Tangle - PREVIEW: Will Kaback interviews Ambassador John Sullivan

Episode Date: December 11, 2024

Tangle Editor Will Kaback talked with Ambassador John Sullivan who gave a comprehensive overview of the current state of the Ukraine war, the implications for U.S. national security, and the challenges facing future administrations. They discussed the importance of supporting Ukraine against Russian aggression, critiques the political rhetoric surrounding the conflict, and reflects on his experiences in Moscow leading up to the invasion. This is a preview of today's special edition that is available in full and ad-free for our premium podcast subscribers. If you'd like to complete this episode and receive Sunday editions, exclusive interviews, bonus content, and more, head over to tanglemedia.supercast.com and sign up for a membership. If you are currently a newsletter subscriber, inquiry with us about how to receive a 33% discount on a podcast subscription! Ad-free podcasts are here!Many listeners have been asking for an ad-free version of this podcast that they could subscribe to — and we finally launched it. You can go to tanglemedia.supercast.com to sign up! You can also give the gift of a Tangle podcast subscription by clicking here.You can subscribe to Tangle by clicking here or drop something in our tip jar by clicking here. Our podcast is written by Isaac Saul and edited and engineered by Jon Lall. Music for the podcast was produced by Diet 75. Our newsletter is edited by Managing Editor Ari Weitzman, Will Kaback, Bailey Saul, Sean Brady, and produced in conjunction with Tangle’s social media manager Magdalena Bokowa, who also created our logo. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

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For more, visit Systemofadown.com. From executive producer Isaac Saul, this is Tangle. Good morning, good afternoon, and good evening, and welcome to the Tangle podcast. My name is Will Kavak. I'm one of Tangle's editors, and I'm really excited to share an interview I just conducted with John Sullivan, a fascinating figure in American foreign policy, somebody whose name you might not know, but who has had a hand in some of the most consequential foreign policy moments of the past decade. He served as the ambassador to Russia under both President Trump and President Biden.

He was also Deputy Secretary of State under President Trump and temporarily served as Acting Secretary of State at one point during his first term. We talked about a wide range of issues related to Russia and Ukraine and the West. We talked about his experience being in Moscow when the Ukraine war started. We talked about whether the Biden administration made strategic mistakes that could have prevented Russia's invasion, foreign policy challenges that President Trump will face in his second term that he didn't face during his first, the rise of sloganeering about Ukraine from both Democrats and Republicans, how that manifests, how that hurts the Ukrainians, what the West doesn't understand about Vladimir Putin that Sullivan learned from his direct experience

working with him in Russia and how America can lead us out of this period of global instability, both in Ukraine, in the Middle East, elsewhere in the world. It was a great conversation. We talked for about 45 minutes, touched on a lot of different issues. I think you guys will enjoy this one. So let's jump into my interview with Ambassador John Sullivan. All right, Ambassador Sullivan, thanks so much for joining us. Well, it's great to be with you.

Thanks. So last week, we passed the 1000-day mark in the Ukraine War. And I'm curious if you could just give us your high level, 30,000 foot perspective on where the war stands right now and your assessment of where it's headed. Well, one question is a little bit more difficult, where it's headed. Where it stands now is, it's not a frozen conflict, the Russian military is still making modest progress in the Donbass, capturing territory. I think it's overstated in Western media how much Ukrainian territory has actually been captured by the Russian Federation. I think they would have to even to occupy that

portion of Ukraine that they have already claimed as Russian territory as part of the Russian Federation for example the rest of the rest of the Donetsk Oblast if they have captured say six or seven hundred square kilometers in in the last month two, they would need to capture two thousand more just to get to that boundary that they already claim as Russian territory. So we're talking about a much different situation from what Ukraine confronted in early, starting on February 24th, 2022. And of course, Ukraine has now occupied a small chunk of Russia, the Russian Federation,

near Kursk. There has been, despite not a lot of territory being gained, there has been a fairly significant escalation in the last few weeks. The Biden administration has finally authorized Ukraine to use longer range strike weapons, the so-called Heimarr systems. These are not intercontinental missiles by any stretch of the imagination. It's 190 miles, but they do allow for a longer longer reach into Russian staging areas where they have staged aerial attacks,

drone attacks, missile attacks, and marshalling areas for troops in the Russian Federation. In response, the Russian Federation has modified, as it threatened to do in September, its nuclear weapons doctrine. It's also used in the last few days an intermediate-range missile, a hypersonic missile that did not have a nuclear payload, but they suggest could have a nuclear payload. It struck near Dnieper in the last few days. So there has been escalation beyond the modest progress on the battlefield.

