This is Democracy – Episode 185: Ukraine Invasion by Russia

This is Democracy, a podcast about the people of the United States, a podcast about citizenship, about engaging with politics and the world around you. A podcast about educating yourself on today’s important issues and how to have a voice in what happens next. Well, welcome to our new episode of this is democracy.

This is a special episode today that we are recording, uh, on the day that, uh, the Russian invasion of Ukraine has really, um, come to pass, uh, something that we long expected, but hoped would not occur. And we felt we had to record another episode this week. We normally only record one a week, but we felt we had to record another one to document this moment.

And to provide us all a space to reflect and think about what we’re experiencing today. Many of us have been following Russian foreign policy, European politics and modern world history for a long time. And, uh, any account of democracy in the modern world is really built around these regions as important areas.

And, uh, the events of the last, uh, 24 hours have been disconcerting to say the least. So our podcast today is really trying to explore, understand, and come to grips with what’s occurring before us. Uh, the kind of warfare we thought was long in the past, but clearly isn’t a, we’re joined by our longtime friend and general mench, uh, Dr.

Doctor. Kimmage uh, Michael, as many of you know is a distinguished scholar of, uh, Eastern Europe, Russia foreign policy and American politics. Uh, he wrote a phenomenal book on, um, the importance of the west and the rise and fall of ideas about the west in our society and these written wonderful books on American conservatism and literature and society.

He also served on the policy planning staff, uh, in the state department and is very involved with the German Marshall fund, uh, and various other groups, uh, looking at and understanding foreign policy in our world today. And he’s been on our podcast many times to talk about Ukraine and Russia. Uh, Michael, thanks for agreeing to join us on.

What’s a super busy and difficult day for you. It’s such a pleasure to be with you both. No better place to be and a to get us started as always. We have, uh, Mr. Zachary’s, uh, scene setting poem. Uh, what’s the title of your poem? Exactly. Well, today this poem is titled in Kiev, but it’s, uh, only one third of a larger poem called our Ukrainian love story.

And this is a poem you would have written about a week ago, right? Yeah. You wrote it for a different context, right, right, right. For, for, for the time before the war. Right. Okay. Well, let’s hear it in my mind. We would have met in Kiev along the Neper and we would have walked the beaches. Yes. I know it is winter and it is all probably frozen over or at least colder than ice.

But I still think I could fall in love with you. In my mind, we would’ve stood under the statues and cathedrals and monasteries and laughed because it had all turned to dust before. Yes, it will be dust again. And probably if not yesterday, tomorrow, if not tomorrow than an hour from now, but I still think I could fall in love with you.

There we’d find a park in an old neighborhood and sit, maybe even as the guns were rolling in. In my mind, we would’ve met in Kiev and you would have looked me in the eyes without flinching and I would return the favor. Yes. What can it possibly be worth this falling in love in a park, but I would like our love story to end a true tragedy, not just a war.

In my mind, we would’ve met in Kiev along the Neper, you and I walking between real people, holding onto reality and realness and realistic reifying repetitious in decency. Yes. Wouldn’t you say it’s indecent to fall in love before the war, before anyone can twist it and make it seem trite or stupendous or patriotic.

Wouldn’t you say it’s indecent. In my mind, we would have met in Kiev, in a cafe and we would have sipped our coffee. What else are we supposed to do in my mind? We would’ve hugged a tree stump or bumped into a great Oak and no one would kill us for having disrespected the trees. It seems so much more beautiful that way in my mind, who would’ve met in Kieve in a cafe just before all this, maybe yesterday and maybe inadvertently, we could fold a thousand paper cranes.

I love the closing on the paper cranes. Zachary, what is your poem about? My poem is really about, uh, understanding the extent to which people’s lives go on as normal before, after, and during war and the way that these universal themes of love and and violence are are, are just heightened during war they’re.

They’re not suppressed. Hmm. Um, Michael, I think this poem is, is in your wheelhouse. You, you, you bring such a literary sensibility to your policy and scholarly work. I’m, I’m curious your reflections on, on the, on the last day and the war in Ukraine, I think Zachary has captured something significant about many wars.

Certainly the second world war is this way, but, uh, very much the case with this four, which is it’s, it’s sudden this, of course, we’ve all been reading the news for the last year and we know that. Where has been possible, and there’s been more in Ukraine for the last eight years. That’s the reality for sure.

