Speaker 1: Very pleased to be joined by the historian and author
Speaker 1: and apple Bomb, one of the most insightful commentators on
Speaker 1: domestic and global affairs, and particularly this revanist movement we
Speaker 1: see in the United States across Europe that is hostile
Speaker 1: to the liberal democratic values and the systems that emerged
Speaker 1: in the aftermath of the Second World War, and though imperfect,
Speaker 1: have largely kept global peace for eighty years and have
Speaker 1: certainly advanced human progress at a level that I think
Speaker 1: sometimes both Beggar's imagination and is not widely known. But
Speaker 1: welcome an apple.
Speaker 2: Bomb, Thanks, thanks, glad to be here.
Speaker 1: There is a person that you remind me of historically
Speaker 1: who I've never met, but who I've read a great
Speaker 1: deal of, and that's Dorothy Thompson. And she had the
Speaker 1: distinction of being the first journalist an American kicked out
Speaker 1: of Hitler's Germany, out of the Reich. I think, wrote
Speaker 1: the greatest column explaining fascism and the affinity of people
Speaker 1: towards it in a New Yorker column You know speculated
Speaker 1: guess who the Nazi is as a dinner and parlor game.
Speaker 1: She talked about the collapse of democracies as an eyewitness
Speaker 1: before Senate testimony in nineteen thirty seven. She was an
Speaker 1: FDR New dealer, but was absolutely opposed to his court
Speaker 1: packing scheme and deeply worried about it. When she talked
Speaker 1: about the collapse of democracy, her main point was that
Speaker 1: people just are not willing to fight for a concept
Speaker 1: and an idea that they think has failed them with
Speaker 1: regard to their life, their economic prosperity, but they are
Speaker 1: willing to fight for that economic prosperity at the expense
Speaker 1: of their democracy. And so as we stand at this
Speaker 1: moment in the United States where Biden, if the election
Speaker 1: were tomorrow, by all accounts and all the polls, would
Speaker 1: lose the election to Trump. I don't think we're faded
Speaker 1: to that. We have at least dephonic on national television
Speaker 1: talking about the January sixth perpetrators three years later, or hostages,
Speaker 1: so on and so forth. How do you see all
Speaker 1: of them in its totality in the highest lens.
Speaker 2: So let me unpick a little bit what you just said.
Speaker 2: You know, one is the question of are people willing
Speaker 2: to fight for an idea as opposed to fighting for
Speaker 2: their own economic interests? And you know, I know that
Speaker 2: it's it's quite fashionable to say that, you know, democracy
Speaker 2: is too complicated a concept people. You know, people don't
Speaker 2: understand these questions a rule of law and justice and
Speaker 2: you know, it all takes place on a higher level,
Speaker 2: and everybody just wants to know where their next meal
Speaker 2: is coming from. I actually disagree with that, and I
Speaker 2: think there is quite a lot of proof of that
Speaker 2: over time, both in our country but also in other countries.
Speaker 2: And we can come back to that as well. I
Speaker 2: do think that we live in a moment when the
Speaker 2: ideas have become muddied and you know, and have ben
Speaker 2: and we we we lack people who clearly explain them
Speaker 2: or people who are able to organize movements around them,
Speaker 2: and I think that's you know, that's a that's a
Speaker 2: part of the problem that we're seeing now. I would
Speaker 2: say that the third thing I would say is that
Speaker 2: we you know, way the way you started your statement,
Speaker 2: you know, you talked about this eighty years of relative
Speaker 2: peace and prosperity, rules of international order that at least
Speaker 2: kept the peace in some parts of the world. You know,
Speaker 2: it meant that we didn't have another big war in Europe.
Speaker 2: It meant that conflicts were contained, even if they weren't
Speaker 2: always prevented. You know, we took a lot of that
Speaker 2: for granted, we were all you and me and you know,
Speaker 2: people our age and years older and ten years younger.
Speaker 2: We're very, very lucky to live at a particular moment
Speaker 2: in history when it was just assumed that peace was
Speaker 2: the norm and democracy was the ultimate aspiration. And we're
Speaker 2: now returning to something that's more normal historically speaking, or
Speaker 2: more you know, closer to what Dorothy Thompson was describing
Speaker 2: in the you know, in the nineteen thirties nineteen forties,
Speaker 2: were returning to a time when democracy is a thing
Speaker 2: that has to be fought for against different kinds of
Speaker 2: forces that want to undo it. And preparing again to
Speaker 2: do that, and beginning to think about how to do that,
Speaker 2: and how to mobilize people again in a way that
Speaker 2: we haven't had to mobilize them in a long time.
Speaker 2: Is the challenge of the current moment. You know, I
Speaker 2: like to a good metaphor for a way to think
Speaker 2: about how we're where we where we are right now
Speaker 2: is is actually the metaphor of running water. You know,
Speaker 2: we all live in a society now where we just
Speaker 2: assume that water comes out of the tap.
Speaker 1: Right.
Speaker 2: We don't think about where the water comes from. We
Speaker 2: don't worry about the pipes, we don't know really how
Speaker 2: the technology works. We don't care about it. We just
Speaker 2: turn the tap on and we get water. We are
Speaker 2: now returning to an era before that, when we had
Speaker 2: to think about water. You might have to go to
Speaker 2: the well to get the water, or think about buckets
Speaker 2: or prepared during the day to assume you have enough on.
