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>>, okay welcome everybody. our audience in the classroom and our audience beyond. i can get a class on the war in ukraine, titled the history of the present. and which we are trying to go back into the past to do our very best to understand events that are happening before our eyes. in the present tense. today's class is going to be and overview of the war, with our typical back and forth between past and present. and i'm going to try to explain, not a mathematics class, but a rather simple formula on the blackboard for those who can see it. formula is a is not equal to b plus c. i'll explain that more with that rather mysterious mathematical formula, what it means. a is a variable that stands for russian aspirations, with foreign policy, that's one side of the

equation here. b as the foreign policy and military aspirations of ukraine, and c are the military and foreign affairs aspirations of the united states. b and c have gone along pretty well for the last six months, he witnessed a very close partnership between ukraine and the united states. so, in that sense, b plus c adds up to something significant. what it does not add up to is a, and there is been a very significant clash between the aspirations of the united states and ukraine. on the one hand. and the aspirations of russia on the other. so, that is what i'll try to exploit in short form in today's class, for the next 40, 45 minutes or so. and then we'll see if there are questions before we drown today's class to a close. let me start, before going into a, b and c, with some words about the war itself that began on the 24th of february. it would be deeply inaccurate to say that the war in ukraine, as we've come to refer to it, is unique to our times. that is a

first major war since 1945, or even the first major european conflict since 1945. if you look back over the history of the last 60, 70 years, we will see nothing that quite amounts to a second world war. but you will see one major conflict after another. now just a can get american terms. if the war in korea from 19 50 to 54, you have vietnam from the late 19 50s until 1974, 75. you have the war in iraq that began in the spring of 2003. the war in afghanistan that began not too long after the september 11th attacks in 2001. if you look at the history of asia over the last 40, 50 years, you will see many conflicts. and i think anybody who would look at the history of it as, 40 50 years would see many conflicts as well. multiple wars, civil wars, upheavals et cetera. if it were in the southeast of europe in the 1990s, in the balkans. we have a russian invasion of the country of georgia and the

south caucus in 2008. indeed, what we have witnessed over the last six months has in fact been the second bucket chapter of the war in ukraine, which begins in 2008. do not forget the 2022, this ominous here that we're living through, we've entered an entirely new or different era. there have been wars and many places. in yemen recently. ethiopia. conflicts in sri lanka and other places. ukraine is really one among many international conflicts that are occurring at the present moment. but it, is i would argue, i say this by way of introduction, quite a dramatic departure from the recent past. but it is, i would both in eurot i'll try to explain in a moment, but also globally. i would argue, perhaps a little bit of exaggeration, not intentional, but part of what i'm saying

that the events of february 2022, the beginning of the war in ukraine, are on par with the events of that december of 1914. and the events of the fall of 1939. which is to say it's on power at the beginning of the first world war of the second world war. in the late 1940s, the beginning of the cold war, which doesn't have such a precise moment of origin but is a four-year conflict that was very consequential and significant. and i think that we are facing something of similar size and scope and stature with the current war in ukraine. so, let me say first about why this war matters as much as it does for europe. and then a few words for why the war minutes as much of it does globally. and that we can move into our mathematical equation of a not equaling b plus c. europe has not seen a war of

this kind, truly, since 1945. we have an engagement between the largest military in europe, the russian military, and the ukrainian military, which is not the same size of the russian military. the two countries are not comparable in terms of economic heft and population. ukraine, a bit less than 40 million, russia around 140 million people. the russian economy is bigger than the ukrainian. but the military is a significant one as well. if you subtract the russian economy from the equation, you could see that ukraine has one of europe's biggest and most battle-tested armies in all of europe yep. it is a confrontation between two major militaries, not quite on par with each other on paper but two large-scale military's. it is not, as we might've expected ten or 15 years ago, a war that primarily takes place in cyberspace. not a war of

machines and computers as much as a war of soldiers. much the way the venetian war was of soldiers, or the conquest of the roman empire where wars of soldiers. it's a very traditional war and that regard. not all countries are equal in terms of geography. not all countries are equal in the scheme of things, but they're not all equal in terms of geography. so, it matters very much where a war takes place. if the united states fights war incarnated as it did in the 1980s, that matters for grenada. it matters for the united states. but it may not matter for the world. ukraine is a very different kind of thing. from the small country of grenada. uk comprises a very, very important piece of global real estate. it is to the north of the black sea, the black sea unites turkey with europe. turkey with russia. ukraine with turkey. it's a major transit point. and it's a great strategic fleet evidence. ukraine has many countries

abroad as to the last of the european union, hungary, slovakia and poland, as well as romania. so, for countries within the european union. ukraine has bellow wrist to its southern border, which is an independent country but very closely tied with russia. if ukraine has a huge, huge land border with russia. so, ukraine as one of these countries, if you think of the world as jenga blocks, ukraine is one of the countries where if you pull it out it's very likely that the whole tower comes tumbling down. it's connected to many different places. and as a great deal to do with the world economy. if you think of the chinese belt and road initiative that begins in china, has destinations that europe and other places. it runs through the country of ukraine. if you think back to the first and second world wars, although there wasn't identified a country called ukraine, and those towards the territory of contemporary ukraine is integral to both of those wars. many, many battles on the first world war that are fought on

the territory of ukraine. and that, if anything, is you more toward the second world war. they were instrumental to the collapse of the soviet union. it was uganda votes the socialist republic as a part of the soviet union. as ukraine's vote in the fall of 1991 that top of the soviet union. ukraine has perhaps been a little bit less of a gun after 1991 in terms of the history of conflict that is until 2013, 2014 but what revolves around ukraine is simply very important. in that, sense also we can fold into this story, the importance of geography. the fact that russia is one of the combatants in the world. worship is one of the countries that touches upon many other countries with part of russia and asia. part of russia and central asia. part of russia and europe. and now

because this too is an area of contestation, and important -- in the arctic. russia is in many ways at the center of the world and russia is one of the world's two major nuclear powers. any conflict that involves russia involves all of us, it involves humanity because of the nuclear dimension. that raises the stature the war in ukraine i would say to a very high level. let's also understand the stakes of this war. there are times when countries skirmish with one another. they have a conflict over a piece of territory, over an issue and able to contain that skirmish within certain boundaries. those can be terrible affairs, they can be terrible episodes but it's possible to have what you could describe as a-limited war. maybe that's what russia had in 2008. but it's not what ukraine and russia had at

