December 6, 2025 • 35 mins
Newt talks with George Beebe, Director of Grand Strategy at Quincy Institute about the Russia-Ukraine war. They discuss the Tuesday meeting between President Putin, U.S. special envoy Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner, focusing on a potential compromise to end the war in Ukraine. George highlights the necessity for both Ukraine and Russia to make concessions, emphasizing Ukraine's need to secure its sovereignty and rebuild, while Russia seeks assurances against perceived threats from NATO and the United States. The ongoing negotiations aim to address both nations' security concerns, with discussions on military limitations and the status of the Donbas region. The potential for nuclear escalation remains a critical concern, with George asserting that Russia views the conflict as existential, which could lead to nuclear options if pushed into a corner. They conclude their conversation by emphasizing the importance of diplomatic efforts to prevent further escalation and achieve a sustainable peace.
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Speaker 1 (00:04):
On this episode of the News World. On Tuesday, President
Putin met with Special Envoy Steve Wikoff and Jared Kushner
for nearly five hours to discuss the ongoing plan to
end the war in Ukraine. During the talks, mister Putin
went through the US proposals that the Kremlin had received
in four documents head of the meeting here to discuss
(00:28):
what's next in the peace negotiations. I'm really pleased to
welcome my guest, George B. B He's Director of Grand
Strategy at the Quincy Institute. He spent more than two
decades in government as an intelligence analyst, diplomat, and policy advisor,
including as Director of the CIAS Russian Analysis, director of
(00:49):
the CIA's Open Source Center, and as a staff advisor
on Russian matters the Vice President Cheney. His book The
Russia Trap, how our shadow war was Russia could spiral
in the nuclear catastrophe, warned how the US and Russia
could stumble into a dangerous military confrontation. George, welcome, and
(01:25):
thank you for joining me again on Newsworld.
Speaker 2 (01:28):
It's my pleasure, thanks for having me.
Speaker 1 (01:30):
Let's start with the most recent news. Steve Witkoff and
Jared Kushner just met with Vladimir Putin. It was Witkoff's
sixth meeting, but the first time Kushner has joined. This
is also the first in person discussion between Putin and
Trump's team since the Alaska summon. What do you think
is the significance of this meeting.
Speaker 2 (01:51):
Well, it's clear at this point that we've gotten very
serious about finding a compromise settlement to the war in Ukraine,
and that neither side is going to get all the
things that it wants. Both sides are going to have
to make some concessions, and I think we're pretty close
now to a point where Ukraine's core interests can be addressed.
(02:13):
And I think the biggest ones that they have are
to ensure that they can survive as a sovereign, independent state,
that they have assurances that their security concerns about a
Russian reinvasion will be addressed as part of this settlement,
and that they can rebuild the country, recover from the
(02:33):
devastation that this war has inflicted on Ukraine, and look
forward to some sort of prosperous future. So that is
a part of this deal, and I think the Russians
understand that unless those concerns are addressed that Ukraine has.
We're not going to get a compromise, We're not going
to get end of the war, and they want one.
(02:53):
And that's a part of this that you don't really
hear a lot about in the public debate. But Russia's
concerns in this are less about Ukraine and more about
what they perceive as threats posed by the United States
and NATO to Russia. Russia's biggest issues in this war
are also security. They want to make sure that Russia
(03:17):
is not going to be threatened by the prospect of
US or NATO military infrastructure on Ukrainian territory that can
be used in some way to threaten Russia, either politically
or militarily, to strike Russia's strategic nuclear infrastructure in some way.
(03:42):
So what they're looking at here is not so much
how do I compromise with Ukraine, but how do we
compromise with the United States, so that our concerns about
the military threats posed by NATO and by the US
military are a part of this settlement. So what I
I think has been going on is the United States,
(04:03):
its negotiators have been engaging with both Ukraine and Russia
to find a way to address both of these core
interests that the Ukrainians and Russians have, and I think
we're close. I think we're zeroing in on a compromise
that both sides are not going to like, but they
(04:25):
will recognize that it will ensure that their most important
interests are addressed. And I think that's what the focus
of these talks really is on right now.
Speaker 1 (04:36):
One Putin talks about the fact that Ukraine is not
a legitimate state and that his real goal is to
eliminate Ukraine and guarantee that it could never function as
a part of NATO or any would be a threat.
Do you think that's mostly blaff or do you think
he means it well.
Speaker 2 (04:58):
I think there's a lot of misunderstanding surrounding this question
of whether Putin regards Ukraine as a legitimate state or not.
On the one hand, he has argued repeatedly that Ukraine
and its current borders, its current condition is something of
a historical accident, that it is the result of conquest
(05:23):
wars repeatedly over the centuries, the breakup of empires, one
of which was the Soviet Empire, of course, but another
was the Austro Hungarian Empire, and of course, when you're
talking about Crimea, there's also the prospect of Turkey and
its involvement in all of this. So it is a
complicated history. And I think what Putin is saying here
(05:46):
is we have wound up with an artificial state that
has been sewn together from the remnants of these old empires,
and it can't continue to exist if it continues to
be the object of a geopolitical tug of war between
NATO and Russia. We're going to have to find a
(06:08):
way to address that bigger geopolitical context, or Ukraine itself
will come apart. It won't continue to exist in its
current form. Now, that's something he's been warning about since
the early two thousands. He had conversations with Bill Clinton
and George W. Bush about this warning about what would
(06:30):
happen if the United States and NATO tried to pull
Ukraine into the Alliance. And his warning essentially was, this
country will come apart. It will break apart at the
seams because it can't hold together under that kind of
geopolitical competition. It's going to have to be a neutral state. Now,
(06:52):
Putin has never said that Ukraine as a neutral state
should not exist, or that Russia will not reckonize Ukraine
as a neutral state. I think he's been careful to
say in that kind of geopolitical context, Russia can live
with an independent Ukraine. Now. Does he want to have
(07:14):
very strong influence over Ukraine? Absolutely? Has he decided, given
the geopolitical tug of war that is going on over
the past couple of decades that the dawn Boss region,
which is largely populated by Russian speakers, Russian Orthodox believers
and has a history of association with Russia in various forms,
(07:39):
has he concluded that that should be part of Russia,
that it can no longer viably be part of a
Ukrainian independent state. Absolutely, he has, but that wasn't his plan.
