This Is Democracy Episode 243: Ukraine War

[00:00:22] Jeremi: Welcome to our new episode of This is Democracy.

After a one month hiatus for the summer, we are now back to our schedule. Zachary, are you excited to be back? Yes, I’m very excited. What did you do during the time we were away?

[00:00:38] Zachary: I think we already spoke about this. I was an intern at the Bundestag in Berlin.

[00:00:43] Jeremi: Yeah. That’s great. So you, you infiltrated the German government.

[00:00:48] Zachary: I wouldn’t say infiltrated.

[00:00:51] Jeremi: You, you, you brought your wisdom. Exactly. Excellent. One is

[00:00:55] Michael Kimmage: he didn’t exfiltrate the German government. Exactly. Thank you,

[00:00:58] Jeremi: Michael. Who knows that remains to be seen as many of you might recognize, uh, we’re beginning our new season, uh, with one of our favorite guests. We’ve had more than 125 different guests over more than 240 episodes now, and one of our all time favorites and one of the most insightful and always evocative and creative and provocative guests is our friend Michael Kimmage.

We’re going to talk to Michael Kimmage today about where we are. in the war in Ukraine. We’ve had him on a few times, uh, and from the comments from our listeners, he’s been one of our favorite guests, especially for the way he elucidates this complex tragedy unfolding before our eyes. I know Michael’s been thinking a lot about this.

Michael, thank you for joining us again.

[00:01:46] Michael Kimmage: It’s wonderful to be back with you Jeremy and Zachary.

[00:01:49] Jeremi: To remind everyone of Michael’s illustrious pedigree and all the things he writes that you should try to keep up with. I say try because I can’t keep up with everything he writes. He writes frequently for foreign affairs and for various other outlets on the war in Ukraine.

In addition to being a scholar of the war, he is also a scholar of the West, of Western intellectual ideas. political and diplomatic ideas among his many writings is his most recently published, already published book, The Abandonment of the West, The History of an Idea. I encourage everyone to read that if they haven’t already, really provides a foundation for understanding where we are today.

And Michael has a forthcoming book on the war in Ukraine. I think this will be one of the most important books for understanding the war as contemporary history and the title I believe is Collisions. Is

[00:02:39] Michael Kimmage: that correct, Michael? That’s it. Collisions. And when will it be available? February 24th, 2024. So the second anniversary of the start of the war.

Wow. And, and

[00:02:48] Jeremi: are you, are you hopeful that that’ll be

[00:02:49] Michael Kimmage: the end of the war? Well, I, I would hope for the soonest possible end of the war, but I suspect it’s, it’s, it’s going to be very much ongoing in February. Unfortunately,

[00:02:58] Jeremi: you’re probably right. Before we get further into our discussion with Michael about.

about this terrible war. Uh, we have, of course, our scene setting poem for Mr. Zachary Suri. I haven’t said scene setting poem in about a month. It feels good. Uh, what’s the title of your scene setting poem, Mr. Zachary Suri? For Yegor. For Yegor. Okay, we’re going to find out who Yegor is in the poem, yeah? Sure.

Okay, let’s hear it.

[00:03:23] Michael Kimmage: Listening

[00:03:24] Zachary: to Shostakovich’s 10th, I am reminded that this miserable world is miserable for you too. I remember how much you dreamed of New York and a business jet. I hope only that you do not lie somewhere on one of those battlefields where a generation goes to die. I know what unjust war is, but I know this one is true.

I know not what it means to leave. I hope that now you do. You on a beach where the ocean heaves and cuts the sky in two. But I know that evil needs its own foot soldiers too. Please, if I find your picture in the news, let it be your voice in some nightclub where the rich of your land party away the war.

Please, if you ever return my call, may it be your voice in Istanbul speaking to me in English and saying the empty glass half full. And please, if I might shake your hand, let us instead embrace, for if there’s any hope at all. I’ll see it in your face.

[00:04:29] Jeremi: First, Zachary, maybe tell us who

[00:04:31] Zachary: Yegor is. So this is a excerpt from a poem that I wrote recently about a friend of mine that I met a few years ago from Moscow.

His name is Yegor. This is sort of, in that sense, very personal about our friendship, but it’s also an important reminder that In these wars, in which two different state structures and two militaries are, are fighting each other. And in this context, certainly a broader set of allies as well, that there are people who get stuck in the middle.

And there are people who are suffering on both sides. And, and even for someone caught on the wrong side of a war in this case, most certainly on the side that has the most moral blame and shame for this war, which would be Russia. Certainly. Yeah. That there are people suffering there as well. And that there is also hopefully a future in the, in the people there.

And, and that we have to, when we talk about these things, I think distinguish between the people of a country and. and their

[00:05:27] Jeremi: government. Right. So the Russian soldiers are, in a sense, potential victims themselves. Exactly.

[00:05:32] Zachary: Certainly not the primary victims, but I think it’s important that we remember that there are people suffering in this war on

[00:05:39] Michael Kimmage: both sides.

Yeah. Michael, your thoughts? Well, it’s, um, you know, it’s a very striking poem as ever. Zachary, somehow the mention of Istanbul is quite interesting, all of these places on the spectrum of the Russian diaspora, Armenia, Georgia, Latvia, Germany, Turkey, maybe to a lesser degree, the United States, and this may be a topic we get into later in our conversation, but it’s a poem about people who get caught in the middle, as you say, Zachary, but perhaps it’s also a poem about the Russia that might be in the future.

It’s hard at the moment to have, to have much optimism. about where things are tending in Russia, but this sort of Russia apart, that’s a great book by the historian Mark Ryef called Russia Abroad about the diaspora of the post 1917 generation. But this Russia Abroad is a very interesting thing. Indeed.

And it’s a good thing to pay attention to. So, so Zachary, as always, your poems draw us into the emotional world of, of all the things that are happening now. And this, this mention of the diaspora, I think to me is just especially interesting.

