Pod Save the World - Biden goes to NATO

Episode Date: March 23, 2022

Tommy and Ben cover the latest in Ukraine, including Biden’s visit to Brussels for a NATO summit and trip to Poland. They also explore how China is viewing the Russian invasion, how the war can create a global food shortage, the latest on the military effort and peace talks, the reaction to President Zelensky’s address to the Israeli Knesset, why the Russians are making prank calls, and President Trump weighs in with more strategic genius. Then Tommy interviews former US Ambassador to Ukraine Marie Yovanovitch about what Zelensky was like before the war and her time at the State Department under Trump. How to Help in Ukraine Ukrainian Congress Committee of America: donate to humanitarian efforts United Help Ukraine: donate to the life-saving medical supplies to Ukraine’s front lines Revived Soldiers Ukraine: donate to treatment of the wounded and the provision of hospitals Razom for Ukraine: donate to tactical medical training and emergency response in Ukraine Nova Ukraine: donate to humanitarian aid for Ukraine Vox: How you can help Ukrainians For a closed-captioned version of this episode, click here. For a transcript of this episode, please email [e-mail] and include the name of the podcast.

Welcome back to Potsaf the World. I'm Tommy Bitor. I'm Ben Rhodes. Ben, are you a college basketball guy? I used to be. I think I used to be more than I am. Players would play for more than one year. Oh, you don't like the one and done?

No, I don't like the one of them. I like this. I used to like to live with players for four years, you know, like you'd see them get better and they play together and the teams are more interesting. You liked when Coach K was paying them under the table and not going to the pros. Oh, you know. I mean, let's just pause it. They should all get paid. They should all get paid.

The fun story this year is St. Peter's, the tiny little school in Jersey that beat Kentucky and then Murray State. Very fun. We like a good upset here. Speaking of underdog stories, Ben, Ukraine. We are going to cover all the developments in Ukraine, starting with President Biden because he's got a world tour ahead of him. We'll also talk about what we know about how China is viewing this war, the impending food shortage, the latest in the military ever in talks. And then I wanted to see what you thought about President Zelensky's address to. the Knesset Israel's parliament and why Russians are making prank calls and then President Trump waited once again. So that was always good to have his input. Helpful is always strategic genius. And then you guys will hear my interview with former U.S. ambassador to Ukraine, Marie Yovanovitch. You probably heard her name during the impeachment proceedings. But she has tons of interesting

experience way before that. She knows President Zelensky well. She's worked in Ukraine. She knows Putin well. She's great insight into Ukrainian politics, Russian politics. And a new book, out called Lessons from the Edge. So stick around for that. Also, Ben, stick around for offline with John Fabro. Yeah. It was on this week with technology reporter Taylor Lorenz talking about journalism in the digital age. That's a very important subject. And Taylor Lorenz is like a, you know, like you, if you were designing an offline guest, that's who you design. Totally. And we also, I think we covered birds aren't real before her. So, you know, just throw that back. We're a lot of things. I've got two things. Just quick things. A Wednesday night, so the night that

this podcast airs. I will be joining Senator Bernie Sanders on a live stream discussion of the war in Ukraine at 8 o'clock Eastern. How do I find this? You can find this at bernysanders.com. So you find it at Bernie Sanders.com? Yeah, it'll be me and Bernie and at front of the pod, Peter Binardt is joining. It's kind of progressive view in Barbara Lee. Cool. So it's kind of like progressive view of the war in Ukraine. Remember when we did the J Street thing with Bernie and he just owned us on stage and stood up and was like getting the crowd all whipped up? It was great. I mean, the best thing about that is, so we, Tommy and I are at J Street, we interviewed a lot of presidential candidates kind of armchair interviews. And we asked Bernie's first question, and he stands up.

And he delivers his entire answer standing. It's so fun. And like shouting and, you know, rattling up the crowd. Then he sits down and you ask him a question and he stands up again, you know? I remember some reporter was like, oh, so great watching those neolibs get shouted over. And I remember thinking, this is awesome. I love this answer. Yeah, it's awesome.

Yeah, I love Bernie. I'm here for it. Super fun. That's great. Only other thing is that Thursday I will be at the University of Central Florida and Orlando speaking. So if you are there, check it out. Disney. Yeah.

Well, maybe. Actually, don't go to Disney. I know. They're kind of in the – They're kind of in the – They're in the dockhouse because their new CEO is not very good at – Kind of whiffed on the don't say gay. Yeah, very easy bill to be opposed and locally.

So anyway, also check out POTSafe the World on Snapchat. Done with promos. Ben, huge week for Biden. Tons of big meetings. On Monday, Biden held a call with the leaders of France, Germany, Italy, and the UK. So I guess there's coordinating strategy on a call. Then on Thursday, he's going to be at a NATO summit in Brussels. And then a meeting of the European Council.

Then he goes to Poland on Friday where he's going to probably do something with troops maybe and then see President Duda. I don't know if you see more. And refugees, I'm sure. And refugees, too. It's a very good call. I imagine the agenda of this week ahead is going to include coordinating military support conversations around what might happen if Russia uses chemical weapons. or cyber attack. I saw Jake Sullivan today said that he could see a scenario where there's a collective response by NATO to a cyber attack. Biden also put out this interesting statement about

how we should all be preparing for a Russian cyber attack. It creates a lot of anxiety in my head. I'm not sure what I do with it, but industry should be updated. Yeah, given how accurate their forecasting of Russian moves has been. I think we should be ready to cyber attack. Makes you just want to turn off your computer. I got to coordinate sanctions. They'll probably figure out, like you just mentioned, how to support huge refugee flows and provide relief, especially to Poland, where you're seeing the mayor of Warsaw start to sound the alarm about the city being overwhelmed. So timing's important here. The symbolism is very important. There's some risks, though, right? Because we know that Zelensky wants more from NATO than NATO has been willing to give.

Europe has different views when it comes to, say, energy sanctions. What do you think that Biden and NATO needs to get done here and what pitfalls maybe would worry you if you were doing the communications for this trip? Well, first of all, I think that, you know, Zelensky is going to address the meeting so we can expect, obviously, him to give, as always, like a eloquent and forceful appeal for help. I'd look for a few things. I think the first is the NATO posture in Eastern Europe and will Biden be announcing any additional U.S. deployments of forces in Eastern Europe, but will we be making any of the kind of short-term deployments that we've already sent there kind of more semi-permanent or permanent.

So just kind of what is NATO's posture? And tied to that, I think, is, you know, NATO is, and this is not something they probably discussed publicly, but they need to start, you know, thinking through the contingencies like we talked about in this show about, like, hey, what happens if they start hitting NATO efforts to supply Ukraine around the border, what happens if there's a chemical weapons attack, are there things that, you know, might affect NATO's posture vis-à-vis Russia, right? These are huge questions that you want to, you know, have some sense of in advance. So I think that'll be part of the discussion.