Speaker 2: In other words, something that was automatic to us and
Speaker 2: didn't require that much thought, which was the existence of
Speaker 2: democracy and the rule of law. We're now going to
Speaker 2: have to begin to fight for, to think about, to
Speaker 2: go back to basics, to understand it. Better to talk
Speaker 2: about it more if we want it to continue, if
Speaker 2: we want to if we want to have that sense
Speaker 2: of automaticity. You know that this is automatically where we live,
Speaker 2: then you know, in the society that we live in,
Speaker 2: we may have to do more about it. You know,
Speaker 2: all of us got used to this idea that democracy
Speaker 2: was something that was done by specialists, you know, political
Speaker 2: consultants or politicians or people who live in Washington and
Speaker 2: the rest of us. All we had to do was
Speaker 2: show up every four years and vote, or maybe not
Speaker 2: vote because it wasn't that important, and then the system
Speaker 2: would keep going. Actually, it turns out that it might
Speaker 2: be a system that we have to be involved in.
Speaker 2: We have to think about, we have to care about it,
Speaker 2: you know, it has to be part of our lives.
Speaker 2: We have to worry about it in ways that we
Speaker 2: didn't before. And so I think that's the that's the
Speaker 2: that's the change that we're living through.
Speaker 1: You know.
Speaker 2: It's it's not so much that people won't fight for it,
Speaker 2: or don't care about it, or prefer their own economic interests.
Speaker 2: It's that we have to have to think harder about
Speaker 2: how to mobilize around it, how to push it, and
Speaker 2: how to make sure that it remains real. You know,
Speaker 2: it's a it's not a and it's not like a
Speaker 2: battle that will be won and then it's over and
Speaker 2: we can all go back to making money or painting
Speaker 2: paintings or doing whatever we were doing before. It's a
Speaker 2: struggle and it's going to go on, probably for the
Speaker 2: rest of our lives.
Speaker 1: You know.
Speaker 2: If we want to maintain a political system where you know,
Speaker 2: freedom and the rule of law and you know, a
Speaker 2: certain tolerance for you know, for political and other kinds
Speaker 2: of minorities is the norm. Then we will have to
Speaker 2: many more of us will have to be engaged than
Speaker 2: we ever were.
Speaker 1: It's shocking to watch Trump or at least Stephonic or
Speaker 1: there's fifty other examples I could give you where somebody
Speaker 1: looks into a television camera and says the red chairs
Speaker 1: blue right, that the convicted Falons are now hostages. And
Speaker 1: you're sitting there saying, what are people conceivably going to
Speaker 1: believe this? Is it possible that they could leave this?
Speaker 1: And you kind of step back in the historical perspective
Speaker 1: and you say, you know, we live in a country
Speaker 1: where the casualty estimates of the Civil War were revised
Speaker 1: upwards about ten years ago after a really deep analysis,
Speaker 1: and so had you had a nation of thirty four
Speaker 1: million people where there were somewhere between seven hundred and
Speaker 1: fifty thousand to eight hundred fifty thousand casualties in eighteen
Speaker 1: eighty five the political era of Abraham Lincoln, Ulysses Grant
Speaker 1: dies and he's the most famous American in the world,
Speaker 1: and he's revered. You get to the beginning of the
Speaker 1: twentieth century, Grant is routinely mentioned in the same breath
Speaker 1: as Washington and Jefferson and Lincoln, and by nineteen thirty
Speaker 1: he's gone. And by nineteen thirty, in fact, a military
Speaker 1: genius was a butcher, Harry genius was a drunk, a
Speaker 1: near great president was corrupt, and all of the noble
Speaker 1: virtues are assigned to the loser, a trader Robert E.
Speaker 1: Lee the myth of the lost cause. If you could
Speaker 1: come out of the American Civil War within a few
Speaker 1: decades or maybe a few more. On top of that,
Speaker 1: with the entire narrative of what happened topsy turvyed I
Speaker 1: think Taitasi Coach speaks about this. The North won the war,
Speaker 1: the South won the myth, then certainly it's possible. And
Speaker 1: this is the lesson, I suppose of all dictatorships, is
Speaker 1: to invent and manufacture their own reality and their own
Speaker 1: truth under the velocity of their under the velocity of
Speaker 1: their lives. And so when you look at the propaganda
Speaker 1: element of this, the streme of invective and vitriol that's
Speaker 1: directed at Biden, at the pro democracy forces, the and
Speaker 1: from my perspective, the incapacity for a number of different reasons,
Speaker 1: some structural, not to be able to respond to it.
Speaker 1: How do you think about that as central to being
Speaker 1: able to communicate about the exigent threat, the existential threat ahead.
Speaker 1: When I think of the explanation, despite all the technology,
Speaker 1: all the advances in filmography, I'm not sure that there's
Speaker 1: a better explanation of who the fascists are and who
Speaker 1: we are than Frank Capra's nineteen forty two film, which
Speaker 1: was Why we Fight and how the country got right
Speaker 1: into World War Tip. How do you think about that?