[00:06:41] Zachary: Thank you. Uh, and in, in that context, a lot has happened, uh, not just, uh, on the battlefields, but also in the halls of power, uh, since we last spoke with you, how should we understand the coup that we all witnessed, uh, about a month ago in Russia?

Or attempted coup, I should say.

[00:06:58] Michael Kimmage: Right. It’s a, it’s a, it’s a very important, uh, it’s a very important question. I think that the initial response to the coup, and I think this was sort of, uh, my response, and it’s good to have a bit of time to pull back and reflect on this, was that this was the first major crack in the edifice of Putinism since really the construction of Putinism in the early 2000s.

Uh, and when I say initial response, I think When I first, uh, looked at it, it felt like really this is the kind of the bell tolling in a way for, uh, for Putin in, in, in two respects. I mean, one is that… Even though Prokhorin failed, uh, to take Moscow, I don’t think that was ever really in the cards, but even though his sort of venture, uh, failed, the fact that he was bold enough to do it, uh, suggests that there are really significant cracks within, uh, the Russian political, uh, elite.

Uh, and then secondly, The thing I think that really gave Pugosian encouragement, and I doubt that this has changed at all, or perhaps, uh, for Putin it’s gotten worse, uh, over the last, uh, two months, uh, is, uh, the misery of, of, of Russian soldiers on the front, you kind of indicate that a little bit in your poem, Zachary, and I think it’s become a very significant dynamic and one that the Kremlin is not able to control.

So there’s the convergence of these two points, you know, discontent at the front, which I think is really widespread, I And the emergence of entrepreneurial activity among people in the Russian elite who are starting to sketch out a future beyond and after Putin. But with the passage of time, it’s not been a long time, uh, that’s passed since, since it’s June 24th, I think that the uprising, uh, took place.

Uh, I don’t think that it’s come to look like a blip. I think it’s still a very significant moment, but you do see that Putin has the capacity to manage. Some of this stuff, at least for the time being, in other words, there hasn’t been a copycat since then, uh, Prokhorin has been to a degree neutralized, and, you know, there’s still a kind of Leviathan at work in Russia, and if there are cracks in the edifice, you don’t want to forget there’s also the edifice itself, uh, which is not, uh, you know, I think, about to crumble.

Uh, anytime soon, but it’s sort of hard to contextualize exactly how vulnerable Putin is, but the key fact, this is the key takeaway from this very peculiar event. Is that he is vulnerable, uh, and sort of objectively. So, uh, and that’s, uh, you know, an interesting turn in Russia. Uh, and when, and if it intensifies, it will be an interesting turn in the war itself because it can only be prosecuted by, uh, the war can only be prosecuted by a viable Russian state.

Uh, and that’s simply not a given. And of course,

[00:09:43] Zachary: there’s a long history in Russia of discontent among soldiers at, at the front of long land wars in Ukraine or in, uh, naval battles in, in the Pacific leading to political change or dramatic political events. Should we see this moment you think is another?

echo of 1917, or is this perhaps, maybe we don’t have enough time to have seen the consequences fully, or is this perhaps a, a further reinforcement of Putin’s ongoing grip on, on Russian

[00:10:14] Michael Kimmage: society? You know, I think in terms of historical analogies, what feels a little bit more apropos than 1917 is, uh, is maybe Afghanistan.

Uh, and what happened with Afghanistan is, you know, typical for a lot of wars in a lot of countries is that people Started to trickle back into Soviet life at that stage with a lot of post traumatic stress disorders and, uh, you know, real sort of, um, frustration and anger about the war. Uh, and I think that that did contribute something to the crisis that Mikhail Gorbachev found himself in in 1985.

It took him a few years to wind down the war in Afghanistan, but there was this kind of leeching away of support from the system itself, the Soviet system, uh, and Afghanistan was an important tributary. Uh, into that process. I think that that’s structurally somewhat similar to what’s happening to the war, uh, in Ukraine.

It’s, it’s, it’s causing the system to wobble, and I think the Prokhorin uprising was definitely, uh, an emblem of that. I think 1917 is a very difficult comparison to make, as of yet, for at least two reasons. I think we could probably come up with more, but at least two reasons. One, the kind of immiseration that the First World War caused in Russia, you know, sort of mass hunger, you know, huge dislocations, uh, and a lot of the battlefields were very much, uh, either close to or within the Russian Empire.

I don’t think that that’s true for Russians living on Russian territory in the midst of this current war. It’s just not of the scale or scope of the First World War and it’s not unsettling Russian society as of yet in the way that 1915, did. And then secondly, And this is, uh, of the essence for Putin, who is, uh, kind of crazy student of Russian history, but, uh, at times, you know, has, uh, a somewhat canny reading, uh, of, uh, Russian and Soviet history.

There’s no revolutionary movement, uh, at the present moment in the way that you have the Bolsheviks kind of coalescing into a real movement with a program and ideology, you know, a set of, uh, foundational texts, et cetera. Uh, that’s just not there. And Putin has devoted a lot of energy to crushing.

political alternatives, uh, to his, uh, regime and to a degree, uh, to a large degree successfully when it concerns what you might describe as liberal Russians, you know, sort of urban Russians would want to see a more westernized country. You know, you have Navalny as the kind of figurehead of that, and he’s, uh, in prison and under duress at the present moment.

Uh, what’s interesting is that Prigozhin indicates that there could be sort of a revolution in Russia from the right. Uh, and here, my own knowledge is a little bit too limited. Maybe there’s a lot of stuff stirring that resembles a revolutionary moment. It could come from Putin in the next couple of months, uh, or years.

That’s a kind of interesting prospect, but it’s not 1917 ish yet in that sense. So I, I wouldn’t go in 1917. I would sort of go with the 1980s.

[00:13:11] Jeremi: I think that’s really astute, Michael. Of course, we should say, and you know this as well as anyone, there was a revolt against the czar from the right in 1917 too, but of course the revolt on the left was much more significant.

