The Duran Podcast - Trump's Peace Plan & Rejection of War Narratives - George Beebe, Alexander Mercouris & Glenn Diesen

Episode Date: March 5, 2025

Trump's Peace Plan & Rejection of War Narratives - George Beebe, Alexander Mercouris & Glenn Diesen

Hi everyone and welcome. Today I'm joined by George Beebe, the former director of the CIA's Russia Analysis and current lead director of Grant Strategy at the Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft. Thank you for taking time. I've been looking forward to speaking with you again. My pleasure, a lot to talk about these days. Yeah, we're just saying we have a plan to talk today about narratives because you wrote a very fascinating article about how the reality is winning the Ukraine war, as the headline of your article said, but it's very difficult not to address the main issues at hand, which is this debacle in the Oval Office, sorry, in the Oval Office,

and followed now by a very short-lived ceasefire proposal by Macron, almost a ceasefire at least. I was wondering if you could give your overview of what happened in the Oval Office, because, again, we're here in Europe, and all we were shown on the news was Zelensky entering the room before being bashed by Trump and Vance. So how did you read the situation by the evil Americans? Well, I think this is in part very much related to that narrative war that we can get into. But I think at its heart, the argument that we saw in the Oval Office has its roots in fundamentally different understandings of why this war began and how do you get out of the war. The Zelensky approach to this, his understanding of how this war began, which is, I think, widely shared in Europe and in the United States. at least in mainstream media discussions, is that this is a war of imperialist aggression, plain and simple, that Vladimir Putin decided he wanted Ukraine no longer to be a country, but to be a part of Russia,

that it really was an artificial country, that it was occupying territory that is rightfully part of Russia's, and he simply said, you know, enough, we're taking this over, much the way Nazi Germany behaved in 1939, the start of World War II. And Zelensky's prescription for how you deal with that problem flows from that same model. You don't negotiate with an imperialist aggressor. That actually wets the appetite for more aggression. It constitutes appeasement. And we've all learned the lessons of Munich in 1938.

you know, you don't appease. That only makes the problem worse. You have to stand up to this aggression. And the belief is that ultimately, standing up to a bully forces the bully to stand down. And that you'll either win the war outright on the battlefield, or you'll force the aggressor's state to capitulate at the negotiating table. But you don't need to compromise. In fact, you shouldn't compromise. It's morally wrong and practically will make the problem worse. That's where the legacy is coming from. So coming into the Oval Office, that's his perspective. The Trump administration's perspective on this is one that I will confess I share, which is that this war is closer to a World War I kind of problem. It is an escalatory spiral. What American political

side is Bob Jervis called a spiral model complex, where you see one side taking steps that it believes are defensive to enhance its own security, but this is perceived as threatening to the other side, which in turn takes steps that it believes are defensive, and you get into an action-reaction spiral of escalation, which I think has been going on between Russia and the West for many decades, dating back to the early years after the fall of the Berlin Wall. And the prescription for solving a problem that is this kind of security dilemma problem, an escalatory spiral problem, is exactly to use diplomacy. You don't get out of this escalatory spiral by doubling down on your military reaction.

That makes the spiral worse. And that, I think, is in fact what we have seen playing out in Ukraine since really before the full-scale Russian invasion, but certainly afterwards. Every escalatory step that has been taken has caused the situation to get worse, not better. So Trump is coming at this in the Oval Office meeting saying, we have to have diplomacy. say time for this to end. And that means both sides are going to have to engage and both sides are going to have to make concessions. There has to be a compromise.

And you need to understand a couple of things to understand what happened in the Oval Office. The first is that I was told that the White House formally asked Zelensky to come to this meeting wearing a business suit. He did not. And I don't think that was accidental. he chose to dress in a way that sent a very clear signal to the White House, that he is a wartime president leading a country that is at war, fighting for its existence, and he has every intention of continuing that fight.

In fact, believes that his country has no choice but to do so, absent someone else coming in and taking on that fight directly, which is what he wants, the United States to do. He wants us directly involved in this war with Russia. Unsurprisingly, I think if I were in his position, I'd want the United States to fight on my behalf, too. That said, that is not where Trump is coming from. So I think he reacted, A, with a little bit surprised when he saw what Zelensky was wearing. But then the course of this discussion,

and don't forget that they had been discussing these issues in private for a while before the television cameras came in and they met with the media. But it got to the point where when J.D. Vance said, you know, the way out of this war is diplomacy, and that's exactly what we're doing here. And Zelensky stepped in and said, well, you know, what kind of diplomacy are you talking about? That in part reflected, I think, this fundamental divergence in understanding what kind of problem we're dealing with. Is it a deterrence problem, a Nazi Germany style problem, or is it an escalatory spiral problem? And the two sides have starkly different answers to that question. So that was a big part of all this. Now,

there's also personal aspects to this that began a long time ago, too. And that made all of this, I think a lot more volatile than it would have been otherwise. Yeah, I noticed that this is really when the whole thing went south, when Vance started arguing that we need diplomacy. And, yeah, when Zelensky went against this, of course, this is when everything went out of control. But it was, yeah, we spoke earlier on when you mentioned this, the issue of not wearing the suit.