present moment. this is a no holds barred existential war for both countries. if putin loses this war, i feel safe making this prediction, if putin loses this war, his presidency will be over. it is not impossible that his entire government could fall if the war is lost. there is evidence for this in a way that -- two presidents in russian history. one that i would imagine press quite considerably on putin's -- putin being a student of history among other things. and this is the war that russia fought against a panda 1905. it's settled in new hampshire by teddy roosevelt in the summer of 1905. russia lost this war in japan that began the long progression of nicholas the second, last saar of the russian empire towards revolution and towards the loss of power which he experience in 1917. russia and 1917 was in the process of losing the first world war. -- nicholas the second lost two wars, you could

say, and then he lost his government. then after that, he lost his life. and you could also point to the macallan gorbachev who died yesterday, stories are now being written. he lost the war in afghanistan, soviet union lost the war in afghanistan in the 1980s. it was a part of his own power eventually. loss of the war in afghanistan 1987. soviet union cracks up in 1991. not because of these words alone but there is a relationship. putin is there for acutely aware that if he fails in ukraine and he can fill in ukraine, -- -- -- it's a war he can certainly lose. if he does, it will not be a

trivial loss. it will not be a loss that he cannot probably survive politically it. we'll be game over for vladimir putin. i feel in that, sense whenever -- it's a war he has to win the stakes if anything are higher in ukraine. we have seen from the nature of the russian occupation of various territories -- the reporting is never perfectly crist, sometimes murky. but i think that these are safe generalizations. the russian army has committed numerous atrocities. that there have been forced programs of versification of the population that has been forced to take on different kinds of classes and use different language at times. because of the russian occupation. there are reports of tens of thousands or hundreds of thousands of ukrainian children have been deported. to russia. and i think it's no secret that it -- effusion has the ability to assassinate or in some ways to

limit the ukrainian government, i think that's probably what he was trying to do in the first two days of the war. if that was possible for him, this is something that he would do. so ukraine faces the prospect -- of a very -- the loss of freedom in a really every respect i think in that sense, you can say for ukraine as well this is a next essential conflict. if you agree with those two assumptions, those two statements, there is an existential conflict for russia and ukraine simultaneously, it means that these countries are going to give it everything. they're going to push as hard as they can push. to stave off defeat or to achieve victory. this is not going to be some kind of-limited small-scale skirmish. when a country's dispute, little bit like india and pakistan have disputed territory in kashmir for the last couple of decades. but they're not gonna use their weapons against each other because of this dispute. it's a dispute there able to contain. not so in ukraine in the case of ukraine and russia. and

therefore, the final point i made before getting into a review of russian ukrainian aspirations at the present moment or over the last year or so. and that is very possible and conflict -- other countries. more likely then the possibility that ukraine can contain this conflict is the possibility of the conflict will spread to include additional countries. other than ukraine or russia. already you have countries including the united states that are involved in the conflict from a certain distance. it's an open question whether they contain that distance. in that sense, this could be very melodramatic and hopefully not irresponsibly so. in that sense, the war in ukraine runs the very real risk of becoming a world war. that is unfortunately the precedent with these kind of wars in

europe because of the density of countries that are so closely connected and related. they draw one another into these conflict so we have two examples of the 20th century of what were the beginning kind of smaller scale conflicts that developed very quickly into world war. that's something to worry about, something to bear in mind in this case. all of what i'm trying to say. speculative unfactual. all of them trying to say is that the event that has happened before our eyes over the last seven months is one that is of immense significance. so that by way of introduction. if we are to understand the immense significant of this event. we need to understand our the motivations of the primary actors. this is what i will turn our attention to at the moment. what motivates the three major participants in this conflict. the three major participants, a b and c. in radical form or russia, with started the war, that's what we had to begin the story. the war being fought on the territory of ukraine. so that's of equal

importance in terms of understanding the conflict. and one might walk down the streets of washington d.c. on a pleasant late summer early fall day in october or rather august of 2022 and say that this country is nothing to do in the war in europe. the country engaged in its own business, getting ready for midterm elections. back to school, sentiment and mood in washington d.c.. sort of the city still sort of at a rhythm of its late summer vacation. that might all be the optics of washington d.c. at the present moment. but make no mistake, washington d.c. or rather the united states is an unbelievably important participant in the war in ukraine. it would not be unfolding as it is unfolding if the united states were not the kind of participant that it is. that's something -- another piece of the puzzle. even though the war is quite distant, possibly -- american sullivan had any awareness of gun force upon us. although a very distance, the united states is

not distant from the war. we understand the motivations as well. >> what motivated vladimir putin to pull the trigger on the 24th of february, 2022. i think the first thing that we have to say in the spirit of being careful and rigorous is that there is a great deal that we do not know. we don't have access to the inner symptoms of the kremlin. we never making that access. we don't have a historians like to have a good trail of documents were to really lay out the thinking of putin, the decision-making process. the in the vigil advisers, the military planning, et cetera. there's a lot of data that we might wish to have, a lot of the factual information that we might wish to have. then we don't have. hat we don't have. so put an asterisk by anything that is said by or anybody else in terms of putin's motivation has put an asterisk next to that and have that asterisks indicate that what is being said is guesswork and guesswork

different from factual analysis. so since we can't do a factual analysis the way that we could of say czar nicholas, 2 seconds thinking at the time of the first world war, kaiser wilhelm thinking or woodrow wilson's or anybody else is at that time, we don't have that advantage. we'll to just do the best we can by guessing. so in that spirit, i am going to as methodically and, carefully as they can about motivations russia has had for. the brutal war it has been prosecuting in ukraine over the last six and a half months. one of the keys to understanding russian foreign policy is and big u.s. relationship within, russian foreign policy between and defense. it is very, very difficult to disentangle these two things in russian foreign policy. and what two outside observers can like pure offense may from the inside, from the kremlin's

