This is Democracy – Episode 318: War In Iran

[00:00:00] Intro: 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.

[00:00:20] Zachary Suri: Hello, and welcome to our latest episode of This Is Democracy.

Uh, today we’re gonna talk about, um, the conflict in Iran, which, uh, has obviously been ongoing for the last few days, um, and has received, uh, extensive media coverage. I’m sure all of us have been following, uh, to varying degrees of closeness, but, um, I don’t think, uh, there’s really been a chance for, for most of us at least, and certainly.

Uh, probably not for, uh, policy makers who are in the room making decisions to think about this conflict in historical perspective. Uh, here joining us today to offer that perspective, uh, is Professor Michael Dennis. Um, professor Dennis is an associate professor of practice at the LBJ School of Public Affairs at UT Austin.

He also served as Chief of Intelligence, operations and Chief of Strategic Futures at Army Futures Command. Was a member of the intelligence community serving at the National Ground Intelligence Center as a Senior Intelligence Analyst. He was also appointed an exceptional analyst research fellow at the office of the Director of National Intelligence and taught at the National Intelligence University Center for Strategic Intelligence and Research.

Professor Dennis, thank you so much for joining us today. Uh,

[00:01:32] Michael Dennis: thank you for having me.

[00:01:34] Zachary Suri: Wonderful. And joining us. Of course, as always, also, professor Jeremi Suri. Hello, good morning.

[00:01:39] Jeremi Suri: Good morning Zachary and Mike. I’m looking forward to the conversation.

[00:01:42] Zachary Suri: I am as well. Um, so Professor Dennis, uh, just to, to make sure we all have sort of a sense of, of what’s really happened and what is happening now, um, given the sort of constant, uh, constant, uh, turnover and, uh, you know, ongoing nature of the conflict, could you give us a sense, uh, from your perspective at least, of what the sort of most important developments, uh, in this, uh, what has really been a larger, longer protracted conflict?

Um, in the last few days.

[00:02:12] Michael Dennis: Yeah. So we are now in day seven of this conflict, and as you know, sort of each day brings new developments. It on the one hand becomes clearer to see some of the challenges that, um, all sides are going to face moving forward. But also it sort of reveals some of the strateg. And so as you know, the, the campaign had started from, uh, the United States and Israel, um, airstrikes against, um, uh, Iranian air defense and naval systems and nuclear facilities, missile batteries, um, really degrading Iranian capabilities to achieve what the US military often wants, which is air superiority and sort of superiority across domains.

So I’m sure there’s a lot happening sort of in the space and cyber domain as well. Where domain dominance has not taken place, of course, is, is within the ground domain. And so as of right now, the US and Israel are still hitting, um, a series of targets across the country. Now, it’s not just in Iran, as you know, there have been attacks, um, from both sides, um, outside of the, uh, country as well.

And so sort of most prominently here. The United States, uh, a naval vessel, a submarine for the first time since World War ii, uh, used a torpedo to sink an Iranian frigate off the coast of Sri Lanka. Um, again, sort of in a very interesting development, um, in this conflict. Iran for its part, has been sending out a series of missiles and one-way attack drones, uh, to, uh, a number of countries in the region, largely hitting sort of, um, economic targets.

But also diplomatic posts as well, um, with the threat of more to come. And then the last sort of two developments that have happened. Um. Uh, either yesterday or the day before the us, um, had admitted to, um, being in talks with some of the Kurdish factions, uh, within Iran and within the region. Um, and for us to look to give them sort of, not so much covert but uh, overt support to help weaken the regime.

And then the second bit, uh, uh, bit of information that just came out is that the, uh, Russians are sharing tactical opera, uh, tactical and operational intelligence with the Iranian. Uh, basically, uh, giving them info on where US warships and military, uh, personnel are stationed, uh, so that Iran can target them.

[00:04:40] Zachary Suri: That makes sense. Um, thank you for that. Very helpful, um, summation. Uh, I’m wondering from your perspective what you think the Trump administration’s logics of going to war was? There’s of course been, uh, talk among, in American policy circles for decades about the potential conflict with Iran, but this, this seems to be something else.

Do. There’s, there’s talk of. Effort to stir a popular uprising or, you know, of, uh, a, a sort of the re that this might be the result of Israeli pressure. Um, how do you understand that decision to go to war, at least from what we know now? So, so soon after.

[00:05:17] Michael Dennis: Yeah, one of the big challenges here is, um, is that the, the motivation, um, for this attack and the, the sort of the trigger, right, the timing, Iran has been a threat of varying degrees, you know, for nearly 50 years.