Um, and it’s not to trivialize that, but, uh, this mass invasion of a kind that has disrupted civilian life, uh, uh, in a country of some 40 million people, the rapidity of it, uh, the way in which the bombs began early in the morning. Uh, and with, with Sarah, you know, with the ruthlessness of that transformed everything, I think Zachary is exactly right.

There’s the overlay of normal life of love and cafe and parks, uh, and the conventional life of a conventional and beautiful city. Uh, and then there’s the horrific interjection, uh, and disruption of war and the two things coincide and coexist. And I agree with Zachary entirely, that’s the tragedy of war because you don’t cease to be human in the midst of war.

You’re almost excessively human in the bone captures that. Michael, how should we think about, uh, what’s happening in, in, in Ukraine, not just in Kiev and other areas, how should we understand? Uh, we can see the bombs. We can, we can watch CNN and they’ll narrate for us, the, the military elements of warfare, and we can hear the speeches from the politicians.

Um, but, but how should we try to understand what’s happening on the ground? I think a point that’s worth bearing in mind amid this, this, this blizzard of, of events and, and, and details the liquor just for a moment with, with literature. One moment longer since sacri has so kindly brought us there. There’s the wonderful novel cycle of John does pass us from the 1930s, uh, called USA.

And one of the things he does in that book is to. Parse without any explanation, all of these different hard-hitting headlines. And it just seems like modernism when you read it as a college undergraduate, but it’s been coming to my mind today because you take all these headlines and you can’t make sense of them.

They sort of overwhelm you and just pass those captures that really well. And I think for all of us, it’s hard not to have that feeling at the moment. So I think if we were to pull back and try as best we can to get something of a big picture view of this event, uh, and it’s only the first day of last, but the point I would understand.

Is the radicalism of Poussin’s methods here. Um, a lot of people, myself included have been speculating for the last couple of months about what might happen. We knew that he assembled some 200,000 soldiers with an enormous amount of firepower. We know that there are military assets that Russia has in Crimea and an Eastern Ukraine or the Donbass.

This is. In and of itself a surprise and you could play out various scenarios that maybe there would be enhanced fighting on the line of contact in Eastern Ukraine. Maybe Russia would bite off yet. Another piece of the. Uh, and seek to destabilize or seek to, to get the west or Ukraine back to the diplomatic table.

All of that was, was speculated about, but that wasn’t the approach that, that puts in turkeys, uh, you know, taken into his sites. One of Europe’s largest countries, territorially, uh, with tens of millions of people in this population. And not only has the attacks from the Eastern. Uh, and the south, but he’s also, his armies have engaged in bombing in cities as far west, as, as the leaf and Ivano frontiers, which is, I think very few people in Ukraine and elsewhere expected from this, uh, from this endeavor.

So it’s a massive military campaign. And I think we can extrapolate from that, that this will be. Whatever this means, and however, successful or unsuccessful they’re going to be. This is going to be a massive political project as well. Uh, so this is not a reshuffling of the deck of the diplomatic cards, uh, in someplace like Geneva or Vienna, where you can come back with some kind of face saving victory, uh, or, uh, a newly designated treaty of some kind.

This is a massive effort to reorder in military and eventually in political terms. And that takes. And how should we understand the human cost on the ground? We’ll we’ll do you think we’ll see a major refugee crisis? Are we seeing that at the moment? I think we can still entertain two scenarios at the moment.

Despite what I just said a moment ago about the, the radicalism of the, uh, of the operation. I think it is possible that the next week or two, uh, Putin could enable, uh, a cease fire of sorts or. Uh, and he could use the leverage that he’s gained on the battlefield to try to impose terms on the existing, um, on the existing Ukrainian government.

Um, in other words, it keeps the Lansky there, keep the governments and tax don’t have to deal with an occupation, uh, and therefore with an insurgency, but try to get what Russia wants to. some degree of control over the country, uh, by threatening further military force. In that case, thinking very optimistic.

There will be immense humanitarian costs of the operation. Uh, but they won’t be, uh, on the largest possible scale. If Putin on the other hand goes for something like partition of the country or what may be conceivable given some of the military moves and outright effort to conquer Ukraine, to install a puppet and really to control the country from Moscow and the way that Russia controls Bellaruse.

Then I can’t imagine the Humanic current humanitarian costs being other than anything. Than than entirely catastrophic, because you’ll have two kinds of humanitarian costs. You’ll have all the people who are driven out by the war itself, but then you’re going to have an incredible resistance and Ukraine to this kind of Russian control, this Russian stage managed political process.