perspective, be perceived as defense. what is perceived as defense? the kremlin can be acted upon in an offensive manner i'll try to make this as clear as i can. this point about russian foreign policy. but i want to begin with this somewhat abstract generalization about russian foreign policy, which goes deep back into russian history. and what are the constants of russian foreign policy going back not decades, but centuries, as is an equation of security and territory security and. territory. it is a commonly made observation and a very legitimate and important one, a commonly made observation that russia is not great britain or japan or the united states that matter. it is not a country that is bounded by oceans, is not switzerland, it's not bounded by mountains. there are no natural borders to the russian landmass and historic russia is one of those

countries that has always had enemies sometimes the enemies have been to the east and sometimes the enemies have been to the west. a less typically have come from the south and there's not much of a north to come from given how far north russia is. so historically, the enemies of have come from the east and the west and a response, a kind of foreign policy response to that situation been to build the defensive. russia can't really build a great wall of china or hadrian's wall around russia. the country is too big. but the defensive strategy has been to add territory to make russia as territorially large as possible. you can say the success of that project to be measured by the circumstance. the largest country in the world is is russia. second largest country in the world is i believe, canada. but that's a lot of fairly northern real estate as well. but russia is by far, i think, ten or 11 time zones by far the

world's largest country. now, how is it that you build territory? how is it that you expand your territory? is a country. it's obviously empire building and conquest. so in a sense this is, again, this sort of dilemma or this paradox, perhaps that offense and defense are intertwined in russian foreign policy. if you think that you make yourself more secure by having more territory, you defend yourself by becoming bigger. the only way that you can do that is by going on the offense to acquire that territory. so you can study. you know, if we had a computer graph, we could sort of do it. the growth of the russian empire into siberia in the 18th and 19th century is very, very far to the east, such that russia has a border surprisingly with north korea, not just with china. mongolia, but it goes so far as to be a bordering state to north korea. and then at the height of the russian empire in the late 19th century, early 20th century, you have portions of poland are part

of the empire, the baltic republics of finland and, you know, sort of very far down to south as such that the russian was sort of there on the of of the southeast of europe or of of of the balkans. so this became a massive empire that developed and i'm again, i'm speaking in the past tense. i'll bring this sort of forward in in just a moment. but again, the paradox of russian history, russian foreign policy has been that in acquiring these territories, conquest, new enemies have created. so you defend yourself from the old enemies by acquiring territory. but in acquisition of these new territories, you also create new for yourself. so it's never been a stable situation, it's never been a a situation of great, you know, sort of continuous security for russia. it's almost been a case or a situation of continuous, insecure city. and very often it has been i don't mean peripheral in the sense of anybody, but it has

been the peripheral populations of the peripheral territory of the russian empire that have it down at various times. so it was in part the difficulty of defending all of its peripheries in the first world war. that was a dilemma for russia and certainly the collapse of the soviet union. it was the peripheral parts of the empire ukraine and baltic republics that dissolved the soviet union in the late 1980s or in in in 1991. so, you know, that sort of equation of becoming more secure through territorial acquisition has not led to stability, at best, from a russian perspective, led to a kind of managed instability. so bear this point in mind when try to hone in now on vladimir putin's reasons for invading ukraine on the 24th of february, i think that what putin judged in the in february and probably the military planning begins at least a year, if not two years

before february 22. i think what he judged is that his point of view, ukraine was drifting out of the russian orbit. we in this class will go much further in the discussion and description of ukrainian politics and why there was a revolution there in 2013 and what that meant for ukraine. we have to put that to the side for a moment just to concentrate on russian decision making and the war. i think putin's judgment was that ukraine was drifting out of the russian, that it was drifting in a westerly direction, that it was forming an ever closer military relationship with nato's not as a member, just as a kind of partner and that it was forming an ever closer relationship with the united states. i think putin's assumption here is that there was a trend at work circa 19 circa 2022 or 2021 when he made the decision to begin for the war that there was a trend or a pattern at work that was very chronological in

nature, that in 2014 ukraine had initiated a closer relationship with the west. by 2022, that relationship was far advanced and think he was projecting into the future to 2032 or 2042 and saying if nothing done, then that relationship will be very advanced indeed. and what russia will have is a non friendly or possibly hostile country on its than a thousand mile border with ukraine. it will be a kind of platform or area military development and that area will be used by the united states allies and partners for. their purposes and that sense, russia has or president putin sort of put it this way either a real vulnerability in real time in 2022. it's a little bit hard for me to imagine nobody was poised to invade russia in 2022, far it so it doesn't seem quite a threat in real time but i think for putin it was a potential threat.

there's this potential there's this potential source of of of danger that's there for us on our border. and that danger is a foreign presence. or if putin to put a face on it, it's the presence of us influenced parties and and and groups now we might disagree with this assessment we might feel this is incorrect that this is paranoid, that this is a misreading of ukraine, it's a misreading of american politics. all of that is very possible. it's certainly highly debatable. all of these points and conclusions if we are to understand putin's decision making, we have to try to enter into his mind. so let's say that that is problem is he understands this the best i can do. i think there are other ways of configuring, but that's the best i can understand. in terms of his deepest motivation for thinking about war in ukraine, if his assessment is that ukraine a potential vulnerability for russia. the second part of the equation that we have to understand for

putin is why he choose to respond with military force. right. he could put the squeeze on ukraine economically. he could go to the u.n. and try to come up with some argument as to why this is not a good situation for russia. he could conceivably it's theoretically possible he could sit down with biden and say, let's work out something different in terms of your position and posture toward ukraine. he could attempt to do something with europeans and say that the us has got it wrong. the us is too forward leaning militarily when it comes to ukraine. so let's you and i, you europeans and i work on something, some other kind of arrangement. these are all theoretical possibilities. a lot of other things that putin could have done other than to invade. so in other words he could have perceived a vulnerability. but the invasion was particular answer to that vulnerable. well, why think it goes back to this issue of of territory? if you equate territory with

security and in a sense you equate going on offense as the best form of defense, think you can see how putin is solving the problem that he put before himself. it's again, for most observers or non-russian observers, a lot of this doesn't make much sense and it will just be the fever dreams of putin or a kind of internal russian imperialism or just the evil of of of of of the kremlin. that's your explanation. but that to me is not a very, you know, sort of serious of trying to analyze these issues. i think there has be more. there has to be more it and so i think that the defensive problem that putin identified or associated ukraine the russian vulnerability, in other words, is one that he believed he had to solve in an offensive manner. and so territorial acquisition and in the course of the war, this is both 2014 and 2022 for russia. russia now controls between 20 and 25% of ukrainian territory. ukraine is a country the size of texas, so it's not a small