And the combination of coup and revolutionary activity does seem to be missing, at least part of that combination, today. How do we understand, um, the… Role of, um, the Russian military during the coup. What what seems striking to me as someone who’s been trying to follow this, but not with the depth that you have, um, is that there wasn’t much resistance to progosion.

What do we make

[00:13:52] Michael Kimmage: of that? Well, I would be a little bit careful on that point. I think that What happened on the ground, uh, you know, and this is a little bit through a glass darkly because it’s hard to get good evidence on a lot of these points. But I think what happened on the ground was that the Russian military was not given orders for the first.

I think they just didn’t know what to do, but they didn’t have orders to actively resist. So it wasn’t, you know, it could be that certain gestures were sort of gestures of support or maybe propriate quote, progression gestures. Uh, but I think more to the point is that they were not. Told to shoot and they, and they didn’t shoot.

And I think, you know, of course the dynamic for soldiers that makes it sort of confusing is that the Wagner figures are, uh, are Russians, the people in the military are Russians. And so there was a kind of lack of desire, I think, to, uh, to instigate something again, maybe not for political or ideological reasons, but just for.

You know, sort of more visceral or, or practical reasons. And from what I understand in the kind of unbelievably arcane, complicated conversations that seem to have been taking place, uh, on that Saturday afternoon, including the president of Belarus, uh, Alexander Lukashenko and, and, and Putin and Prokhorin is that probably an ultimatum was given to Prokhorin that if he continues, they would start to shoot.

They would be given those orders. And then Purgosian sort of stood down, uh, and, you know, maybe Purgosian expected that there would be such confusion, or there would be a kind of rebellion within, uh, the Kremlin that he could then build upon, and then he might have kept going, but I think when he realized that Putin had enough support behind him, and that probably he would have been crushed pretty quickly, Uh, he pulled back.

So, you know, I don’t know how political it all was in terms of the events on the ground, probably more haphazard, uh, anarchic, and then, uh, and then confused. And then when certain decisions were made at the top, uh, they were able to able to stick. It is worth noting that Progosion himself, we don’t quite know the number, I think is between 12 and 14.

He shot down a number of aircraft, uh, Russian military aircraft, uh, in Russian airspace. Uh, and it’s Russian military who died, uh, on that, uh, on that particular day. That’s, of course, been downplayed in Russia and sort of swept under the carpet, but those were the casualties of the, uh, of, uh, of the uprising.

Uh, and, uh, that’s, that’s just an astonishingly notable fact, because Putin is, rather, Pugosian is alive and kicking, just showed up at the Africa Summit in St. Petersburg, and, you know, sort of a free man, uh, after having done that, and that’s as shocking as anything else that happened on that day.

[00:16:32] Jeremi: Absolutely, and it’s worth just clarifying, right, that Purgosian is the leader of, uh, a group called the Wagner Group, which is really a paramilitary organization that has worked for and with the Russian government, but is not of the Russian government. It is separate from the Russian government. And so this is in essence what you’ve described so well, Michael, is the equivalent of some paramilitary group in the United States shooting down, uh, U.

S. Air Force jets. And it’s hard to imagine that anyone responsible for that would be allowed. To, you know, operate freely within our society after that, but that seems to be what’s, what is the case with Purgosian

[00:17:10] Michael Kimmage: now, right? The whole thing is unthinkable in the American system. I’m not exactly sure why, what the relevant differences are, but also the, you know, even if it was for only a short period of time that the Wagner.

Forces took the military headquarters in Rostov on Don, which is where the war is being organized from and they sort of held it for X number of, uh, of hours. And that again, you know, in the U. S. context, it’s just Uh, it’s just unthinkable. So, um, the level of chaos that was there on that day and the empowerment of Wagner, so to go back to the initial question about what all of this signifies for Russian politics, the empowerment of Wagner, which has since been modified because they’ve been sort of disempowered in a few ways, but the empowerment of Wagner up until that point is a very remarkable factor of, uh, very remarkable factor of Russian politics.

Uh, it’s, um, uh, it’s astonishing. Yes. So

[00:18:03] Jeremi: what does all this mean, uh, on the ground in Ukraine? I think that’s really the, the key set of questions for us today, Michael, uh, many of us, myself included, right, are trying to follow the war, trying to understand what’s going on. And I will admit I’m often baffled.

It’s hard to know. You, you know, some days you hear the Ukrainian offensive is bogged down and they’re running out of weapons. Other days, There’s evidence that, uh, the Russian forces seem to be collapsing around their heels in certain areas. And obviously both are overstatements. How do we understand what’s happening and to what extent has the story of the coup or the attempted coup or whatever it was, what we’ve just discussed, how does that connect to what’s happening on

[00:18:44] Michael Kimmage: the battlefield?

I don’t think that there’s too much of a connection from the coup, uh, to the battlefield. I think a sober assessment has to acknowledge that there’s not. A debilitating crisis of morale on the front. I hope that that’s not in contradiction to what I was saying earlier, that there’s discontent on the front.

Uh, Russian soldiers are unhappy. I think some feel bamboozled into getting there and don’t feel well treated. So far, this has not translated into anything resembling a mutiny. On the front or to a kind of laying down of arms. Maybe what we saw in September and October, uh, 2022, when you had this really rapid fire Ukrainian offensive, uh, below, uh, Kharkiv, uh, then you had Russians turning tail, uh, and running away, but those were pretty sparsely defended, you know, unprepared areas.

And so there is a kind of clear cut military explanation for why they, while they fled, that’s just not been the situation with the. Counter offensive so far, and so I don’t think morale or even organization is at issue, and there’s not been, I think, much spillover from, uh, the mutiny to the battlefield performance of the Russians, uh, so far, you know, the salient differences between now this summer.

And the Kharkiv offensive on the part of Ukraine are, of course, that the Russians have dug in and they’ve heavily mined, uh, the territory. They seem to enjoy a degree of superiority in the, uh, in the air war, which they’ve been, you know, using, uh, to some effect. I think everybody knows, uh, in the course of this war that it’s easier to defend than it is to go on offense.

