreciating the difference between defense and offense is really important and understanding why this is so hard. And now we get to your third question, which is about the U.S., and essentially, are we going to keep supporting Ukraine? Vladimir Putin, I think, has believed, part of his going in belief was you're not going to have unity in Europe, in the U.S. and Europe. And he also believed I Vladimir Putin care more about Ukraine than the U.S. does. And I have much greater staying power than these democracies. I watched them. They get tired of wars.

and everything the U.S. is doing right now, I'm sure, is leading Vladimir Putin to sit back and say, was I right or was I right? Because we are seeing political dysfunction in the United States. We have... In many other places. Fair enough. We are not alone in this, in many other places. So we have a Biden administration. President Biden, he was said, we will stand with Ukraine for as long as it takes. And last fall, the Biden administration sent a supplemental appropriations request to Congress

that included additional funding for Ukraine, for Israel, for Taiwan. In that bill, about roughly 61 billion, the largest piece was for Ukraine. We are now in April of 2024, about six months have passed. That bill languished. In February, the U.S. Senate took up the bill. Seventy senators voted in favor, 29 senators fitted against. Pretty strong majority in support of those appropriations. But more Republicans voted against.

that bill then voted for it. So that's an interesting point. Bill moves to the House of Representatives where there was a majority in support of that piece of legislation. But Speaker Johnson, one of the roles of the Speaker of the House in our system, is putting legislation to the floor for a vote. And Speaker Johnson said, I'm not going to move this bill. Why? Well, there might be several reasons, but one of them is that former President Donald Trump, the Republican nominee in our election this November, said, I'm not supportive of more, eight to Ukraine. I believe in an America first policy, not a Ukraine first policy.

And that had a big effect not only on the speaker, but also on a arguably small, but an important group of Republicans in the House. So the bill hasn't moved. And if you're someone like me who thinks Ukraine matters for U.S. interests and we can talk more about that too, it has been very difficult to watch because the Ukrainians are dependent on the U.S. for military assistance. other countries are also providing military assistance to Ukraine, but we are far in away the main provider. And I should say, if you look at total numbers, the Europeans have given Ukraine more assistance,

because on the financial assistance, they lead. And of course, Ukraine going bankrupt is also not an option. So this bill has languished. And last week, General Kovoli, an American general, he's the head of the U.S. European command, he's double-hatted as the Supreme Allied commander of NATO, where his U.S. hat in U.S. Europe command, testified in front of the House Armed Services Committee, and essentially rang the alarm bell and said, look, the side that cannot shoot back loses. And within weeks, Russia will have a 10 to 1 advantage in artillery.

So I don't think we can overstate how serious this situation is for Ukraine right now. We have Speaker Johnson now saying, I've taken the Senate bill, I've split it into pieces, I am going to get each of these bills, one of which includes aid for Ukraine, through the House of Representatives. So we are all waiting with bated breath to see if these bills, get through. It is a drama because there is a member of the House, a Republican member of the House, who has put in place a motion to vacate, which is a really weird term. So it's a motion essentially to topple Speaker Johnson. Another Republican member has joined her and said, I will support her in doing this. You're like, ah, two members, who cares? Well, on Friday, a Republican

member of the House, my Gallagher, it's his last day, and then the Republicans are down to a one-vote majority. So it really matters if two Republicans want to topple the speaker. And we now have a couple Democrats saying, well, if they do that, we would vote to keep him in office. You cannot make this up. It is such a soap opera. And we cannot afford. this political drama given not only what's happening in Ukraine, but what's happening around the world. So how does this end, Bita? My crystal ball is a little cloudy. But if we don't get Ukraine more military assistance, we do know how it ends.