I think that one of the things that's really interesting is that in recent days, Zelensky has basically said publicly that of Putin's demands, the issue of, NATO neutrality is one that he's open to because he doesn't believe that he's ever going to get in NATO. And he's kind of been, you know, he's been appropriately frustrated from his vantage point that, like, what's the point of us kind of holding out for some NATO membership that's never going to come? And so how NATO approaches that issue in the context of the diplomacy is really important. You know, like obviously I think the NATO position should be to back Zelensky, but this

complicated because part of what Zelensky's saying is the reason I'm willing to make this concession is because I don't believe you guys are ever going to let me in. And NATO may not want to say, we'll never let you in, but they'll want to back him and taking that position. So this is something that is going to have to be dealt with, you know, very, in a very sensitive way. But I think ultimately it has to be backing whatever position Zelensky wants to take, not NATO's on that, you know. Did you see the sort of blobby Twitter tough guys saying that Biden should. go to Kiev.

Oh, yeah. You mentioned putting the President of the United States and like hundreds of support staff into a city being bombed right now. The absurdity of that is having planned, you know, presidential trips, including into war zones, you know, when we would go to Afghanistan, we would go in the middle of the night and we would go basically to Bogram. To a base. Which was a facility that the United States completely controlled, you know. And even then, the secret.

Service had all manner of misgivings. And we went on trips where they were delayed. Right. And the Taliban didn't have an Air Force firing missiles into the city. Exactly. I think people don't understand that like the president doesn't get to decide, you know, I think it'd be cool to show up in Kiev. Like the Secret Service has to be able to say that they can reasonably protect him. And so that seemed like a pointless side show, you know. As great as it would be to show that moral support. I, no matter, it's not up to Joe Biden in this case and I can't see any scenario where the Secret Service is okay with it. It's also just in practice like a huge distraction and suck of resources and time from

everybody on the ground there who are literally trying to fight a war. Well, and by the way, like a potential escalation point. I mean, what happens if like a Secret Service advanced staffers killed by a Russian, you know, shelling or something? I mean, like you're just kind of putting yourself in a position to test to be an escalatory situation. Super risky. along those lines. I saw the Russians summoned the U.S. ambassador to Russia, and they warned of severing relations, basically, with the U.S. over Biden calling Putin a war criminal. It was interesting because it's hard to tell if their reaction is posturing or if Biden really hit a nerve with that commentary. I don't know if you had to take there. I think he did probably hit a nerve. And, you know, essentially it's both the introduction of this question of whether or not Vladimir Putin is going to be processing.

prosecuted or pursued, at least for war crimes, which again raises other questions like it would be nice if the United States was the party to the International Criminal Court. There is that detail. We'd have a lot more, which I support, which would give us a lot more standing to be calling for that at the ICC. Absent that, I've seen American officials or members of Congress talking about some independent tribunal here, it raises a lot of questions that I'm sure Vladimir Putin doesn't want to see answered.

But I also think that more generally, you know, once you've... called someone a war criminal, you basically indicated that you're never really going to have a normal relationship with that leader. We've also, by the way, sanctioned him too. And you're not going to have a normal relationship with somebody who's been sanctioned. And that might therefore contribute to this logic of Putin's that therefore, well, why do we even have diplomatic relations? But I still think Biden's right. Like we're not going to have a normal relationship with Vladimir Putin after what he's done in Ukraine, nor should we. He is a war criminal. He's a war criminal. he deserves to be sanctioned.

And on the Putin's standpoint, we maintain relations with the Soviet Union throughout the Cold War, including at times when there were really hot proxy wars in Vietnam and Afghanistan and other places. This is like Putin, again, telling on himself of like,

he's literally going to be more extreme than Soviet leaders. You know, it's unsettling for that reason. But I don't think it calls into question Biden's statements on this. Biden's right. Remember brief aside here during the transition after the 2008 election when Obama went to some random dinner at George Will's house?

Yeah. I staffed that. And George Will's high school age son asked Obama one question as we like walked in and it was whether the U.S. should join the ICC. I was like, whoa, kid. That's going to random. Yeah, yeah. Smart kid. Spoiler, we should.

But we won't. Two last quick things. You know, Congress is working on undoing permanent trade status for Russia and Belarus. This week, I think that's sort of in train. And the other just note that, you know, because you mentioned this, that refugees will be at the forefront of the conversation, especially in Poland. The United Nations says 10 million Ukrainians have been pushed into their homes. A lot of them are displaced throughout other parts of Ukraine, but at least three and a half are now refugees outside the country. So that's just a massive exodus in a month, like a catastrophic scale.

Yeah. I'm glad you raised at Belarus. And there's another warning out of the U.S. that there is a concern of additional troops moving in from Belarus. into Ukraine, which we haven't seen yet, Belarusian troops. And then maybe nuclear weapons from Russia moving into Belarus, which you never like to see nuclear weapons being in some place. And the Belarusians had recently changed their constitution, I think, to allow for that to happen. Yeah, which that'd be concerning.

Scary. The thing I'm very curious to see, though, with the Belarusian troops is, like, we've seen morale problems in the Russian military. Does the military of Belarus really want to be fighting in Ukraine? I can't imagine that's going to be the most motivated fighting force. We've also already seen the Belarus opposition blow up like rail lines and disrupt equipment flows into Ukraine from Belarus. So, you know, something to watch is whether the opposition to Lukashenko and Belarus kind of picks up, too, if they get more involved in the war. One reason they might not have to date is in part the morale issue with their troops, but in part if you stir up that opposition, it could blow.

The lid could blow there faster than Russia. Totally. And Lucas Hiko's got to be thinking, I'm keeping my best guys as close to me as possible because I'm protecting this house I get here. Let's talk China for a minute, Ben, because on Friday, Biden held a two-hour video conference with Chinese President Xi Jinping about Russia. Biden reportedly told she there would be stiff consequences if China provides military or economic assistance to Russia. Doesn't sound like the message necessarily immediately got through China, I think in their readout of the call, which went out before the U.S. one did. blame the U.S. for the crisis in Russia and with Russia and Ukraine and seemed to put the onus on the U.S. to de-escalate. I guess they also talked about Taiwan. The conversation had been in the work since November, but of course Russia and Ukraine became the focus.