And so why now is a, is a real puzzle. And that’s something that we have to, we have to grapple with. And, and, and hopefully in the years ahead, future, future historians like yourself will grapple with that. Um, but all evidence seems to suggest at this point. That in light of the recent, uh, US and IS and Israeli attacks over the last couple of years against nuclear facilities, against prominent Iranian, um, proxy forces like Hezbollah and Hamas and the Houthis that essentially.

Iran as a regime, and then of course with, as you noted, popular sort of the population here with these massive protests. I mean, there have been protests across the years against the regime in Iran. None were ever as big as they were this past year. And the response and the slaughter of, I was reading it this morning, anywhere between 3000 and some estimates put it at 30,000, which of course seems high.

Um, uh, protestors, slaughtered. So all of those things in combination, I think gave from the US side, from the president’s side, the, the perception that Iran was at its weakest, that it was ever going to be, and now was just a target of opportunity, a window of opportunity. And of course, as you noted, Israel has for a very long time pressed the United States to do more.

So in some ways it’s kind of this perfect storm moment.

[00:06:51] Jeremi Suri: Mike, if, uh, you, with all of your expertise. Had been the person charged with, um, planning for this conflict that you weren’t, but if you were, uh, what would you have done in terms of planning, especially for the day after the bombing?

[00:07:09] Michael Dennis: Yeah, I think there’s two parts and I’ll, and I’ll.

I’ll float towards the second one. I think first, you know, it’s really interesting that we’re doing this out of sequencing. Um, at least, at least as far as we can see. Right? And that’s the thing. We don’t have all, all the information and, and that will come out. Um, but typically, you know what, it comes to things like, you know, covert action or unconventional warfare, right?

This is what the US special forces and, and what, um. The US intelligence community, the CIA can do, it’s that you go and you work with local partners. You, you know, you provide material support or lethal aid or training or funding, and there’s, there’s all sorts of problems with that. Um, but you basically do that as a way to put pressure on the regime as a way to shape conditions.

And then you sort of have more kinetic action, and now it’s sort of op operating in reverse, which again, it’s, on the one hand, we have to be very careful not to be quick in our judgment. It’s, it’s the same thing with respect to the larger issues of decapitation. And regime change, external regime change has a terrible record.

Um, you know, again, usually the, the external force is seen as illegitimate and they’re working with illegitimate local partners and it, it just never really works out. And we saw that to a degree in some of the recent conflicts that the US has been involved in. But in this case, sort of decapitation without ground troops.

You know, we have to be attentive to or open to the idea that maybe this would work. And if so, how, why, and under what conditions. Now to the idea of, you know, sort of managing for post-conflict. This too is something that, you know, we always wanna be attentive to sort of history, right? But of course, you know, sort of he who remembers the past is, is sort of can commit the opposite mistakes.

Um, the, the, when we look at sort of events in Iraq and Afghanistan and sort of the, what seems on the face of it, like how could we not know some of these dynamics and some of the violence and some of the things that happened in the aftermath. Insurgencies and civil wars and proxy wars. That was not for the lack of planning.

There was extensive planning across the US government for that. But it just shows how difficult it is, right to wage, wars, wars, it is far easier to start wars than end them. Right. And and I was just saying to someone the other day, it’s like all wars end, but they rarely end as expected. And even short, decisive wars like this can often produce post-conflict environments that are bloodier than the, than the war itself.

And not only that, the termination of one war often becomes the beginning of another. And then in doing so, the mistake that so many people make is they sort of graft on these apriori grievances and things onto the post-conflict environment. But the post-conflict environment, as we saw in Iraq, as we saw in Afghanistan, that violence unfolds over a range of complex, evolving motives that can be even, you know, sort of either directly or even indirectly, um, related to the war.

[00:10:09] Zachary Suri: It that, that makes sense. Uh, uh, and, and I think there’s a really interesting question that I hope we’ll dive into a little bit more about potential for a post-conflict or post regime, uh, chaos in Iran. But I did ask first what you think, how plausible you think it is that the Iranian people as President Trump has suggested in recent days, might actually rise up against the Iranian regime in a way that could effectively prop the regime.

How is the, is the regime really that weak in this moment?

[00:10:38] Michael Dennis: Well, that’s again the thing. The US and Israel have been successful at decapitating, many of the senior Iranian leaders right from the Ayatollah down to, you know, sort of that, that top tier, um, of leadership. But that is not the regime. The regime itself.