A front line that is very large in Ukraine and hasn't moved very much over the past year, will start moving and not in Ukraine's favor. So that is a certainty. If Ukraine does not get more military assistance, Ukraine loses. And you can hear Ukraine, President Zelenskyy say the same thing. So that outcome we know. If weapons keep flowing to Ukraine, then I think what you postulated may be the outcome. You may have a frozen. conflict. And as we know, most wars don't end actually through negotiation. They end because two sides get exhausted. And, you know, so is that the most likely outcome? I don't know. I mean, you can imagine, and it's worth doing a full analysis of what the possibilities are. But I do think this question

of continued U.S. assistance is critical, because if we don't do it, we do know the outcome. In a scenario where weapons don't continue flowing. Yeah. How many oblasts are exposed? So the interesting thing here is Putin, even though he doesn't occupy all of the oblasts in Southeast Ukraine, he annexed them. And so I think that's what he is going for right now is essentially 20% of Ukraine. Now, the significance of those, I mean, it's not just about the size of that territory, the number of

Ross. He's got the Zaporich nuclear power plant in there, which is the largest nuclear power plant in Europe. You have essentially Ukraine's industrial heartland. Now, you could argue, okay, but that industrial heartland is pretty outdated. So it doesn't mean Ukraine couldn't re-industrial in the 21st century and have much greener manufacturing and other things. You've got the agricultural heartland. So it's also what is in that territory that will matter. But fundamentally for Ukrainians, they don't want to give up their sovereign territory. So I think it's very hard for Ukraine to think about what that means. But as we know from other examples, be it West Germany or pick your countries that have been divided, it doesn't mean that forever Ukraine would be divided.

But I think, you know, we're right to also mention that there are real strains on the Russian military. I think we're very cognizant of the strains on the Ukrainian military in terms of weapons and manpower because Ukraine is a smaller country. But Russia, has had its share of difficulties on the battlefield too, which we've seen as well. In both scenarios, do you see them as being able to help re-energize transatlantic ties? Or you see one over the other being able to do more? Yeah. So, you know, Gita, I do think this has reminded the U.S. and Europe why the election.

why the alliance is so important. And I want to be really careful here because there really are no silver linings of war. And this is fundamentally tragic. And, you know, I do think we tried to forestall this war and failed. But every day, innocent Ukrainian civilians are being killed. And that's a horrible thing. And that said, when Russia undertook this invasion, it reminded all of us that there are real dangers in this world. And there are challenges to things we believe in.

And no one wants to go to war, no one likes to go to war, at least in democracies. and you sometimes have to make those decisions. And I think for every European to watch this play out in real time and to think what happens if Putin actually does take all of Ukraine? Suddenly Russia is on Poland's border. Russia is on Slovakia's border. And there are NATO member states that border Ukraine. And it just completely transformed.

formed Europeans' view of their own security. And it reminded them of how valuable NATO is to have a collective, what's now 32 countries saying, we are committed to each other's security. And also, the importance of that U.S. commitment to Europe was renewed in a very important way. So, yes, I think that is all true, but as an American, I also need to acknowledge that many Europeans are asking today, how reliable is the United States? They're unnerved at the prospect of Donald Trump coming back to the White House because U.S. European relations were very troubled in the four years of the Trump administration. but they're also saying Joe Biden is president of the United States now. He's committed to NATO. He's very supportive of the European Union, yet he can't get an aid package through the U.S. Congress.

So they see a political dysfunction that is having broader impact on U.S. policy. You alluded to China, right? And I want to take you to this U.S.-China relations. There is a perception in Southeast Asia that at the rate that you're allocating so many resources on Ukraine, that there could be a misallocation of resource at the rate that if the U.S. were to actually try to call it contain, call it stabilized relations with China. I'm just curious as to what your views are with respect to this. This is also an active debate in the United States.

Yeah. So you have... And this is just want to enrich, I mean, add on to this. Please. You know, it sort of runs counter to the pre-existing foreign policy posturing rather than the United States where, you know, Kissinger's success. and getting China aside with the U.S. as to help

contain the Soviet Union. Why is that not seemingly continuing, right? So it's really interesting because, as I mentioned, I served in the Obama administration, and we all remember the pivot to Asia. And I had European allies and partners saying, pivot to Asia. If you pivot, you're pivoting away from something. You're pivoting away from Europe. And this is bad. And I said, no, no, no. And you remember we then switched to rebalance.