And so that’s worked a bit in the. Uh, in the Russians, uh, favor and, you know, there probably was a framing of the counteroffensive that was maybe a bit over optimistic from the beginning. From what I understand, it’s roughly 35, 000 troops, some of which have been Western trained, uh, but many of which are sort of people who a year or two ago were schoolteachers or.

Lawyers are, you know, sort of doing things that were very much not military and, you know, have tried to come up to speed, but are maybe not the same in effectiveness as a highly trained, long term, uh, fighting force. And they’re being asked to do something that’s just really, really Uh, difficult. I think if we accept this is a really difficult kind of campaign, uh, I think in that sense, it, it, it makes it clear that this is not a debacle on Ukraine’s side, uh, and it’s very possible that some of these great gains will be, uh, incremental over the course of the next couple of weeks, uh, territorial, uh, gains, but it does seem, I think, reasonable to conclude that a kind of outright Breakthrough a kind of movement of Ukrainian troops down to Melitopol and the kind of cutting of the land bridge that the Russians have to Crimea.

That doesn’t seem to be in the cards this summer and fall. That may be a, uh, that may be an inaccurate, uh, judgment. And so we have to think incrementally about the counteroffensive long term, uh, and, you know, kind of, uh, day by day. But it’s going to be hard Whatever we might have hoped for when it came to Purgosian’s mutiny, that this really signaled something, uh, of a turning point in terms of Russia’s capacity to wage the war that hasn’t come to pass.

And I think in ways we can discuss, you know, a little bit later, Russia’s also tried to change the nature of the war by bombing Ukrainian grain supplies, and, uh, there’s a kind of new wrinkle, a kind of new iteration of the war that’s not connected to the counter offensive, but, uh, is also Uh, significant.

So, you know, Russia remains, uh, a hard army to, uh, to dislodge. That’s, that’s, that’s, I’m afraid, the bottom line.

[00:22:26] Zachary: And, uh, of course, the Russians have been targeting Odessa, one of the great Ukrainian and Eastern European cultural

[00:22:33] Jeremi: capitals. And an important center of Jewish culture, too. Certainly,

[00:22:37] Zachary: yeah. Um, In recent days, how should we understand Putin’s strategy at this moment with not, not a stalled counteroffensive perhaps, but, but a, uh, a struggling counteroffensive, um, on the part of the Ukrainians.

And then of course, headlines every day about the bombing of grain shipments and of churches and, and cultural centers in Odessa, where do you think, uh, the, the Russian strategy is at this moment? And if you’d say a little bit as well about, about what the Ukrainian people are experiencing now with, with repeated airstrikes on, on civilian

[00:23:15] Michael Kimmage: targets.

Right. Uh, well, to start there, I mean, of course that’s been the case in Odessa, but we’ve had attacks, you know, in the last couple of days on Kriviri, which is the hometown of Uh, Volodymyr Zelensky, lots of air raid sirens going off in, uh, in, uh, in Kiev. And, um, the awfulness of it is, uh, something that we have to make sure that we don’t allow our minds to become dull to, although in a, in a sense, we’ve been living with this awfulness now for, for 17 months, but it’s twofold.

It’s the loss of life and, you know, the injuries that are sustained in these consistent attacks on civilian. Locations, but it’s there’s another dimension to it, which I think is maybe not quite as visible to us because it’s not as photographic, not the kind of thing that would appear on a video on social media, but the disruptions, you know, people who are trying to get their kids through school or to get through the working day.

get home on their commute, et cetera. And, you know, the, the constant disruptions it’s, it’s a psychological toll that’s just very difficult to countenance and very, very sad, uh, to witness and that’s Odessa and the South and, you know, many other places in some ways Kiev now is, is quite well defended in terms of air defenses.

So it’s harder for the, for the Russians to punch through there. And so they choose these random targets to just sort of keep up the psychological pressure. It’s a really grotesque tactic. To move on to the other part of your question, Zachary, in terms of what the Russians may be trying to accomplish, I mean, I think that they’re in a pretty bad position structurally, in the sense that they’re just not in the position, probably for the next couple of years, to take any of the major Ukrainian cities.

So yes, the bombing of Odessa is a part of what they’re doing. But they’re not going to take Kharkiv, they’re not going to take Kiev, they’re not going to take Odessa, they’re not going to take Chernigov, they’re not going to take these cities, much too costly, I mean, they’ve expended so much effort on Bakhmut, which is a city of 70, 000, not a big Ukrainian city, and so without being able to do that, they’re not going to be able to turn the war Uh, in their, uh, direction.

So to that degree, they’re stuck and they’re fending off, of course, the counter offensive as we’ve discussed, but they’re not sitting still. So with the attacks on grain, you know, I don’t think it’s all that difficult to disentangle what they’re up to, but it’s worth spelling out. You know, there are two benefits that accrue to Russia from attacking Ukrainian grain supplies.

One is it contributes to the strangulation of the Ukrainian economy. So this is a huge export good for Ukraine. Uh, and it’s now much, much more difficult for Ukrainians to get this, uh, to market. Although they have very willing buyers, um, you know, not only has Russia been, uh, making it difficult to get grain out through the Black Sea with the collapse of the grain deal, but Russia has also been bombing.

grain supplies on the Danube near Moldova and Romania, uh, and making it difficult for Ukraine to get grain out, uh, that way. So, you know, that’s just, you know, sort of trying to pull the rug out from Ukraine, uh, economically. You know, a lot of the mined territory, one should add, is some of Ukraine’s best agricultural, uh, land.

So that’s another way in which Russia is kind of waging war against, uh, Ukraine’s grain supply. Uh, but there are knock on effects to, to, to doing this kind of attack that serve Russian interests as Putin sees them. Uh, and this is, of course, to raise the price of grain on the international market. And Russia is, after Ukraine, one of the world’s major grain suppliers.