Speaker 2: So you're right that creating myths and you know, coding
Speaker 2: the past with lies and reconstructing what happened, you know,
Speaker 2: is a is a trade of every dictatorshipt you know,
Speaker 2: probably going back to Rome, but certainly the ones of
Speaker 2: the twentieth century. You know, we're famous for doing that.
Speaker 2: You know. The the construction of a of a historical
Speaker 2: mythology and a kind of series of events that justify
Speaker 2: the present is, you know, is as old as autocracy.
Speaker 2: You know, the the you know, there was a communist
Speaker 2: mythology about the heroism of Stalin. You know that that
Speaker 2: was entirely false, based on a completely fake account of
Speaker 2: the of the Bolshevik Revolution and the and the and
Speaker 2: the nineteen twenty wars. You know, Hitler had had a
Speaker 2: fake story about his own life and his own trajectory.
Speaker 1: You know.
Speaker 2: And you know, once again, I would I would stress
Speaker 2: the idea that I think for a long time Americans
Speaker 2: half convinced themselves. Certainly, I mean that I was convinced
Speaker 2: when I was growing up that this this quality didn't
Speaker 2: really apply to us. You know, that we had a
Speaker 2: we had a better and clearer understanding of history and
Speaker 2: uh and uh, you know, and there and the and
Speaker 2: the narrative of progress was was was somehow solid, you
Speaker 2: know that okay, where there was the revolution and then
Speaker 2: this the Civil War kind of corrected the revolution, and
Speaker 2: then we had the civil rights movement that corrected that,
Speaker 2: and you know, now we were on to something, to
Speaker 2: something better. And I think what we forgot was that
Speaker 2: bad ideas never die, you know, they they don't go away,
Speaker 2: you know, just because they've been defeated. You know, just
Speaker 2: because Nazism was defeated doesn't mean that it doesn't come
Speaker 2: back in different forms. Just because you know, white supremacy
Speaker 2: was defeated in the in the Civil War, doesn't mean
Speaker 2: it doesn't re arise, and being vigilant about the return
Speaker 2: of bad ideas and constantly being aware that they can
Speaker 2: and will come back, and not being complacent. I think
Speaker 2: Americans became very complacent in the twentieth century because of
Speaker 2: you know, we enjoyed so much success. We forgot that,
Speaker 2: we forgot what could lead to failure. You know, is
Speaker 2: a you know again, something that needs to be done now,
Speaker 2: I mean almost constant reminder of of you know, what
Speaker 2: happened in our history and how we have to continue
Speaker 2: to overcome it is important. But your other point is
Speaker 2: about truth and untruth, which is you know again, Autocracies
Speaker 2: are always based upon, you know, an attempt to discover
Speaker 2: or ascempt sorry, an attempt to distort or rearrange reality.
Speaker 2: And another element that we have to contend with now
Speaker 2: is that there are many more ways to do that
Speaker 2: than there used to be. You know, it's not just
Speaker 2: the dictator telling a story. You know, the dictator can
Speaker 2: now have you know, hundreds of trolls, you know, paid
Speaker 2: and unpaid, who can echo and repeat that story for him.
Speaker 2: The dictator can you know, can use you know, other
Speaker 2: forms of technology. I mean, we haven't we haven't seen
Speaker 2: the full impact of AI yet, but I'm sure that
Speaker 2: we will in the coming election campaign. You know, the
Speaker 2: you know, there there are lessons that have been learned
Speaker 2: over the over the last several decades. You know, if
Speaker 2: you repeat lies enough, if you provide a constant stream
Speaker 2: of them, you know, if you confuse people, if you
Speaker 2: produce this. You know, the famous expression is firehood of falsehoods.
Speaker 2: This is the kind of Russian invention. You know, if
Speaker 2: you continually put out lies one after the next, you know,
Speaker 2: you begin to loosen the idea of truth itself, and
Speaker 2: then people feel, you know, they're not rooted in reality anymore.
Speaker 2: They doubt this, you know, all sources of information, whether
Speaker 2: it's the media, or whether it's the government, or whether
Speaker 2: it's universities, and then they begin to doubt everything. And
Speaker 2: people who doubt everything, and people who don't know what
Speaker 2: to believe and aren't oriented, are much easier to manipulate.
Speaker 2: So so you know, you're seeing right now several things
Speaker 2: going on at the same time. One is this, you know,
Speaker 2: return of bad ideas. The second is ever more sophisticated
Speaker 2: ways of you know, convincing people that nothing is true
Speaker 2: at all, and that they don't really know. They can't,
Speaker 2: they have no way of knowing what reality is, so
Speaker 2: they might as well go along with, you know, with
Speaker 2: with whatever is easier.
Speaker 1: You know.
Speaker 2: It's it's interesting. I mean, at least dephonic is a
Speaker 2: particularly confusing in some ways version of this. I mean,
Speaker 2: it's somebody who's clearly educated, right, who's clearly intelligent, who
Speaker 2: must know she's lying, you know, who, who who must
Speaker 2: understand that, you know that January sixth perpetrators were insurrectionists
Speaker 2: and not and not heroes, and they're certainly not hostages,
Speaker 2: you know, And yet has you know, is so profoundly
Speaker 2: cynical that she's using again all these tools, you know,
Speaker 2: the the you know, the false language, you know, the
Speaker 2: being reinforced by you know, by waves of internet emotion.