And I kept, I thought that was such a great point, because that would have been the ultimate symbol that now, you know, we're trying to bring this to an end. He's putting on the clothing he wore before the war, and it would have been very powerful. But what was the roles of the minerals?

Because often this has been put into the discussion. Again, that was the main reason he was there to discuss this agreement on the minerals. And, you know, often, well, what you see now in the media is kind of a bit

simplistic, if not a false view, that well, that Zelensky didn't want to hand over the natural resources, so the Americans started, you know, bullying him in front of the cameras, so that this was the source of it. But obviously, well, anyone who watches the tape realizes

it began quite polite until they had this bat over the willingness to end the war engage in diplomacy, but nonetheless, what do you see being the role of the minerals in this because that has been a controversial part, I guess, of the meeting. Right. Well, I think the minerals question is quite an interesting one.

I think early on it was portrayed as some sort of way of recovering money from Ukraine that the United States had spent over the past several years in support of this war effort. Now, why was it portrayed that way, in part because Trump himself portrayed it that way? Now, why did he do that? I think part of this is to play to his base that regards Ukraine as a very corrupt basket case that is stealing America's patrimony and that this needs to end. And Trump needs it to continue ironically enough. I think he's smart enough to realize that if we simply cut off military aid and other kinds of assistance, to the Ukrainians, that their war effort will collapse fairly quickly, and Russia will not be in a

position where it has to compromise. At that point, Russia is dictating the terms of Ukraine's capitulation. That's not a good thing for diplomacy. So Trump has to bring along that part of the American political spectrum that wants to cut off Ukraine yesterday. And I think the mineral deal was in part aimed at that domestic audience. It was also aimed at Russia, I think. It was trying to show Russia that the United States is not going to go away. We're going to be involved in Ukraine with Americans on the ground, not holding rifles, but engaged in economic activity.

And this kind of mineral extraction effort takes a long time. This kind of thing would necessarily require decades. So it sends the signal to the Russians. We're going to be there. We're not going to go away. We're not simply abandoning Ukraine to a Russian sphere of influence. And then finally, I think it helps ensure that Ukraine will be reconstructed. In fact, if you read the draft of this agreement, it's billed as a joint activity that will take the profits, at least part of

of the profits that each side is making from this joint mental extraction effort and devote that to a reconstruction fund for Ukraine. So it's a path toward rebuilding Ukraine, ensuring that the United States will be involved there, and putting in place, I think, at least a disincentive for the Russians to reinvade. Because if there are Americans on the ground in U.S. Ukraine, but would have to think twice about saying, hey, let's, you know, let's reinvade Ukraine after a deal and potentially kill a bunch of Americans and who knows how the United States would react to that kind of situation. So I think there was a lot of logic to all of this. Now, and from what I understand, we had gotten some signals from Zelensky that he was willing to move forward. But when I mentioned that this, the blowup in the Oval office was in part personal. I think part of this is that J.D. Vance and Secretary of State Marco Rubio had met with Zelensky in Munich. They had talked about this mineral deal. And they subsequently said, Zelensky, after he told us one thing in private, went out in

public and lied about what we had talked about. And that, I think, had a very damaging effect on their perceptions of whether he's somebody that we could deal with as a straight shooter in all of this. And I think that did, in fact, color the reactions that we all saw in the White House in front of the television cameras. Yeah, well, this is never a good idea to mix up the negotiations with the public diplomacy. Oh, sorry, hi, Alexander. Well, I'm very sorry. I'm so late joining, but I was very tired up earlier. I hope this was

passed on to you, George, and my very profound apologies. I've come at the tail end, and I'm sure there's been a very fine discussion already. Anyway, for what it's worth here I am. Oh, we're just discussing the problems in the Oval Office, but now thereafter we see, of course, the reaction that is the Europeans. I would like to... Well, it seems like they would like to deal with this on their own. Again, this is part of my concerns as well, that there seems to be efforts to push back and reject whatever Trump's put forward. But I guess my great concern is if the Europeans are not willing to support the peace efforts by Trump,

then they're not going to be able to push him into a war, as they're hoping. Rather, the more likely outcome would be that Trump would simply, say, walk away, say, well, I give it at my best. Now, Ukraine is your problem. And in the hands of the Europeans, I think, will become a huge mess. And I guess a good case for this would be the new peace proposal now by Macron, which wasn't really a great peace proposal. I mean, it partial ceasefire because it would still allow for fighting to continue.