Because we didn't want to suggest we're pivoting away from something. We're rebalancing for Asia. And I said to our European friends at the time, this is not bad for you. This is good for you. Because guess what? Asia really matters for Europe too. And we collectively need to be spending more time, more resources on Asia and on China specifically. And I'm not sure we were convincing to the Europeans at the time. The free trade agreements that have been signed by the European Union are with three Asian countries. Yes. But, you know, many people today say, yeah, you announce the pivot to Asia. but where's the thief? Where is really the evidence that you've done this? And we can think about

the Trans-Pacific Partnership. We can think about some policies that were introduced, negotiated, but ultimately we're not implemented. But here we are in 2024. And my view on this is it is all connected. So what do I mean by that? I'm not sure you can pick. focus on Russia, you can pick a focus on China. Because in the immediate run-up to Putin's invasion, we had Xi and Putin meeting declaring the no-limits partnership. I am so curious if Putin told Xi at that meeting, by the way, just so you know, in a few weeks I'm going to be undertaking a full-scale invasion of Ukraine. I mean, my sense is he didn't share that. I think that the Chinese thought he was going to do a smaller scale invasion more along the lines of when he grabbed Crimea and

occupied that part of the Dombas, but I don't know. In any case, China has been remarkably steady in its support of Russia. Even in that first year where things really were going badly for Russia on the battlefield. And, you know, I think our assessment was China does not want Russia to lose this war. I mean, I don't think they necessarily wanted Russia to take over all of Ukraine, but they were willing to give support to ensure Russia didn't lose. And I think it was perhaps somewhat a time. attractive to China that Russia through the war in Ukraine was distracting the U.S.

And I think she was watching every measure we were putting in place, sanctions, export controls, staying power, and taking lessons for a future contingency, perhaps with regard to Taiwan. So I think he was happy to have Putin distracting us, happy to be learning from what the American playbook was and how can China really buttress itself against countermeasures we were using with regard to Russia? And, you know, you saw, I mean, the economic relationship with China and Russia has been booming, both on the energy side, but not limited only to energy. I have not been in government now for some time, but when I was in government, we didn't see any lethal assistance going from China to Russia. But I watched closely, actually, our Treasury Secretary

Janet Yellen's recent trip to China. And she was very clearly expressing concern and warning about China providing support to Russia's military industrial complex. And of course, there's always concern about dual-use equipment as well. So I think this is something the administration is still watching very closely. But there's no question of my mind. China has been important to Russia economically and also politically because they're ensuring Russia is not isolated on the political stage. You know, I think about this series of votes in the UN General Assembly in support of Ukraine, where you consistently had 140, 141, 143 countries of voting with Ukraine. And that could lead one to say, oh, they're getting pretty isolated politically. But when you have

Xi last October welcoming Putin as the guest of honor to the Belt and Road forum, Putin feels pretty good. So I think the Chinese rule has been essential in the war in Ukraine. And it also means China really for the first time is playing a direct role in European security. I mean, we Americans had warned Europeans about relying on Huawei for 5G. Like, this could affect your security, backdoor. We warned Europeans about the Belt and Road initiative. Be really careful about China snapping up your strategic infrastructure. You know, if they have ports in Europe, that could be strategically significant for your security.

And, you know, the Europeans list in, and I think European views of China have changed over time without question. But with Ukraine, I think this is affecting China's relationship with Europe in a fundamental way. And, I mean, China has to calculate the impact of that as well. it's not to say that the economic relationship still isn't terribly important, especially to a country like Germany. We just saw Chancellor Schultz in China with a large contingent of business people, three ministers. The U.S. has a profoundly important economic relationship with China, right? So it's a complex reality. But, you know, we see China giving political economic support to Ukraine.