Speaker 2: And she's doing it in order to, you know, in
Speaker 2: order to obtain power. I mean, whether it's power for
Speaker 2: herself or power for her party, you know, remains to
Speaker 2: be she I mean, maybe she wants to be vice president,
Speaker 2: maybe she wants to be have another leadership role. And
Speaker 2: you know, we've we we really forgot that that's you know,
Speaker 2: that's normal behavior throughout history that people, you know, people
Speaker 2: are opportunistic and cynical, and they lie to get power.
Speaker 1: Well, it's an important part of the coalition, right. You
Speaker 1: have the fanatics, you have the ideologues, but none of
Speaker 1: it happens, none of it comes to life without the cynics.
Speaker 1: Let me, let me ask you turn this towards Ukraine
Speaker 1: and to the war, and towards the global security situation.
Speaker 1: Nineteen twenty three Hitler's punch. We are one hundred and
Speaker 1: one years on, and we are one hundred years on
Speaker 1: now from the birth dates of men like Jimmy Carter
Speaker 1: and George Herbert Walker Bush. Jimmy Carter just missed the war.
Speaker 1: He graduated in Napolis in nineteen forty six. George Bush
Speaker 1: was the youngest fighter pilot, naval aviator in the Pacific.
Speaker 1: But when we think back towards you know what's called
Speaker 1: the Greatest generation. A lot of the young men who
Speaker 1: landed on the beaches and who were buried under the
Speaker 1: crosses were born in a twenty four after the nineteen
Speaker 1: one hundred years ago. It was their birthdates. And there's
Speaker 1: something true about history. The sixteenth century was deadlier than
Speaker 1: the fifteenth and the seventeenth. Then the sixteenth, the eighteenth
Speaker 1: more than the seventeenth. The nineteenth was a very deadly century.
Speaker 1: It was a preface to industrial war, and things went
Speaker 1: completely off the hook, as you know in the twentieth century,
Speaker 1: where by the time you reach the midpoint with mankind's
Speaker 1: possession of weapons that can extinct civilization, one hundred million
Speaker 1: dead in the Second Global War of the first half
Speaker 1: of the cent history has been broken or postponed. But
Speaker 1: there's a lot of time left in the twenty first
Speaker 1: century to exceed the Butcher's bill of the twentieth century.
Speaker 1: And so my first question, and I'm going to ask
Speaker 1: a bunch of them put together, who is winning the
Speaker 1: war in Ukraine and Russia? And two, it seems to
Speaker 1: me that Donald Trump's security vision is very clear. He
Speaker 1: views the world in a nineteenth century sense. He's a
Speaker 1: mercanti list in some regard a moral but he doesn't
Speaker 1: understand why the United States would extend a security guarantee
Speaker 1: to Taiwan. He looks at that as China's back yard
Speaker 1: and doesn't care. He looks at Ukraine as Russia's backyard.
Speaker 1: And whoever the strongest power in Europe may be, let
Speaker 1: him fight it out. If that's what they want to do.
Speaker 1: And I think that Trump looks at the Western hemisphere
Speaker 1: is my territory. I don't think you ever have to
Speaker 1: look forward to Trump trying to send an American army,
Speaker 1: let's say, to the Middle East. I think that's anatomatic
Speaker 1: to him. But I think there's a real lack of
Speaker 1: imagination about an American army rolling south into Mexico or
Speaker 1: into Venezuela, or into other places in the hemisphere. Trump
Speaker 1: ideologically doesn't necessarily want a foreign war on the other
Speaker 1: side of the world, but all dictators want a war,
Speaker 1: and Donald Trump's personality would suggest that he too would
Speaker 1: not be indisposed towards sending that. So when you look
Speaker 1: at the world and you look at it an American
Speaker 1: president that would, I think, within a week functionally abrogate
Speaker 1: Article five of NATO. That pretty quickly would realign the
Speaker 1: world in the sense that the United States is not
Speaker 1: is not coming to help you, the United States is
Speaker 1: going home. Talk about that in the context agreement disagreement,
Speaker 1: but also in the context of this of this war
Speaker 1: in Ukraine. United States weapons supplies to Ukraine are tenuous
Speaker 1: at best. There is an unbelievable hostility towards the Ukrainian
Speaker 1: nation from this MAGA right, that is fully in league
Speaker 1: with the ambitions of Vladimir Putin or useful idiots forum. However, however,
Speaker 1: you see the world to talk to a warning community,
Speaker 1: if you would, about this moment in the next moment,
Speaker 1: as this security situation continues to unravel in a way
Speaker 1: that I find very, very worrisome.
Speaker 2: So what you're talking about is Trump's dislike of the
Speaker 2: idea of collective defense. So Trump is not interested in
Speaker 2: America having allies and in working with other countries to
Speaker 2: preserve regions of stability.