A What people forget in all of this was after
the Maidan Revolution in twenty fourteen, the Russians assisted a
(07:59):
separate movement in the Donbas region that essentially said we
want either independence from Ukraine or annexation from Russia. But
Putin refused to recognize them as independent, and he refused
to annex that region for eight years. And there's a
(08:22):
very good reason why he didn't want to break that
part of Ukraine off from the rest of Ukraine, and
that is that this part of Ukraine did not want
to be in the NATO alliance, and Putin wanted a reliable,
(08:43):
domestic Ukrainian group that would oppose that kind of move,
that would serve as a counterweight to parts of western
Ukraine that were very enthusiastic about integrating Ukraine into NATO.
And Putin took a lot of criticism inside Russia for
his refusal to recognize Don Boss independence or annex them.
(09:07):
A lot of the hardline nationalist patriots in Russia thought
that Putin was too weak, not willing to protect these
as they saw them, compatriots in the Don Boss, and
too eager to seek some sort of compromise with the West.
They thought he was essentially a Germanist, not somebody that
(09:31):
was sufficiently hardline Russian patriotic. So all of that, I
think is a very useful historical context to understand where
the Russians are on this. This war that they launched,
this full scale invasion of Ukraine that they launched in
twenty twenty two, is not primarily about acquiring land or
(09:54):
conquering all of Ukraine or bringing it as a whole
into a rebuilt Russian Empire. It is largely driven by
security concerns. Their belief that Ukraine was over time steadily
becoming more and more of a direct military and intelligence
(10:16):
partner to the United States and NATO, and they were
seeing military infrastructure and military cooperation deepening. And the worry
in Russia was if those trends continued, that would reach
a point in a few years where the only way
Russia could prevent Ukraine from actually becoming a member of
(10:39):
the NATO Alliance would be to fight NATO itself, which
they were not willing to do. They thought the window
was closing that if they waited, this would no longer
be Russia against Ukraine, this would be Russia against the
United States and its allies. And that was a prospect
that I think they found very threatening and they wanted
(11:01):
to preclude that. So all that tells me is if
we're going to get out of the mess that we're
in and end this war, we're going to have to
address the course security concerns that the Russians have as
well as the core security concerns that the Ukrainians have.
And that's really the trick. That's a balancing act that
(11:22):
US negotiators are I think making some progress in carrying out.
Speaker 1 (11:46):
For Ukraine to retain enough military capability that you wouldn't
have two or three or four years from now a
sort of third Russian assault. If you count what happened
in for Team as sort of the first wave, this
is the second wave. See, the Russian has been pretty
clear that they will not accept a Ukraine strong enough
(12:10):
to defend itself.
Speaker 2 (12:12):
Well, I'm not sure that's true. Now. The devil's in
the details on that, and that's obviously a key aspect
of these negotiations. Now. At the Alaska summit, in the
concluding press conference that Putin and President Trump had, Putin
did say, look, we understand that Ukraine has security concerns
(12:35):
here that have to be addressed, and he went on
to say, and naturally, we are willing to discuss that.
So now that by itself doesn't say exactly what the
Russians are willing to live with. But what I would
imagine here if you go back to the Istanbul negotiations
in twenty twenty two between Russia and Ukraine that was
(12:59):
meet by several different mediators, one of which was the Turks.
The Russians put down on paper their demands for limits
on the Ukrainian military, and the kinds of things they're
concerned about are size, how large is that military? And
the Russian demand at that time was for a military
(13:22):
of eighty five thousand troops as a standing peacetime army,
which is ridiculous. That's not a military that can defend
itself against Russian in any way. But they also wanted
to cap on long range strike missiles, and that term
long range is not a precise term. But now you're
(13:46):
in a discussion over what kind of range limitations might
the Ukrainians agree to in its ability to strike deep
into Russian territory, And so that's a negotiation. You know,
one man's defensive capability is another man's offensive capability. So
that is going to be an issue that will require
(14:06):
some hard negotiating. But if you look at the so
called twenty eight point plan that got leaked to the
media a few weeks ago, that envisioned a cap on
the Ukrainian military of six hundred thousand men, which quite
honestly is not a cap at all on Ukraine. They
(14:28):
don't have the population base or the economic wherewithal to
sustain a peacetime army of that size. That's many times
larger than any European NATO ally the United States, larger
than the BRITZ by several orders of magnitude, larger than
the German military very expensively maintain. The Ukrainians couldn't do it.
(14:53):
So that figure, I think, is an indication that things
are moving. And this question of the size of the
Ukrainian military and what qualitative caps might be involved in
this is under discussion right now and this is going
to be a central issue. Are the Russians willing to
(15:14):
compromise on this? My guess is yes, we're going to
find out here. But they have engaged with the Ukrainians
on this question before, they didn't reach a satisfactory compromise.
The Ukrainian proposal in April of twenty twenty two was
for a military cap of two hundred and fifty thousand,
(15:37):
so we're now many times greater than that in the
current numbers being discussed. But this is something that the
Russians understand they're going to have to compromise on. My
guess is that we can find some numbers here that
are large enough that the Ukrainians can defense themselves, but
(16:01):
not so large that the Russians feel that their strategic
capabilities are threatened in some way. And they have of
course an eye not on Ukraine itself, but on Ukraine
as an element of the military threat posed by the
United States and Europe towards Russia. That's the balance they're
(16:22):
looking at. So that's why they want to talk to
the United States. Really, the Russians think that this is
really a negotiation with the United States over the European
security order, over the threats that they perceive pointed at
them from the United States and NATO.
Speaker 1 (16:41):
Do you think that Putin and his team were shocked
when they could not get.
Speaker 2 (16:47):
To Kiev, Well, yeah, I do. Their military plan really
was to launch a lightning strike that would seize the
airport outside of Kiev and in so doing force the
Ukrainian leadership essentially to flee and then allow some sort
(17:08):
of puppet regime friendly towards Russia to step in, and
that in turn wouldn't require a long war and they
could get this over with and then they're in a
position to dictate the terms of some kind of settlement.