This is at the moment, a free society. It has political parties, it has institutions. It has civil society. You don’t terminate that overnight and people are not going to give up those qualities or those. Uh, overnight either. And the only way you can do it is through, uh, an architecture of repression, uh, that in and of itself will have enormous humanitarian consequences.

This is somewhat similar to the Stalinist tactics that were employed between 1945 and 1948 in places like Czechoslovakia hungry, uh, and pull into the Baltic republics. They didn’t want to be part of a Soviet Imperium, but coercion made them a part of the Soviet Imperium. Once again, a terrible humanitarian costs.

Right. And, and most scholars yourself included would put the numbers at above 20 million casualties during that period during the 1930s and forties. Why Michael. It does Russia have this obsession with Ukraine? Why does Putin have this obsession? He, he makes a very transparently, superficial and unpersuasive argument about this being the heart of Russia.

There’s there’s gotta be something deeper. Uh, why do you think this obsession exists? Okay. Let me review as best as I can. We all believe, I think that the idea of strategic empathy that we try to understand. Uh, adversaries and even enemies sort of in their own terms. So I’ll engage in that in the spirit of neutrality.

And we’ll try to explain Putin’s view as best as I understand. Uh, in, in a way that makes sense to him, uh, if not to us, uh, and we’ll explain two dimensions of his approach to Ukraine, one of which is cultural or civilizational, uh, and the other of which is geo-strategic or geopolitical, and they intersect, I think it’s clear.

And it’s implicit to your question, Jeremy, that the geo-strategic is more important than the cultural civilizational, but. Well, when listens to his speeches, you see how often he argues in cultural and civilizational terms. So here, I think we’re sorta familiar from all of the speeches he’s given recently that there is a religious bond between the two countries.

That there’s a way in which Russia sort of drew life Muscovy through life from, uh, from Kevin Roose, from medieval Ukraine, uh, and that these two people sort of emerged in tandem with one another Ukrainian and Russian with shared linguistic affinities. Cultural affinities, um, cuisine, Folkways music, uh, et cetera, in, in, in, in vitamin or plutons parlance, you know, sort of one people.

And you want to understand, yeah, there’s something very particular to the Putin’s argument here, but it’s also a broader Russian argument about Ukraine’s bond with Russia. The premise here highly politicized of course, is that the west has consistently used a Western Ukrainian nationalism as a lever of influence.

Break up this pond to separate Russians and Ukrainians to put them at odds with each other and thereby to a week in Russia, the polls have done this and the Austro-Hungarian empire did this and Nazi Germany did this. And then the United States has done this more, uh, more recently. So it’s not just a romantic cultural civilizational argument.

It’s an argument of grievance. Uh, and when you hear of flutes and speaking of liberating Ukraine at the present moment, fantastic as that sounds. It sort of follows from that the west and a nationalist lead has superimposed something artificial and repellent, um, Nazi in orientation, according to Putin, uh, until Ukraine and Russia will now eliminate that sort of allow you to create and to be, uh, to be Ukraine even uses the phrase.

He even uses the phrase D Nazi precise. The phrase do not certify which, uh, as everybody points out for a country with a Jewish Jewish heritage president, uh, is, is, is baffling. But it’s of a piece with this it’s really about outside influence. That’s important. What he means is the most extreme form of it.

The ugliest form of it, the Nazi, a Nazi forum, and you’re sort of allowing what’s indigenous to be indigenous. I think he’ll encounter a lot of difficulty with this project on the ground when the fighting was over. Uh, and if he does pursue a political project there, I think he’ll find as much more difficult to an accident.

His theory of the. Uh, it would suggest, but that’s, you know, time will tell on that, on that, on that couch, the strategic arguments is, um, uh, is, is of course very significant. And part of it is not madness on BlueJeans part. This is a neighboring country. There’s a very large border between Ukraine and Russia.

Historically, there’s been a big commercial connection, uh, between the two countries. Russia has Naval assets and the black sea that are affected by. Uh, the pitcher’s position of Ukraine. Historically, if you want to go down this road, invasion of Russia have come through, uh, Ukraine. It’s not entirely wrong to think of both the first and the second world war as Ukraine wars, uh, in a certain sense.

And so, uh, it, it is clear that Ukraine occupies an important strategic position, uh, for Russia, but what Putin has taken from that, what he spun from that simple circumstance, uh, is a twofold approach to this crisis, which he himself has general. Which is that he is going to use military force for one of two possible Ames.

Uh, the first is to block certain outcomes. And primarily that would be the military affiliation between Ukraine and the United States or between Ukraine and NATO between Ukraine and Europe. This is empirically a relationship and military relationship that has been growing in the last couple of years between Ukraine and the west.