And being the power that can control kind of turn off, turn on the grain supply in Ukraine means that Russia now has a lot of leverage, say, over the economy of Egypt and the economy of other countries that are dependent. Either on Ukrainian grain or dependent on low cost grain from other, uh, countries.

So Russia’s using this as a choke point, uh, as one might use oil or other, you know, sort of things to, uh, to gain leverage. It’s a very, very cynical foreign policy, but, uh, uh, you know, it is a policy. Uh, finally, what Russia’s symmetry here with the war in terms of, uh, Ukraine and the West on one side and Russia on the other.

What Russia’s trying to do is to make the whole war… Seem futile, uh, for Ukraine and for the West. You’re never going to win. It’s going to go on forever. It’s just going to make things worse and worse and worse. And Russia sees in this a potential political argument, AFD polling around 20% in Germany at the moment, upcoming presidential election in the U S lots of countries that are sort of sitting and watching and Russia’s trying to feed both the reality and the narrative of this war.

As an impossible, futile war, to be honest, that’s quite similar to the Western strategy in the war to make Russia think that this is futile, it’s never going to end, you’re never going to win. The Biden administration’s phrase for this is the strategic defeat of Russia, that it needs to come to see the war as a strategic defeat.

So it’s a battle of. weapons. It’s a battle of grain. It’s a battle of air power. But you could also say in a strange sense, it’s a kind of battle of dueling images of futility that the West and Ukraine and Russia are trying to impose on one another. But that’s where the grain comes in. And that’s where some of these attacks on civilian infrastructure come in for Russia.

Just make it seem miserable, unending, impossible. Michael,

[00:28:35] Jeremi: for all of your, I think, compelling reasons not to use the World War One analogy. It seemed you, you were using precisely the language of trench warfare there, right? Which is, uh, and what, what many scholars would write, right? That the war by 1915, 1916 becomes futility and, and to some extent, symmetrical futility and then desperation in the case of World War One, right?

Of the Germans with the U boat. Uh, warfare, which, which one could argue is similar to Putin’s efforts to basically destroy grain shipments coming out of one of the largest grain exporters in the world. In, in Ukraine. One of the things we learned in World War I, uh, if, if at least in this part of this discussion the analogy might hold, was that to some extent, um, a large land power that is, uh, trying to fight a war in this way as Russia is or as Germany was that.

that it’s resources are actually pretty finite when it can’t get support from other places. And it’s so far it does appear that Ukraine has managed to develop and create a supply line that would be hard for Russia to match. Do you think, well, is that first of all a fair way of looking at this? And do you think Russia could hang on quite a long time in, in the, In the strategy that you’ve described,

[00:29:58] Michael Kimmage: you know, I think that, um, what I would maybe dispute is more than 1917.

Russian revolution, uh, at least, at least so far, which is of course a product of the first world war. But I, I a hundred percent agree with you, Jeremy, that at world war one, I think is a very instructive, is a very instructive situation now, maybe one of the distinctions, I’m not sure how relevant it is that, you know, in world war one, you did have.

France, Britain, Canada, eventually the United States, they were all really, um, direct combatants in the first world war. And then of course, Germany, Austria, uh, et cetera, on the, on the other side. I mean, here, the only combatants are Ukraine and Russia. And then there’s this whole. Very, very complicated global tapestry of countries from China to Brazil to South Africa, uh, to the United States that are participants in a, in a, in a, in a certain way, India, you know, you should sort of put there because it’s buying, uh, oil from Russia and, you know, involved in some degree of, uh, of, uh, of sort of military trade, uh, with Russia, not a huge part of the war, but, you know, one of the pieces, uh, in the, in the puzzle.

So I think maybe the scope of it, you could say is, It’s smaller than the First World War in the immediate military sense, uh, but I think that what you describe is, uh, is, uh, is exactly it, uh, and it takes one to the question of politics, because I think that that’s in part where the First World War started to change, especially Uh, in Germany, and you know, it’s hard for me to predict there at the moment.

I really just can’t see a pattern that will emerge. I can kind of imagine scenarios where the politics could shift on both sides or on one side, and the, and the precocious conversation is already a set of insight into how that might happen in Russia. I would say strategically, if we’re going to have. A set of operating expectations that we, you know, policymakers in Ukraine, policymakers in Europe, policymakers in the U.

S. should bring to bear on this, on this awful war. Uh, I would make the assumption that Russia will be able to wage this war for quite a long time. It is, I think, a popular war in Russia. I don’t know how to measure this. I would like this not to be the case. But I think it may well be maybe because most Russians are anti anti war or because the Putin arguments resonate, uh, throughout the society.

You know, either way, I don’t think that it’s an unpopular. And I think Russia has enough global contacts that it has markets for its goods. It has, uh, ways to, uh, you know, sort of keep on going. Even, you know, I hear from American visitors who go to Kiev now that one of the things Ukrainian government officials will do is show them down drones and Russian missiles that have all kinds of American components that are under sanctions.

So Russia’s finding ways to skirt the sanctions regime. Uh, and you know, it’s if the will is there, if Putin is still in power, uh, I’m afraid the capacity will be there and that’s what we should plan for, you know, no collapse, uh, or, or change if that comes. Well, thank God it comes. But, uh, my planning instincts would be to plan for a very long, uh, war fought with a kind of maniacal force, uh, on the part of Russia with Russia seeking.

I think this is maybe the Area of the war that we haven’t thought enough about with russia seeking to globalize the war in ways that benefit russia, right? Think of the vicious circle that’s at work in ukraine. They attack ukrainian grain It hurts the ukrainian economy. It drives up grain prices russia profits from higher grain prices.

It can use that money to fuel The war. So we just need to be aware of how these vicious circles are developing and how they might prolong the war in certain ways. And of course, plan accordingly, try to break up those vicious circles, do all kinds of things, uh, to act, uh, in response, but, um, you know, assume I would say in this case, a long term and formidable antagonist in Russia.