And that failed, they basically put all their chips on
(17:29):
that bid to seize the airport in institute regime change.
And what happened, of course, was the United States the
CIA got a hold of Russia's war plan. We knew
exactly what they were going to do, you know, we
knew that it was going to be Colonel Mustard in
the library with the lead pipe at noon on Thursday,
(17:52):
and we told the Ukrainians, here's what's coming now. The Ukrainians,
of course, were skeptical initially and kind of went a
you know, what do you know? But they, after a
little bit of discussion, understood, yeah, this is serious, and yeah,
we better prepare. So that made the difference here between
success and failure for the Russians. The Ukrainians were ready
(18:15):
for them. They defeated that attempt to seize the airport,
and then the Russians were in trouble because they had
not done the kind of planning that they needed to do.
What if Plan A fails, you know, what do we do?
What's the backup plan? And that threw them into disarray
quite honestly, and led to some major changes in Russia's approach.
(18:40):
You know, we're living with several years of attritional warfare
that have flowed from that.
Speaker 1 (18:46):
Do you think that it would have been politically impossible
at home for Putin? Pru said, well, that didn't work.
Let's go back to the status quo ended.
Speaker 2 (18:58):
I don't think it was so much politically impossible as
it was strategically impossible. This is an issue that you know,
a lot of people in the West don't understand, but
the Russians view the prospect of US or NATO military
infrastructure in Ukraine as an existential threat, as something that
(19:21):
threatens the very viability of the Russian Federation. So this
is not a nice to do for them. This is
a must do. They don't think they have a choice,
and a lot of Americans don't grasp this. They look
at this war as an elective, as an ambition, as
(19:43):
something that the Russians would like to do, because they're
looking over at Ukraine and saying, Hey, that territory should
be ours, that country should be in our sphere of influence.
Let's go make that happen. And as a result, our
approach to that has been well, let's raise the costs
of this invasion. Let's show Russia that the benefits of
(20:08):
this ambition are far outweighed by the costs and damages
that this invasion is doing to Russia economically, etc. Diplomatically,
Let's crank up the pressure on the economy, Let's turn
Russia into an international diplomatic pariah. Let's expand the Natal
(20:29):
alliance and show putin that all the things that he
wants actually he can't get. And then he'll look at
the costs and benefits and say, yeah, it's not worth it.
It's just too costly. Let's end this invasion. And that
idea really animated the Biden administration's approach to this, and
(20:50):
I think it was a fundamental misunderstanding of Russia's perceptions
of its own interests and what motivated this invasion. The
Russians thought their back was against the wall, that the
prospect of NATO being in Ukraine was so threatening to
them that they felt they had to do something. The
(21:13):
West made clear that we weren't willing to strike a
diplomatic bargain over this. We essentially said no, Russia doesn't
get a voice in whether NATO is in Ukraine or
whether Ukraine is in NATO. That is a sacred, sovereign
decision for the Ukrainians to make. And the Russians don't
get a veto over that. And the Russians reaction to
(21:36):
that was Okay, you know, we hear you, but if
you're not willing to discuss this and compromise at the
diplomatic table, we will exercise our veto over this on
the battlefield. Now. The only way you're going to fix
a problem like that, which is, you know what international
relations theorists call a security dilemma. You know, a situation
(21:59):
where one can tree takes steps that it believes enhances
its own security, but another state finds those same steps threatening,
so you get into this escalatory cycle of action reaction.
This is much like what happened in World War One, right.
The only way you get out of a situation like
that is through a diplomatic process, some compromise where you
(22:21):
address both side security concerns in ways that don't cross
the line into being too threatening to the other. That's
really the kind of problem we're dealing with, and I
think had the Biden administration approached this like that kind
of problem, we probably wouldn't be in the confrontation that
(22:43):
we're in right now. There is still time to get
out of it, and I think that's exactly what the
Trump administration is doing. I think it recognizes what has
to be done. And now the question is can we
exercise the kind of statesmanship and diplomatic skill that will
be necessary to strike this kind of compromise and address
(23:08):
all of the details that have to be addressed in
this and the devil will be in the details and all.
This is not an easy negotiation, not something that you
can do very quickly. Is they have found out over
the past year. But I think we're really getting close
and we shall see.
Speaker 1 (23:42):
Part of the estimate by some Americans and Europeans has
been that the inn a war of attrition that the
number of people putin is losing is so significant given
their already existing demographic challenge of not having enough young
in your judgment, can he sustain this kind of trench
(24:04):
warfare for three or four more years? He has to?
Speaker 2 (24:08):
Well, you know, there's the old joke about the campers
to guys that are out, you know, in the back country,
pitch their tent and they see a bear coming, and
one of the guys starts putting on his shoes, and
his campmate says, what are you doing. You can't outrun
a bear? And the guy says, I don't have to
outrun a bear, I just have to outrun you, And
(24:31):
that analogy I think is absolutely right here. This is
not a question of ken Russia sustain this kind of
warfare absolutely for as long as necessary. The question is
can it sustain it longer than the Ukrainians can? And
I think we're already seeing the answer to that question.
The Russians are meeting their monthly recruitment goals and even
(24:55):
exceeding them in many respects. Yes, they're taking a lot
of loss, but they are more than replacing those losses
on the battlefield. Their numbers are going up. They outnumber
the Ukrainians along the line of contact by several multiples
right now. And the Ukrainians are not meeting their monthly
(25:16):
recruitment goals. They are falling short. The rates of desertion
are going up rather significantly. So the question is not
can Russia sustain this for many more years? The question
really is how long can the Ukrainians sustain this word
of attrition? And I think the answer is not for
(25:39):
much longer. You know, this is an intangible question. A
lot of this has to do with optimism and morale
and resilience in determination. But those qualities are not infinite,
and there are signs that the Ukrainians are reaching the
exhaustion point. And what I'm hearing from my contacts in
Ukraine is that the vast majority of Ukrainians want this
(26:04):
war done. They're ready for a compromise. They're not willing
to surrender, they're not willing to capitulate, but they are
interested in a compromise way to end this war. And
I think that provides Zelensky with both an opportunity and
an incentive to find a compromise way forward here. So
(26:26):
I think the time is right now inside Ukraine. The
other part of this is the corruption scandal, which provides
Zeleski with a major political incentive to change the narrative
inside the country away from corruption and graft and towards peace.