Speaker 1: I don't want to cut you, I don't want to
Speaker 1: cut you off there, but I want to take for
Speaker 1: an academic purpose, right, I want to take the Trump
Speaker 1: position on this. Is the German army is it prepared
Speaker 1: to fight? It is not. The Canadians have the capacity
Speaker 1: maybe to send a battalion to Haiti, maybe not. When
Speaker 1: you look across the Western European nations, what countries have
Speaker 1: a military that's ready to fight today.
Speaker 2: Well, I'm speaking to you here from Poland that's one
Speaker 2: of them. And the Poles would fight and are and
Speaker 2: think about it, frequently. I believe the British and French
Speaker 2: can fight, and they periodically do. I believe that if
Speaker 2: there were a war that you know, that that that
Speaker 2: that you know, that challenged Europe, I believe you would
Speaker 2: find Dutch soldiers, you would find Scandinavian soldiers, You would
Speaker 2: you might even find Italian and Spanish soldiers that will fight,
Speaker 2: and you would even find some Germans who would fight.
Speaker 2: You know, much would depend on how all the contest
Speaker 2: was organized and how people understood it. But you know,
Speaker 2: and you know you would. You might also have without
Speaker 2: the United States as an organizing power. And that's, by
Speaker 2: the way, the United States is most important function in Ukraine.
Speaker 2: It's not just that the US gives money. Actually, if
Speaker 2: you if you look at the numbers and you count
Speaker 2: EU donations, which of course come from the Member States,
Speaker 2: the US and the European Union give about the same
Speaker 2: amount of money to Ukraine. But the US has a
Speaker 2: fundamentally important organizing leadership function and of course has a
Speaker 2: military that it's not just the scale of the military,
Speaker 2: it's also the commanded control systems, the experience of leadership
Speaker 2: that the you know, the rest of Europe as a
Speaker 2: whole doesn't have. So, you know, I think you would
Speaker 2: find you would find people who would fight, you just
Speaker 2: wouldn't find the leadership and the and the you know,
Speaker 2: the the you know, the the galvanizing force that the
Speaker 2: US can provide. You know, I don't think it's the
Speaker 2: case that you know, Europeans are I don't know, incapable
Speaker 2: of warfare anymore. I think that's a you know, it
Speaker 2: hasn't happened here in a long time, but you now
Speaker 2: have a sense of, at least among some Europeans, you
Speaker 2: have a sense of existential conflict that you didn't have before.
Speaker 2: You certainly had that at the beginning of this war.
Speaker 2: And you know, it's not universal and it's not everywhere,
Speaker 2: but it's that it's quite powerful. So so I don't
Speaker 2: I don't think we're you know, what the US does
Speaker 2: is the you know, just returning to the beginning of
Speaker 2: our conversation, is the US in a way brings the
Speaker 2: organizing ideas and principle. You know, people people would fight
Speaker 2: for freedom, and they would do so under American leadership
Speaker 2: because as they do believe in that idea and they
Speaker 2: believe in in you know, and certainly Europeans believe in
Speaker 2: the idea that you know, larger countries shouldn't be able
Speaker 2: to occupy and and and destroy smaller ones. People understand
Speaker 2: that the Russian occupation of Eastern Ukraine is a tutalitarian occupation.
Speaker 2: You know, when the Russians come into a region, they
Speaker 2: arrest all the local people, they create concentration camps, they
Speaker 2: kidnap and deport children, They commit human rights, human rights
Speaker 2: abuses on a scale that nobody has seen in Europe.
Speaker 2: And you know, since the generation of you know, Jimmy
Speaker 2: Carter and George Bush Senior, maybe before that, so people
Speaker 2: understand that. But but it's the American leadership and America
Speaker 2: and military leadership and thought leadership kind of ideas leadership
Speaker 2: that that the US can bring and those things are
Speaker 2: of course Trump can't bring those because because Trump doesn't
Speaker 2: understand those ideas and he doesn't really believe in themselves.
Speaker 2: He doesn't himself care about human rights abuse or kidnap children.
Speaker 2: You know, he's he he he admires cruelty, and he
Speaker 2: admires absolute power. And the United States has always stood
Speaker 2: for the opposite.
Speaker 1: Of that absolutely, and and that is that is the
Speaker 1: key point. He admires Vladimir Putin and definitely much wishes
Speaker 1: to emulate his role.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and I think I think, I think it's important
Speaker 2: that people also understand it's not just Putin. He admires
Speaker 2: she Absolutely, he admires you know, the North Koreans. And
Speaker 2: he's he said so, He's told us so repeatedly. He
Speaker 2: you know, he says it over and over again. And
Speaker 2: the you know the idea that you sometimes hear on
Speaker 2: the maga right that well, you know, we're fighting the
Speaker 2: wrong war. We should be fighting China, that's our real rival,
Speaker 2: not Russia. That's not how Trump thinks, you know. Trump, Trump,
Speaker 2: you know, admires dictatorships and he admires you know, autocracy,
Speaker 2: and he would admire it in different forms. He would,
Speaker 2: he would he would feel the same way about Taiwan
Speaker 2: that he feels about Ukraine.