country. there's quite a significant territorial to what's happened. and i'm going guess that russia will do it can to hold on to this territory or perhaps to acquire to acquire more. so that is what putin is winning in the course of the war. he may not win political control of ukraine. he would love to have that. he may not win that. but i would not underestimate the importance of the territory as such old fashioned thinking about foreign policy. that territory equals security. you bet. and i think it probably is the way that putin looks at at the world. it's a very interesting question. now, sort of the last thing i'll say about the russian side of the of the story, it's a very interesting now as to whether putin truly believes winning the war. very important to try to figure out a lot of us at the beginning observers, analysts of putin said he looked pale. he looked sickly. you know, he had some kind of deathly disease. he was in the grips of some kind of neurotic, maniacal mood. he seems to have snapped out of it. if that was the case at the

beginning of the war. in other words, there was the sense that putin was sort of not up to the task psychologically at the beginning. there was an outside perception and now many people are saying that putin believes that he is winning that he's winning the war. maybe that's based on misinformation. maybe that's based on what people describe as war optimism. possibly, if he believes he is winning. the final thing that i'll say on this account, if he believes that it's winning, he be measuring his successes in territorial terms. in other words not has every battle gone, not what is president wolanski saying in kiev, not how many weapons is the us providing ukraine? how much territory lies under our control because, you know, in this kind of circular reasoning, the greater the territory that we have around us, the more secure we are at at home. okay, so let's draw a line of that and say that that is that is variable a, let's switch our gaze and perception to the

country that has been the victim of these two wars. in 2008 and rather 2014 and 2022. let's turn our attention now to the country of ukraine and let us try to understand what i'm going to describe as the ukrainian predicament, because i think that this predicament helps us to understand the nature of foreign policy, the nature of its motivation, is in the present tense. that we just say a few words about ukraine in the 1990s, ukraine had a piece of the soviet to go back into. earlier history, and we will. and there's more to it than just the soviet story. but circa 1991, there had a peace of the soviet union. since the end of the world war, parts of ukraine had been a part of the soviet union from earlier times in 1991, ukraine, its independence, its own parliament, its own capital city, its own currency, own flag, no less independent sovereign than the united

states, canada or britain or other long standing and very familiar countries. ukraine is not politically connected to russia in a formal sense. it's its own country, and that's what it wished to be. in 1991 and in the 1990s. but the story that we can tell about the three baltic republics, latvia, lithuania and estonia that were also a part of the soviet union since 1945, is a very different story from the story of ukraine in the 1990s. and so by discussing just a little bit this divergence between these four former soviet pieces of the soviet union, i think we can get to a sharp and good understanding of ukraine situation in the 1990s, latvia, lithuania and estonia. they're all quite small countries population wise. we're on the track in the 1990s, they only got there in the first decade of the 21st century, but they were on the track to join the european union and to join the nato alliance.

these were countries that very much perceived themselves as europe in that had deep ties through diaspora populations to western europe and the united states. and they also, as smaller countries, very manageable as countries that could be brought into the european union, nato, they made a lot of the internal reforms, legal and economic reforms that were necessary to join these western institutions of the european union. in-a-row they were sort of objects of desire joining. this, this, these western clubs. and at a certain point they into into these entered into these institutions that gave these three countries a great feeling of connectedness and security, not least because when you enter nato, as i'm sure all of you know, when you enter day two, you get what is called article five commitment that the united states or any other nato member will come to the defense if there is a threat to if there is a threat to the security of one

of these of one of these countries. so the path these three former soviet countries latvia, lithuania and estonia was path into the west. if you can put that way. it was a path into these western unambiguous populations were in favor of it. they got into the club and i think with very very few reservations, they've been very sort of happy and proud members of the club ever since. i believe it's 2004, the so-called big of of nato expansion, when the three baltic republics entered into the nato's alliance. so bear that in mind. that's possible. post-soviet destiny. but ukraine describes a very post-soviet destiny, a very different state of affairs. ukraine does not join european union or join the nato alliance in the 1990s. and in fact, if go into polling data with the population, there were quite significant divisions within, the population that not more than 50% of the population wanted to join. naito and the european union was

often, was often that it wasn't necessarily the, the chosen the chosen path. it was one of several possible paths. and there was also on the side of the eu. nato's a great reservation about incorporating ukraine large population, big border with russia, many russian speakers there. it just felt from the baltic republics and it felt like more of a a more of a challenge. the predicament of ukraine is how to be autonomous, safe, secure, independent, everything that a country to be its own agent, own decision maker in the world, when you are not a part of one of these larger clubs, when your economy is relatively small. and when you live in a dangerous neighborhood, people have started to make the comparison. and over the last year for the course of the last, it's a very illuminating one between israel and ukraine. likewise israel, you know, it's not world's biggest economy,

certainly not world's biggest population. and it lives in a tough neighborhood. so it's had to figure out how to do that. one of the israeli answers has been to really invest a lot in military affairs. and, of course, israel has a close partnership with with the united states. but has had a much more difficult time of it or a much more difficult challenge, has faced ukraine and this predicament was sustained a bone. as long as russia kept a certain amount of. and the catch 22 of ukrainian foreign policy goes as follows if was deferential toward if it made certain concession, if it didn't rock the boat then things would basically fine and you can sort of study the different ukrainian politicians after 1991, the different presidents of ukraine, and they all kind of manage this a bit differently, but if you if they were deferential toward moscow, if they were deferential toward russia, what they could have was peace security and freedom but there was a nagging,

philosophical that came with that, which is that do you have peace, security and freedom if you're being deferential? is that truly autonomy, if you have to kind of acknowledge that you have, a bigger brother who's going to push you around or knock you around if you go off course or do something that that bigger brother doesn't like, are you truly being free are you truly independent? and so ukraine has had this great challenge of dealing with a neighbor that has all kinds of strengths and all kinds of interests in ukraine and is expecting a certain kind of deference without going into details about why this is the case let me simply state that it is the case in 2013 the deference comes to an end the ukrainian comes to an end. was this a good thing or a bad thing. that's for the ukrainians to say. we can sort of evaluate and and debate this in an academic way. but the fact of the matter is, the deference came to an end and when the deference came to an end, russia chose a policy of

different kinds of vis a vis ukraine. it was definitely the bigger brother and it felt like it had a right to push around ukraine for the sake of its agendas and its aspirations as in the region. remember, this is sort of trying to intertwine things a little bit for russia offense, defense are intertwined. and so what happens in ukraine is understood to be a part of the russian national security story and so russia feels that it a stake or maybe something more than a stake in ukraine and is entitled to sort of push for the outcomes it wishes to have in ukraine. the deference stops in 2013 and you get gradual uptick in military pressure coming from moscow. this first takes the form in ways that we're going to study in much greater detail. this takes the form of the annexation of crimea, a part of ukraine. in march of 2014. then you have an outright war between ukraine and russia for a year, roughly february, march of