You know, the backgrounding you're seeing in stories that the White House has been worried about China setting mixed messages. Initially, Chinese state-owned banked seemed to be pulling back from Russia, but then Chinese officials expressed some support for what Russia is doing, and they've been parroting Russian propaganda. A lot of history here. You know, in February, she and Putin got together. They issued that 5,000-word statement about their limitless friendship, I think, was the quote. There's all these reports we've talked about before that Putin told Xi about the invasion in advance and then delayed it to let the Olympics happen first. So, Ben, I mean, I'm struggling to find the right framework for how to think about what China's calculus is here. There's kind of like you could think about it from a practical standpoint and just imagine that China doesn't want economic instability.

and they're the world's biggest producer and consumer of wheat but are facing the worst harvest ever in decades at least because of flooding. And so they don't want high food prices. So like that's a practical thing that would maybe get them going. There's a security approach, which says, you know, China's just viewing this all through the prism of what they may want to do in the future with Taiwan. Then there's kind of a framework of like, okay, is China's sole motivation just checking the U.S. all the time, reducing U.S. power in the world, not letting us.

impose our will on other countries. Do you have like a framework for how you think listeners should think about the Chinese calculus? Yeah, I mean, I think the way in which you want to think about the Chinese calculus is it's always weighted against where is China trying to go, right? And China is trying to evolve an international order in which the United States and the world's democracies are significantly diminished relative to China in which there are not enormous shocks that disrupt the kind of steady growth and predictability around the Chinese economy and in which China has a growing sense of kind of freedom of action, particularly in the Asia Pacific region, but even beyond in terms of everything from the future of Taiwan to kind of their

ability to throw their weight around. And so if you do that prism, Ukraine presents interesting challenges. On the one hand, it is going to suck up a tremendous amount of time and bandwidth and attention to the United States and Europe that is not going to be implied to China and dealing with all of our various. Yeah. That's like the big brain like. Yeah. They like the distraction thing. Yeah.

They like the distraction thing. On the other hand, you know, it is a potential enormous shock to the global economy and kind of predictability that China likes. you know, they don't like a lot of independent variables and a war that could escalate or sanctions that could entrap, you know, major Chinese banks or people doing transactions in China with Russia. You know, that's just a pain in the ass to them. You know, when I looked at this, what I felt like is that there's a scale of how unhelpful China could be and how helpful they could be. Now, on the unhelpful side, per usual, yeah. You know, the extreme end is like, are they going to start arming Russia? Are they going to start kind of backfilling military equipment and capabilities?

And it felt like that was the most acute warning that Biden was delivering. Don't do that or else, you know, what or else probably, you know, sanctions more likely to come your way, et cetera. And it did feel like the Chinese statements put the blame on the U.S., but they also talked about how they didn't, you know, nobody has an interest in a war. And you could have find stuff in there that was not positive of the war. And that suggested to me that they're less likely to do the military aid. That leaves then on the unhelpful side of the spectrum that the sanctions busts. essentially. Are they going to start buying discount of Russian oil? Are they going to start making whole Russian technology that is cut off from Western technology? And that to me remains a

big variable. And I would guess that they're going to test it. You know, they're not going to want to be too overt about it in a way that invites scrutiny from U.S. sanctions. But, you know, they're going to push and they used to do this on Iranian oil, by the way, you know, and kind of push and test the boundaries of how much they can benefit from getting cheap oil or getting Chinese tech into Russia without it being kind of so over the top that it invites more scrutiny from us. It feels like that's where they go. On the helpful side, yeah, I mean, if they cut off Russia and participated in sanctions enforcement and condemn the war, I think it would be much, much harder for Russia to sustain it, but it doesn't feel like China's going to be helpful.

It feels like the best possible situation is a China that is neutral to slightly unhelpful, you know, and that's where they're at least trying to keep them. That's the sweet spot. Yeah. I mentioned this food shortage thing. It might have sounded like a random aside, but we've talked about this a little bit. Now there's some new statistics that I think are valuable. I mean, it just seems like there's almost no preventing this war from creating a global food shortage.

And the catastrophe that that will create is not getting enough attention. The New York Times had a good piece over the weekend. Some key details just for context. Over the past five years, Russian Ukraine have accounted for nearly 30 percent. of exports of the world's wheat, 17% of corn, 32% of barley, and 75% of sunflower seed oil. So it's a huge amount. Wheat prices are up 20% since the invasion, barley up a third. Fertilizer prices are up 40%. It seems completely impossible for Ukraine to have anything close to a normal harvest this year. You can't grow crops when you're getting bombed. Russian farmers are going to be impacted

to by sanctions and by everything else going on. So there's just going to be less food in the world, that will mean inflation in the U.S. and then probably potentially catastrophic impacts on poor countries like Bangladesh, Yemen, Egypt, Eritrea, Afghanistan, where they are buying grain on the international market against China, against, you know, name your big country. So it's a horrifying spillover effect that is just coming. Yeah. Yeah. And if you look at the different regions where there's a lot of dependency on on say Russian, Ukrainian wheat, for instance, there's some places where you might be able to find short-term solutions. So the Middle East is a region where, you know, there's a heavy

dependence on this and there's heavily subsidized food prices, right? So in places like Egypt, the government subsidizes the price of bread pretty aggressively. That's getting more expensive. So bread prices go up. So get toppled. Well, yeah. I mean, you know, and again, what I would argue is like our good friends in the Gulf, you know, have plenty of resources to deal with us. So like I hate to hope for the best from the Gulf. But like if they want to avert the kind of food charges that lead to instability, they can make that hole and they can pay that price differential. In Afghanistan, all the more reason for the United States to be lifting its sanctions.

I mean, this is a humanitarian crisis that we were talking about before the war. you've seen terrible statistics about like infant mortality rates in Afghanistan going through the roof and food shortages already that are going to get worse in this kind of circumstance keeping these sanctions in place that are going to do nothing to like they're not going to like dislodge the Taliban feels crazy and so that's another one I worry a lot Tommy if you look at sub-Saharan Africa there are a ton of countries in sub-Saharan Africa that are highly dependent on you know Russian and Ukrainian agriculture. And there, I don't know what the, you know, what's going to backfill those shortages

or do those price increases. And I think that's going to have to be an enormous focus of the U.S., USCID, but, you know, the World Bank, you know, the UN all hands on deck here because we could be looking at serious famine ripple effects or at least, you know, shortages. is, and we can plan for this. We can see. I think you have to anticipate the worst that this stuff is not going to be coming back on the market. And what's a plan to get us through the next, you know, year or two here? Yeah, that's right. I mean, like, and the only way to prevent it, I think, is for the war to end incredibly quickly. But the word you keep hearing from experts about the military