Speaker 1: I say this as somebody who grew up in New
Speaker 1: Jersey and share a culture with Trump. I'm gonna explain
Speaker 1: this perfectly. He has a kosinostra philosophy. Uh, it's territorial.
Speaker 1: He's got his family, they got theirs. And there may
Speaker 1: be issues between us where are boundaries of butt, But
Speaker 1: generally speaking, so long as you respect the boundary, there'll
Speaker 1: be peace. And that is and that is the Trump philosophy.
Speaker 1: It is not it is not built around the maintenance
Speaker 1: of an international system sustained by American heart and soft
Speaker 1: power and the rule of law and international treaty that
Speaker 1: you know is the culmination of really hundreds of years
Speaker 1: of advancement in human progress. An extraordinary thing to behold
Speaker 1: in twenty twenty three. But I wanted, I wanted to
Speaker 1: I wanted to ask. In Ukraine, the Russian army is
Speaker 1: sustained in some media accounts five hundred thousand casualties, Its
Speaker 1: officer corps has been decimated. What is the Russian capacity
Speaker 1: to keep fighting? What is the Ukrainian capacity to keep fighting?
Speaker 1: And what does a cease fire line look like in
Speaker 1: Ukraine that stops the war or holds it in place
Speaker 1: for some period some period of time? Or do you
Speaker 1: subscribe to the notion that Zelenski holds that he will
Speaker 1: liberate every inch of Ukrainian territory held by Russians, which
Speaker 1: is an American in a position I deeply appreciate, but
Speaker 1: I wonder if it is achievable, and whether the entire
Speaker 1: weight of America's national security and foreign policy position should
Speaker 1: be behind something that is not achievable.
Speaker 2: So let me I mean this will sound paradoxical, but
Speaker 2: the war will be over when the Russians feel they
Speaker 2: can't win. So you know, the war will end when
Speaker 2: the Russians go home, when they feel they've lost, when
Speaker 2: they give up the idea of conquering all of Ukraine.
Speaker 2: And when that happened, we don't. I can't tell you
Speaker 2: exactly when and how that will happen, but we will
Speaker 2: know it like there will there will be a you know,
Speaker 2: there will be whether it will be a putin, will change,
Speaker 2: or there will be a leadership change, or there will
Speaker 2: be some change political change in Russia, not necessarily regime change,
Speaker 2: just a change of movement that you know, the moment
Speaker 2: when they decide they don't want to do it anymore
Speaker 2: is when the war is over. And I think at
Speaker 2: that moment then we can negotiate where the borders will be.
Speaker 1: Are we getting there?
Speaker 2: So the only way we can get there is for
Speaker 2: you know, is for Russia to run out of steam,
Speaker 2: out of energy, out of people, out of ammunition. We
Speaker 2: could get there, and I you know, I've just been
Speaker 2: to Ukraine. Actually I went right before New Year's right,
Speaker 2: you know, in December. And you know, if we can
Speaker 2: can can continue to help Ukraine, if we can help
Speaker 2: Ukraine build up its defense industry, if we can help
Speaker 2: Ukraine create a you know, a professional, long term, long
Speaker 2: standing army, which is what they're trying to do.
Speaker 1: Now.
Speaker 2: If we convince the Russians that we aren't going to leave,
Speaker 2: that we will be there and not just convince them,
Speaker 2: you know, tactically or in a narrative way, but convince
Speaker 2: them because it's true, you know, then it is a
Speaker 2: matter of time before the Russians begin to ask what
Speaker 2: are we doing this for? You know, there is you know,
Speaker 2: it's not Russia, it's you know, we are not winning.
Speaker 2: We are not winning hearts and minds. We are not
Speaker 2: conquering territory that it will then be easy to hold,
Speaker 2: and so the so the so the so. The victory
Speaker 2: depends a lot on whether you know, we can win.
Speaker 2: But it's both a military battle and a psychological battle.
Speaker 2: You know, we convince the Russians that we aren't leaving,
Speaker 2: we are staying. We do stay, we help Ukraine create
Speaker 2: a permanent you know, in a kind of a permanent
Speaker 2: war economy if you will. I mean, the Ukrainians sometimes
Speaker 2: talk about Israel in the sense of, you know, being
Speaker 2: or or South Korea, you know, being a state that
Speaker 2: is permanently ready to defend itself. If we help Ukraine
Speaker 2: become that, then I think, you know, that will help
Speaker 2: end the war. I mean, the Ukrainians had hoped for
Speaker 2: some kind of victory, perhaps involving Crimea. That would you know,
Speaker 2: that would be the blow that would convince the Russians
Speaker 2: to leave. Maybe they'll achieve that, and maybe they won't.
Speaker 2: There was more hope for that a few months ago
Speaker 2: than there is now. But the but you know, it's
Speaker 2: still about holding on and holding out and convincing the
Speaker 2: Russians to go home. And you know, literally the war
Speaker 2: is over when the Russians leave.
Speaker 1: And and of course the central reason looking at the
Speaker 1: looking at the world through Russian eyes and looking at
Speaker 1: the world through Vladimir Putin's eyes, why on earth would
Speaker 1: he ever give up and give in with five hundred
Speaker 1: thousand casualties when Donald Trump could be elected president in November.