2014 till january of 2015. and then you have a very uneasy, nervous stalemate after that on an from from 2014 forward. let me just mention a final sort of detail in terms the ukrainian predicament. i don't think it's anything is resolved at the moment in terms of this issue or this subject. i just want to describe as clearly as i can the last seven or eight months have been some of the most complicated. i don't mean difficult that goes without saying, but have also been some of the most complicated in ukrainian history for the following reason ukraine has done something that it was never able to do in the 1990s. it has got military partners. most importantly, the military partner of the united partnership of the united states. that was not forthcoming a year. that is very much a fact. life at the present moment. even germany, which is a country that very much defined as a

pacifist country after 1945, not a military power, didn't invest much money in defense, doesn't like military activity, really tries to keep a distance from that. even germany is sending panzer tanks and forms of military hardware to ukraine. so even the countries that were self-declared pacifists before the war seven or eight months ago are now military partners of ukraine. norway i heard the striking detail recently at the beginning of the war. it gave its entire artillery to ukraine. can you imagine giving an entire branch of your military hardware to another country? and norway is? only one of many countries that are now currently ukraine. so the complexity is as follows the complexity is, that ukraine now has bona fide military partners, not necessarily a part of nato's, but getting billions upon billions of military assistance from the us and many other countries. and that's going to continue, i think for quite a while perhaps indefinitely in effect.

ukraine has become a member of the club but the price it's paying for this is astonishingly high in the sense that the war is not finished. it's not we don't know how it's going to go and the war is being fought on. the territory of ukraine and. other costs are another way of humanizing the cost of the war for ukraine is some 12 to 13 million refugees or internally displaced people. that's out of a country of a little bit less than 40 million. that would be like one third of americans. what would number be 70, 80 million people? one third of americans losing their homes either within the us or fleeing to canada or mexico or to countries. it's sort of unfathomable, i think, when you put it in those in those local terms, the cost to the ukrainian economy has clearly been immense. and even if when you look at those new york times and other maps of the war, ukraine, you can kind of see that now. it's only only the southeast, the country that's involved, the direct military activities, even. it looks like it's only like a fifth. the country that's actively engaged in the war. the war is being fought all over

the country. the bombs are dropping cities in the west. every family, of course, is affected. and we could go deeply into the economic details of the war, which are very, very disturbing for the society, for the people of ukraine. and also, you could imagine how is it to school the next of children when the country so torn apart by war? in a certain sense, the war is robbing ukraine of its future, not completely, of course. and there are many ways triumphing over over this kind adversity. but to an extent, the war is robbing of its future, and that is the price that is being paid for the war. and at the same time, the war is making it possible for ukraine to resolve one of these outstanding problems of its independence, which is the problem of where do we stand, where are our alliances, where our partners, where are our friends? that question has become much clearer and a sense it's much more favorable to ukraine. but of course, the clouds of

hang very heavily over the country and we have no idea when those clouds are going to lift so that is be that is the predicament of ukraine where to fit where to fall. where to sort of organize itself in terms of its foreign policy, what relationships and alliances to build. and the last months have changed an enormous in that regard. well, we come now to the last part of the equation. the c part of the equation that is united states and let me sort of by inverting things, by turning things inside out and speculating as to why the us is not indifferent about a war in ukraine, why is it that let's imagine what it would look like for the us to be indifferent to the war in ukraine? americans could easily argue that ukraine is very far away. it is many thousands of miles away from the red states. americans could that the us has almost economic equities in

ukraine and that is true that is not a country that does much to determine the course of the american economy neither provides many goods to the us nor does it by many goods from the us. you could sort of go back to the two gulf war, as in 1991 and the iraq war of 2003. and you can see that there was an economic to both of those wars, but not in ukraine. you could argue from an american perspective that the us has been through lot militarily in the last 20, 30 years. it has waged two wars overseas in iraq. afghanistan paid greatly for those wars financially and in human costs and. you know, a lot of americans felt very frustrated with the outcomes of those two wars. so why begin another overseas war if you have that bitter aftertaste in your mouth? and that might be another reason for american indifference toward toward the war and a final reason might thinking sort of abstractly or perhaps coldly

this that the war in ukraine matters less. the united states than a decent, workable relationship with russia, for the simple reason that the united states and russia are the world's major nuclear powers. and so what is the threat that we have from this region. it's not russians taking x, y z cities in ukraine. the threat that americans face is that whole conflict will get out of control and acquire a nuclear dimension and then the us might be somehow pulled into this, this sort of nuclear catastrophe. so you could also say on that that the us might preserve relations with russia for the sake of its own security and in the so to sacrifice ukraine on the altar of american security those are those are all to me imaginable it's very interesting to note that none of arguments has done anything on anywhere or even been apart of the biden administration's thinking about or the war in ukraine. so that might be the case for other administration as it might

be the case for presidential candidates 2024. that's very possible. but for those who have the keys to the foreign policy kingdom, those who are making the decisions, these arguments have not had any traction whatsoever. so the question we have to answer then, not the faux question of why americans are not indifferent to the war in ukraine. the question that we have is answer is why is there such a high of commitment and concern for a country that is far away, for which there are no real economic interests and that does involve or supporting this country involves conflict with one of the world's major nuclear. so the us is in many ways putting itself on the line in the war in ukraine and we have figure out why this might be the case. so let me try to explain as best as i can i tried to do this with as much intellectual empathy as i can for the kremlin and for the ukrainian government. let me try to explain the motivation of the united states and of the white house. we can have a broader