I think that's a really helpful state of play. I know another side of this here in the United States is the decision about whether to continue providing aid to Ukraine or the amount of aid that will continue to supply them. When you think about this, especially in terms of the incoming administration, how do you think about the overlap between US and Ukrainian interests? And are there areas where you think maybe those interests diverge that might make a case for U.S. involvement scaling back? Well, ultimately, for any U.S. government official, the ultimate touchstone is the national

security interest of the United States and what those interests are. And if it does not serve the national security of the United States, then it's a difficult task to justify supporting a country. And we, the United States, don't just intervene in conflicts around the world, although the Russians accuse us of that. Having said all that, supporting Ukraine is, in my opinion, is in the national security interests of the United States. And what I like to say to people, particularly my fellow Republicans, those serving on Capitol Hill, as members of Congress, who say things like,

I care more about the southwestern border of the United States than I do about the borders of Ukraine. I care more about the United States, my home state, my district, than I do about Ukraine. What I say to them is, you're focused on the wrong side of the battle line there. The question isn't, do we support Ukraine? The question is, do we oppose Russian aggression, which is now manifested in this aggressive war against Ukraine? And if you want to write off Ukraine, if you want to say it's not worth it to the United States to continue to support Ukraine in resisting Russian aggression, then I'm curious as to what your policy is with respect to Russia. Because you may not care about Ukraine, but you got to care if you're a member of Congress or a senator, you got to care about Russia. And if you

say you don't, well then, you know, why have you been, as most Republicans have been, voting for defense and intelligence community budgets year after year combined, classified and unclassified, combined military, I see, almost a trillion dollars to defend the United States. And we're not spending all that money just to defend ourselves from the PRC. We need to defend ourselves from the Russian Federation. And I've yet to hear somebody explain

how we confront Russian aggression, or just at a minimum, articulating a coherent foreign policy with respect to Russia that accounts for the national security of the United States that also includes abandoning Ukraine. It just doesn't fit. I believe the political sloganeering about Ukraine is a dodge. So, but they're not, the Republicans aren't the only ones who are engaged in sloganeering.

The Biden administration saying, you know, we support Ukraine for as long as it takes. That's a slogan too. Why? Why is it in the national security interests of the United States? Why should I, as a member of Congress, vote to spend $61 billion to support Ukraine. It's sloganeering on both sides because people don't want to talk about the serious security interests that are implicated by this aggressive war. So would you say that maybe the Biden administration stance is maybe the side that you would agree with, but they're not articulating the reason well enough to the American people? They're not articulating the reason in

my opinion at all to the American people. Think about this. I cast my first vote in a presidential election in 1980 for Ronald Reagan 44 years ago. Reagan and Carter were engaged in a serious debate about US national security, defense budgets, et cetera. Back then, the American president, then the principal Republican candidate, and then the Republican nominee, her president talked about complex security issues, the threats posed by the Soviet Union, increasing defense budgets, the Strategic Defense Initiative, which was this missile defense system nicknamed Star Wars, increasing, adding a new, as the

Reagan administration considered, a new mobile intercontinental ballistic land-based missile, the MX missile, intermediate range nuclear missiles in Europe and in West Germany. Presidents talk to the American people about those issues all the time. Everybody knew what Reagan thought of the Soviet Union. And he'd been saying this for decades, he campaigned for Barry Goldwater in 64, 17 years before he became president. So we didn't have candidates or presidents or senators for that matter who were afraid to confront hard national security issues.

And I'm afraid to say that's what we can find out. I say this, you know, I say this not as a warmonger, not as somebody who's looking for conflict. I say this as someone who served in Moscow as the ambassador of both President Trump and President Biden. The Russians, led by Putin, the Putin government considers the United States its enemy, their word not mine. They already say they're in a hybrid war with us. So we are not confronting that and we're engaged in political sloganeering and doing a disservice in my opinion to the American people. We'll be right back after this quick break.