campaign and what the latest is is stalemate. The Russians have clearly failed in their effort to, to topple Ukraine quickly or take Kiev quickly. But, you know, a few weeks ago, we were worried about an imminent attack on the city of Odessa. That has not happened still. They have not encircled Kiev, let alone taken it. A couple of days ago, there was a leak in a pro-Kremlin tabloid that says, according to the Russian Ministry of Defense, 9,861 Russian soldiers have died in Ukraine, and over 16,000 have been injured. Just staggeringly high numbers. But, you know, also worth remembering that Russia has a huge military. We have no statistics about Ukrainian losses to compare that to. So, you know, the question is, I've seen a bunch of experts say that what's likely

to happen is the Russian military will soon be depleted and they'll have to pause to regroup and resupply. I don't know. I guess it remains to be seen. They're still making advances in the south and in the east. The siege of Maripole is ongoing. It's horrific. Did you read this? There are two associated press reporters who got out. I mean, it's an unimaginable hell in that place. The Russians are bombing malls in Kiev. I mean, I think the point I'm trying to make is that stalemate is still an absolute nightmare for the people in any of these places. Yeah, I mean, I think that in the first instance, like what you're seeing in Murielbo, which is, I mean, just like you're talking about war crimes. I mean, just staggering human suffering, like the

destruction of an entire city, who knows how many people have been killed. They're deporting tens of of thousands of residents of that city to Russia to do what with them? them like this is really scary stuff and what is also scary is the possibility that that that tactic could then be portable right and and they do that in odessa or they do a version of that in kev and they kind of grozny strategy across the country and peep off to remember particularly those people kind of the the keyboard warriors you know um you like there's a reason Zelensky's pursuing peace talks it's because you know he wants to win as he constantly says And I think in a way, Putin can't win, right?

Because he can't subjugate the country, but he also, you know, you want to mitigate loss of life. That said, I think one of the scenarios that concerns me, Tommy, is you mentioned that they may need to pause and resupply. And let's bear in mind that if those casualty numbers are accurate and they may even be higher, that's like 10 to 15 percent of their force that they had massed around Ukraine. I mean, this is an enormous hit that they've taken. We may see.

scenario where there are apparent breakthroughs and peace talks that feel like the war is ending that may even last for periods of weeks. And then it turns out the Russians were just using that time to kind of consolidate their position in a Muriope or to resupply their forces. And so what I worry about is this kind of stop and start war where we all get excited about a peace deal that then is just kind of a facade for Russia to do this. And it just speaks to how, just deadly complicated this is. Totally. I mean, Zolensky keeps saying, I want to negotiate, I want to negotiate with Putin. He's also saying, I think today he said this, that he would have to run any sort of major concessions, any constitutional changes by their parliament,

which is maybe a smart way for him to not get, you know, brow beaten into major concessions. But I ask Ambassador Yovanovitch this as well. Like, how do you, how can you trust Putin at any point along the way? I mean, he's been lying and invading your country for nearly a decade now, trying to topple governments. Yeah. Particularly on the matters to get at their territory, right? So NATO neutrality, I think, is the easiest concession to make because they're not a member of NATO. Crimea, right, difficult. But like the Donbos, this is like, you know, to accept somehow these people's republics

or to accept the Russian presence in a pretty big chunkier territory, I don't know how they would ever pass the Ukrainian referendum. It would be like the United States being like, all right, Canada, you get. Maine, Massachusetts and New York. Or all of New England, basically. Yeah, all of New England, right. Yeah, like, I mean, it's just, I, so to me, like, you know, this is, like, there may be short-term breakthroughs,

but like a long-term resolution, it's going to take some time, you know, as much as we'd like to happen fast. I hope, my God, we all want to go fast. With all the caveat said, like, I hope I'm wrong tomorrow. No, I know. Durable peace deal, but like, this is what concerns me.

I see people on the left being like, why isn't Biden talking more about diplomacy? It's like, well, you know, of course I think he wants diplomacy and peace talks, but like he can't want it more than Putin. And that's the challenge right now. You mentioned Grozny a minute ago. We talked about Chechnya a bunch on this episodes. The comparison is useful. I mean, sort of the major combat phase, quote unquote, of that war was less than a year. But then there was an insurgency that was nearly a decade.

And the thing that, you know, the more and more I read about it that is unsettling is, We all want to think that bad outcomes in Ukraine will create political pressure on Putin to cave back home. But throughout this Chechnyaan insurgency, you had massive terrorist attacks in Moscow. There was a hostage taking at an elementary school and like hundreds of kids were killed. At that time, there was much more of a free press. There were much more in terms of like robust political opponents and counterweights to Putin who could at least exert some political pressure on him. All of that stuff has gone now. And, you know, they are shutting down the media left and right.

They just announced another nine-year sentence on Alexei Navalny, I think, today. Yeah. So it's just, you know, where this dissent is going to come from, where this political press are going to come from, it's hard to see. That doesn't mean there are brave Russians out there protesting, but like, what does a critical mass look like? I don't know. Yeah, and that's where I think that there are these layers of communities inside of Russia to watch.

We sometimes are tempted to just watch, like, street protests in St. Petersburg. in Moscow because that is more readily available on television. And the people protesting, frankly, are the people who are more recognizable to us. Young people. Cosmolitan. Those people are leaving. I mean, I know a lot. I know a bunch of them, and most of them have left, and they're in places like Istanbul.

But then there's, like, the military writ large. And so when I say the military writ large, I mean, like, families out in the provinces who are beginning to get pissed because their sons aren't coming home. or they're coming and wounded and do start to see kind of localized unrest and anger at what's happening. This is kind of what happened in the Soviet Union. And, you know, it took time. But that really contributed the kind of outrage, not just from kind of the dissident community,

but from like ordinary Russians tied to the military over the Afghan war, contributed to, you know, the change in leadership under Gorbachev and. peristoric area. Again, that took a while. But then the military leadership, too, if they start feeling like their entire military is being decimated and they're losing general officers, they're losing equipment, they're losing whole units, we're not going to see that, but like, you know, usually in a closed system that has seen the media squelched out, it's the military that can actually, you know, have some standing to push back. And again, I think that would take some time. But I'd be looking at that whole spectrum of, from generals that we don't see to

towns in Russia where they're losing a lot of people, does that start to apply some pressure? Yeah. Historically, moms have killed Russian soldiers have been a powerful. They've been a powerful force. Political force. So, you know, Zelensky continues his, you know, Zoom tour of the world. It's pretty amazing. You just mentioned he's talking to NATO. He spoke to the Italian parliament on Tuesday. He talked about the famine concerns that we just mentioned. Zelensky's address on Sunday to Israel's parliament, the Knesset, was a little more controversial. Zelensky criticized Israel for refusing to provide defensive weapons to them like the Iron Dome missile defense system. He also criticized Israel for not putting in place strong enough sanctions or pressuring Russian

oligarchs or businesses. He also pushed back on, you know, the suggestion you've seen that Israel is trying to preserve some flexibility to be a mediator between the Russians and the Ukrainians by saying, quote, you can mediate between nations, but not between good and bad. And he drew connections to the Holocaust. Some Knesset members accuse Zelensky of bordering on Holocaust denial in his remarks, sort of a shocking rejoinder to a guy who's like desperate for help here. He sort of Zelensky moderated his speech a little later in the day with the video. What did you make of this pressure campaign? on the, you know, going into all these parliaments, whether it's the U.S., whether it's Knesset, and just drilling everybody for an action. You talked about how they did it in Germany last week. I mean, effective, not effective. The response here was mixed, at least. I think it's effective because, you know, where else is this spotlight going to come from?