And the British already even distanced themselves from it. So how are you interpreting this? Well, we can call it a ceasefire, even though they're not seizing the fire. No, they're not seizing the fire. And it's a proposal that both the Russians and, by the way, the Ukrainians have already rejected. So it's not helpful. And I think also talking about the Americans giving security guarantees, which, well, my impression was that the Americans don't want to do it. and they seem to say no last week, coming back to this and starting up this whole discussion

or trying to start, restart this discussion all over again, isn't helpful either. My own feeling about the summit meeting that took place on Sunday, and I say this with great, you know, sorrow and concern, is that I heard nothing there that was really positive or really new. and which can take the process forward. And we've had proposals from the United States, we've had discussions with the Russians, we've had some kind of a process begin, and we are retreating again

into a world of cliches and demands of the Americans that simply won't work. Why don't we do the obvious thing if we want to be party to the discussions, why don't we send someone to Moscow and talk to the Russians ourselves? That option exists.

There's nothing preventing us from doing it. If we do that, then perhaps we can work with the Americans productively and start to shape this discussion better in the direction that we wanted to go. I would have thought that complaining about us being excluded is absurd when, as I said, we are basically excluding ourselves. Well, you know, I can't disagree with that.

I think what is likely to happen at this point is a negotiating tactic that anybody that's been in a bizarre would immediately recognize. You know, you're not ready for the best deal that you can get until you've should. shown that you're willing to walk away from what's on the table. And I think the Trump administration is about to show people that we're willing to walk away from this. And that will, I think, be intended to bring the Ukrainians and the Europeans face to face with a very stark reality. And that is that the course of action that they are advocating, which is really to continue the approach that we have taken since the start of this invasion. We're going to be there for as long

as it takes. We're going to give the Ukrainians as much as we can give them. We're going to ratchet up economic and political pressure on the Russians to force them to capitulate. That course of action has failed, and they have no viable option to continue it if the United States is not willing to do that itself. And we're not. And we shouldn't be. I think we've recognized here in Washington, at least the Trump administration has recognized, that that is a formula for one of two things. It's a formula for Ukraine's collapse,

or it's a formula for escalation into direct conflict between the United States and Russia, neither of which we want. So we have chosen the path of seeking a diplomatic compromise. But compromise requires all of the parties that have interests in this particular conflict to recognize that they need to compromise on things that are not core, not vital interest to them. That they're going to have to make some concessions on things that they would like to have, but don't have to have. Right now, Europe isn't ready to do that, and Ukraine's not willing to do that. Ukraine is saying we will not give up any.

We will not make any concessions. We will not compromise at all with the Russians. We will force the Russians to capitulate. And the United States has to back us in that approach. We're not going to do that. So where does that leave Ukraine and Europe? Well, I think the sad reality is that Europe can't make up for what the United States is providing to Ukraine in this situation. They can provide economic assistance, yes.

Can they provide some weapons and ammunition? Yes. Can they provide real time 24-7 intelligence surveillance and reconnaissance data on which Ukraine's war effort depends? No, they can't. They don't have that capability. So that means all of the weapons systems that the Ukrainians have that depend on that data provision can't work. That's an enormous problem. Can they provide Starlink?

Does Europe have the equivalent of Starlink circulating up in space? That can provide the Ukrainians with vital communications capabilities on the battlefield? No, they don't. The United States, if it chooses to, cut that assistance off today. And that means that a lot of the weapons

that the Ukrainians have can't work, and a lot of the battlefield operations that they're undertaking can't continue without that communication. That puts Ukraine in a very, very precarious situation, and the Europeans can't rescue them from that. So what do they do? And I think that's where we're going to head, and I think the Trump folks are going to play a hardball on this. They're going to say, okay, you know, no more pretending. If you insist on continuing this war, you're going to do it on your own. And you're going to find out what that looks like, and it's going to look very, very bad,

very, very quickly. And then you're going to come back to us and say, let's make a deal. But unfortunately, their negotiating position will be that much weaker under those circumstances. So I think they're making some very, very, very. dumb decisions I have to say on all of this. I just wanted to say I completely agree with every point just made. Well, this is, I think the pressure is already coming. We're hearing comments now that the US might cut old funds to Ukraine.

Elon Musk just took to Twitter today to suggest that, you know, US, why do we need NATO? This is outdated or at least retweeting something like this. So it's amounting a lot of pressure, I guess, on the Europeans. And for the Europeans, it looks like they're prepared to anything, even war with Russia, except for actually speaking with your opponents. This is something apparently a line they can't cross. But I think the absence of an alternative, as Alexander suggested before, this is really the amazing part, because if the deal coming from Trump is so bad,

I mean, and I do think it's bad. It's terrible for Ukrainians, but it's still the best thing that exists. I don't sure what would be better. So, again, a horrible deal, but it's the best possible deal. And again, this is why I was surprised by this Macron's deal, where you have a ceasefire, but you still accept fighting on the ground. You only seize, what is it, missiles, naval-based launches and attacks on energy infrastructure, effectively all the areas where Russia dominates and this is it.