And Putin finds it entirely unexpected. Uh, and has not been unclear about his willingness to use military force, uh, to terminate that, to, to, to put an end to that relationship. That’s I think his minimal aim and Ukraine, and I suspect that that is achievable for him through, uh, through military forest one way or another.

His other aspiration, uh, is political in nature. He wants to create a compliant. That’s at the very least deferential to Russia, but better than that, and this plays back into his cultural reading of the country, that’s loyal to Russia and he will attempt, I think, to use military force to create this kind of Ukraine, either through a puppet or through some other kind of government structure.

That’s put. Uh, and that’s of course, vastly more ambitious. And I suspect his chances of succeeding at that second project that sort of second political project are pretty close to zero. And he’s already tried a few times by trying to install various figures, uh, which actually was one of the motivations for the color revolutions, which in some ways has brought him to this, to this moment, Michael, that would, that was a super helpful historical dissection of this, uh, Topic of the crisis and it showed why understanding the history of societies is so important when you’re trying to explain the current moment, do Russians Russian citizens, the ordinary, Yvonne, and Anya as Ronald Reagan would refer to them.

Do they, um, do they buy into this as well? And does it even matter? I think it does matter in some respects. This is I find in the current crisis, one of the essential questions, whereas whereas Russian public opinion gonna fall, but as all this mean for dimension, domestic, Russian politics. And I will say here, uh, that my own.

Level of knowledge here is very, very thin. So I’m just guessing I haven’t been to Russia since 2016. It’s an enormous country. It has all of these different social, uh, segments. And I simply can’t predict, uh, how they’re going to respond, uh, to this massive, massive warrants. So I’ll offer it two points that contradict each other in terms of what Russia public opinion may do in light of this cataclysmic event.

One is that there will be a rally around the flag of. Uh, lots of Russians and it’s sometimes it’s not as grandiose as Putin makes it out to be lots of Russians have family members in Ukraine. So when you hear this phrase, one people, we might think that that’s a pretext for imperialism and it may well be for Putin, but a lot of Russians hear that and they say, yes, my grandparents, grandfather, or grandmother is from Ukraine.

So we are. Uh, of the same family and then a lot of Russians traveling vacation and Ukraine. Uh, that’s going back to Soviet times and there’s a kind of sentimentality that it’s, it’s, you know, sort of, uh, um, I don’t know, in the way that Americans might have sentimentality Bobcat can, I don’t know if they think that Mexico in the U S or the same country, but there’s a kind of affinity there, right?

There’s a, there’s a, there’s an identification perhaps with the, uh, with the place or the, uh, or the location. So it can be sentimental and , and not necessarily. Uh, political or geopolitical, but there is, I think, a popular presumption in Russia that Ukraine, uh, is very much a part of our world. And perhaps we, as Russians are very much a part of, uh, of its world and Putin plays on that.

But beyond that, in terms of the popularity of this for such as it is, and if you look at the Luvata polling over the last week, um, you know, it doesn’t look like it’s immediately, uh, unpopular in Russia. I think that there is a sense that. Russian autonomy, Russian assertiveness, Russia, creating facts on the ground, standing up to the west, securing its borders, exerting influence.

All of this is, is positive in nature. So we look at the war, we see the horror of it. I think it’s possible from a Russian point of view, to look at the war. Um, I’m not quite sure what the right word is, but to see the purpose of it, uh, perhaps, uh, and to see the Russian initiative behind it and to perceive that initiative, uh, in positive and constructive terms, again, very difficult for us to get to that narrative through our news media and through our point of view.

But, uh, I think it’s there. And for a while I suspect the war will be popular when Russian soldiers start to die, you know, what did. Uh, Elliot Cohen right today on Twitter, the great, uh, uh, foreign affairs scholar, former Dean of Johns Hopkins CISE that what we really need to do to deal with Russia and Ukraine is body bags.

I’m not sure. I think that when Russians see soldiers dying there, they’re going to look at that with. But there’s a natural instinctive wartime reaction that you’re killing our guys. And, uh, we’re going to be invested in the war for that reason. So it will be up to a point of popular war with many elements, especially if gluten’s a constituency that said we saw a protest today and some 50 over 50 Russian cities.

Uh, I think Putin’s messaging to the Russian population has been busy. I think he seems not to care about younger Russians. He’s making all of these Soviet Neo Soviet, Neo Imperial, Russian arguments, uh, that may appeal to pensioners and people of an older generation. I just wonder how that works, uh, for younger people.