Right? Again, going all the way down to sort of, you know, subnational municipal level. The regime is robust. You still have not just the Iranian Revolutionary Guard, you have their conventional military, the Artes, you have their, what’s called the besiege. These are sort of domestic, uh, kind of military forces.

I mean, these folks are still. Um, you know, they still have high capabilities when it comes to resistance. One of the things that, um, that groups face are these typical challenges of coordination and collective action. And so here thinking about, you know, if, if, if, if the three of us were, you know, in Iran and we wanted to do something, you know, how do we coordinate with the broader group of people that might wanna do something?

Technology is helping with that, but it also creates these vulnerabilities once we communicate. We’re vulnerable. And of course this has happened in a abroad, but more broadly, you know, the incentive structure is, is not for us to do something that is risky with an uncertain outcome. That if someone else does it, we get to benefit for benefit from it.

The incentive structure is to not do anything to sit on the fences. Um, and so when you talk about a resistance in Iran, you have to think about how are these populations going to overcome those central challenges? And there are more. There’s something called sort of. The G um, GM squared, guns, money, manpower.

The idea is that in this type of environment, the state apparatus has the monopoly in the, or the asymmetric, uh, comparative advantage on guns and money and manpower. And so, you know, from an insurgency perspective, you have to sort of secure those things and it’s a very, very difficult thing. And that’s why most insurgencies fail right off the bat.

Although, and the ones that do become successful, conversely, the ones that are able to solve that problem tend to last on average about 10 to 12 years. So there are a lot of upfront sort of challenges that have to be made. The other side of this, of course, is as I mentioned, you know, the US has doctrine and dedicated forces to working with populations to help them overcome them, ch those challenges to help them get the money and the guns, and to give them the training.

And that’s where, you know, again, like we have to think analytically when we talk about the, you know, the quote unquote population in Iran. Which population are we talking about? Once again with the regime chain, I just, I just wanna say quickly, one of the big factors is you need to get regime defections to work, and we haven’t seen that.

But the other side is, again, what we saw in the news that I mentioned earlier, US is talking about supporting the Kurds. Something that we’ve done for years and then withdrawn, support and kind of left them in a, in a fraught spot. But that’s a different dynamic, uh, that what we’re talking about here, this kind of, um, unconventional warfare support to groups like the Kurds or maybe even the Balu, right?

Which is another ethnicity, um, in Iran that’s been fighting for independence for a number of years, and they are very capable militarily.

[00:13:52] Zachary Suri: That makes sense. Uh, I, I do think though that there’s maybe an even more basic question that hasn’t been answered yet, which is, um, you know, is there even will among the Iranian people for this kind of like, comprehensive regime chain?

And is there will on the American side for that? I mean, just today President Trump said he doesn’t care whether Iran becomes democratic or not. Um, do you think that’s, at this point a, a goal or even a desire of of, of either side.

[00:14:18] Michael Dennis: Yeah, I mean that there is, is a great question. I mentioned the kds a moment ago.

One of the things, despite our support to the Kurds over the years and, and the Kurds right across, whether you’re talking about in Iran, in Iraq, in Turkey, in Syria, again, in all of these places except for Turkey, we have supported the Kurds. Um. But the Kurds in, in some places like Iraq have actually gotten a better deal, not fighting for independence, but, but um, agreeing to sort of, you know, um.

Regional autonomy and, and so it’s a great question to ask, what do these populations really want? Do they want regime overthrow or do they want policy changes? Um, and it seems that many of them do want some overthrow of the regime. Um, but one of the other challenges that if, again, if we go back to sort of history.

It is extremely difficult analytically to gauge and to anticipate the very word that you used will, right? Not just a word, it’s a variable. Um, the will to fight is often rev, not just sort of, um, revealed by conflict, but it’s also sort of conditioned by conflict. And this is why during, um, you know, most recently during the US withdrawal from Afghanistan.

Um, the United States sort of did not, uh, uh, fully estimate the degree to which the government of Iran, uh, Afghanistan had the will to persist after the US withdrawal and face of Taliban attacks. And then conversely, if just looking at Ukraine. Um, here too many in the us uh, sort of, and, and even in the government structures, right?

Not just talking about US public opinion, um, but many of the people that are tasked with knowing these things were really, um, surprised that the Ukrainians not just sort of have lasted as long as they have, but even lasted outside of those original three days.