And the purpose of this, why would they do this for a month? He said, well, the purpose is for Putin to show us that he is acting in good faith. I mean, like he's a schoolboy and we're going to grade him on how good he is. We were still behaving as if Russia should capitulate and do what it's told. It's very strange. The EU also recently began talking about starting a tribunal against, Putin. It's not, you know, it's usually not the winner in the war who gets put on the tribunal. It just seems very absurd to me. But how do you explain the Europeans here? Because I guess

this is, is this a narratives we have locked ourselves into because we can't rationalize or address reality as it is? Well, I think yes. I think that explains a lot of it. There has been this struggle between narratives since even before this invasion, honestly, but it certainly intensified after the Russians moved forces into Ukraine on February 24, 2022, and you immediately saw in Western coverage that this was portrayed as, quote, unquote, an unprovoked invasion. And these were news stories. These were not editorial, op-eds. These are news stories. These are news stories describing objective truth purportedly. But that word unprovoked is an editorial judgment.

It is a belief that there was nothing whatsoever that the West or Ukraine did in all the years of tension that have attended this question of NATO expansion eastward. Nothing that we conceivably could have done any different. that time that would have had any impact on Russian behavior. That narrative essentially says Russia did this because Russia is Russia. By its nature, the problem that we're dealing with here is a regime that by its very nature is imperialistic, wants to conquer its neighbors, and you can't negotiate a compromise with that kind of problem.

This is like negotiating with Hitler. Of course you can't do that. And that is the narrative that I think has deeply rooted itself in public consciousness in the West, and I think even to a greater degree in Europe, but I'll defer to you on that. And in part it's because anybody that has challenged that narrative and said, well, wait a minute, yes, there are imperialistic aspects to this. Yes, Russia has very paternalistic attitudes toward Ukraine, in particular for a lot of cultural and historical reasons. But fundamentally, what we're dealing with here is an escalatory spiral, a security dilemma in which each side has taken what it thinks to be defensive steps that the other side finds threatening. And you have to solve that with diplomacy.

Those of us that have argued that have found almost no receptivity in mainstream media and an awful lot of pushback, not on the facts and merits of the argument, but were dismissed as Russian apologists, agents of Putin. I mean, the only way anybody could possibly entertain the notion that we have a World War I style. escalatory spiral problem is if they are suffering from reading too much Russian disinformation. And that, I think, has very much distorted our public debate on this issue. And we've not been able to have the kinds of public discussions that are necessary to think about how to solve this problem in a way that's pragmatic and effective. And I think that's particularly true in Europe. And I think that's part of the reason why J.D. Vance said the things he said in Munich.

You can't have a real public debate if the people that are saying, hey, wait a minute, maybe we ought to think about diplomacy with Russia are essentially anathematized, excluded from public discussion, treated as illegitimate. Sorry, Alexander. Now, I just said this is absolutely true. If I can just say Glenn has been writing about this, but getting trapped into your own narrative, which is what we've done, has had disastrous effects. And when we see them, I've never known in European history a time

when the whole of Europe has been locked into a single narrative in this sort of way. And I'm going to throw this out, and I'm a mischievous comment maybe, part of the problem has been this drive that there's been since the Second World War to European centralisation, to integration processes within the, within Europe, you know, the single market, the single cultural space culminating in the Lisbon Treaty. It has created mechanisms and perhaps also political. imperatives in a kind of a way, which have brought us to this point, because previously in Europe, the very fact that we were very fragmented meant that we had a diversity of debates. We talked

about things with each other, and we don't seem to do that anymore. We have far less debate in Europe than they do in the United States, and it is striking to see that. There are far more places in the United States where alternative dissident, if you like, or really, Let's call the realist views can be expressed than you find in Europe today. Yeah, I think that's true. And it's ironic when you associate the term realist with dissident, because for so long, realist was the mainstream perspective on things. And it's gotten to the point where if you're a realist,

you are in fact treated as some sort of subversive in the U.S. discourse. And that's very odd to see, I think. One of the problems in Europe, I think, has been that the European Union, with the fall of the Berlin Wall, the end of the Warsaw Pact, faced a choice. You know, was it going to broaden its membership or deepen the integration of its members? Those were two things that were in tension with one another. and Europe chose to do both. Some of the problems that I think we're seeing right now are the result of that decision.

Well, I think the way, as you mentioned, we would dismiss all dissent as simply being Putinists. We saw this within the EU as well, when countries like Hungary and Slovakia wanted to push for diplomacy, to were immediately brushed off as either far-right or agents of Russia. We do the same with political opposition within our countries as well.

If they come forth and suggest less to make peace, well, now they belong to Putin as well. And so you can't really make the case, because once you make the case for diplomacy, then you automatically become a Putin agent, and now you're outside the discourse. You're not legitimate anymore. But this is very different because now we can pretend, you know, Hungary and Slovakia, they don't exist or they're all agents of Russia. But now the United States, this idea that, you know, everything that comes out of Washington is a MAGA, pro-Russian, fundamentalist.