Uh, and I think when Russians see the humanitarian crisis, and this is not the Soviet union anymore, you’re not going to be able to block. Images entirely. They will filter in to the Russian consciousness when they see those humanitarian disasters that Russia is going to create in the course of this sport, they will say, that’s my grandmother’s town.

Or that’s the place that I’m familiar with. These are people that I know they’re there like me, it’s the same religion, it’s the same language, more or less. Um, uh, and that will be very, very Dem. Uh, for Putin wars of choice, as we all know, right? Jeremy wars of choice are especially perilous for governments.

And when those words of choice go badly, uh, it can have a really deleterious, uh, effect when you’d think, when you think back only to the war of 1905, between Russia and. And how that is a, is a, is an ingredient later of the, of the Bolshevik revolution of bank 17. And that’s especially true. Of course, when the expectations are so high of an artificial quick victory without any resistance of any kind.

Absolutely. What about the, uh, Ukrainian leadership, uh, where do they fall in this and, and, and how do they handle a situation like this? That seems almost entirely unprovoked. Uh, and, and, and how did. How do they gain the support they need from, from the west Zachary, I’m going to be very candid, sort of to the best of my abilities.

And what I’m going to say is going to be very depressing and will seem a little bit, perhaps unfair to a government that’s fighting for its life in a country that’s fighting for. But, uh, I think we don’t benefit from, um, from sugarcoating and from, uh, innovation of the knowable facts in my view. And I feel churlish saying this at this very moment.

Uh, I think that the Ukrainian government over the last couple of years was unnecessarily intransigent in terms of the diplomatic process. Uh, they sort of thought that uncle Sam was behind them. You know, they had lost the military battles in 20 14, 20 15. They came to the table, they signed these agreements that they didn’t like.

Uh, and then they didn’t implement them. They didn’t want to see them implement that. I fully understand in human terms. And I very well understand that political terms, why it was near impossible for them to do that. But in light of what’s happening now on the ground, when I look back at those moments, I wonder if it wouldn’t have been better to just be Darwin, say it sort of more conciliatory to the country that does have.

Uh, military there, lots of dangerous in that approach and you can lose that way as well. Uh, but, uh, in retrospect, I think, um, not every option was explored and I have regret about that and I have regret about how the U S approached and framed this issue, uh, as well. But that by now of course, is, is, is water under the bridge?

Uh, Michael, before, before we just move on, I don’t want to catch up. To explain to our listeners, you’re referring to the Minsk Accords and particularly agreements that had been made or signed, at least that would have given more autonomy. As I understand it, to, uh, areas in the Donbass, uh, the Eastern Ukraine with the areas that have large Russian populations, is that what you’re referring to?

Exactly. And the Ukrainians perceive this rightly this is how the Russians intended. It’s the bitterness of this whole situation as a poison pill for Ukrainian politics, because this would have been. Eastern Ukraine under a kind of Russian control tacit or explicit vetoes over Ukraine foreign policy. It would have been a diminishment of Ukrainian sovereignty.

And that was the dilemma. Do you accept that and perhaps accept future such efforts to diminish your sovereignty? Uh, or do you not accept it, uh, and try to sort of fight your way forward. They chose that. Uh, and, um, uh, and you know, and we can study that as the knowable choice. We don’t know what would have happened with these other, uh, with these other choices.

The second point I’ll make here in terms of Ukrainian leadership. Uh, and I’ll conclude with a, a few kind words about Selenski for whom I have at this particular moment, enormous admiration. Uh, they made a decision not to mobilize two months ago when the U S was saying, this is going to happen. I’ve never seen, I think we’ve all been sort of marveling at this.

I have never seen. Uh, white house using intelligence, uh, in this way with lists with this degree of confidence that this degree of openness, obviously they would have shared a lot, drive it with the Ukrainian government, the white house that they didn’t share in public. Uh, and we know now hindsight being 2020, uh, that the U S.

Uh, so it’s baffling. It was baffling to me. Then I have a tweet to this effect. So I can, uh, you know, sort of legitimize this, uh, this, this, this, this claim. At least it was baffling to me. Six, seven weeks ago as the Lensky didn’t vocalize. Obviously he didn’t. Inside the Russians by mobilizing, he didn’t want to panic this population or tank the economy, but my guess is he just got it wrong.