And it is

[00:34:06] Jeremi: worth remembering, and this was implied in your really excellent comments, Michael, that, uh, Germany, which for much of World War I was largely isolated, uh, still fought for more than four and a half years, or almost four and a half years, and after losing, in many cases, thought it had won. So… Yeah.

So, so the, the point there being that, uh, a country like, uh, Germany in 1917, uh, or Russia today can fight a very, very long time, even when it appears to be, uh, cornered a certain way. Zachary, you mentioned

[00:34:41] Zachary: though, I, I think in, in this analogy, there’s a, there’s a lot to learn, but you, you mentioned the. the political dynamics, uh, in, in Ukraine’s Western allies in the United States, in Germany, uh, in, in other parts of Europe.

Um, and of course in, in parts of Asia as well. Um, where do you see, uh, the, do you see in, in these political dynamics, many of which are not in favor of Ukraine at the moment, do you see a real, a real danger? That the war effort on the part of the Ukrainians, not their will to keep fighting, but the, the, the critical support that they get from their allies, that that might collapse or at least weaken.

Um, and, and where do you see, uh, Ukraine in that conversation?

[00:35:25] Michael Kimmage: I frankly don’t. I mean, I think it’s a good thing to pay close attention to. You know, I think that where there are warning signs, they should be taken seriously. It’s a, it’s a hard effort to keep coalitions going. Uh, and this is a very, very enormous sprawling coalition that’s composed of countries that have many different interests and timelines and political characters.

So that’s, you know, by definition, a hard Project and I, you know, certainly wouldn’t want to underestimate the difficulty of it, but I would also, you know, since we are 17 months into the war, let’s, you know, sort of remember some of the structural strengths that are there on the Ukrainian side and on the side of the countries that are supporting Ukraine.

Of course, the news story would be the rise of the AFD in Germany, and that’s appropriate, but to pull back from that news story and look at some of the structural factors over the last 17 months. Is not to see the rapid march to an end to the war or to victory. That’s not what we’ve gotten. Uh so far and that’s bitter, uh, and that’s hard to live with and will be hard to live with for the Uh for this foreseeable future, but you know, that’s a very very high bar, you know Lower the bar a little bit and what you get is An increasing willingness, uh, on the part of countries to give Ukraine more and more sophisticated weaponry.

You’ve seen that, you know, you’ve had elections in Sweden and Italy, uh, and we’ve had Orban all along. So you have these skeptics who make, you know, critical noises about the war and seem to suggest that there’s some kind of better alternative, but they do absolutely nothing about it. You know, sort of when push comes to shove, even the populist figures who are part of the coalition.

Uh, are unwilling to, uh, to pull away from support, uh, for Ukraine. Of course, you have Finland joining NATO and all that that means for the strengthening, uh, of, uh, of the alliance and for all that we speak of, you know, sort of destabilizing polarization in the United States and, you know, we’re dysfunctional and, you know, there’s, there’s all of that.

And, and, and there’s an element of, of, of truth in that, of course, uh, but it hasn’t been the case with U. S. policy toward. Uh, toward Ukraine, and we’re talking about 17 months into what’s a very difficult conflict, and there’s not a light at the end of the tunnel, uh, at the moment, and you could say it’s a country that’s very far away from the U.

S., and, you know, a country of which we know little, and, and, you know, sort of care little, that, that kind of rhetoric from, from the 1930s about, uh, about Czechoslovakia, and that has not come into, uh, come into play, so that’s not a news story. I don’t think you could write a news story. Coalition for Ukraine, Endures another month and becomes marginally more powerful, you know, that’s just a boring story to read But it kind of is the story of the last 17 months not just that the coalition has maintained its structure but the structure has become more robust and in a certain way less risk averse when it comes to Uh to supporting, uh ukraine so we can’t be sanguine about the future There are lots of threats and challenges on the horizon, but let’s also not forget What we have.

And, you know, if we are going to think about morale on the part of Ukraine on the part of our own countries, it’s very, very necessary to tell some of these success stories as success stories. So, you know, yes, I want to be Pollyanna here, but I feel strongly about this point. I

[00:38:44] Jeremi: think you said that very well, and I agree 100% with you, Michael.

Um, I guess the question we have to ask, and it’s, it’s got to be one of our closing questions, because I think it’s a question that takes us into the politics of today and the politics of tomorrow. But it is, I think, the core question. Should there be a negotiating position? Obviously, we’ve all learned as historians that war and negotiation go hand in hand.

They’re often thought of as being different, but one of the lessons, I think, of the historical scholarship of the last 10, 20 years that you and I have been a part of, right, is to get us beyond this either or way of thinking. Um, and even Henry Kissinger has been making this argument as a, as a centurion recently.

Um, What are the, what are the possible areas of negotiation? What are the ways to forestall just a continuation of a war of attrition? Or are those non existent pathways now?

[00:39:40] Michael Kimmage: I think when we talk about really substantive war ending negotiation, I don’t believe in it while Putin. Uh, is, uh, in power. Now, I’ll develop the argument in just a moment, but I’ll start by qualifying it in a few ways.

I do think that the U. S. government and the Russian government should try to have a conversation about red lines. I’m pretty sure that there is that conversation ongoing, probably through, uh, the CIA with Director Burns, uh, there, who’s just the right person for that kind of conversation and probably has the trust and respect in Moscow that they would need to speak about some of these things, you know, these are two nuclear powers, uh, the role of error, uh, as, as you would well know, Jeremy, as a, as a, as a historian of the Cold War, the role, the role of error, is frightening, uh, when it comes to nuclear powers.

Uh, and, you know, there, I think it makes a lot of sense. I’m not sure if I would call that diplomacy exactly, but it makes a lot of sense to have, yes, dialogue and, uh, and contact. It would be foolish of the U S to be squeamish, uh, in that regard. It is, I think, necessary in a kind of built in way for the U.

S. to be receptive and open to signals when they may start to come from the Russian government about some Russian intention to scale back. I just don’t think Russia is going to stop this war. I don’t think Putin has changed his ambitions, and I don’t see it, and I don’t believe it’s going to happen anytime soon.