It doesn't work, really. And even if we can make ourselves believe it, we can't pull off any of the things defeating Russia, first and foremost, without the Americans. Possibly we can't do it with the Americans either. And it's quite troubling that it's never an alternative. As we talked about earlier, is it either we continue this until Ukraine collapse, which will be much. much worse deal or we escalate into some World War III which either could end the world or we would probably lose. This is, it's just, none of this actually makes much sense. And with this focus on narratives, I found it interesting that back in September of 2024, you had the chiefs of both

MI6 and the NCAA, they met and said that the invasion of Kursk, it was a great achievement because it could change the narrative of the war. I remember, this because I thought it was interesting how much the credence or how much value they put into the narrative. But how did narratives become such a key focus of great power conflicts? Or has it always been like this? I just can just take two very quick points. Firstly, I think one thing we should recognize and be grateful for is that the World War III possibility has now effectively been taken off the table. It can't be done without the Americans.

And the Americans have made it absolutely clear that they're not going there. The issue now is this. Do we have a negotiated settlement of this war, which would be best for everybody, including obviously Europe, Ukraine and Russia, or do we have a situation of a Ukrainian collapse, which would actually be bad for everyone? It would be bad for Russia too. In many respects, George Beebe has written,

about this and he's spoken about this. I completely concur with his views on the points that he's made about that. So that's the first thing. The second is how did we get here? How do we have these narratives? How were they constructed? Well, this is a cultural question about which I think cultural historians perhaps or people who work in culture might be in a better, might be in a better position to explain than someone like me might be. But I think that there has been some kind of cultural shift in the West, some sort of idea that narratives somehow have more importance and can shape events. And I don't want to stop pointing fingers of particular schools, which I think they're always misrepresented. But I think this has been building up in the West for a very, very long time.

You saw it, by the way, during the Second World War as well. I mean, there was already, especially Germany, some elements of that already there. So I think this has been developing for a long time. But as I said, what caused it? What brought us to this point? Exactly. It's, I think, a challenge for me to be able to answer that question. It goes beyond the kind of things I know about. Yeah, no, I think you're right. This is a very complex question. I think it has been brewing for a long, long time as a very, very long antecedent.

Part of it was the way the Cold War ended. The United States and West more broadly looked at as vindication of our system, of our ideology. And the conclusion that we reached, I think, was the path toward peace and stability in the world is through the transformation of other countries, the change of their regimes to become a lot more like the United States. This was essentially democratic peace theory, and much of our foreign policy with the end of the Cold War shifted. During the Cold War, we were engaged in what was essentially a realist balance of power struggle, where we were attempting to balance Soviet power, counterbalance it, build alliances that can counterbalance the Soviet

alliances, and establish rules of the game that essentially made the competition between these two ideologies as safe as possible to minimize the likelihood that it would spiral into some sort of direct confrontation. And each side recognized that it had an interest in the stability and security of the other side, at least to some degree. We realized after the Cuban Missile crisis that absolute Soviet insecurity

would not result in absolute Western security, that we each had a stake in making sure that this competition was stable. We lost that understanding with the end of the Cold War. And we began to think that our security depends on changing the other guy. We will be secure when Russia is a liberal democracy and not before. And I think that perception merged in some of the Eastern European states who have had a very difficult history with the Russians and have a tendency to believe that the Russians are permanent adversaries,

these two things reinforce one another. Now, you layer on top of that some other things. Social media, the media environment has changed. And so the battle of narratives now has a medium that lends itself to this in a lot of ways, but also exacerbates it because in the age of the internet and social media, you can be selective about the media diet that you're consuming. But also the algorithms that are built into this actually reinforce it. When I go on the internet and I look around and read news stories,

these algorithms are looking at what I'm looking at, and they're deciding what interests me. and they very quickly feed me more of that because they want to hold my attention for as long as possible. So if I'm of the opinion that Putin is like Hitler and Russia's like Nazi Germany and the only way we can deal with this problem is to fight back until they capitulate, I can consume an endless amount of media online, even unintentionally, that reinforce that belief. So now we have a communications technology which almost by design reinforces confirmation bias. So if you layer all these things together, I think that explains to some degree why we're in the media narrative war that we're in. Yes, it's not just how we view Russia as the new Hitler, but as you mentioned after the Cold War,

that NATO was more or less transformed from being one of the two rival military blocks to being this inter-democratic security community, something that spread peace through values. So it became a positive sum approach to security. We're going to make everyone else more democratic, then everyone will be more peaceful. Once this becomes the dominant view or narrative, we'll be. which everyone has to organize around. And suddenly, first of all, we can't accept that others would consider us a threat. This is an interesting phenomenon because we can see that NATO can be bombing another country

and still we would say, well, it's ridiculous anyone would consider us a threat. And so we can expand NATO, we can shift the military infrastructure. But again, as you said before with Robert Jervis, if you want to mitigate the security dilemma to reduce this competition, then you have to also recognize the security concern of the other guy. And I just don't see any legitimate scope anymore for discussing legitimate Russian security concerns. I have tried to do it at conferences, and I'm told that, well, this would mean legitimizing Russian aggression against not just Ukraine, but anyone. So we essentially delegitimize the concept of Russia having security concerns.