And that’s a pretty huge mistake to make when you’re in a situation that militarily for Ukraine is in every respect, the game of a game of inches. So they are evacuating now and mobilizing, uh, in a rapid fire away. But I just fear it’s it’s, it’s it’s much too late. Uh, they face. The most tragic and terrible choice at the moment they are going to lose militarily.

That’s not, I think really in question, uh, it may take three months. It may be more like the Soviet Finnish war, which was brutal and difficult and much longer than Stalin expected it to be, uh, or it may be. And I suspect that this is probably closer to the truth as far as one can predict it more like the Iraq.

Uh, of 2003 or the first Gulf war where it just, you know, you have two militaries that are not matched. Uh, and, uh, one of them is sort of destined, uh, in a sense to lose. If that’s the case, then we know that Putin has these hit lists, or we think we know that he has these hit lists and he’s already made those statements that he’s got to get the Nazis out of the Ukrainian government instead of purge, uh, Ukrainian, uh, the Ukrainian polity of these negative forces.

So I’ll ask you sense, a very good chance of losing his life and not, you know, a month from now, possibly next week, you know, Kia is already, uh, semi circled by Russian, uh, military. So do you, um, go down with the ship? I says, as I suspect, so Lansky will, uh, and in the process encouraging insurgency that we’ll retain, uh, the country’s honor, uh, and try to live for a better day.

Uh, whenever that may be, or do you consider surrendering, uh, in some way or suing for peace? And I suspect that he’s just not going to do that. It doesn’t seem in character for him. I can admire him for that. And, um, but I’m also not sure when I think about this alternative, I just, I, I don’t know how to handle it.

I’ll I’ll, I’ll, I’ll sort of leave it at that, but just to, to come in with a concluding word about Selenski, this man came to the job as a former comedian, as an entertainer, a television person that. Uh, and we can laugh at that and say, this is the Trump of, of, of, of Ukraine. He’s, you know, younger than I am.

I think he’s 43, 44 years old. And he also looked, you know, sort of, uh, out of sorts. And then he got a subjected to all of this. We are treatment from Donald Trump and he had to deal with. Uh, and he’s struggled with the job and, uh, he’s not always been great at it, but boy has he shown real courage in the last couple of weeks, he went to Munich, he came back, uh, he really spoke with such dignity on the Eve of the, uh, of the invasion that I suspect what he’s doing.

Maybe I’m reading too much into it. He knows he will die or end up in some Russian prison. He’s thinking about the future Ukraine. He’s thinking about the Ukrainian. That will be. After this war and after this occupation, which is, uh, the purest form of heroism that I can, that I can think of in politics.

Well, and he has shown, it seems to me, Michael, and this is implied in your, in your lovely comments. He has shown for all his, sometime in competence, he’s shown a real commitment to something larger than himself. And it’s at least reminded me in this terrible tragic moment that is ugly as politics is, uh, they’re still there.

There’s still is heroism. That doesn’t mean you get a heroic outcome. Um, but there’s, there’s a nobility in that. And, um, maybe that is a tiny silver lining and maybe that becomes something for future Ukrainian, uh, citizens to look toward. Um, I know you have other people you need to talk to Michael, uh, who are eager to get your, your thoughts and insights.

I wanted to close by asking you yet another hard question and I promise it will be the last one. What should we do? In the United States. And I don’t, I don’t just mean what should president Biden do? I think that’s an important conversation, obviously, but many of our listeners, many citizens, many of your friends and my friends, Michael, uh, care deeply, even if, uh, they’re not experts on Ukraine.

Uh, I think it’s fair to say that most people, uh, oppose the idea of a big country conquering a small country in this way. And, um, that’s the most simple way to understand what’s happening here? Uh, so what, what should we as citizens, uh, who believe in democracy? What should we do?

Okay. It’s a hard question. And I’m going to try to answer it in three. In three, uh, in three domains, the first one is, is being aware of the stakes for Ukraine. Obviously you’ve created as the victim here, it’s, it’s it’s happening on their territory to their people. So they matter first and foremost, uh, the stakes for Europe, uh, which are, which are, as we all know, very significant.

Uh, and then the stakes for United States and for American foreign policy, I’m leading off here, the stakes for Russia, which I think are very great. Uh, and we’ll save that Jeremy and Zachary for. Another conversation, how we can conceptualize Russian democracy at this moment, which doesn’t really exist, but may exist and how we can think of cultural diplomacy toward Russia, uh, that may get us out of the abyss that we’re entering into in terms of this endless cycle of eschalots, where I conflict with Russia.