And I think that's part of why we're seeing some
progress right now.
Speaker 1 (26:45):
Do you think it's plausible that they will give up
the Dawn Bass, even the areas that the Russians have
not conquered.
Speaker 2 (26:53):
Well, I don't think there's any prospect that the Ukrainians
are going to legally seed that territory to recognize it
as Russian and not Ukrainian. I think the most one
can hope for is the Ukrainians will say, we are
not going to see the territory, but we will also
(27:14):
agree that its future status will be determined politically and
not by force, not by war on the battlefield. A
lot of wars have ended in just that kind of
pragmatic compromise. Now, the next question is will they withdraw
their forces from parts of Dunyetsk that they now hold,
(27:37):
and that I think is going to be the focus
of these discussions in a lot of ways. That's another
core issue, and what the twenty eight point plan envisioned
was I think a fairly pragmatic and creative compromise on this.
It would not demand that the Ukrainians say, Okay, yeah,
the Donyetsk is yours and we recognize that, but it
(28:00):
would allow for a withdrawal and not a Russian military
occupation of the parts that the Ukrainians had withdrawn from.
In other words, this would become a demilitarized zone under
some sort of international supervision that would allow the Russians
(28:22):
to say, hey, this is our territory. The Ukrainians could
also say, no, that's our territory. But neither one would
have its forces in that part of disputed Dounyetsk, and
we could move forward pragnatically on that and say, Okay,
this is now the basis for a ceasefire. The Russians
(28:42):
can maintain the fiction that they own all of this.
Nobody else is going to recognize that legally, but we
will all just pragnatically say we're going to move forward
on ending this fighting and leave the negotiation over the
future status of this and much the way the United
(29:03):
States did with the Baltic States under Soviet rule. Every
US map produced during the Cold War had a little
box in it that said, the United States government does
not recognize the incorporation of Estonio Laffian Lithuania into the
Soviet Union. But that didn't prevent us from having a
diplomatic relationship with the Soviet Union addressing the many multitude
(29:28):
of security and other issues that we had to deal
with with them.
Speaker 1 (29:31):
One last thing on the question of the Dawnbos, which
is if they will not accept any NATO. When you
talk about somebody being there maybe as a guarantur, who
do you imagine would be acceptable to the Russians as
a guaranty? They certainly don't want us, and they certainly
don't want the rest of NATO.
Speaker 2 (29:53):
Well, here you have to make a distinction between what
I would call a deterrence force and a piece keeping force.
Peacekeeping force, monitors, a ceasefire line, ensures that there is
a separation of armies, that there is a demilitarized zone,
that it is not violated. That's the kind of thing
(30:14):
that an international organization can handle, the United Nations, the OSCEE,
and the job of that kind of force is not
to serve as a deterrent to Russian reinvasion. It's not
meant to be a combat force. Now, a lot of
people when they're talking about this, conflate this question of
(30:37):
a deterrence force a combat force, a trip wire that
would be on Ukrainian soil whose purpose would be to
fight against the Russians should they be tempted to reinvade.
That's not something the Russians are going to agree to.
They're not going to say, yeah, sure, has put a
combat force on Ukrainian territory that would have the purpose
(31:00):
of fighting against us. If we think maybe we want
we want to advance our position at some point years
down the road, what I think they will agree to
is some sort of peacekeeping force, and that's going to
have to be under some sort of international supervision.
Speaker 1 (31:17):
I don't know whether President Trump read your book The
Russia Trap, how our shadow war with Russia could spiral
into nuclear catasity, but I have a distinct sense that
somehow over the last eight years or nine years, he
got the understanding of how truly catastrophic a nuclear war
(31:41):
would be, and that he is bounded at one level
from putting too much pressure on Putin because he doesn't
want to run a risk of Putin starting with tattoo
on Luke's and then who knows how the escalation latter works.
Do you have the same sense that, in fact, if
really puts into a corner, put would be capable of
(32:03):
at least going to limited nuclear weapons, and that it
is a threat that should be a part of our calculus.
Speaker 2 (32:11):
Yeah, I do. I've mentioned that I think this war
for Russia is existential. Then yes, you're going to use
a nuclear arsenal. If that becomes the ultimate guaranteur that
you're not going to be destroy or threatened or face
that kind of threat. That's obviously not plan A for
the Russians. That would be hugely problematic for all kinds
(32:35):
of reasons for them. But here I think John Kennedy's
admonition after the Cuban missile crisis is very apt. He
said the big lesson of that crisis was don't put
a nuclear superpower in a position where it faces a
choice between humiliation and nuclear weapons use. And I think
President Trump has certainly internalized that advice, and that is
(32:59):
clear one of the considerations that he has in saying,
how do we get ourselves out of this situation and
what kind of leverage do we have to apply here?
And you know, I think he understands that in a negotiation,
you get farther with, you know, a smile and a
gun than you do with just smile. You know, he
knows that there has to be pressure on Russia, but
(33:23):
you have to be careful about how far you go,
because you could risk kicking off some sort of escalatory
spiral where people feel like their humiliation is at play
in some way and things could start to get out
of control. And that's not an escalation ladder we want
(33:45):
to start climbing up.
Speaker 1 (33:46):
In my opinion, I have the greatest desire to make
sure we avoid nuclear war. I think people generally have
no idea how bad it is.
Speaker 2 (33:56):
Yeah, that's right. We do have to bear in mind
that this is a real thrall. We can't be complacent
about it, and there's nothing else more important to American security.
Speaker 1 (34:06):
George, I want to thank you for joining me again.
It's always educational. You do remarkable work. Our listeners can
follow the work you're doing as Director of Grand Strategy
at Quincy I nst dot org. I really look forward
to talking with you again in the future.
Speaker 2 (34:23):
Great well, thank you for having one.