And to take just one issue, and we've mentioned this, but the oligarch issue is really important here because you've already seen this. Like we've seen Russian oligarchs moving their stuff to Israel and the UAE. And, you know, Zelensky is right? Like, where else is that scrutiny going to come from? You know, one way to get that scrutiny moving is for Zelensky to raise it. And, you know, similarly, you've seen some countries, you know, I've noticed, Tommy, like a bunch of countries stay neutral under the guise of this mediation thing. So Israel's done this.

So is the UAE. South Africa, the South African president, Cyril Ramaphosa, said something similar. He stayed neutral, kind of blamed NATO and then said, you know, well, we've been asked maybe to mediate. So Putin, I think, is like dangling out to every country that he wants to keep neutral. Oh, you can be a mediator and you can say that's why you're neutral. And does anybody really think Nafthali Bennett's mediation is like on the precipice of yielding some agreement? No. So I think he was kind of right to call out that mediation cannot be.

just kind of your diplomatic cover for staying neutral because you don't want to to complicate your Russian ties, right? The Holocaust thing, at the risk of waiting into it, first of all, Zelensky's Jewish, and a lot of his family members got killed in the Holocaust. So this isn't a guy who, like, doesn't understand or is denying the Holocaust. I think that's an unfair criticism of him to be leveled. I get why, like, apples to apples comparisons are always dangerous when it comes to the Holocaust. And that's true. Now, Lapid, the foreign minister today, said he wasn't going to begrudge Zelensky. He wasn't going to join the criticism of Zolensky because, like, the guy is literally under bombardment.

He's literally getting briefed, I'm sure, on like tens of thousands of civilians getting killed in places like Maripal. You know, like, I wouldn't, you know, just sometimes you got to allow the guy to like, to be hyperbolic. But look, there's a, there's also like a cried wolf aspect to this in the sense that, like, The Holocaust was constantly used to attack, you know, other leaders who disagreed with Israel and policy. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, like, the Iran deal was constantly cast, you know, in Holocaust terms by Netanyahu. So I think it's right to say, like, let's just not, like, I actually agree with, like, the core point of, like, let's just not draw these comparisons.

You know, I think we can make some allowances that this guy's under pretty extreme stress. And because he's Jewish, it's not like he doesn't get that. the Holocaust. So it kind of became a kind of became the story that Zelensi didn't really want it to be. Yeah, that's right. I think is indicative of like it's better in general not to go there. But I do think that like, you know, spotlighting why neutrality is not really a comfortable, moral option. And there's very real concerns about things like oligarch cash, not just in Israel, but a lot of places, you know, he should keep doing that everywhere. Yeah. And I talk about this later with Ambassador Yovanovitch. But,

Putin is using genocidal language talking about like exterminating people, like converting all Ukrainians to become Russian, getting rid of their identity. Like that is the kind of thing that the definition of the word is based on. I mean, actually, I'm glad you raised that because like if you look at Murielpo and if you look at like Putin's language that we talked about, you know, scum, gnats to spit out, he's denied that Ukraine really exists as a country. Yeah, like you're busing thousands of people into Russia. Like, there's some dark stuff. We're kind of at the, that, that the, we're kind of at the entry point to the discussion of genocide. Because, you know, he's not necessarily in the process of the industrialized killing of the Holocaust, obviously.

But he said that this nation has no right to exist. He's drawn no distinction between combatants and civilians. And there's a kind of systematized way in which he's in eastern Ukraine and Maripal. he's killing people, he's deporting people to Russia, and he's kind of replacing their leadership with Russian imposed leadership. There is something of a genocidal streak to what he's doing and that we shouldn't look away from and we should be accumulating both evidence and not be afraid to make determinations if that's where the facts lead. Yes, yes. To slightly lighter topics to close here before the interview. This is a weird story, Ben. Apparently the Russian government placed

like two or three phone calls to British cabinet ministers. So we had the Secretary of Defense, the Home Secretary, one other who didn't get the call, pretending to be the Prime Minister of Ukraine. I'm guessing this was some Russian Intel Goober who was going to try to get like the home secretary to talk shit about Zelensky or whatever, record it and then release it. It didn't work. The questions were leading and weird and they hung up and I think they immediately went public with it the Brits did. I'm just wondering like how far down the battle plan you have to reach before you get some prank phone calls as a tool of war. They've done this before. Yeah. Like remember that like there have been these kind of weird like, remember Adam Schiff got, um, oh yeah, like they called

Adam Schiff with information. I mean, there's a kind of juvenile trolling to, to Russia that like, the jerky boys of war. And the thing is that like they did that in other context. When you're doing it in the context of like this war war two scale war that you've launched you know these these tactics that looked kind of disruptive and yeah savvy like just look like like like everything else like like just completely fucking bonkers and and and and disgusting and despicable like in that you see that across the board like this russian playbook of the troll farms and the disinformation like and the prank calls even like none of it works in the same way when you've actually launched this war, you know?

Yes. Speaking of disgusting and bonkers in context, Donald Trump weighed in recently just a few weeks after calling Putin a genius, praising the invasion, saying it was like a great deal, essentially. Here's a clip of him on some Fox business show talking about how he would be

managing Putin. But I listened to him constantly using the N word. That's the N word. And he's constantly using it, the nuclear word. We say, oh, he's a nuclear power. But we're a great nuclear power. We have the greatest submarines of the world. Most powerful machines ever built, and nobody knows where they are. And you should say, look, if you mention that word one more time,

we're going to send them over it, we'll be coasting back and forth up and down your coast. Does he not think that submarines are currently all over the world coasting up and down their coast? I'm pretty sure they are. There's so many places to start. Like, N-word? Like, I didn't... You could see Stuart Barney's face in the clip. He's like, oh, God, oh, God, oh, God. The first time I heard, I literally thought that he was going to the actual N word, right? I did too.