But that’s a conversation for another day. Those stakes matter a lot too, but I’ll leave them out here for, uh, for purposes of, of, of efficiency. We were just speaking about Selenski and Ukraine there’s of course, sovereignty and nationhood, which the Ukrainians deserve as much as we do. And as much as anybody else on this planet does so that I think we can certainly acknowledge and respect.

And we all see the violations of sovereignty and nationhood on CNN and elsewhere. Before our eyes, I’ve been very critical of Ukrainian politics in the past. I think I haven’t been wrong about that. I’ve honed in on corruption. I don’t think that Ukraine really has rule of law. They have a lot of post-Soviet oligarchic elements in their political system.

That’s all true. That matters. You don’t want to take that out of the picture, uh, for the sake of honesty, but the thing about Ukraine, it’s not a perfect democracy, but it’s a pluralistic country and it has real civil system. You know, sort of flourishing conversations, debates that has a real cultural life.

Uh, and let us not forget that the stakes here are the preservation of those things. So nationhood and sovereignty are going to be the things that are going to matter most immediately to Ukrainians, but that sort of pluralism that civil society, which is a great achievement. They’ve upheld that in eight years, since 2014, uh, of, of war time.

Uh, that’s a great achievement. Uh, we need to remember that we were meeting to remember. Given what I said a moment ago about impending military defeat of Ukraine. That that’s what they stand to lose. Uh, and let’s hope if we can have a long view on, on our foreign policy, that that’s what they will stand at some point to, uh, to regain.

But that’s a very important matter for Ukraine beyond just the country’s own, uh, basic integrity. The stakes for Europe here are amends and I have. You know, I’ll be critical of the Biden administration, uh, when, when, when needs to be, uh, and they’ve had a lot of screw ups in their first year for sure on foreign policy.

Uh, but I think they’ve been admirable in the way that they’ve approached the whole question of Europe over the last couple of months, they’ve been very engaged in, uh, diplomacy. Biden has mentioned the need to defend every inch of NATO territory. He said that. You know, telegraphically, uh, today you see the commitment to Europe.

You see the commitment to NATO, which is crucial. Uh, at this time we don’t know exactly how NATO is going to figure in this conflict, but we need an American president who can sort of shore it up and, and speak for the Alliance. And there’s just been a lot of. Uh, American leadership and, you know, that’s that just sound too celebratory.

What what’s at stake here is the crown jewel of American foreign policy, which is not peace and security all across Europe at every moment and in every area, but in very, very substantial parts of Europe, this has been great for Europeans. It’s been very good for the American economy. Uh, it’s contributed in many ways to our democratic culture when we get sort of a discussion and feedback and interchange, uh, intellectual, academic, and other kinds of exchange, uh, with Europeans when Europeans are critical of an American foreign policy venture with a lot of Europeans, is, are critical of an American foreign policy venture.

Whether it’s a rocker Vietnam, they’re usually right. So they have a lot to say to us, uh, and, um, you know, they’re, you know, sort of peace and secure. Uh, is something that contributes in many different ways to American life, American prosperity, uh, and, uh, and peace in the United States. So the stakes for Europe are very great.

I can’t quite figure exactly where all of this is going to work in terms of European security. I think it’s going to be a new situation. We’ve got to rethink it. Uh, but the stakes are certainly, uh, very high and it’s just crucial that the United States does not have. Uh, it does not allow, uh, Russia to succeed.

Uh, I think over the long-term, I don’t think we’re going to block Russia much, uh, in the, in the near term, but over the long-term, uh, that’s something we just have to work on. And then finally, the stakes for, uh, American foreign policy. And here, maybe it’s good for me to be a little bit critical of the, uh, of the budget administration, because I don’t want to, uh, I don’t want to cheerly too much.

It’s not, uh, it’s not. I think the U S needs to work on a core problem of American foreign policy that goes to Afghanistan, uh, goes to Ukraine. It goes to other areas, and this is. Ambiguity, you know, there’s a place, there’s a term. I’m sure you work on it with your students, Jeremy of strategic ambiguity that you don’t put all your cards on the table or with Taiwan.

You want China to sort of be guessing about what the U S is going to do. And that can be a successful policy, but we’ve really gotten. Uh, with these ambiguous, uh, commitments and our rhetorical commitment to Ukraine was greater than our actual commit was. I felt a certain degree of shame when I saw Zelensky go to the Munich security conference and come before this audience and say, I need your help.

Uh, and he was given a standing ovation, but he wasn’t given that much, uh, that much help. We should have been much more candid with the Ukrainians about the nature of this commitment. We should have worked on it. We really should have thought it through. And when you can’t make a full commitment to your friends, Say it don’t pretend that you’re going to make more of a commitment than you’re going to make.