Speaker 1 (34:28):
Thank you to my guest, George Baby. Newtsworld is produced
by Gangrishtreet sixty and iHeartMedia. Our executive producer is Guarnsei Sloan.
Our researcher is Rachel Peterson. The artwork for the show
was created by Steve Penley special thanks to a team
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(34:48):
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ginistree sixty dot net. Language This is news World, m
On this episode of the News World. On Tuesday, President
Putin met with Special Envoy Steve Wikoff and Jared Kushner
for nearly five hours to discuss the ongoing plan to
end the war in Ukraine. During the talks, mister Putin
went through the US proposals that the Kremlin had received
in four documents head of the meeting here to discuss
(00:28):
what's next in the peace negotiations. I'm really pleased to
welcome my guest, George B. B He's Director of Grand
Strategy at the Quincy Institute. He spent more than two
decades in government as an intelligence analyst, diplomat, and policy advisor,
including as Director of the CIAS Russian Analysis, director of
(00:49):
the CIA's Open Source Center, and as a staff advisor
on Russian matters the Vice President Cheney. His book The
Russia Trap, how our shadow war was Russia could spiral
in the nuclear catastrophe, warned how the US and Russia
could stumble into a dangerous military confrontation. George, welcome, and
(01:25):
thank you for joining me again on Newsworld.
Speaker 2 (01:28):
It's my pleasure, thanks for having me.
Speaker 1 (01:30):
Let's start with the most recent news. Steve Witkoff and
Jared Kushner just met with Vladimir Putin. It was Witkoff's
sixth meeting, but the first time Kushner has joined. This
is also the first in person discussion between Putin and
Trump's team since the Alaska summon. What do you think
is the significance of this meeting.
Speaker 2 (01:51):
Well, it's clear at this point that we've gotten very
serious about finding a compromise settlement to the war in Ukraine,
and that neither side is going to get all the
things that it wants. Both sides are going to have
to make some concessions, and I think we're pretty close
now to a point where Ukraine's core interests can be addressed.
(02:13):
And I think the biggest ones that they have are
to ensure that they can survive as a sovereign, independent state,
that they have assurances that their security concerns about a
Russian reinvasion will be addressed as part of this settlement,
and that they can rebuild the country, recover from the
(02:33):
devastation that this war has inflicted on Ukraine, and look
forward to some sort of prosperous future. So that is
a part of this deal, and I think the Russians
understand that unless those concerns are addressed that Ukraine has.
We're not going to get a compromise, We're not going
to get end of the war, and they want one.
(02:53):
And that's a part of this that you don't really
hear a lot about in the public debate. But Russia's
concerns in this are less about Ukraine and more about
what they perceive as threats posed by the United States
and NATO to Russia. Russia's biggest issues in this war
are also security. They want to make sure that Russia
(03:17):
is not going to be threatened by the prospect of
US or NATO military infrastructure on Ukrainian territory that can
be used in some way to threaten Russia, either politically
or militarily, to strike Russia's strategic nuclear infrastructure in some way.
(03:42):
So what they're looking at here is not so much
how do I compromise with Ukraine, but how do we
compromise with the United States, so that our concerns about
the military threats posed by NATO and by the US
military are a part of this settlement. So what I
I think has been going on is the United States,
(04:03):
its negotiators have been engaging with both Ukraine and Russia
to find a way to address both of these core
interests that the Ukrainians and Russians have, and I think
we're close. I think we're zeroing in on a compromise
that both sides are not going to like, but they
(04:25):
will recognize that it will ensure that their most important
interests are addressed. And I think that's what the focus
of these talks really is on right now.
Speaker 1 (04:36):
One Putin talks about the fact that Ukraine is not
a legitimate state and that his real goal is to
eliminate Ukraine and guarantee that it could never function as
a part of NATO or any would be a threat.
Do you think that's mostly blaff or do you think
he means it well.
Speaker 2 (04:58):
I think there's a lot of misunderstanding surrounding this question
of whether Putin regards Ukraine as a legitimate state or not.
On the one hand, he has argued repeatedly that Ukraine
and its current borders, its current condition is something of
a historical accident, that it is the result of conquest
(05:23):
wars repeatedly over the centuries, the breakup of empires, one
of which was the Soviet Empire, of course, but another
was the Austro Hungarian Empire, and of course, when you're
talking about Crimea, there's also the prospect of Turkey and
its involvement in all of this. So it is a
complicated history. And I think what Putin is saying here
(05:46):
is we have wound up with an artificial state that
has been sewn together from the remnants of these old empires,
and it can't continue to exist if it continues to
be the object of a geopolitical tug of war between
NATO and Russia. We're going to have to find a
(06:08):
way to address that bigger geopolitical context, or Ukraine itself
will come apart. It won't continue to exist in its
current form. Now, that's something he's been warning about since
the early two thousands. He had conversations with Bill Clinton
and George W. Bush about this warning about what would
(06:30):
happen if the United States and NATO tried to pull
Ukraine into the Alliance. And his warning essentially was, this
country will come apart. It will break apart at the
seams because it can't hold together under that kind of
geopolitical competition. It's going to have to be a neutral state. Now,
(06:52):
Putin has never said that Ukraine as a neutral state
should not exist, or that Russia will not reckonize Ukraine
as a neutral state. I think he's been careful to
say in that kind of geopolitical context, Russia can live
with an independent Ukraine. Now. Does he want to have
(07:14):
very strong influence over Ukraine? Absolutely? Has he decided, given
the geopolitical tug of war that is going on over
the past couple of decades that the dawn Boss region,
which is largely populated by Russian speakers, Russian Orthodox believers
and has a history of association with Russia in various forms,
(07:39):
has he concluded that that should be part of Russia,
that it can no longer viably be part of a
Ukrainian independent state. Absolutely, he has, but that wasn't his plan.