I did, too. Which, like, I guess, well, he didn't go there. And then I just didn't know nuclear was an N-word. Then, what coast is he talking about? I was wondering, like, the, I mean, the... Off Alaska. Laxie or Alaska, like, but, like, here's why we're talking about this. Because, like, I know, like, people will be like, oh, you guys talking about.

Trump. This guy could very well be president of the United States again. I don't think anyone's going to question why we're talking about the foreign president. Well, no, but it's not that he's former president. It's that he could become president again. Yeah, he's running. And like, imagine, like, that would be really bad because we're in a situation where nuclear war is actually something we're talking about is not a situation you want to introduce the variable of Donald Trump into it. Because, like, whether or not the scenario I'm concerned about is that he's going to like leave NATO and totally abandon Ukraine and open up the door for Putin to keep moving into other parts of Europe. That's scary as hell.

Or whether or not he decides he's going to come in and run the genius play of like running nuclear submarines along the coast and risk nuclear war, that's, you know, terrifying as well. Of course, like this, like I can't believe we're in a situation where, you know, he's probably got like a 50% chance of being president of United States. in three years. The stupidity jumps out in this moment. I pulled up my Apple maps to see if it's got any listings of locations where nuclear subs are. I guess we could do the Bering Sea. We could do the East Siberian, maybe the Arctic Ocean, the Berensi. That's a new one.

He's kind of describing the Norwegian Sea. He's basically describing nuclear posture and mutual struture destruction for the last 80 years as if he just discovered it. I mean. But like he seems like he's a little more casual about it than you should be. It's just so stupid. It's just so stupid. Not one idea. I think also, Varney tries to ask him whether he would give the mig 29s to Ukraine and he just can't even answer it. He just goes off on some tirade for 50 seconds about nonsense. Yeah, I'm sure he, you know, first he's heard of it, you know, when that Varney guy is like the intellectual and the conversation, you know, even problem. I did think you mentioned the like armchair hawks who wanted Biden to go to Kiev. Like I kept waiting.

for that to escalate to like... Me too. Literally flying with the miggs into Kiev, you know. Joe Biden should learn to fly. Yeah, a mig. Like George Bush Mission Accomplish style, land the mig and, you know, let's go for it. There is so much military cosplay happening on Twitter. Yeah.

It's really amazing. Yeah. But there's also, I have to say, like, this is one of those circumstances where it's, like, the best and worst of Twitter because there's, like, remarkable on the ground reporting. And then there are these, like, nerds who've emerged to, like, are good sources of information. and then there's like the virtue signaling, you know, flood of stuff too. So like it's an interesting mix of the good, bad and ugly of social media. Yeah, there's this guy Michael Kaufman who's just like a Russian military expert.

I think born in Ukraine, maybe in Kiev. Yeah. I love when these are like my favorite NSC nerds in the world. 97 hard threads about. Yeah. They just know like down to the unit level how a military, the Russian military is structured in where they are and how they're performing. and who's elite and who's not.

It's just like, it's the best. I, you know, it's interesting. I, um, uh, I've been looking at TikTok a lot too. And like they're, they're what's so, so challenging is, um, not that information is easily verifiable on Twitter, but like you've, you have no idea where these videos, you know, one of the things I, I think it's interesting is this question of whether you need to kind of time and location stamp information on social media. Um, because in the TikTok context, you have no capacity to evaluate.

whether something is actually current and where it is. So it's an interesting question of social media regulation. Social media can play an enormously useful role in combating Russian disinformation by showing people what's actually happening. That information would be even more credible if like a TikTok could verify, you know. Yeah, and this was created this day.

Yeah. Yeah, they'll be useful. I also was talking to somebody else. This might be interesting for us to explore going forward. Social media like content being relevant to future war crimes tribunals, right? So Syria, there's already been an effort to, you know, collect it. Like Bellincat or whatever's called.

They've been collecting a lot of stuff. And here, like, the same thing, because some of the platforms, they purge the content, you know, so there's, there's a lot. Right. Some of it gets struck for terms of service reasons. Well, think about it. And that actually harms efforts to collect evidence. So you could have the most gruesome videos that are posted to YouTube and TikTok

that get, you know, purged for that reason. But you might actually want to preserve it for the purposes of investigation. It's challenging. Man, that's a hard problem. That's a tough one for these platforms. Okay, we're going to take a quick break, and when we come back, we'll have my interview with Ambassador Marie Yovanovitch. So stick around for that. I am thrilled to welcome to the show, Ambassador Marie Yovanovitch. She is the author of a fantastic new memoir, Lessons from the Edge, which is available now. Ambassador, wonderful to see you. It is great to be with you. So I imagine most of our audience, heard of you or met you for the first time. during, you know, the impeachment proceedings and the conversations around Donald Trump, but given the focus on Ukraine and Russia and all that's happening in the world, is hoping we could start there in a more substantive place than our former president.

So most of the world, I think, is getting introduced to wartime President Zelensky. And he obviously deserves every bit of praise that he's getting for his performance in the last month or so. You've known him a lot longer. Can you help us understand a little bit about what he was like as a leader? six months ago, a year ago, two years ago. Who was the man you met originally? So I met him in 2018, in September of 2018, when he was rising in the polls. And it was clear that if he chose to become a candidate, he stood a good chance of becoming the next president in Ukraine. So, of course, we at the embassy wanted to meet him. And the first time I met him, he, I was expecting this really funny guy, right? Because he's a comedian. He had this show called

The Vervin of the People where a teacher has a viral rant and about corruption in Ukraine. And based on that, he becomes the president of Ukraine. And so, you know, this is a case of really life-imitating art. But in this first meeting, I was expecting a very funny guy, which he was, but he took great pains to explain to me how he had built up his media and entertainment empire based on his own talent, his executive capabilities, and everything else. And it is a hugely successful company in Ukraine. So I met him, I don't know, four or five times during the campaign season. And then the last time I met him was the day before he was elected president of Ukraine,

where it was clear he was going to win with a landslide, and we were already starting to talk about how the U.S. and Ukraine, under Zelensky, would be working together. And he was, you know, as president, of course, I was further away, because then later that week, I was pulled out of Ukraine, as you may recall. And so as president, I was further away from the action. But I think, you know, he had a very promising first government, full of reformers.

but I think he was, you know, new to politics, untried, untested, and was very impatient. So he fired all of them, not with, and the next government was perhaps not as good. Nevertheless, he did have some successes over the next couple years, and there was, you know, a lot of political infighting, which, you know, is not unusual in Ukraine and not unusual in other countries, including our own. And then, you know, the war king to Ukraine. Yeah. Russia's war of choice. And all of a sudden, this comedian becomes Winston Churchill of our times.