But, you know, that’s me guessing. If there is a kind of change of mindset in the Kremlin, we can’t be so locked into our positions that we refuse to see it or fail to see it. I’m thinking of the great Mel Leffler book about the Cold War and sort of missed opportunities for scaling back the Cold War. And that’s a book that, you know, all of us should be thinking about.

You don’t want to be too set in your ways and make too many firm predictions about. You know, the implacable, never ending, never changing Russians. And, uh, there’ll always be this way and Putin will always be this way. Well, let’s, let’s test that empirically and sort of leave the door open. But negotiation that would be aimed at ending the war through a kind of humoring, uh, of Russian needs as they perceive them and as they believe them to be at the present moment.

Does not seem prudent to me. It does not seem, you know, sort of legitimate or fair to Ukraine. It does not seem to be in our larger, our Ukraine, our allies, you know, sort of us, our larger, uh, security interests. You know, I think in some ways, you know, in 2014. The U. S. And allies bent over backwards not to go too far.

You know, I think Biden in ways that were probably good because it helped to build support for the war when it came for Ukraine in the war when it came. I think Biden bent over backwards to talk to Putin in the summer of 2021. The Geneva summit and all of that shuttle diplomacy that that winter. I just don’t think that there is, at this point, a deal to be had, uh, and I don’t think that Putin could end the war without demanding some kind of territorial concessions from Ukraine.

And I think the moment he would get those territorial concessions, if we would be unwise enough to give them, they would be the pretext for the next, uh, invasion. But we cannot forget Uh, from, you know, the history of the last eight years, is that we fudged everything on Crimea. Yes, we didn’t support it, we sanctioned Russia, we didn’t like it, we complained, we said that we were going to isolate Russia because of Crimea, but we lived with it.

And maybe there wasn’t much of an alternative in 2014 to living with the annexation of Crimea. But what happens eight years later? Russia invades Ukraine from Crimea. So, you know, you just cannot do that again. You cannot set up those conditions and allow that to be a possibility. And I think with Putin in power, and I’m going to guess here, even the successors to Putin are not going to be very easy to deal with on these questions, but as long as Putin is in power, you know, unless he would change in some absolutely dramatic, profound, fundamental way, which I can’t imagine him doing.

This option is going to be off the table. And so this is a conversation for another discussion with you guys. The strategy is not to deal with Russia to sort of negotiate with Russia. And the strategy is not to defeat Russia. The strategy is surprise, surprise, you know, for a student of George Kennan, the Cold War strategy is to contain Russia for the long term, right?

[00:44:05] Jeremi: And and your sense is that in in the short term, that involves basically a continuation of the current war that we have in front of

[00:44:13] Michael Kimmage: us. Yes, it involves long term structured patient support, uh, for, uh, Ukraine, certainly. And I don’t think that the Biden administration has done this, but certainly not saying, well, you’ve got the counteroffensive and then six months from now, you know, we’ve got to figure out how to, how to kind of wrap this up.

Uh, that’s, uh, really not, you know, sort of a possible or a smart position. Uh, you know, it involves creating long term structures of economic support. Uh, for Ukraine, that’s going to be a big problem. Let’s not forget also about the refugee, internally displaced people, uh, issue in Ukraine, which needs, uh, again, support, not just military support, but support from Ukraine’s, uh, friends and partners.

You know, it means, uh, maybe spending more effort on sanctions implementation. We’ve slapped a lot of sanctions on Russia. I think that they’re sort of finding creative ways to evade them. So that’s another important part of the Uh, of the war to kind of grind down, uh, the Russian war machine, and that has to be done.

You know, sort of very, uh, zealously. And then I think that the U. S., uh, and, you know, its partners supporting Ukraine have to learn how to speak to countries that are not on board, uh, with supporting Ukraine. Uh, but that could become closer partners in the future. I think potentially even including China here.

I don’t think some of the very rigid matrix we use for looking at China. As you know, only a kind of adversary in the world that may apply in the case of, uh, of Ukraine, China was Ukraine’s, uh, biggest trading partner before the war, China will be one of the big countries to reconstruct Ukraine after the, uh, war.

And I don’t think that China likes Russia’s war very much, so there might be interesting opportunities that open up in that regard. Uh, in the future, if we can sort of learn to talk and maybe engage in a kind of really shrewd diplomacy, uh, that could start to move things, uh, in the future in Ukraine’s direction.

So military support, a kind of structural opposition to Russian militarism, and, uh, and increasingly, multi dimensional creative diplomacy. I think that that’s, uh, that’s the best way forward. Zachary, uh,

[00:46:20] Jeremi: you’ve, you’ve been listening and, and obviously, uh, contributing to this discussion quite a bit. Um, as we sort of bring it together here, um, and I think Michael’s brought us to a real Um, thoughtful and well informed, uh, way of thinking about where we go from here, based on where we’ve been the last, uh, two years, the last eight years, and even further back.

It sounds like we’re at a position that, that is similar to a Cold War position, where we’re in for a long Uh, a long struggle that we’re a part of, but where others on the ground are paying, paying higher costs than we as Americans are. How, how do you think that your generation, uh, and I don’t just mean in the United States, you’ve spent much of the summer in Germany as well.

How, how do younger people, those who are of, Military age like yourself. How do they see this? Is this part of a struggle they support? Um, how, how, how do you see this in the conversations with those who are closer to 18 than 48 like Michael and myself? I do think that

[00:47:26] Zachary: we felt it very personally. Uh, on in February of last year, when, when the invasion began, and I, I do think that it is important to remember that we are of military age and, and, and certainly as silly as it sounds now, the, the, the, the sense in my high school in, in February was, Oh, we’re going to have to go fight in world war three, right?

As, as silly as that sounds. And I think that there certainly isn’t that same. degree today, uh, that sense among, among my generation in the United States, I definitely did feel in Germany that there is, there is a sense that, that this is a war that’s close to home. And I think that’s a lot, and it is a war that, that is their war as well.