A What people forget in all of this was after
the Maidan Revolution in twenty fourteen, the Russians assisted a
(07:59):
separate movement in the Donbas region that essentially said we
want either independence from Ukraine or annexation from Russia. But
Putin refused to recognize them as independent, and he refused
to annex that region for eight years. And there's a
(08:22):
very good reason why he didn't want to break that
part of Ukraine off from the rest of Ukraine, and
that is that this part of Ukraine did not want
to be in the NATO alliance, and Putin wanted a reliable,
(08:43):
domestic Ukrainian group that would oppose that kind of move,
that would serve as a counterweight to parts of western
Ukraine that were very enthusiastic about integrating Ukraine into NATO.
And Putin took a lot of criticism inside Russia for
his refusal to recognize Don Boss independence or annex them.
(09:07):
A lot of the hardline nationalist patriots in Russia thought
that Putin was too weak, not willing to protect these
as they saw them, compatriots in the Don Boss, and
too eager to seek some sort of compromise with the West.
They thought he was essentially a Germanist, not somebody that
(09:31):
was sufficiently hardline Russian patriotic. So all of that, I
think is a very useful historical context to understand where
the Russians are on this. This war that they launched,
this full scale invasion of Ukraine that they launched in
twenty twenty two, is not primarily about acquiring land or
(09:54):
conquering all of Ukraine or bringing it as a whole
into a rebuilt Russian Empire. It is largely driven by
security concerns. Their belief that Ukraine was over time steadily
becoming more and more of a direct military and intelligence
(10:16):
partner to the United States and NATO, and they were
seeing military infrastructure and military cooperation deepening. And the worry
in Russia was if those trends continued, that would reach
a point in a few years where the only way
Russia could prevent Ukraine from actually becoming a member of
(10:39):
the NATO Alliance would be to fight NATO itself, which
they were not willing to do. They thought the window
was closing that if they waited, this would no longer
be Russia against Ukraine, this would be Russia against the
United States and its allies. And that was a prospect
that I think they found very threatening and they wanted
(11:01):
to preclude that. So all that tells me is if
we're going to get out of the mess that we're
in and end this war, we're going to have to
address the course security concerns that the Russians have as
well as the core security concerns that the Ukrainians have.
And that's really the trick. That's a balancing act that
(11:22):
US negotiators are I think making some progress in carrying out.
Speaker 1 (11:46):
For Ukraine to retain enough military capability that you wouldn't
have two or three or four years from now a
sort of third Russian assault. If you count what happened
in for Team as sort of the first wave, this
is the second wave. See, the Russian has been pretty
clear that they will not accept a Ukraine strong enough
(12:10):
to defend itself.
Speaker 2 (12:12):
Well, I'm not sure that's true. Now. The devil's in
the details on that, and that's obviously a key aspect
of these negotiations. Now. At the Alaska summit, in the
concluding press conference that Putin and President Trump had, Putin
did say, look, we understand that Ukraine has security concerns
(12:35):
here that have to be addressed, and he went on
to say, and naturally, we are willing to discuss that.
So now that by itself doesn't say exactly what the
Russians are willing to live with. But what I would
imagine here if you go back to the Istanbul negotiations
in twenty twenty two between Russia and Ukraine that was
(12:59):
meet by several different mediators, one of which was the Turks.
The Russians put down on paper their demands for limits
on the Ukrainian military, and the kinds of things they're
concerned about are size, how large is that military? And
the Russian demand at that time was for a military
(13:22):
of eighty five thousand troops as a standing peacetime army,
which is ridiculous. That's not a military that can defend
itself against Russian in any way. But they also wanted
to cap on long range strike missiles, and that term
long range is not a precise term. But now you're
(13:46):
in a discussion over what kind of range limitations might
the Ukrainians agree to in its ability to strike deep
into Russian territory, And so that's a negotiation. You know,
one man's defensive capability is another man's offensive capability. So
that is going to be an issue that will require
(14:06):
some hard negotiating. But if you look at the so
called twenty eight point plan that got leaked to the
media a few weeks ago, that envisioned a cap on
the Ukrainian military of six hundred thousand men, which quite
honestly is not a cap at all on Ukraine. They
(14:28):
don't have the population base or the economic wherewithal to
sustain a peacetime army of that size. That's many times
larger than any European NATO ally the United States, larger
than the BRITZ by several orders of magnitude, larger than
the German military very expensively maintain. The Ukrainians couldn't do it.
(14:53):
So that figure, I think, is an indication that things
are moving. And this question of the size of the
Ukrainian military and what qualitative caps might be involved in
this is under discussion right now and this is going
to be a central issue. Are the Russians willing to
(15:14):
compromise on this? My guess is yes, we're going to
find out here. But they have engaged with the Ukrainians
on this question before, they didn't reach a satisfactory compromise.
The Ukrainian proposal in April of twenty twenty two was
for a military cap of two hundred and fifty thousand,
(15:37):
so we're now many times greater than that in the
current numbers being discussed. But this is something that the
Russians understand they're going to have to compromise on. My
guess is that we can find some numbers here that
are large enough that the Ukrainians can defense themselves, but
(16:01):
not so large that the Russians feel that their strategic
capabilities are threatened in some way. And they have of
course an eye not on Ukraine itself, but on Ukraine
as an element of the military threat posed by the
United States and Europe towards Russia. That's the balance they're
(16:22):
looking at. So that's why they want to talk to
the United States. Really, the Russians think that this is
really a negotiation with the United States over the European
security order, over the threats that they perceive pointed at
them from the United States and NATO.
Speaker 1 (16:41):
Do you think that Putin and his team were shocked
when they could not get.
Speaker 2 (16:47):
To Kiev, Well, yeah, I do. Their military plan really
was to launch a lightning strike that would seize the
airport outside of Kiev and in so doing force the
Ukrainian leadership essentially to flee and then allow some sort
(17:08):
of puppet regime friendly towards Russia to step in, and
that in turn wouldn't require a long war and they
could get this over with and then they're in a
position to dictate the terms of some kind of settlement.
And that failed, they basically put all their chips on
(17:29):
that bid to seize the airport in institute regime change.