[00:16:11] Jeremi Suri: Mike, I think your comments on will are so revealing, uh, and as you say, uh, will itself is not revealed until the conflict occurs.

But we do know, um, that Iranian society has, uh, existed for hundreds, thousands of years, largely un colonized, unoccupied. Uh, how does that history play into this, uh, set of circumstances?

[00:16:34] Michael Dennis: Yeah, I think, and that’s a great point too, you know, what has happened over the last 50 years is in some ways, you know, kind of anomalous is too much of that history.

Um, but I think the, the broader point that you would want to take away from that fact is just once again, going back to these post-conflict dynamic. And, and, you know, this is just an ever moving target. Today, is again, the, the president, um, president Trump had said that, you know, well yesterday he said that he wanted to determine who the next leader was.

And then today he was talking about unconditional surrender. But in both of those instances, you are ignoring this central fact that you just described. Any sort of the, the greater, like the greater than an external power interferes in the domestic politics of a country, the greater to some degree that it can control those outcomes, but paradoxically, the greater that that actor becomes involved.

The greater the risk of instability because you are an external actor and because for the United States we have this history, right? Going back to 1953 and the election of EK overthrown in a CIA coup, you know, so the US does not have a lot of legitimacy here as a particular actor, but more broadly, anytime you have these dynamics, and again, right, under what conditions do things happen.

When you have a highly nationalist population, right, with a long, rich history of proud people, um, it just makes it exceedingly difficult. And this is why external regime, uh, change has a terrible record for success.

[00:18:08] Zachary Suri: That makes sense. What if you were an American policy maker? What are the kinds of tools that you would have at your disposal?

To try and encourage the kind of regime lasting regime change that President Trump has stated as his goal. Others there, is there work that special forces can do, covert operations, et cetera? What would that look like?

[00:18:28] Michael Dennis: Well, so here, let, let me, that’s another great question. And let me just say again to take that step back.

When it comes to long-term stability, that’s the key word, long term. You know, when you look back at Iraq and Afghanistan, despite how long we were there, that was not the intent, right? The US militaries optimized for decisive, conventional combat. Yes. And some special operations missions, but it’s about achieving that technological and domain dominance, right?

Own the air, own the land. But post-conflict stabilization takes political bargaining, institutional development, long-term legitimacy building, and, and just from our military to even our political system, right? US electoral cycles, incentivizing quick wins and visible problems, progress and exit timelines.

Um. You need that decades long commitment. You need the tolerance for ambiguity. You need institutional patience. That is why people point to, even though it’s not exactly analogous, people point to post-World War ii, Germany and Japan as the exemplars of what successful post-conflict management could look like.

So that being said, what could we do? I have to note that one of the things that we could have done, um, prior to the last year in which the administration, um, is defunded and, and sort of dismantling things like Voice of America. Things like, you know, sort of the, the radio free series, which going back to the Cold War would publish right?

Sort of the, the truth, right? Sort of like countering regime narratives, um, in local languages. You know, for me, I, I, this was in a tremendous, uh, source of information and for my own work with the Chechens, a lot of the chechens, you know, radio free Europe, radio, marsh show radio. You know, radio, um, freedom. I mean, this was a really valuable tool, and that’s something we’re not talking about here.

Our soft power leavers, right? We have just shifted to a world and, and people from the adminis administration have said this, right? The Iron law, you know, the, what is it? The iron laws of Power for time Memorial Stephen Miller said. Yeah, but that’s not really what has worked empirically. So when you ask what would I do?

I would say, you have to get that thing going. You have to get sort of soft power moving. I think with respect to special forces and others, working with locals can bring great reward, right? They know the terrain. They have sort of the local intelligence. Um, but the challenge there is that they don’t always share the same objectives beyond the most proximate, you know, both sides wanna get rid of the regime or something like that.

And what you see is a lot of times when the US or other actors have backed local groups, you tend to see that that makes violent or that makes conflicts. More violent, more lethal. It makes them more protracted. So again, these are the things that in pol in the policy world, it’s often not the choice between good policy and bad.

It’s the least bad option. And when it comes to that least bad option, so things like supporting proxy groups, perhaps like the KDS or the Balu, that’s gonna give the United States some, um, military and political advantage on the ground. But there are some real inherent latent risks. And not just latent, there could be some explicit ones like I described earlier, that we should be very, very, um, cautious and aware of.