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book and the experience that you had in Moscow. But I appreciated how you talked about the sloganeering as it happens on both sides, right? And I think on the Republican side, a lot of the representatives who are engaging in this, I would say are more aligned with President Trump and maybe the MAGA movement. Now, on the other side of that, I think something President Trump talked about a lot on the campaign trail was how, you know, Putin didn't invade when he was

president and how these issues came up when Biden was in office. But do you think that President Trump will support Ukraine based on the statements that he's made and make the case to the American people in the way that you think he should? Or do you think that the party, as he's the leader of it, is going to be pulled more towards that isolationist impulse? I'd say it's too soon to tell. And I'd cite, for example, his pick to be Secretary of State, Senator Rubio. I remember back in 2017 when I was on the verge of becoming the Deputy Secretary of State.

My boss, the Secretary of State nominee, Rex Tillerson, almost had his confirmation hearing basically hijacked by a Republican senator, Senator Rubio, who demanded that Tillerson answer the following question in the affirmative, is Vladimir Putin a war criminal? People forget that. I mean, his views, Senator Rubio's views on Russia have been consistent with mine and I think Not favorable to to the Kremlin I know that the person that the president has selected to be his national security advisor Congressman Mike Walt similarly has had a pretty hard view on Russia and what this aggressive war that Putin has started means

for the United States. So, yeah, the president has said things, I believe. President Zelensky has characterized them as political rhetoric during a campaign. He's hopeful that Trump's peace through strength mantra will result in support for Ukraine. We'll have to see. But there is definitely a strain, though there's no doubt about it. I think reflected by Senator Vance, the vice president-elect who believes that the United States should limit its support for Ukraine, limit its engagement in this conflict in Europe and focus more of its attention to the extent

we can on the Pacific and the PRC. And that's a mistake because there isn't an a la carte menu of foreign conflicts. And what we've seen is an increasing interconnection of the conflict in Russia, Ukraine, the conflict in the Middle East, in Gaza, in Lebanon, in Yemen, the Red Sea, the Persian Gulf, and security threats in the Pacific, in the Western Pacific. And the Russian-Ukraine wars become a global conflict. We now have North Korean soldiers fighting with Russian soldiers on the European continent.

I have a few more questions, I think, about how maybe the Biden administration, the Trump administration have and might handle this issue differently. But I do want to talk about your book, Midnight in Moscow. Something that jumped out to me when I was reading it was that you wrote about how you saw the signs of the imminent Russian invasion for weeks in advance, well before it was being reported in the national press, before many people were talking about this as something

that was about to happen. So based on your experience on the ground at that time and the conversations you were having until you were receiving, what led you to that conclusion? And what was that time like generally for you as somebody who was right there in Russia at the moment? So there were a couple of things that converged to make my views pretty firm about what was gonna happen. The first was the intelligence that we were receiving,

which by the way was outstanding. It was a real, it was a great moment for intelligence professionals, the way they prepared the administration for what was going to happen and what we knew about what the Russians were doing. So that's one. Second, in engaging with the Russians, they weren't engaged, as I describe in my book, they weren't seriously engaged in negotiations with the United States. They were going through the motions

of what I call sham diplomacy. And I cite a number of examples. They would read from talking points. They wouldn't engage when I would raise issues with them, speak to them as I'm speaking to you now will. And they would just read their talking points, what they were authorized to say. And what they were authorized to say was Ukraine needed to be, now they say denazified and demilitarized, which means the government in Kiev removed, the Ukraine military reduced dramatically in size, and that Ukraine's got

to remain neutral. Third, and this is now looking back as I do now, and it didn't necessarily contribute to my thinking in December and January. So those first two items were really what convinced me at that time period. But now looking back, I am more convinced than ever that Putin was never going to be deterred in the summer or fall of 21 or early 2022 for the following reasons. And I write about this in my book.

Biden and Putin met in June 16th, as I recall, of 2021 in Geneva. And what did they talk about? They talked about a lot of things, but they didn't talk about Ukraine. There were fleeting references to Ukraine and the Minsk agreements, but there wasn't. They spent more time talking about Afghanistan and what was at that point the start of the US withdrawal from Afghanistan. They spent more time talking about Afghanistan, the Arctic, other issues than they did about Ukraine. Yet by the end of November, just a few months later, Putin was saying that Ukraine and the

threat to Russia that Ukraine posed with support from the United States, with Ukraine seeking NATO membership, that that was an existential, their word, not mine, existential threat to the Russian Federation. What changed between June and November? Putin's plans were becoming firmer, and he wanted to give the impression of engaging in diplomacy with the West to appear reasonable and to create a moral equivalence between Russia and Ukraine, Russia and NATO.