That’s not the cause of this conflict. I’m not saying that that’s a motivation for Russia to invade. That’s a separate story, but we haven’t put Ukraine in the perfect place in terms of, uh, of those commitments. So let’s think about the kinds of commitments that the U S makes. Uh, let’s try to be candid about them.

Uh, and you know, let’s sort of fit them into a. Workable grand strategy that we have the resources to act upon, or that reflects the best ideas and traditions, uh, of American foreign policy. Uh, and let’s use this crisis, uh, to sharpen our minds, uh, on, uh, on all of these questions. A crisis does for all the terrible things that it brings in its wake.

It focuses the mind. So let’s take that from. And let’s bring it and let’s recalibrate our foreign policy in a few ways. Uh, and, uh, and do just a bit better in the, in the, in the future. Very powerful words. And particularly your, your, your last point there, Michael, it’s a recurring theme in our podcast, right?

Democracy as a strength brings in many points of view as a weakness, it can be hard. To develop that kind of focus, right. And develop that kind of consensus, but that’s the work of leadership, uh, in a democracy, Zachary, as we close, uh, I’ve noted in the last day, you’ve been particularly moved by this. Uh, the story is coming out of, out of Ukraine.

Uh, I’m just curious if, if you, for a second, as we close would reflect on that, it connects back to a poem and what you see among other young people, because you don’t have a direct personal connection to Ukraine, but yet I’ve noticed how much this has affected you. Yeah, I think it’s for me personally, it’s it’s, it’s, it’s very startling to see how quickly.

Um, these things that we, we value so much in the United States, uh, civil society, um, vibrant cultural life can sort of come crashing down overnight. Uh, for me the most, the most harrowing moment was watching. The bombs begin to drop in Ukraine at 4:00 AM or so their time and knowing that they were being invaded, but also knowing that many of the Ukrainians, uh, at that moment were sleeping and had no idea that they were being invaded or, or didn’t know what we knew.

Um, I think that young people are surprisingly more aware of this than, than many would think. I think that there is. A recognition of the horror of what Russia is doing. And. I worry though that the too many of us are framing it in these broader, uh, historical lenses. Uh, I’ve heard at school today, many probably dozens of people compare it to world war two or talk of the next world war three.

Uh, and I think that it’s very, it’s very disturbing to hear that. Um, maybe, maybe it’s not totally farfetched at this point. But I hope that we can have more candid discussions about this issue, these issues, and really talk about what’s being lost here. And I think both your poetry and your reflections now, and especially Michael’s comments really open up space for us to talk about these issues.

Uh, what I take away, Michael so much from your work, your scholarship in so many areas. Is, uh, just where we started the podcast, how important it is to penetrate beyond the words and the labels, and really try to understand that what you called appropriately strategic and historical empathy and, and to, to sort of work through that in a way that that’s attentive to context into the power of relationships.

Uh, it’s a tragic moment we’re in, but as you say, it should also focus the mind. Michael, thank you so much for sharing. Your insights with us and making time and what is a very difficult and busy day for you. It’s accurate. And Jeremy, thank you so much. Uh, and we’ll be back on this topic later, uh, and, uh, let’s look forward to the day when we can speak about the bright prospects of Ukrainian democracy.

I may not be around the corner, but, uh, uh, let’s, let’s keep out the hope for that. The image that I keep in my mind, when I think about the subject, especially at moments of crisis and anxiety, and exactly, as you say, Zachary, we’ve lost something very important, but the image I keep reading. Are the three embassies of the Baltic republics in Washington, DC, which the United States, uh, quite notably kept as buildings because the us didn’t acknowledge the annexation of these three countries into the Soviet union.

For some 45 years, they sort of kept them as empty buildings, uh, when there was very little expectation that they would ever be used again. And all three are of course, very much in service at the present moment. So the historical wheel is always turning and spinning and we’ll wait for that moment when it turns and spins in a better term.

Uh, so well said, uh, thank you, Michael. Thank you, Zachary. Thank you to our listeners. Uh, everyone be safe out there. Thank you for joining us for this episode of this is DeMarco. This podcast is produced by the liberal arts, its development studio and the college of liberal arts at the university of Texas at Austin.

The music in this episode was written and recorded by Harris. Codine stay tuned for a new episode every week. You can find this Is democracy on apple podcasts, Spotify, and Stitcher. See you next time.