because that would entail recognizing that we might be a threat. But this used to be a problem, but now it becomes so much worse, I feel, because everything with narratives about either giving legitimacy or depriving it. So now we see, even in the media, when we say, you know, we stand with Ukraine, it means that we can't undermine the legitimacy of Zelensky. So we, when all this human rights abuses, this suppression of cultural and, language rights, media, the suppression of the political opposition, religious freedoms. You have all this young men being abducted, sent to the front line against their will thrown

into cars. We can't mention it in our media anymore because it could be feared that it undermines support for Zelensky. And that's not standing with Ukraine at all. That's undermining Ukraine. So we have to be quietly and even quietly support all of the suppression against Ukrainians. otherwise we're with the Russians. It's a very strange way we get entangled.

And I saw the same in Kursk, which was, you know, from day one, me and Alexander were saying very clearly this is a terrible, terrible mistake. You know, they're entering into a foreign hostile territory. They supply lines are weak. They can't really get excavators or build any defensive lines in there. They can't even get proper reliable fuel access. They would take huge casualties. and in a war of attrition, this is a disaster.

And this is exactly what happened. And we're not that geniuses. But the only thing is, this was obvious. But no one was allowed to say it because you had to support and hail the great wisdom of Zelensky and how great, you know, he was shifting the narrative, taking the war to the Russians. And any criticism was a criticism of Ukraine. So you had to then stand there and applaud how brilliant it was. was to send all this men into certain death.

And now I feel we're on the same track with diplomacy. We can't talk to the Russians even when they have won the war. It's just, it's amazing. Yeah, no, it is. And I think there's another danger that we're facing right now, that is that all of this turns into a domestic political dispute here in the United States, that seeking peace, taking what I would call a practice, and traditional approach to diplomacy, something that would have been unremarkable 50 years ago

in our approach, has suddenly become pro-Trump. And if you support this, well, you're supporting everything in Trump's agenda. That's a very unhealthy thing, I think, for the United States politically. We need to be able to debate these things in a dispassionate way. in recognizing that reasonable people can disagree at all of this. And this is not just, you know, are you in favor of Trump or not? And if you're in favor of Trump, you're in favor of Putin. And if you're in favor of Trump and Putin, you're a fascist.

And this sort of approach is not constructive, I don't think, in any way in finding a way out of the problem that we're in. And it's going to have a catastrophic result unless we do find a way to advance diplomacy here. I agree, by the way, again, can I ask, can I just ask George Beebe? You may have discussed this already before I came in. Where is this going with the Americans and the Russians? Because it seems to me that there's two issues. The Americans and the Russians are talking about normalization of relations. which I think is an entirely good thing, by the way.

I mean, what I mean by normalization of relations is basically conducting a dialogue with each other. You can be adversaries. You don't have to be friends, but you are both important countries. You talk to each other about things, and you try to manage your conflicts. That's one thing.

The second thing is this much more complicated issue, which is Ukraine itself. and the conflict there. I still haven't seen that there's actually, despite all the people that saying, any real negotiation going on by anybody yet about how to end the conflict in Ukraine. I've not seen any real clan than the Americans.

I'm not sure one exists. As far as I can tell, the Americans are talking about getting the Russians and the Ukrainians to sit down and talk with each other. That's going to be very difficult to do, but who knows. But even if that doesn't work, that's not a reason for stopping with the other process, the process of normalizing relations. And the risk is that if you can't achieve a settlement in Ukraine,

that could jeopardize the other thing, which is in some ways, and, you know, I don't want to understate the level of the tragedy in Ukraine itself. But in some ways, if you're looking at the global picture about world peace, about avoiding nuclear war, about those things, it's even more important. How has anybody, have you been thinking about this, George? Oh, sure. I've given this a lot of thought. I know, you know. It's a question. We're getting it to talk about it. Yes. No, I think.

think what the Trump people are intending is to pursue what we once would have called detain with Russia. Not turning Russia into an American ally or friend, I think that's a bridge too far right

now. That would not fail. There's too much deep mistrust between the sides, and there are areas where our interests certainly our intention with one another. But I think the Trump people believe that the relationship with Russia has become quite dangerous, and we need to have some rules of the game and understanding in place so that it does

not spiral into a big confrontation. But also, I think their belief, and I again share this belief, is that the poor relationship we have with Russia has hurt America's broader geostrategic position. From a geopolitical point of view, this makes no sense. We are, in fact, driving Russia for deeper and deeper cooperation with China, with Iran, with North Korea, with countries that regard us as adversaries, and reinforcing the perceptions that we are, in fact, adversaries, and incentivizing that. to deepen their cooperation with one another, which makes our geopolitical challenges much greater than they would otherwise be.