Speaker 1: So the so, yeah, it was so the demand side
Speaker 1: for the for the war continuing is the idiocy of
Speaker 1: the useful idiots and the American Congress and around Donald
Speaker 1: Trump and Trump himself, whose position really makes it impossible
Speaker 1: for Putin to walk away, makes it impossible for the
Speaker 1: country to communicate what it is you are suggesting needs
Speaker 1: to be to be communicated. And so we'll probably have
Speaker 1: at least one more fighting season, and if Trump goes
Speaker 1: down in the election, probably the lines as the winner
Speaker 1: starts next year twenty four twenty five will be the
Speaker 1: lines around which you know, permanent demarcations and inspires on
Speaker 1: the game.
Speaker 2: Yeah, so it's not the final border, isn't what's important,
Speaker 2: you know, What's important is that it becomes clear that
Speaker 2: the Russians are leaving and want to end the war.
Speaker 2: Is important, have a negotiation right now? Is The reason
Speaker 2: you can't have a negotiation now is not because you know,
Speaker 2: Zelenski is a maximalist and he's you know, unrealistic and
Speaker 2: so on. The reason you can't have a negotiation right
Speaker 2: now is that Putin doesn't want to end the war, you.
Speaker 1: Know, because he believes his position will improve.
Speaker 2: He believes his position will improve because if Trump is
Speaker 2: the president, then Trump will hand over you know, half
Speaker 2: or all or some large parts of Ukraine. And will
Speaker 2: no longer defend you, Craine. I mean so literally, Trump
Speaker 2: is playing a huge role in this war just by
Speaker 2: being the person who putin. Putin is counting on to
Speaker 2: give him the advantage and let him win.
Speaker 1: Let me, let me, let me ask this question as
Speaker 1: a historian, is there any American from nineteen hundred and
Speaker 1: forward that he ever played a role as pronounced as
Speaker 1: the one Trump is playing the way you just articulated it.
Speaker 1: So you had Lindbergh in the thirties, he was decorated
Speaker 1: by Ribbentrop. He wasn't the head of state. Americans forget
Speaker 1: though that. You know, the draft was preserved in nineteen
Speaker 1: forty by one vote, which would have made it impossible
Speaker 1: had we lost the draft in nineteen forty to have
Speaker 1: invaded France before probably nineteen forty six, which might have
Speaker 1: made the task impossible. But is there any American who
Speaker 1: has played a comparable role in support of a foreign
Speaker 1: dictator's aggression? And the way that Trump is right now,
Speaker 1: I mean he is he is the hope of the
Speaker 1: Russian of the Russian aggression.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean you could put the best comparison to
Speaker 2: me of the Magarite is actually to the far left
Speaker 2: in the uh, you know, in the in the sort
Speaker 2: of pre war and post warrior I mean, you know,
Speaker 2: there were American communists who supported Soviet communism, you know,
Speaker 2: in all kinds of ways. The difference, of course, is
Speaker 2: that none of them ever had any power or any
Speaker 2: significant power, and so you know, they were they were
Speaker 2: they were in favor of a of a of a
Speaker 2: of an autocratic dictatorship that wanted to defeat the United States,
Speaker 2: but they weren't in any position to bring that about.
Speaker 2: You know, what's different and unusual and new about Trump
Speaker 2: is that he's somebody who favors the you know, the
Speaker 2: aims and beliefs of a foreign dictatorship that wants to
Speaker 2: defeat you know, American allies, and the end he's in
Speaker 2: a position to influence that and effect it. So in
Speaker 2: that sense, he's worse than they are.
Speaker 1: Do you think that Ukraine will become a nuclear power?
Speaker 2: You know, I don't know. Uh, you know, there's it's
Speaker 2: certainly an interesting historical puzzle. You know, had Ukraine been
Speaker 2: allowed to keep its nuclear weapons after the fall of
Speaker 2: the Soviet Union, would we be having this war now?
Speaker 2: My guess is that we would not, and of course
Speaker 2: everyone around the world is also. This is another reason
Speaker 2: why everybody's watching the outcome of this conflict.
Speaker 1: You know, if.
Speaker 2: Ukraine is to lose because it gave up its nuclear weapons,
Speaker 2: then what is the incentive for anybody to give up
Speaker 2: nuclear weapons ever again, or to not acquire them? You know,
Speaker 2: why wouldn't South Korea want nuclear weapons? Why wouldn't Japan
Speaker 2: want nuclear weapons? You know, if you, if you, if you,
Speaker 2: why wouldn't Taiwan want nuclear weapons? I mean, I'm not
Speaker 2: saying these are countries that all have the have the
Speaker 2: ability to obtain them, but but the you know, this
Speaker 2: is another issue that's at stake in this war. You know,
Speaker 2: if we you know, we gave Ukraine in the nineteen nineties,
Speaker 2: We and the British and the Russians actually gave Ukraine
Speaker 2: this guarantee of independence and and and and of its
Speaker 2: end of its borders in exchange for Ukraine giving up
Speaker 2: its nuclear weapons. I don't know how many Americans know that,
Speaker 2: but we did. And you know, were Ukraine to lose
Speaker 2: its sovereignty and to lose its independence after that, then
Speaker 2: the incentive for everybody else to get nuclear weapons is
Speaker 2: suddenly much higher. I mean may that may have happened already.