And what happened, of course, was the United States the
CIA got a hold of Russia's war plan. We knew
exactly what they were going to do, you know, we
knew that it was going to be Colonel Mustard in
the library with the lead pipe at noon on Thursday,
(17:52):
and we told the Ukrainians, here's what's coming now. The Ukrainians,
of course, were skeptical initially and kind of went a
you know, what do you know? But they, after a
little bit of discussion, understood, yeah, this is serious, and yeah,
we better prepare. So that made the difference here between
success and failure for the Russians. The Ukrainians were ready
(18:15):
for them. They defeated that attempt to seize the airport,
and then the Russians were in trouble because they had
not done the kind of planning that they needed to do.
What if Plan A fails, you know, what do we do?
What's the backup plan? And that threw them into disarray
quite honestly, and led to some major changes in Russia's approach.
(18:40):
You know, we're living with several years of attritional warfare
that have flowed from that.
Speaker 1 (18:46):
Do you think that it would have been politically impossible
at home for Putin? Pru said, well, that didn't work.
Let's go back to the status quo ended.
Speaker 2 (18:58):
I don't think it was so much politically impossible as
it was strategically impossible. This is an issue that you know,
a lot of people in the West don't understand, but
the Russians view the prospect of US or NATO military
infrastructure in Ukraine as an existential threat, as something that
(19:21):
threatens the very viability of the Russian Federation. So this
is not a nice to do for them. This is
a must do. They don't think they have a choice,
and a lot of Americans don't grasp this. They look
at this war as an elective, as an ambition, as
(19:43):
something that the Russians would like to do, because they're
looking over at Ukraine and saying, Hey, that territory should
be ours, that country should be in our sphere of influence.
Let's go make that happen. And as a result, our
approach to that has been well, let's raise the costs
of this invasion. Let's show Russia that the benefits of
(20:08):
this ambition are far outweighed by the costs and damages
that this invasion is doing to Russia economically, etc. Diplomatically,
Let's crank up the pressure on the economy, Let's turn
Russia into an international diplomatic pariah. Let's expand the Natal
(20:29):
alliance and show putin that all the things that he
wants actually he can't get. And then he'll look at
the costs and benefits and say, yeah, it's not worth it.
It's just too costly. Let's end this invasion. And that
idea really animated the Biden administration's approach to this, and
(20:50):
I think it was a fundamental misunderstanding of Russia's perceptions
of its own interests and what motivated this invasion. The
Russians thought their back was against the wall, that the
prospect of NATO being in Ukraine was so threatening to
them that they felt they had to do something. The
(21:13):
West made clear that we weren't willing to strike a
diplomatic bargain over this. We essentially said no, Russia doesn't
get a voice in whether NATO is in Ukraine or
whether Ukraine is in NATO. That is a sacred, sovereign
decision for the Ukrainians to make. And the Russians don't
get a veto over that. And the Russians reaction to
(21:36):
that was Okay, you know, we hear you, but if
you're not willing to discuss this and compromise at the
diplomatic table, we will exercise our veto over this on
the battlefield. Now. The only way you're going to fix
a problem like that, which is, you know what international
relations theorists call a security dilemma. You know, a situation
(21:59):
where one can tree takes steps that it believes enhances
its own security, but another state finds those same steps threatening,
so you get into this escalatory cycle of action reaction.
This is much like what happened in World War One, right.
The only way you get out of a situation like
that is through a diplomatic process, some compromise where you
(22:21):
address both side security concerns in ways that don't cross
the line into being too threatening to the other. That's
really the kind of problem we're dealing with, and I
think had the Biden administration approached this like that kind
of problem, we probably wouldn't be in the confrontation that
(22:43):
we're in right now. There is still time to get
out of it, and I think that's exactly what the
Trump administration is doing. I think it recognizes what has
to be done. And now the question is can we
exercise the kind of statesmanship and diplomatic skill that will
be necessary to strike this kind of compromise and address
(23:08):
all of the details that have to be addressed in
this and the devil will be in the details and all.
This is not an easy negotiation, not something that you
can do very quickly. Is they have found out over
the past year. But I think we're really getting close
and we shall see.
Speaker 1 (23:42):
Part of the estimate by some Americans and Europeans has
been that the inn a war of attrition that the
number of people putin is losing is so significant given
their already existing demographic challenge of not having enough young
in your judgment, can he sustain this kind of trench
(24:04):
warfare for three or four more years? He has to?
Speaker 2 (24:08):
Well, you know, there's the old joke about the campers
to guys that are out, you know, in the back country,
pitch their tent and they see a bear coming, and
one of the guys starts putting on his shoes, and
his campmate says, what are you doing. You can't outrun
a bear? And the guy says, I don't have to
outrun a bear, I just have to outrun you, And
(24:31):
that analogy I think is absolutely right here. This is
not a question of ken Russia sustain this kind of
warfare absolutely for as long as necessary. The question is
can it sustain it longer than the Ukrainians can? And
I think we're already seeing the answer to that question.
The Russians are meeting their monthly recruitment goals and even
(24:55):
exceeding them in many respects. Yes, they're taking a lot
of loss, but they are more than replacing those losses
on the battlefield. Their numbers are going up. They outnumber
the Ukrainians along the line of contact by several multiples
right now. And the Ukrainians are not meeting their monthly
(25:16):
recruitment goals. They are falling short. The rates of desertion
are going up rather significantly. So the question is not
can Russia sustain this for many more years? The question
really is how long can the Ukrainians sustain this word
of attrition? And I think the answer is not for
(25:39):
much longer. You know, this is an intangible question. A
lot of this has to do with optimism and morale
and resilience in determination. But those qualities are not infinite,
and there are signs that the Ukrainians are reaching the
exhaustion point. And what I'm hearing from my contacts in
Ukraine is that the vast majority of Ukrainians want this
(26:04):
war done. They're ready for a compromise. They're not willing
to surrender, they're not willing to capitulate, but they are
interested in a compromise way to end this war. And
I think that provides Zelensky with both an opportunity and
an incentive to find a compromise way forward here. So
(26:26):
I think the time is right now inside Ukraine. The
other part of this is the corruption scandal, which provides
Zeleski with a major political incentive to change the narrative
inside the country away from corruption and graft and towards peace.
And I think that's part of why we're seeing some
progress right now.
Speaker 1 (26:45):
Do you think it's plausible that they will give up
the Dawn Bass, even the areas that the Russians have
not conquered.