I mean, the man has really met his moment where he is reflecting, I think, the courage and the values of the Ukrainian people. But he is also uniting them and inspiring them, even as he is inspiring the whole world. Yeah. Yeah, it's hard not to be inspired by the courage he's shown by sticking around. It's hard not to admire how savvy he's been and his ability to just sort of connect directly with everybody in the world through his phone. Just to be a little wonky for a second, I've heard you and others talk about how Ukraine has to do some work before they can join NATO or before they can join the EU.

They have to enact certain reforms. I think listeners probably hear that and wonder, what does that mean exactly? Is there sort of a gist of what kind of steps you think they would need to take before they could get accepted into these bodies, assuming that they would be welcome to this point? Yeah. Well, at this point, of course, that is sort of a more theoretical conversation. Yes, very much. But, you know, the EU and NATO, these are communities. Sometimes they're called marriages of civil societies.

I mean, they're organizations. NATO is a, you know, a defense pact, but it is made up of countries that not only share interests, they share values. They are democracies. They are market economies. You know, not perfect democracies, not perfect market economies, but overall, we share certain values. And I think that is why the alliance has stuck together for so many years. It is the single most successful defense pact, frankly, in the history of the world. And it's because it's about values and the ability to work together and to work through problems. And so as NATO, in recent years over the last 20, 30 years, as NATO takes on new members, and this is not us forcing these countries to come to us, this is countries applying to join NATO, we have asked them to undertake certain reforms in their military so that it's NATO compatible, we call it so that if there actually were a war, that we could actually work together, fight together in hopefully a relatively seamless way, but also reforms in the country that would strengthen their democracy. And so these are the sorts of things that we're looking at.

Got it. On the NATO side, it's some pretty technical stuff. I imagine communications, infrastructure, weapons systems, command and control, that kind of And then on the other side, it's more these diplomatic agreements and civil society reforms and steps like that. Well, and it's changing a lot of laws so that and regulations so that you're compatible with EU. So, I mean, that's one single market, right? And Ukraine was up for a closer association and association agreement with Ukraine in 2014, which the pro-Russian president said no to, which kicked off the revolution of dignity. and many other events in 2014. But what Ukraine is trying to do is to become more like the EU

so that its economy and its people have the benefits of trading with the EU. Right, right. You mentioned 2014. That's really when this war with Russia began. There was the invasion of Crimea. There has been separatists fighting in eastern Ukraine. thousands of lives have been lost. And then there's been this more, you know, intense military invasion in the last month or so.

I've heard you say that you think that if Putin is successful in Ukraine, he's just going to keep going and maybe we roll into NATO countries. Why do you think that? And, you know, sort of what should we do with that information as a concerned listener? Yeah. Well, I think that because he's told us that. And I think one of the things we've learned over the last little while is that we need to be paying close attention to, what Putin says. Because, you know, back in the day in the early 2000s, he said that, you know, the greatest single catastrophe of the previous century was the breaking apart of the Soviet Union.

And then in 2007, at the Munich Security Conference, he berated NATO and the United States in a pretty memorable way. And then in 2008, he invaded Georgia and took chunks of Georgia. In 2014, as you noted, he did the same in Ukraine. And, you know, it's only about a month ago that Putin invaded. But when he invaded, he also noted that other countries of the former Soviet Union should also, you know, come back into the fold. That's not an exact quote, but, you know, words to that effect. He's told us what he wants to do. And the history is he wasn't stopped in Georgia.

You know, the international community criticized him, but there were no sanctions. In 2014, there were sanctions as well as the criticism. But Putin could absorb that. It wasn't enough. And so in 2022, he's come back for all of Ukraine. And I think if he's not stopped, he will continue on. And one of the things that we need to be mindful of is that three of the former Soviet republics, the Baltic countries, Lafayah, Lithuania, and Estonia, are now NATO members.

And so this has a direct effect on us, although the current war in Ukraine also has a very direct effect on us. Yeah, no, it really does. I mean, I take everything that you say very seriously, and I've been struggling with this a lot. I mean, when I think about lessons from my time in government, lessons from the post-9-11 era, really, I guess maybe the last 50 years, is that military interventions, especially U.S. military interventions, or even providing support to individuals involved in a war, is likely to have some sort of negative unattended consequences. It can often, more often than not leads to more innocent

suffering, more instability. And so, you know, I think about all the arms we're feeding its Ukraine right now in the possible spill over effects. And I'm also desperate to see some sort of peace talks or a diplomatic solution to the fighting in Ukraine. But what I'm wondering is, you know, I see some on the left, some of my friends call for more pressure from Biden to push for negotiations between Ukraine and Russia. And I wonder how any person could negotiate with Vladimir Putin right now or trust him right now. I mean, do any of these various peace plans give you any hope for a diplomatic solution? And do you think the U.S. canter should push for that kind of effort? So just going back to what you said at the outset of this question,

we're absolutely right that we need to calibrate very carefully the steps that we take and how we support Ukraine. And I think President Biden and his team are doing a fabulous job of doing that. This is a very narrow lane of supporting Ukraine, but hopefully not escalating the war in the ways that. that you mentioned because nobody wants that. But I think the other thing that we need to bear in mind is that there is also risk in not doing enough. We didn't do enough in 2008. We didn't do enough in 2014.

And Putin is a man and the men around him. They only understand strength. And so if we don't act sufficiently robustly, there is also risk there. And like I said, it's a narrow lane. And I'm glad that President Biden has the experience he has to negotiate that lane. I hear you. I've been reading this biography of Putin, and I'm deep into, you know, the middle of the insurgency in Chechnya and how many casualties, civilian and Russian he was willing to endure. But even looking back at that war, I mean, the independent media in Russia at the time was far more robust than than now. There was,

was far more opposition than now. When I think about what could pressure this man, what could lead him to feel like he might face an internal cost personally, politically. I'm just not sure where that pressure comes from. Do you have any, I'm not trying to go like a Lindy Graham route, like calling for his assassination. I think that's outrageous and a crazy thing to say. But, you know, political pressure is a good thing. And do you see any of that bubbling up in Russia? Well, I've heard my friend Mike McFaul say that from a political science perspective that change, revolutions, the kinds of things that we're talking about seem impossible until they happen. And then it seems inevitable. And so right now, it's hard

for me to see the path to, you know, transformational change in Russia, because that's what we will be talking about. But, you know, we do see brave Russians still out there demonstrating. I mean, where do they find that courage? I don't know. It's amazing. Yeah. But, you know, is that enough? Are the sanctions that the U.S. and the rest of the world are imposing on the Russian economy?