[00:21:55] Jeremi Suri: Uh, just building on these very insightful comments, Mike, uh, how should we choose leaders to work with? It seems to me as a historian that our track record is pretty poor, whether we’re talking Ahmed Chalabi, ngo, uh, even Hammad Karzai, right? I mean, we, we. We tend to choose people who, first of all, have dubious legitimacy with certain groups that are important to the post-war environment, as you’ve described it so well, and also the act of choosing them often delegitimizes them further.

Right? So, so, so, so how should we do this?

[00:22:28] Michael Dennis: That again is one of the really important questions. You know, again, by the very nature of our sort of, you know, kind of anointing, these leaders, we have by definition made them in some ways illegitimate. And, and, and it is, you know, I’m trying to think of like, what’s the best way to get out of this?

And it has to be somehow that the US just sets the conditions. For the people to, um, to choose to select their own leader and to just kind of go with it from there. You know, one of the things that’s really sort of important to note too is, you know, when we look at these historical examples and think, what can we learn what generalizable insights there was?

A lot has been said about, you know, how the US prosecuted the war in Afghanistan after nine 11. When they were then suddenly to, you know, small footprint, uh, you know, fine local actors you could work with, even though yes, as you described, Karzai was incredibly problematic. Um, we ignored the, you know, sort of tribal dynamics and, and ’cause Afghanistan was very, very heterogeneous.

You know, we ignored all of that and we seemed to have some surface level successes when the US was thinking about the 2003 invasion. There are, there are so many sort of memoirs and other stories that have come out where. People had to tell senior leaders like, Iraq is not Afghanistan. Like, that was almost like the coffee cup, right?

Hey, Iraq is not Afghanistan. And there, right, again, the, the, the, the ethnic breakdown was very, very different. Now, once again, talking about Iran, Iran is more ethnically homogenous and on the one hand you would think you would avoid all that kind of. Potential for ethnic factionalization, but there are so many other fisher points, right?

Um, there are so many other ways that in which the society could either coalesce or come apart. And again, I’m just, my mind automatically goes to beyond the leadership question that you asked that I’m not really giving a great answer for which. I think just in some ways, again, talks to, there is no great option here.

It’s, it’s what’s the least bad option? Um, but even thinking about that, again, I mentioned this post-conflict sort of dynamic. You know, one of the things that you need too are, are things like illustration courts and, and Right. A reckoning for the crimes of the regime. And that’s where, again, like these cleavages that we see in conflicts, often, it’s not sort of the population versus the regime that is one, but it’s these very micro level dynamics.

This tribe doesn’t like this tribe. This village doesn’t like this village. This neighbor doesn’t like this neighbor. And that too is part of the complexity, the mosaic of challenges. Um, that you find in post-conflict environments.

[00:25:12] Jeremi Suri: J just to follow up briefly, Mike, on, on those comments, um, if, as you said so, well, Mike, our role is not choosing the leader, but setting conditions, what do we do if the leader who turns out to be most popular and legitimate on the ground in Iran post mollah, is someone who’s even more anti-American.

[00:25:30] Michael Dennis: Right. You know. That there are, that to me, the first thing that comes to mind. Um, as I said earlier, we should be open to the possibility that this, this ostensibly new way of fighting war get away with the old Pottery Barn right from Colin Powell during the first and second Gulf War is when you break it, you own it, that you have a responsibility to manage post-conflict.

Now people are saying that is gone very publicly saying, you know, that is gone and we have this new way of warfare. Um, if that is the case, then what you’ve just described and what is, what is potentially happening with, with the Ayatollah’s son being possibly put forward and the president, not President Trump being, being dismissive of that.

Um. That type of outcome. The outcome where we have encouraged the Iranian people to rise up, but given the still robust capabilities of the regime, if 30,000 are slaughtered this time, those types of conditions really put this strategy, the viability of this strategy to the test. Because to your very question, Jeremy, what do we do then?

And from all indicators, I don’t think, I don’t see, I don’t see. We have a very good plan for that. And, and even, you know, again, I think it was the, um, one of a German official, I think came to the White House the other day and, and came out saying exactly that. I, they, I don’t see any sort of day after planning.

So that puts us, really, puts again, this strategy, this new, ostensibly new strategy, um, to the test, to the, the question itself. If a leader were to come to power that we’re not sort of hopeful with, you know, not, not happy with. Here too. I think we’re kind of at a crossroad moment and I think. There’s a question of what should we do, and then there’s a question of what is the most likely thing that would happen?

Again, if that were to happen, the administration would be faced with either having to sort of escalate or to use that as an off ramp and to basically say what I just said. Yeah, it’s not our preferred candidate, but it’s better than before. And it just allows you to exit. So, so that’s that side of it. But at the end of the day, I think, again, if you take a long view, right, a crooked line from a distance looks straight.