Speaker 2 (26:53):
Well, I don't think there's any prospect that the Ukrainians
are going to legally seed that territory to recognize it
as Russian and not Ukrainian. I think the most one
can hope for is the Ukrainians will say, we are
not going to see the territory, but we will also
(27:14):
agree that its future status will be determined politically and
not by force, not by war on the battlefield. A
lot of wars have ended in just that kind of
pragmatic compromise. Now, the next question is will they withdraw
their forces from parts of Dunyetsk that they now hold,
(27:37):
and that I think is going to be the focus
of these discussions in a lot of ways. That's another
core issue, and what the twenty eight point plan envisioned
was I think a fairly pragmatic and creative compromise on this.
It would not demand that the Ukrainians say, Okay, yeah,
the Donyetsk is yours and we recognize that, but it
(28:00):
would allow for a withdrawal and not a Russian military
occupation of the parts that the Ukrainians had withdrawn from.
In other words, this would become a demilitarized zone under
some sort of international supervision that would allow the Russians
(28:22):
to say, hey, this is our territory. The Ukrainians could
also say, no, that's our territory. But neither one would
have its forces in that part of disputed Dounyetsk, and
we could move forward pragnatically on that and say, Okay,
this is now the basis for a ceasefire. The Russians
(28:42):
can maintain the fiction that they own all of this.
Nobody else is going to recognize that legally, but we
will all just pragnatically say we're going to move forward
on ending this fighting and leave the negotiation over the
future status of this and much the way the United
(29:03):
States did with the Baltic States under Soviet rule. Every
US map produced during the Cold War had a little
box in it that said, the United States government does
not recognize the incorporation of Estonio Laffian Lithuania into the
Soviet Union. But that didn't prevent us from having a
diplomatic relationship with the Soviet Union addressing the many multitude
(29:28):
of security and other issues that we had to deal
with with them.
Speaker 1 (29:31):
One last thing on the question of the Dawnbos, which
is if they will not accept any NATO. When you
talk about somebody being there maybe as a guarantur, who
do you imagine would be acceptable to the Russians as
a guaranty? They certainly don't want us, and they certainly
don't want the rest of NATO.
Speaker 2 (29:53):
Well, here you have to make a distinction between what
I would call a deterrence force and a piece keeping force.
Peacekeeping force, monitors, a ceasefire line, ensures that there is
a separation of armies, that there is a demilitarized zone,
that it is not violated. That's the kind of thing
(30:14):
that an international organization can handle, the United Nations, the OSCEE,
and the job of that kind of force is not
to serve as a deterrent to Russian reinvasion. It's not
meant to be a combat force. Now, a lot of
people when they're talking about this, conflate this question of
(30:37):
a deterrence force a combat force, a trip wire that
would be on Ukrainian soil whose purpose would be to
fight against the Russians should they be tempted to reinvade.
That's not something the Russians are going to agree to.
They're not going to say, yeah, sure, has put a
combat force on Ukrainian territory that would have the purpose
(31:00):
of fighting against us. If we think maybe we want
we want to advance our position at some point years
down the road, what I think they will agree to
is some sort of peacekeeping force, and that's going to
have to be under some sort of international supervision.
Speaker 1 (31:17):
I don't know whether President Trump read your book The
Russia Trap, how our shadow war with Russia could spiral
into nuclear catasity, but I have a distinct sense that
somehow over the last eight years or nine years, he
got the understanding of how truly catastrophic a nuclear war
(31:41):
would be, and that he is bounded at one level
from putting too much pressure on Putin because he doesn't
want to run a risk of Putin starting with tattoo
on Luke's and then who knows how the escalation latter works.
Do you have the same sense that, in fact, if
really puts into a corner, put would be capable of
(32:03):
at least going to limited nuclear weapons, and that it
is a threat that should be a part of our calculus.
Speaker 2 (32:11):
Yeah, I do. I've mentioned that I think this war
for Russia is existential. Then yes, you're going to use
a nuclear arsenal. If that becomes the ultimate guaranteur that
you're not going to be destroy or threatened or face
that kind of threat. That's obviously not plan A for
the Russians. That would be hugely problematic for all kinds
(32:35):
of reasons for them. But here I think John Kennedy's
admonition after the Cuban missile crisis is very apt. He
said the big lesson of that crisis was don't put
a nuclear superpower in a position where it faces a
choice between humiliation and nuclear weapons use. And I think
President Trump has certainly internalized that advice, and that is
(32:59):
clear one of the considerations that he has in saying,
how do we get ourselves out of this situation and
what kind of leverage do we have to apply here?
And you know, I think he understands that in a negotiation,
you get farther with, you know, a smile and a
gun than you do with just smile. You know, he
knows that there has to be pressure on Russia, but
(33:23):
you have to be careful about how far you go,
because you could risk kicking off some sort of escalatory
spiral where people feel like their humiliation is at play
in some way and things could start to get out
of control. And that's not an escalation ladder we want
(33:45):
to start climbing up.
Speaker 1 (33:46):
In my opinion, I have the greatest desire to make
sure we avoid nuclear war. I think people generally have
no idea how bad it is.
Speaker 2 (33:56):
Yeah, that's right. We do have to bear in mind
that this is a real thrall. We can't be complacent
about it, and there's nothing else more important to American security.
Speaker 1 (34:06):
George, I want to thank you for joining me again.
It's always educational. You do remarkable work. Our listeners can
follow the work you're doing as Director of Grand Strategy
at Quincy I nst dot org. I really look forward
to talking with you again in the future.
Speaker 2 (34:23):
Great well, thank you for having one.
Speaker 1 (34:28):
Thank you to my guest, George Baby. Newtsworld is produced
by Gangrishtreet sixty and iHeartMedia. Our executive producer is Guarnsei Sloan.
Our researcher is Rachel Peterson. The artwork for the show
was created by Steve Penley special thanks to a team
at ginistreet sixty. If you've been enjoying Newtsworld, I hope
(34:48):
you'll go to Apple Podcast and both rate us with
five stars and give us a review so others can
learn what it's all about. Join me on substat at
ginistree sixty dot net. Language This is news World, m
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