conversation about american public opinion very. very important. that's a complicated conversation to have. but the decision making power is there in the white house. so let's privilege that for today's purposes and just focus on decision making there. why does the why does the house care as much as it does about conflict? why has it made the decision that it's made both during the conflict and in the lead up to the conflict? we need to go back bit in time for this. so history of the present we're speaking about the present, but we need go back into history to think about this particular question to understand answer to this question, american foreign policy is formed modern american american foreign policy is formed in the memory of the two world wars prior to world war one. the us had a very federal government was really not that much in the foreign policy business in the western hemisphere. it was. spanish-american war of 1898. it's sort of pulling the us, the world, but still in many ways the us was pursuing its own

business prior to the first world war. it's the first world war. it's the second world war that pulled united states into the world that makes the united states a global power, that engaged the united states the affairs of the world. it is a conclusion of the makers of american policy. after 1945 that the us has to act very seriously, very in a sort of creatively to prevent a world war three, to prevent a third world war. first world war was very costly for europe, for the united states for the world, second world war was immeasurably costly. the us paid a huge price, maybe not quite the price numerically of the soviet union, but it paid a huge price for the second world war. and so the lodestar of american foreign policy, the driving impulse of foreign policy is no world war three. we need to something better. we need to have a different system mind. we need to have a different state of affairs. where do the first two world wars begin? they begin in europe. they are european wars.

what's the american as to why these wars begin is that you have too little democracy, the one hand and too little deliberation cooperation on the other hand. it is necessary to build structures of cooperation and deliberation. it's necessary to spread democracy for the sake of preventing those kinds of circumstances that created the first and second world war in the american reading of things, this is precisely what united states does for western europe after 1945. so western europe is ruins, it's in rubble. the french and the germans had always been at war. the germans and the british had always been at war. we really need to figure out something better for western and this is to be sure, one of the great success stories of american policy. what do you get by 1950? you have a marshall plan that has helped europe to get off of its feet western europe, get off of its feet economically. and by 1949, you have the nato alliance that instead of

perceiving these different european countries as adversaries, they have become partners and friends, especially. and germany, they're both members of. so the adversity in a sense is gone. and the partnership has been has been built up. this partnership, this peace, which brings great prosperity. western europe lasts until 1989 or 1991, when doesn't come to an end. but it sort of comes to a new stage. the berlin wall falls, the soviet union vanishes overnight. and europe is really dramatically at peace. and then the task of american foreign policy once western europe has in effect and solved, we've solved western europe. i'm putting things a little bit crudely. we've solved western europe. now we have to solve eastern europe. so we've done the job, western europe. now we have to translate. these terms translates the nature of the success into eastern europe. and so there are a lot of success after 1991 in this regard. i've mentioned three of them, the three baltic republics that joined the european and join

nato's. you have the expansion, the eu and the expansion of nato's to include for many former, you know, sort of countries that were under soviet that were under control and a lot of the same benefits follow the prosperity of the movement of populations. the ways in which old adversaries think of germany and poland for many hundreds of years, they've been adversaries in in in europe, poland in germany become equal members of the european union and the nato alliance. so in a sense, that recipe that had worked between france and germany, it works between poland and germany and other countries. after 1991. the premise of the united states also is a little bit more practical in a way this this point the of the us is the sacker thing in europe are the borders of these different european countries. it is crucial that countries be able to maintain their borders. and as a corollary of this probably one of the most important points that you consider in terms of

understanding the american to the war in ukraine, the corollary to this is that a smaller country is not less important than a bigger country. and so the borders of a latvia right. a million and a half people if germany wanted to waltz in and rearrange the borders of latvia, it certainly could in theory. but according to the american reading of europe, the borders of latvia are not less important than borders of your of germany and borders of these small countries have to be preserved. why? well, it's nice for the small that's part of the answer. but the more important part of the answer is that if you allow this to happen, you're going to just get the competition contest, the back and forth resentments, the grievances, the military, settling of scores that's going to bring you back to a world war one or a world war two. you have to keep structure intact. you have to the integrity of these borders and you have to ensure that the small countries are no less secure than the big countries. this is, the american recipe for

peace and prosperity in. well, let's you know, bear all that mind in terms of what's happened in the last year in ukraine let's think of the war in ukraine as a contest between russia and the united states to see which is true. the russian proposition is. ukraine is close to us. it's historically connected. we have a right to figure out in ukraine and surrounding areas what works for us. and we have the military power to do. so if you can't stop us, you have to accept it. it's not the perfect paraphrase, but it's something like the russian proposition at the present moment, the american proposition or the us proposal is that if we allow ukraine to be rearranged, its borders to be rearranged, and if we allow russia to reach its hand in and change the government, ukraine and start to dominate it, the outside in effect to make ukraine kind of colony of russia's what will have been said is the worst possible for europe. we will have gone in the american reading of things to

the 1890s or to the years immediately before the first world war, when all of this stuff constantly being rearranged to divide it in a sort of partitioned, partitioned, colonized, re colonized, etc.. if we go back to that ugly past, the ukraine war is not going to be the only european war. it's going to be first of many european and for the us. i won't linger of this point. i just meant to mention it for your consideration. there's a lot significance for asia as well, because if the rules in europe are that might makes right and that borders don't matter and that little countries are insignificant. well that is going to be something terrible for taiwan, because taiwan is a country that's smaller than china doesn't have the military have to have a china and. if china draws the conclusion from ukraine that these kinds of wars are is now open season for these kinds of wars, then not only will we lose in europe, but we will lose stability in in asia as well. so there is way in which ukraine

matters for it being. ukraine, it's certainly the case that the white house cares about the citizens of ukraine, doesn't want to see displaced people, doesn't want to see the bombing of civilian populations. definitely a moral part. the american response, as there has been to the european and to the response of many who have supported ukraine since the war began. but it does go beyond that for the united states to something larger. the u.s. vision of europe is at stake in the war in ukraine. and so if you that point of view is it cost to send $1,000,000,000 worth of missiles to ukraine on a monthly basis or i think the numbers are even higher than that at the present moment. 3 billion, 4 billion per month. i think it's something like that in terms of u.s. military assistance, those are big. is it costly to send amount of military assistance to ukraine? if what i've said a moment ago is true that the future of europe, the sort of peace and security of europe is at stake, then it's not expensive at all in some respects it's very cheap when you consider when you