Speaker 1: I want to close out with you. I know you
Speaker 1: are in Poland and it is late in the evening
Speaker 1: and you've had a long day there. But I do
Speaker 1: want to talk about the deteriorating situation in the in
Speaker 1: the Middle East. What does it look like to you?
Speaker 1: Does this look like a situation that is about two
Speaker 1: escalate or a situation which is contained inside of God
Speaker 1: as a six months from now, I suspect this will
Speaker 1: be a or have become a wider war before we
Speaker 1: before we go too much further in this year. I
Speaker 1: hope I'm wrong about that, but I'm very curious to
Speaker 1: what you see. And let me and let me and
Speaker 1: let me just say, I'll lay my cards on the table.
Speaker 1: I was involved in the Israeli elections that deposed net
Speaker 1: and Yahoo in the in the coalition after after twenty twenty.
Speaker 1: I think he is an amorl leader of a moral
Speaker 1: nation that must must when it fights wars, fight wars morally.
Speaker 1: And there's no question when you look at the situation
Speaker 1: that net Nyahu's premiership is entirely dependent on the continuation
Speaker 1: of the war. Right so if the if the war
Speaker 1: ends let's say, hypothetically, if you could wave a magic
Speaker 1: wand next Thursday, Jimasa is destroyed, it's all over. Hostages
Speaker 1: are returned on Friday. Net Nyaho is out of power
Speaker 1: on Saturday. So I look at that situation and I
Speaker 1: think it is deeply, deeply worrying in terms of the
Speaker 1: possibilities for for escalation. Are the Turks blustering or is
Speaker 1: erdigone person with conviction when when he when he speaks, well,
Speaker 1: what do you see?
Speaker 2: So my fear about Natanyahu is is similar but different,
Speaker 2: you know, but slight slightly very slightly varied, which is
Speaker 2: that I worry that Netanyahu is because he's dependent for
Speaker 2: power on this on the very extreme far right of
Speaker 2: his coalition, on people who represent a tiny number of
Speaker 2: Israelis but have a huge amount of power inside the government.
Speaker 2: And I am worried that those people want an extreme
Speaker 2: solution in Gaza. And you've actually heard over the last
Speaker 2: couple of weeks you've heard different members of the Israeli
Speaker 2: government talk about different endings in Gaza. And one version
Speaker 2: is that, you know, we we move in some direction
Speaker 2: of Palestinian self rule, or you know, I don't know
Speaker 2: whether a two state solution is still possible, but some
Speaker 2: some some form of you know, returning Gaza to Palestinian control.
Speaker 2: And then you have another faction which is clearly talking
Speaker 2: about expelling people from Gaza. And of course the expulsion
Speaker 2: of people from Gaza would I think inevitably lead to
Speaker 2: a wider regional war. The you know, the idea that
Speaker 2: you would have population transfer and a you know, very
Speaker 2: very ugly ugly solution you know, that would inevitate. First
Speaker 2: of a would involve Egypt, it might involve other other
Speaker 2: countries in the region. You know. Then I can see
Speaker 2: the war ending badly. I don't know that that conflict
Speaker 2: has been resolved even within Natanya, who's government, you know,
Speaker 2: whether he himself has decided which direction it's going to go.
Speaker 2: But I think the choices that are made about how
Speaker 2: to what to do next in Gaza in the next
Speaker 2: days and weeks will you know, will will decide whether
Speaker 2: the war, you know, whether it spreads or not. You know,
Speaker 2: I agree with you. I think the you know, it
Speaker 2: is of course not a coincidence that nata Ya who
Speaker 2: is the leader now at this time of crisis, because
Speaker 2: it's his leadership that has helped provoke it and create it,
Speaker 2: you know. At the same time, it's of course also
Speaker 2: a huge tragedy he's the leader at this time of
Speaker 2: crisis because he is completely you know, you know, morally
Speaker 2: unqualified to be doing what he's doing. And he is
Speaker 2: not capable of leading a you know, uh, you know,
Speaker 2: and he's not capable of bringing about an end to
Speaker 2: this conflict. That is that that is is any way fair.
Speaker 2: I mean even if you think it's you know, maybe
Speaker 2: that's impossible anyway. But but his his leadership, you know,
Speaker 2: he's someone who has divided Israeli's He's allowed the most
Speaker 2: outrageous and the most extreme voices in Israel to have
Speaker 2: an enormous amount of power. And you know, really the
Speaker 2: only hope in Israel is that uh, you know, other
Speaker 2: other parts of what used to be LACUD and other
Speaker 2: parts of society eventually are able to take control and
Speaker 2: and change the direction of the war and of the situation.
Speaker 1: What a treated is to be able to spend some
Speaker 1: time with you. It's for everybody who tunes in. It's
Speaker 1: like being able to attend a private graduate school seminar
Speaker 1: with one of the smartest learned and most thoughtful observers
Speaker 1: of what's happening in the world. There is an applebaumb
Speaker 1: Thank you very much.
Speaker 2: Thanks pleasure to talk to you.