So do I think that we have an eye on China in seeking a better relationship with Russia? Absolutely. I think the Trump folks have been fairly plain spoken about that. But one of their goals, not to drive a wedge between China and Russia, I think they recognize that that is impossible. or Rubio has more or less said this in quite plain language. But a more normal relationship between the United States and Russia would probably make Russia less dependent on China, give Russia more room for maneuver in its own foreign policy, make it less deferential to China,

and result in a more normal relationship between Beijing and Moscow. In other words, if you were looking at the geometry of the, of this strategic triangle, it has been very distorted in recent years, where Beijing and Moscow have been much closer with one another than they have been with the United States. And I think we're looking to make this closer to an equilateral triangle, where we have more normal relations with each other and all of this. That, I think, is attainable, and I think that's part of what's driving all of this. So this raises a question.

Can the United States pursue detente with Russia successfully if there is no actual negotiated compromise end to the war in Ukraine? And I think that's a hard question to answer right now, because it's politics and perceptions, the pressures that attend the – the perceptions of what's going on in the relationship matter a lot. They can circumscribe the Trump team's room for maneuver politically in all of this. I think they have the intention of a better relationship with Russia. But absent a peace in Ukraine, you could have a situation where public opinion in the United States is overwhelmingly against fundamental improvements in the U.S. Russian relationship. And that's why I think

the United States does not simply want to abandon Ukraine. That's not option number one. The people that are saying, oh, you know, the whole White House Oval Office blow up with Zelensky was an ambush that they

intended this to happen. I think it doesn't pass the logic test on all of this. That blow up makes the challenge of achieving a compromise piece in Ukraine much greater, and that in turn very much limits how far and how fast the U.S. Russian relationship can improve. That's not at all what the Trump folks want to see, as far as I can tell.

I think it's correct. I think they definitely intended to put as much pressure on Zelensky as possible to show that there will be punishments if they do not accept that the war has to end but yeah this drama for the sake of the drama I don't see that either

and I just say I agree with what you said and Marco Rubio for that sake that it's unlikely to be able to drive a wedge between the Russians and the Chinese however the Russians they do want they don't want American hegemony to replace with Chinese hegemony

And the difference then is, you know, they want Eurasia with many centers of power, which means you have to be able to diversify. And they also recognize that they're more dependent now on China than they would otherwise have been.

So if there are other central power, if they can work with the Americans, because given that Russia's more dependent on China than China's on Russia, it would be in the interest of Russia to have more diversified economic partnerships. I don't think there's need to drive a wedge.

I think if there's simply good relations, I think there will be a natural balance of dependence where they avoid this excessive reliance on any one partner. Now, I also think that Trump, though, this, a key problem in maintaining the peace between Russia and the US is, of course, the issue of trust, even though the Russians might learn to trust Trump, it's a bit of an unusual.

event in American politics and in four years, God knows who will come in. Will there be another Biden? You can't really know. So I think there will be not make themselves too vulnerable, which is why I think it's important to end the war, to get some solid foundations for actually building some relationship. And also, I think the ability of the United States to stick its head out and build trust with the Russians. It's premised on this need to get an end to the war because like what we saw now with the United States voting with the Russians at the United Nations, which was incredible.

Part of the idea, I guess, was to stop bashing the Russians, because if you keep bashing them, then you can't get a deal. You can't set them, get them at the negotiation table if you keep calling them Hitler effectively. But, so, no, but there has to, I think there has to be an end to this war.

Otherwise, it would be this constant, yeah, what do you say, rock in the shoe of the relationship. Right. Now, I expect that the Trump administration will not abandon its efforts to improve the relationship with Russia, you know, to restore the normal functioning of our embassies, for example, talk about areas where we've got some common interests, try to put arms control,

strategic stability, you know, back on. on the table as things that we're talking with each other about. But I do think that the lack of a compromise settlement in Ukraine will impose some real limits on how far we can go on that. Do you think there is any scope for the United States to make concessions in order to achieve peace in Ukraine? I'm talking about Russia making concessions. And the Russians are taking a very strong line at the moment,

perhaps they will eventually make concessions. But is the United States prepared to make concessions about security questions in Europe, for example? Trump has been talking about reducing defence budgets. Perhaps what we used to call during the Cold War confidence building measures, might we start to see things like that start to happen? because it's going to be difficult that the Ukraine war is very difficult. The Ukrainians themselves are very dug in. Zelensky is very dug in.

It's going to be difficult to get him, I think, to agree to peace. But if there has to be a peace in Ukraine on Russian terms, might it also be betterly managed if it's done within a sort of wider European or Western Eurasian context, as the Russians say, but with concessions by each side on, say, you know, the kind of confidence-building measures I was talking about. Well, yeah. In fact, I don't think you can have a durable peace in Ukraine unless it is embedded in a broader European security context where we are addressing those bigger questions.