NATO expansion, threats to Russia. We're just responding as any nation would when its security was threatened. And it was all fake. It was sham diplomacy. It was all propaganda and disinformation. We'll be right back after this quick break. Timothee Chalamet transforms into the enigmatic Bob Dylan in A Complete Unknown, a cinematic captivation that explores the tumultuous life of a musical icon.

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Roger Stadium, September 3rd. For more, visit SystemOfAtown.com. Do you think that the Biden administration made strategic errors during that period? You know, people often ask me, for example, did the withdrawal in Afghanistan, did that cause Putin to invade Ukraine? And my response to that, I feel very strongly, no, in my opinion, Putin had decided long before, for example, a terrorist attack at Abbey Gate on August 26th, or even the collapse of the Afghan government, the Ghani government in Kabul in July. But it does play a role though. It doesn't precipitate the invasion, but it was confirmation of what the assessment Putin had already made, which was the West wasn't capable of standing up to a resolute Russia that had the means and

the will to subjugate Ukraine. So to the extent that we in the West were trying to deter Putin, Afghanistan made him in effect undeterrable. He just wasn't going to be talked out of it or had press reply to him, is he didn't think, for example, that we would supply weapons the way we did to Ukraine. I think he was surprised by the West's response. And finally, again, citing their own statements, Russian statements, citing their own statements, Russian statements, in late August, referring to Afghanistan. Nikolai Patrushev, who was the secretary of the Russian Security Council, former FSB director,

very close to Putin, he gives an interview to Russian state media on, I think it was August 19th, a week before the terrorist attack at Abbey Gate, and says, and this is in Russian, addressed to the Russian people, beyond me, why my Slavic sisters and brothers in Kiev want to join NATO and want to rely on the United States and NATO. Look what they're doing to their major non-NATO ally in Kabul. They do it to their Afghan allies after 20 years of war. Why do you think they'd do anything to ultimately support you?

They'll leave you twisting in the wind. So it wasn't a precipitating event, but it did contribute to, it made Putin, as I say, I think, undeterrable. It's interesting to hear you outline the bet that Putin made, right, that the West would not be able to stand up to a resolute Russia. And comparing that to your assessment of the war now, do you think that that bet has played out or do you think that Putin himself might have miscalculated in

what the West's response would be? Well, Putin has already admitted that he miscalculated. So the then Israeli Prime Minister, Natali Bennett, visits Moscow, it was in March or April, I can't remember now, of 2022, so a month or two after the special military operation is started. And, but also after, you know, the attack on Kiev had been thwarted, and the Russian military is meeting resistance around Kharkiv and so forth.

And Putin says to Bennett, this isn't a one-on-one meeting. And Bennett then later talks to the press Hey everybody, this is John executive producer of YouTube and podcast content and co-host of the daily podcast I hope you enjoyed this exclusive preview episode of the daily podcast. I hope you enjoyed this exclusive preview episode. We are now offering this podcast exclusively to our premium podcast members along with our ad-free daily podcasts, Friday editions, in-depth interviews, upcoming new podcast series, bonus content, and much more. If you want to receive all that and give your support to help us grow Tangle Media, please head over to www.tanglemedia.supercast.com and sign up for a membership. If it's not the right time for you to sign up, please don't worry, our ad-supported daily podcast isn't

going anywhere. But if it is in your ability to support by signing up for a membership, we would greatly appreciate it and we're really excited to share all of our premium offerings with you. We'll be right back here tomorrow. For Isaac and the rest of the crew, this is John Wall signing off. Have a great day, y'all. Peace. Our podcast is written by me, Isaac Saul, and edited and engineered by John Wall. The script is edited by our managing editor, Ari Weitzman, Will K. Back, Bailey Saul, and Sean Brady. The logo for our podcast was designed by Magdalena Bacopa,

who is also our social media manager. Music for the podcast was produced by Diet 75. If you're looking for more from Tangle, please go to readtangle.com and check out our website. Recently, I felt like I was getting sick, but I downloaded Maple, an app that lets you see a real doctor on your phone in minutes 24-7. You can even get a prescription if needed. So I quickly got to see the doctor, discussed my symptoms, and she prescribed

medication. Starting my treatment earlier means I'm feeling like myself. Ah, earlier too. known as Scar. So glad I brought some crickets. Bring your whole family. Come on, Mufasa, let's get in some trouble. On December 20th, a kingdom of adventure awaits. We can do this. We're busy, let's hustle. Disney's Mufasa the Lion King in theaters and IMAX December 20th. System of a Down.

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