And I think that, that, that those two statements apply to the United States as well, but it’s more difficult for us to feel the war. viscerally, or to feel as, as under attack as one does being only a few, a few thousand miles from, from the, um, from the borders of Ukraine. Um, and in that context, I think as Professor Kimmich mentioned, uh, we need to continue to remind ourselves that there are people suffering in Ukraine.

Um, and we need to continue to remind ourselves that there is a very important war being fought in Ukraine. And In that context, I think that even in moments of stagnation and when, when, when it appears, um, that, that there may not be good news, uh, for a long time, that, that we need to continue these conversations and, and continue to speak frankly and honestly about what the reality is on the ground, both in terms of the suffering of Ukrainians, um, and in terms of the, uh, seeming stagnation of the war.

Into this long war of attrition,

[00:49:17] Jeremi: but what would you say to your friend Igor from the poem at the start? Right if he said, you know, even it’s not it’s not the war he wants but our actions are Prolonging the likelihood that he is a Russian citizen will die in this war

[00:49:32] Zachary: Well, I think there’s another, another aspect of this conversation is, is we need to remember that this isn’t just another war.

This is a war about some very clear principles. And even, I think even, even Putin’s propaganda and his rhetoric reflects this. Uh, this is not simply another war, another war over, over territorial gain or another war over, um, security threats. This is a war about some very fundamental principles, not just of democracy, but, but of, of world peace as we have constructed it since the end of the Cold War.

And in that sense, I think we need to, we need to be very clear when we’re having these conversations. Not only are people suffering, but, but they’re suffering for these ideals and they’re suffering in the context, uh, of. of what is in, in many ways a clash of systems. And, and in that sense, I do think the Cold War

[00:50:27] Jeremi: analogy holds up.

Or what Michael is calling a collision of systems.

[00:50:32] Michael Kimmage: Yeah. I use the, in the book, I use the word in the plural collisions, because I think it’s, that speaks in some ways to the global impetus of the war, the kind of global logic of the war. If I could just quickly make a plug here for two books, because I think a follow on from your poem, Zachary, and from your, I would say very, Humanistic framing of the war, which I think isn’t entirely correct, in other words, is something that a war that affects human beings and human beings in great, uh, duress, um, there’s a Ukrainian writer whose name is Andrei Korkov, K U R K O V, uh, and he has Two books, which I really think should be read in tandem.

The first is a diary of the Maidan Revolution, which is often quite funny. You know, just a kind of writer living in Kiev who happens to see this, this, this big event happen before his eyes. But then of course, he also writes about the annexation of Crimea and the hostilities in eastern Ukraine. And then he has a second book which has just come out.

I can’t remember the title of it, but easy enough to find if one would Google his name. Uh, which is a diary of the war, uh, and it’s, it’s, it’s hard to read, uh, and, uh, you know, it’s a book of small things, all the little details, uh, of life and the kind of, you know, houses that he’s lived in, you know, in Kiev and elsewhere, uh, and, you know, the ways in which, uh, his.

Life and his family’s life has been transformed by the war, and he hasn’t seen the absolute worst of it. But still, it just comes through in a way that’s, uh, uh, you know, not political, not strategic, not ideological, but very, very human. Uh, and, you know, I think our news media actually does a good job with the With the war in Ukraine, I wouldn’t complain about our media coverage, but it’s easy to lose this human, uh, element.

So, Zachary, I appreciate your bringing it back in at the beginning and bringing it back in at the end. And, and, uh, I would urge our readers to take a look at these, uh, at these two books to, uh, to enhance the sense of, of, of the human significance of these events. And Michael,

[00:52:42] Jeremi: I think you have once again, uh, provided us in this discussion, as I think you, you pretty uniquely do both the 30, 000 geo, 30, 000 foot geostrategic view and the close to the ground humanistic view of, of what, what, what this war is, what it really means.

And, and quite frankly, how humbling it must be for all of us at how few the good options are. And maybe there is a, a, um, a small optimism. in recognizing that, that there isn’t an easy solution, but there are at least things to do that make sense for a larger humanistic purpose. Even if they continue to, um, keep us in a position where people are suffering, at least we can hope that we’re moving in slowly in some direction toward some humanistic, uh, purpose in this terrible, terrible war that has already gone on.

It seems, uh, it seems already like an eternity and it’s, it’s. in 17, 18 months. And as you tell us, it’s nowhere near near the end. Now, Michael, thank you so much for sharing your insights and your wisdom and your thoughts with us today.

[00:53:49] Michael Kimmage: Jeremy and Zachary, it’s always, you know, such a pleasure to discuss these issues and to To go back and forth.

It does feel like it’s now a 17 month conversation and for however long this this this this awful criminal war goes on. I hope and assume that our conversation will go on as well. Michael, I look

[00:54:07] Jeremi: forward to the day we can you and I and Zachary talk about this war as

[00:54:11] Michael Kimmage: history, right? Exactly.

[00:54:14] Jeremi: And, and your book is hopefully one crucial step in, in getting us there.

I want to remind our listeners, Michael’s new book is Collisions and it will be out soon and we will of course have him back on probably before the book is out and certainly when the book is out. Thank you again, Michael. Thank you, Zachary, for sharing your account of Igor with us. Uh, today, and thank you most of all to our loyal listeners.

Thank you for waiting for us after a month of summer vacation. We’re happy to be back and we look forward to many more episodes with you and with guests like Michael Kimmage on This Is Democracy.

[00:54:57] Michael Kimmage: This podcast is produced by the Liberal Arts ITS Development Studio. And the College of Liberal Arts at the University of Texas at Austin.

[00:55:05] Jeremi: The music

[00:55:05] Michael Kimmage: in this episode was written and recorded by Harris Codini. Stay tuned for a new episode every week. You can find This Is Democracy on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, and

[00:55:15] Jeremi: Stitcher.

[00:55:17] Michael Kimmage: See you next time.