consider the alternative so for the united states, the essential thing is not so much that russia be defeated or that russia lose. that, of course, is the preferred outcome for the war in ukraine. the more essential thing for the us is that the old system, the kind of old rules with these intact borders, the importance small countries, the kind of deliberative solution to rather than the military solution to problems in europe. the more important thing is that that old system be kept ongoing and sort of up and running. that is the that is the crucial american motivation. so interestingly, not that we would have pursued this in the campaign in 2020, ukraine has risen to the top of the agenda of the biden administration. it may be in foreign policy, i think it will be the most important issue for biden's first term, if that's all if that's all that there is, and a relatively obscure part of europe, which is what ukraine was, let's say ten years ago,

has to be the central terrain the central battlefield of the 21st century, at the very least for moscow on the one side and for washington, dc on the other. so a russians, russian aspiration is to gain greater control and in its self-perception, greater security through the domination of a certain amount of ukrainian territory that runs directly to the ukrainian desire for sovereignty and independence. and russia's aspirations run directly counter to the vision that the united states for europe. and that's the way in which aid is not equal b plus c and guess you could say that that not equal sign is equivalent to the war that we see before us. so let draw to a close on that disturbing note and the floor is now yours for whatever questions you wish to ask, please. you mentioned earlier how major contributors like united states, england, germany and those baltic states have contributed

lots of weapons to ukraine. if ukraine supposed counteroffensive of like in the south doesn't end up being successful as the fall goes on, i know it's kind of speculative, but would you see maybe a lower amount of weapons and ammunition being devoted, donated by certain countries like norway, sweden, england, germany because right now the us is the main contributor. right? it's an excellent question. i think that, you know, there's a lot to unpack in in that question. i think that as long as ukraine is under duress, that the military assistance will keep flowing. and i think that that is as important for european countries as it is for the us. so i think even the failure of a counteroffensive and we've seen the inklings of that this week given the failure a counter-offensive would not change the fundamental nature of the military support.

i think what the failure of a counter-offensive would change though are the objectives, the kind of endgame that are attached. that's attached to that support. and i think instead of the reclamation of territory i mean, it's sort of officially u.s. policy, us policy that ukraine's goal is to reclaim all the territory that was taken after the 24th of february. and so us military assistance is going for that purpose to kind of bring it back to the status quo before the 24th of february. i think if there would not be a successful counter offensive that would be given up and the objective would be, well, there's going to be line between russia and ukraine at a certain point will be kind of like north and south korea. we want ukraine to be as advantageously positioned, so we need it to be sort of as forward as possible. so the military assistance is still important but it's more for that end than for, you know, sort of bringing the country back to where it was prior to the to the 2022 war. so it's very significant. but the whole issue of a counter offensive, but it's not the

whole game, please. you mentioned how russia has used territory by offense as a way of defense. but i'm wondering how through a historical we can understand the present in the states approach to ukraine by kind of using territory in more manner, by having its allies to preserve the status quo of the world and avoid that world war three. you mentioned that that's that's a very, very interesting question. i think that what it points up is of a big structural difference between united states and and russia, the united states, i think, you know, terrorism can change this perception, but it feels pretty secure and of course it matters a lot that the us has good relations. canada to the north and with mexico to the south and good relations and a different sense with the atlantic ocean and the pacific ocean. so the likelihood that the us would use territory to enhance the security is very, very low.

and in that sense i think you're you're absolutely right that the us tendency when it comes to is global outlook is to build up these large structures of alliances. naito is one example and you use the term ideology what the us feels comfortable with, although there exceptions to be sure when it comes to the practice of american foreign policy, but us feels comfortable, most comfortable with fellow democracies. so there's a very tradition going back really to the american revolution of supporting democracies for the sake, of supporting american security. and of course if you look at russian foreign policy, you'll just see a very very different rhythm to it. the soviet union definitely used ideas and ideology to sort of build influence and to enhance its power. but that's been the story in russia after 1991. i think their territory what you could sort of classically understand is these very, you know, sort of hard national security issues that sort of driven everything and ideas and ideology have been less have been less significant.

so it's very helpful to try to understand the contrasting could put it this way the contrasting security of the united states and russia, because they play off of each other in ways that matter a lot to this to this war, please. i mean, i was going to ask. so the us foreign has been very different throughout the years, obviously, but specifically a change a lot in the cold war since they were kind of playing dirty by using the cia to then get them to train other people inside countries. do you think the us would that maneuver again and so do you think that lead to another possibility like cold. so that's a that's a very, very interesting question about you sort of rough tactics and and as say playing dirty. i mean, i would argue in a way that the us has always been pretty with tough tactics i mean

well before the cold war certainly the conquest of native american land is not a, you know, sort of a matter of of genteel politeness. the mexican-american war was of 1848 was a war of conquest in which, you know, texas, new mexico, nevada were sort of taken from mexico by a force. 1898. i mentioned the spanish-american war that makes the united states for a time sort of formally an empire and, you know, those were brutal military campaigns at that time. sort of brutality and toughness, i think, are not foreign or non-native to american foreign policy by by any means. i think that you're asking about a kind of revival of a cold war. i think we're kind there already in many ways, at least in the european domain. i think we're we're there in the sense that this is a war that's being fought on multiple planes as the cold war was the

battlefield dimension. there's an economic dimension, uh, you're mentioning ideas, an ideology. united states positions itself as a friend of europe, of ukrainian democracy, and is very critical of russia's authoritarianism and autocratic. that's certainly very reminiscent of the cold war and lots of russian rhetoric about the united states as hegemonic and aggressive and and and arrogant is very reminiscent of the cold war as well. so i think in many respects we're sort of already there. the only distinguishing point i would make between now and then, between the cold war and the present moment in terms of us-russian conflict, is that it's not as global as it was then. and it sort of works differently in a sense during the cold war, the soviet union and the us were the world's two major powers in a sort of and away. and so what they contested over in the middle east and africa, latin america, asia that determined a great deal. i mean, now you have china, you have india, you have brazil you

have many countries that independent and important players. and you can't say that the us and russia, they're both less powerful than they were during the cold. so it's not quite the structuring of global conflict that the cold war was, but in europe it feels a lot like a cold war and know to come full circle with your question you're asking brutality and toughness, you know, in a way that's all wars evoke. but if it's a new cold war, very likely there'll be a tough and brutal edge to it, given the nature of the war in that all these various actors of varying metrics. so three goals in the high stakes nature. is that even possible for an besides the total victory to end war, like is there any hope of a peaceful outcome diplomacy working in to resolve the conflict? now this question is a is a crucial question it's a very, very hard one. it's a very one to answer. but since we concluded lecture on with white house with the biden administration, let's think about it from there from their angle of a vision.