I think as long as local leaders are not sort of right. Acting and plotting in ways that threaten the sovereignty of your nation. Like, you know, we’re, we’re a democracy. So you let the people have their, have their preferred, um, leader. I

[00:28:07] Zachary Suri: think this has been super helpful at especially illuminating, um, the population dynamics in Iran, the political complexities.

But I’m curious, just sort of as we wrap up here, if you might speak to the wider influence this conflict has already had on the region as a whole. Um, thinking particularly of the Gulf countries that I think perhaps unexpectedly have become sites of conflict, I mean dramatic images of missiles, uh, exploding over Dubai, et cetera, that, that I don’t think a lot of us expected out of a conflict like this.

Um, you know, what does that, what does that dimension add to the. To the dynamics here.

[00:28:40] Michael Dennis: Yeah, another great question. Um, you know, in, so some of the classes I teach are, are, are on post-conflict and I just taught this course in the fall and we were talking about like, you know, there’s so many people in Washington at that point, we’re not, you know, we’re never gonna do nation building again.

We’re never gonna do these, these things again. Um, and, and there was even a talk at UT with a very, with a former, I’m not gonna name them, but a very senior. Uh, US official and now they’re doing some consulting and in response to a question they said, you know, um, I’m gonna tell you where we are telling my company now is telling people to invest.

It’s the Middle East because despite the October 7th attacks. In this person’s estimation, the Middle East, because of some of the partnerships between Israel and the Gulf States, because of some of these other stabilization equilibrium that were sort of emerging, that it seemed like this was the place to invest liberalization was happening in Saudi Arabia.

Like all of these things. And it’s just remarkable that we are in, you know, seven days later we are in such a different world. Um, you know, there Iran is attacking from Azerbaijan, you know, to these Gulf States economic targets. And you know, for their part, I just wanna say too, like. The Gulf States, Qatar and the Emiratis and others, they are ready, you know, they are ready to kind of like end this right now.

So there, there is some momentum to kind of off ramp among some of these actors, but at this point it just starts to go wider and wider and wider. Right? The ripple effects, the kinetic ripple effects have gone from the Indian Ocean and Sri Lanka to Azerbaijan. And what I would hope is one of the things that I teach my students is right, like.

If you’re proposing policies like this, you have to think about the unintended consequences if you do this, how? What might happen, how, why under what conditions? Ian, this is very time and labor intensive, but you need to kind of go around the map. So if the US and Israel artists start this, how does this matter for Iran?

For India, for Sri Lanka, right, for Iran. You have to go through that. All of this to say we are at a really fraught moment and you know, things can settle down quickly, but that’s not what appears to be happening right now and not in the near term. Um, to be sure, again, there are sort of some ways in which this could sort of, you know, the US and with and Israel with respect to military operations.

And we didn’t even talk about that Israel sort of. Expanding, um, strikes into Southern Lebanon, which has been going on for decades. Um, you know, we can off ramp, but then what, you know, then what we, I just mentioned Lebanon. Lebanon is still feeling the effects of the Civil War in the 1980s. I mean, we have destroyed so much infrastructure and you know, it’s just, that takes a really long time.

And it’s not just the physical rebuilding, it’s the social rebuilding, the psychological rebuilding. You know, again, I work with the Chechens. Those wars are 20 years old now, and those people still feel the scars of war.

[00:31:49] Zachary Suri: Well thank you. This has been such a comprehensive conversation. I think we’ve captured so many of the dynamics here and, and, and really the sort of complexities and, and questions that remain completely unanswered.

Um, and I I really appreciate you taking the time to point things out for us ’cause we’re often what gets lost in the heat of the moment. So thank you so much Professor Dennis for joining us.

[00:32:11] Jeremi Suri: Thank you for having me.

[00:32:13] Zachary Suri: Thank you Jeremy, for joining us as well.

[00:32:15] Jeremi Suri: Excellent, excellent conversation.

[00:32:17] Zachary Suri: Yes, and thank you.

Of course. Uh, most of all to our listeners for joining us for this episode of This Is Democracy.

[00:32:27] Intro: This podcast is produced by the Liberal Arts ITS Development Studio

[00:32:30] Zachary Suri: and the College

[00:32:31] Intro: of Liberal Arts at the University of Texas at Austin.

The music in this episode was written and recorded by Scott Holmes.

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