Are they enough to, you know, get the middle class and, you know, the Babushki out in the villages to complain? I'm not sure. And the oligarchs, you know, a lot of my friends say, well, what about the oligarchs? Why don't they do something? They are Putin's bag men. I mean, he knew him back in the early 2000s, and they've been doing his bidding ever since. They are not independent, and it's probably too late for them to try to become independent. And then the last group of people are the so-called syllabi key, you know, the power ministries, you know, intel, defense, et cetera, that are around Putin, the close-in people.

And, you know, they've been with him for decades when he worked. you know, in Germany, the Intel services, all through the St. Petersburg years, and then since 2000, or actually even earlier in the Kremlin. So it's hard to see that they would turn on him, but we also don't have a lot of visibility, or I should say I at least don't have a lot of visibility into that circle and what's going on. But it's clear this is not a popular war. It's clear that there is huge, huge economic pain in Russia. And it's,

you know, it's tragic that the Russian people, like the Ukrainian people, are paying for Putin's mistake. I mean, it's terrible. Listen, I'm with Mike. Hope Springs Eternal. I'm also with you with Olga.

It's like, look, I like nothing more than to see a good $600 million boat seized. It makes my day. But it's not like those guys are going to say, oh, I lost my boat. Now I'm going to, you know, move to Palo Alto and start a tech company. Like, this is their, this is their only job option path is sticking with this man. Last kind of wonky question before I'll be more fun, I promise. I heard Yale historian Timothy Snyder, who I believe is, you know, an academic primarily focused on Ukraine, say that Putin's

vision for Ukraine, which is essentially to tell tens of millions of Ukrainian people that they're now Russian. Like, you will now speak Russian. You will now identify as Russian. You will now identify as Russian, that that kind of big picture goal is the kind of thinking that Rafael Lemkin had in mind when he coined the term genocide. Putin wants to say there is no Ukrainian state. There are no Ukrainian people. You're Russian now. Do you agree with that characterization? Could that be like, could we be watching the beginnings of a genocide against the Ukrainian people and state? Well, I mean, first of all, I think I'm a huge Timothy Snyder fan. I think he's absolutely brilliant and has done as much as anybody to not only document the history of Ukraine over the last

century or so, but also to call out Russia and the evil that Russia is doing right now. So I, you know, the Ukrainians, President Zelensky, are calling this war of choice of President Putin's. They are calling it a war of extermination. And it's just hard to argue with that when, you know, Russian forces are bombing kindergartens and hospitals and maternity wards and, you know, attacking, I mean, you know, firing live fire at demonstrators in Harrison. And I just saw the footage today. And even firing on people that are trying to leave the country, civilians, clearly marked vehicles of civilians. It is it is unimaginable and it's certainly a war crime.

and it's hard not to agree with President Zelensky that this is a campaign of extermination. The irony is that, you know, Putin was going in to save the Ukrainians from the fascist government. He was going to, you know, bind them to their fellow sloths and everything else. It was all going to be, you know, roses and champagne. And what he has accomplished other than what we've just outlined is he has turned every single Ukrainian against him. They will never go to Mother Russia at this point. And, you know, that area in the southeast that has been so attacked, I mean, we think of, you know, the footage in Mariupo where like 90% of the city has been destroyed and they don't have food and water and electricity and heat. And it is winter there.

It is cold. That is a Russian-speaking city. Many people are Russian there, and they have turned against Putin, too. He has managed to do the exact opposite of what he has tried to do. Yeah, it drives me crazy when people talk about him as some sort of strategic genius. I mean, it's not that hard to be a dictator, right? People tend to do what you say. He has managed to unite Ukraine, unite NATO, get the Germans to start spending a whole bunch of money on their military,

cancel the Nord Stream 2 pipeline, which has been in the works for, what, one or two decades? I mean, everything he wants is now going to be harder for him to get thanks to his own crazy actions. He's not some genius. Right. Right. So, you know, you talk in the book and you talk publicly about some incredible mentors you worked for at the State Department, some amazing, like, towering figures in foreign policy. You also worked for some total bozos. You had the Rex Tillerson era and the Mike Pompeo era. I have so many friends in the Foreign Service who in the State Department.

I always wondered which was more challenging watching the plays get gutted by Rex or Pompeo's kind of bluster. What was it like working for those individuals? Then if you have any great mentors you want to talk about, please do. Well, I think, you know, each in his own way did severe damage to the State Department. As you said, Rex Tillerson really gutted the budget for the State Department. and wouldn't even spend the money that Congress allocated. And, you know, the State Department, just like the Defense Department, we need our allocations. We need resources in order to do our job.

And I would say we need a lot more resources for us to do our job or else the Defense Department's got to do it. And, you know, I also mention that there are successive secretaries of defense have said, you know, give the State Department more money because otherwise you're going to have to buy me more bullets. Because, you know, if we're not successful in our diplomacy efforts, the tool of choice usually then becomes the Defense Department. And that's, we never want to, we want to have the best military in the world, but we never actually want to use them. That's right. That's absolutely right. Well, Ambassador, thank you so much for doing the show. Again, the memoir is, Lessons from the Edge. It's available now. You can buy it everywhere and anywhere. Everyone should check it out.

I think it will likely inspire a lot of people to want a career at the State Department and the Foreign Service and do great things. So thank you for your time. Thanks for helping us try to understand what's happening in Ukraine a little better. And we appreciate it. Thank you very much for having me. Thanks to Ambassador Yovanovitch for joining the show. Who else should we thank? Bernie Sanders. Yeah. I was seeing the live stream. Is he pro or anti-war? Matt Dust, Bernie's foreign policy advisor, our friend, was out there being like, hey, there's a lot of people like kind of punching the DSA international committee statements on this stuff, which is a very small subset of people. But I think Matt Dust was saying like, hey, the progressive approach to the war in Ukraine is basically what Joe Biden is doing. Yeah, I mean, he's not, he's trying not to escalate the war.

He's trying to leave the door up in diplomacy. He's supporting refugees. He's going after kleptocracy. I think that the thing that is most probably difficult for progressives is this question of arming, you know, how much we're kind of a party to a conflict we're providing arms. But, yeah, if you look at Congress, it's not the DSA international position, you know. And these are people that, you know, did have concerns about native enlargement. But that doesn't, I mean, I think Ukraine should be a unifying event in terms of like center left to progressives and how we look at it.

Agreed. All right. That's it for this week. Talk to you next week or maybe Friday. We'd ever know. Yeah. We'll see what happens. We'll try to find out. But thanks for listening. Positive the World is a Crooked Media production. The executive producer is Michael Martinez. Our producer is Haley Muse. It's mixed and edited by Andrew Chadwick. Kyle Seguin is our sound engineer. Thanks to Saul Rubin for production support and to our digital team, Elijah Cohn, Phoebe Bradford, Milo Kim, and Amelia Montuth, who upload our episodes as videos at YouTube.com slash crooked media.