is there going to be a total triumph over russia of a kind of world war two style, absolute? i don't think it's possible. not because russia is incapable of failure, but because russia is a nuclear power. and, you know, you can't really defeat a nuclear power. it defeats itself as the soviet union. did in 1991. so that's not really an option. the defeat of russia as such is not an option. i think what the biden hopes for is a combination of two things. in ukraine, this is at least the best case scenario for the us that there will be a battlefields, a set of battlefields, setbacks in ukraine that will just make the whole thing very, very difficult for russia and that will intertwine with the second dynamic, which will be changed political atmosphere. russia itself, where the war becomes less popular. so sort of happened in afghanistan with afghanistan in the 1980s for the soviet union. it fought the war. it didn't go well. the war actually became unpopular in 1987 after invading

1979, the soviet union withdrew. so i think that that's the most optimistic sort of best case scenario for the biden administration. but i think the biden administration recognizes that that's probably an unlikely and that's going to be some messy finish to the war where neither the ukrainian or the russian side gets everything that it wants but it will be either some stalemated of a kind of endless frozen conflict or it will be a very, very uncertain negotiated settlement that could well result in other wars down the line. i'm not a very optimistic, i'm afraid, but it's it's the best i can do. please. this question refers back to the podcast we listen to on the russians. russia's plan for referenda could you explain how this plan demonstrates that russia doesn't want to negotiate with ukraine. right. well, that's a very good question. for those who haven't heard the podcast. this is a we're on the rocks conversation about the of the state the war between ryan evans and michael to two experts.

and it was discussed the possibility of a um of sort of referenda that would be held in occupied territory ukraine occupied by the russian military and these referenda start to make these territories, at least in russian eyes parts of russia administratively, you know, sort of russian land as crimea has been, has made. and this would be completely intolerable to the ukrainian. so your question is spot on if this does happen. i think for the ukrainian government to negotiate, it's that much more difficult and the negotiations are not going well beforehand. does russia show any at the present moment of wishing to negotiate? certainly don't see them. you know, there's the rhetoric is maximalist. the invasion is certainly ongoing. and these kinds of measures, the referenda are deeply provocative. does that mean that negotiations is off the table forever? no, mean i think all wars

reflect, including the second world war, including the cold war. including the first world war. all wars reflect the sort of simultaneous wilting and the will to battle. there's always a kind balance there and there's very, very little negotiation at the present moment if something really does start to change. and one of the two sides are on both of the sides the negotiations will return the war serves certain needs for russia perceived needs and it's certainly throwing everything behind. it's not a war that ukraine can afford to lose. but just think all the incentives. if you if you can think beyond the kremlin, think of all the incentives to stop the war, all of the ways in which people would benefit from stopping the war. so that has to play a role in the scheme of things and may work in the favor of some kind of negotiated settlement down the road but prospects negotiations in the short to medium term seem absolutely bleak please. elaborate further as to why it

was so easy for the baltic states to join the eu organizations like that as to ukraine and why it was so hard for them to basically assert their own independence within, you know, the freedom that was allotted to after the fall of the soviet union. yeah, this is another this is another excellent, excellent question as to why, for some countries, it was easy to the club and for other it was it was very hard. it's definitely the case. taking a step back from your question that for the eu and for nato, it's as if they had a road map or a blueprint they didn't expect. the berlin wall to fall when it fell. they didn't expect the soviet union to collapse. nobody did that sort of created such good conditions for eu, nato, but it was unexpected. and so what you see after 1991, it's very typical of diplomacy in international affairs. there's a lot improvization, you

know, this country might apply. why not? it should apply. it's a good idea for it to apply. part of the reason that poland and czechoslovak russia had such good prospects applying is not because these countries had all the perfect merits to enter nado in the 1990s, but because they had very beloved leadership of the 1990s. lech walesa and havel were really popular in. washington and when they came knocking on the door and said, let us into naito, they had a lot clout in washington dc. so that could be a factor. you know geography was certainly a factor and it just kind of happened haphazardly in a sense. so part of the answer your question is that it was a very process of how various countries entered in to the eu. nato's it was not a top down very rationally planned process. but why was easier for the baltic republics? i think size, as i mentioned earlier, plays a big role in this. lithuania is a little bit less than 3 million. latvia, estonia each, roughly a million and a half. i that's just so much easier to manage than a country of

million. turkey is a naito member. it's a very large country, a pain in the neck for washington often. but it is a nato member. it's never been a member of the eu. i think for a similar reason that it's just a big country to bring in and the eu has never, you know, sort of able to to manage that. you know, i think that there are other answers when it comes to ukraine that officials will give you from the eu and from me too. and one of the things that they would have pointed to, of course, the current war is that, you know, of corruption, rule of law was a in ukraine in a way that it was not in poland or the baltic republics. hungary, czechoslovakia, rather czech republic, slovakia, other countries that did enter nado, romania, bulgaria, etc., that they sort of work that out better than ukraine did. and ukraine was a problematic in that regard. but i probably the ultimate answer and it's very frustrating to state from a ukrainian of view but the ultimate answer is the proximity to russia and that the baltic republics other on the map, they're not further from russia then than ukraine

is. they felt in some ways further from russia non slavic populations, predominately not orthodox christian. however you wish to sort thematic these things perhaps perceive as more european than ukraine, but the sense that ukraine was somehow tied to russia i think was very problematic. the western europeans and others who are contemplating membership in nato's in the eu that of course looks very different in the hindsight the last 12 months. but i think that that was an important part of the story in the 1990s and thereafter. well, i would like to thank for your wonderful questions and to thank this audience and our other audiences their attention over the past hour and 20 minutes. thank you very much.