And I do think the Trump administration is willing to address those things. What we heard in the last few weeks was exactly that. You know, we signaled to the Russians that we are willing to take the prospect of Ukraine's membership in NATO off the table. Now, we did not formally make that concession. It's not codified on paper. I think in order to codify it, the Russians are going to have to make some concessions on their part that will enable us to codify the no more NATO expansion provision. But it's crystal clear that the Trump people are signaling that we recognize that that's something that has to happen,

that they are willing to do that. We're also signaling that we are not only open to drawing down our ground force presence in Europe, but we want to do that. I think the vision that Pete Hegseth as Secretary of Defense has sketched, broadly speaking, is one where the United States continues to extend its nuclear umbrella over our NATO allies in Europe, continues to act as an aerospace power, providing air and space support in Europe to help stabilize the security. situation there. But we're going to be looking increasingly to Europe itself to provide the ground components of deterrence in the European theater and to step up its military industry production and capacity so that it has the arsenal that can serve as a deterrent to further regression on the continent. And

be able to respond should that deterrence fail in the future. I think that's the vision that we have. And what's ironic about all this is I think the Russians are quite happy with that. In other words, U.S. interests and Russian interests when it comes to America's military presence in Europe are a lot closer to each other than our allies' views of what the U.S. military presence in Europe ought to be. And that's part of the reason why we're seeing, I think, the disagreement with Europe over how do you end this war in Ukraine. I think they look at this war and think, boy, we settle this war on a compromised basis. The United States is going to draw down in Europe.

We can't outsource our security to Washington to the degree that we've grown accustomed to. We're going to have to step up, and they don't want to do that, I think, bluntly speaking. So it's a fascinating situation. This is the wider implication. If this was only about Ukraine, then it would be very different. But again, for many people would see this, the Ukraine war, again, there's a struggle for world order. The Europeans, they see if America pulls out of Ukraine, it will leave Europe. The Russians want a peace agreement.

If they can solve Ukraine, they can get a new European security architecture in place, which was the chief of the past 30 years. So this is why the negotiations will be complicated, given that this war has surprisingly little to do with Ukraine, given how much focus is actually on, yeah, that is a Ukrainian war. But anyways, yeah, just took me to my last question, which is a bit related to what you actually said now, which is, yes, I guess as a former director at the CIA for Russia analysis,

What would you see as being the main, what framework would you need? What would the basis of a peace agreement, which would be acceptable to, again, the Americans and the Russians within the scope which could be imposed on the Europeans and the Ukrainians? Well, I think the fundamental strategic compromise that we're going to have to strike is an end to NATO's eastward expansion. something the Russians have been asking for with increasing vehemence over the years, but for quite some time. And the Russians, in turn, are going to have to codify something that I understood they agreed to during the Istanbul talks, early after the invasion in 2022, where they said that they were willing to support Ukraine's membership in the European Union. That, I think, is a reasonable compromise between the two sides. Russia would not object to an economic and political relationship between Ukraine and Europe,

but would in fact insist on Ukraine's military neutrality, not having the presence of American or European forces on Ukrainian territory. And I think those are things in principle that the United States can agree to. where this is going to get complicated is in the question of the limits on Ukraine's military. The Russians, during those Istanbul talks, insisted on a very small Ukrainian military, I think 80,000 men. The Ukrainians were at 250,000 men. That's a pretty significant difference. The Russians also wanted numerical caps and qualitative caps on the weapon systems that the Ukrainian military could hold.

That's going to be a very difficult negotiation. I don't think the Ukrainians by themselves dealing with the Russians at the negotiating table are in a good position to strike a bargain there. They're going to need some help from the United States. And we do have a fair amount of leverage on this because weapons that we have or could station in Europe on Native territory are things that the Russians are very concerned about. They cannot just through military countermeasures neutralize the effectiveness of those weapons. And I think what we're going to need to say to the Russians is, look, the Ukrainians need a reasonable ability to defend themselves. That is either going to be through their own military with the possibility of supply and reinforcement from the West, should this, invasion occur again. Or if you're not willing to agree to that, then the NATO and the United States

are going to have to have a much bigger military capability on our own territory to guard against that contingency and deter that sort of thing. You know, your choice, what would you rather do here? And I think the Russians, you know, I hope, at least they have a pragmatic reason for wanting to find some sort of acceptable compromise and all of that. But that's going to be a hard negotiation. Well, I have nothing to say, just to say, again, sorry for joining late. It's going to be a very, very difficult negotiation, exactly as you say. Well, I have to say, I think we should be a bit hopeful.

I mean, if we compare where we were just a few months ago, when it all looked very bleak and we had missiles being fired into Russia. now we have the Americans and the Russians talking to each other and they've had two good meetings apparently and we're probably going to have a summit before long I mean this is tangible progress actually and we should be aware of that and count our blessings as well as worry about the risks

I agree yeah times are changing we always seem to finish on a very gloomy note very dark only a few months ago. But now, yeah, I agree. I'm becoming much more optimistic that at least they're speaking of peace. They're showing understanding for each other's security concerns, something that was, yeah, unheard of only a few months ago.

So, no, no. So, yeah, George Beebe, Alexander McCurris. Thank you both very much for your time. Thank you.