We see North Korea supplying, not to Ukraine, apologies, China giving economic and political support to Russia, North Korea supplying Russia with drones and missiles and artillery, and it's connected to the Middle East too, because Iran is also the other big supplier of missiles and drones to Russia. So I think we have to look at the world holistically. and understand the connections across these regions. And does that mean, you know, we should be doing less with regard to China?

Of course not. And it's critically important that the U.S. maintain the dialogue with China. It's so important that our Treasury Secretary just went. It's so important that Secretary of State Blinken is going. Yes, the U.S. relationship with China, is multidimensional. We do cooperate on some things. We compete in a lot of areas. And the key is, you know, the confrontation we have in certain places that that not turn into conflict. And so you hear the Biden administration talk about putting a floor on the relationship.

And I do believe we share that interest with China. So it is critically important to the 21st. century. Karen, you've been very kind with your time. I want to ask you the last question. How does all this change with respect to the prospect of Donald Trump coming back to the White House, the probability of which we don't know? Right. Yes, we do not know. With everything that you've said about the world, would that change dramatically if Trump were to re-enter the White House? I believe it would. And Donald Trump is not an unknown quantity. Donald Trump was the president in the United States for four years. And in the part of the world I focus on, which is Europe,

I believe fundamentally the U.S. is stronger because of the allies it has around the world. I have focused on the allies and partners we had in Europe for my whole career. But allies around the world are equally important. And Indonesia is a vibrant democracy that plays such a critical role in Southeast Asia and beyond. And, you know, when we think about the U.S. role, what we have to be a world. what we have that China doesn't have, that Russia doesn't have, is this network of allies and partners that believe in democracy, that believe citizens deciding who they want to govern, that it's not just about majority rule, right? It's about respecting the rights of minorities.

so many fundamental aspects to what democracy needs. But in that scenario, if I believe we are stronger when we work together with allies, I believe fundamentally we need to respect those allies. We're not always going to agree. And that's true domestically in democracies and it's true between democracies. So there are so many different factors. you could look at, but looking at that factor of valuing allies, believing, sometimes he may be wrong and you could learn from an ally who may know the region better, who may know a player better,

that alone worries me about a Donald Trump coming back because we live in a dangerous world. And, you know, when we think about power shifts, China is a rising power. And when the international system shifts, that Chinese rising power affects U.S. And so we, especially today, are stronger when we have allies. And so I want a U.S. president, and I've worked for a Republican president, I want a U.S. president who thinks strategically about the U.S. role in the world and thinks about Ukraine. This isn't just about the existence of Ukraine. It's about a European security order and allies we have treaty commitments to.

And fundamentally, it's about global stability. It's about are we going to stand up for those principles in the UN Charter? Do we want to live in a world that largely is based on rules, that most of us respect? And if you believe that, I want a president who's going to embrace allies, respect them, and ensure that we are well positioned in the 21st century, whether it's a fight like Ukraine or whether it's the tech race. And how do we ensure that we keep the technological edge that we've had? There are many dimensions to that. So, therefore, I do worry about a Donald Trump in the White House because there's nothing that happened in the four years he presided that gave me confidence that U.S. national security policy will be in steady hands. And I do think there was a real threat to U.S. democracy on January 6th,

and that we need to strengthen our own democracy. And this is so important. It's not that in any democracy, you reach some end point and you're done. All of us in our respective countries need to work on strengthening our democracy. So look, we will have an election in November. We need to make sure it's not affected in any significant way by disinformation from bad actors, but we respect the outcome of an election. And if Donald Trump is elected, then I will work to support the policies I believe in. I will work to strengthen U.S. democracy. But this is a challenge many democracies are facing right now. We see this political polarization domestically. We see that there are many Americans who feel they're not well served by their government. So that's not just about Donald Trump. about how do we ensure liberal democracy performs better for its citizens. So that needs to be a focus

for we here in the United States too. In that note, thank you so much, Karen. Thank you for the invitation and so wonderful to have you here at Harvard. Friends, that was Karen Donfrey, former Assistant Secretary of State and Senior Fellow at the Belford Center at Harvard University. Thank you. This is endgame.