5 Scenarios for Russia-Ukraine -- with Richard Fontaine
How could Russia-Ukraine escalate? How could it deescalate? Does Zelensky survive? Does Putin survive? Does China try to bail out Russia?
On this episode, we explore five scenarios with Richard Fontaine, who returns to the podcast. Richard Richard Fontaine is the CEO of the Center for a New American Security (CNAS), a bi-partisan foriegn policy think tank in Washington, DC. Prior to joining CNAS, Richard was foreign policy advisor to Senator John McCain and worked at the State Department, the National Security Council, and on the staff of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee.
Transcript
DISCLAIMER: THIS TRANSCRIPT HAS BEEN CREATED USING AI TECHNOLOGY AND MAY NOT REFLECT 100% ACCURACY.
[00:00:00] When I reduce this down to the possibility of a nuclear change, I don't think Putin is suicidal. I don't think, uh, the United States or Russia wants to get into a nuclear exchange. Putin has put his nuclear forces on alert. They've got these DEFCON levels kind of like us and he moved them up one. Uh, there's nothing has moved.
They haven't seen anything move on the ground in terms of weapons movements or anything like that or mobilization. So I think that this is basically his way of telling the rest of the, of the world, stay out. I've got. Nuclear weapons and if you're smart, you'll let me tend to Ukraine without getting involved directly, but you know, it's a dangerous situation.
What are concrete scenarios for where the Russia Ukraine war could head? How does it escalate? How does it de escalate? Does Zelensky survive? Does Putin [00:01:00] survive? Does China try to bail out Russia? And should we be thinking about the unthinkable? Well, on today's episode, we explore five scenarios with Richard Fontaine, who returns to the podcast.
Richard is the CEO of the Center for New American Security, which is a bipartisan foreign policy think tank in Washington, D. C. A number of the top officials in the Biden administration today Previously worked with Richard at CNAS. Prior to joining CNAS, the Center for New American Security, Richard was a foreign policy advisor to Senator John McCain, and he worked at the State Department, the National Security Council, and on the staff of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee.
Let's get into these concrete scenarios with Richard Fontaine. This is Call Me Back. And
I'm pleased to welcome back to the podcast, Richard Fontaine from the Center for New American Security. Richard, thanks for joining. Thanks for having me back. You are a, uh, you too are a fan favorite. We've recently had some, some fan [00:02:00] favorites on you. Just, you just followed Matt Pottinger, who was also a return.
Yeah. So, Richard, there's a lot we want to cover with you. First, and we, last time we had you on was before Putin invaded Ukraine. And a lot of your forecasting was, uh, what turned out to be accurate. So, uh, so obviously there'll be a lot of interest in what you're, what you tell us today, what pearls of wisdom you have for us.
I want to start with, before we get into different scenarios for where this all may be going, your reaction to President Zelensky's speech before the U. S., address before the U. S. Congress this week. Well, it was extraordinary both that it happened. I mean, just Given technology, uh, from the middle of a war zone in a besieged city, a foreign leader can address the U.
S. Congress, which is new. So that was a new experience, I think, for everyone. And then it was also extraordinary just in his. [00:03:00] Inspirational tone. I mean, who would have thought that a former comedian actor who didn't even have a very high approval rating before the war began, sort of comes into his element as this brave and heroic leader.
Yeah, Churchill in a t shirt is David Sanger has called. Right. And I think it's made a huge difference. I mean, if he had taken some of the early advice and withdrawn the government from Kiev to Lviv or. gone into exile and formed a government in exile. I think it would have been a very different situation if this was more like Ashraf Ghani, uh, departing the country or something.
Uh, I think the Ukrainian will to fight and the world's, uh, willingness to support the Ukrainians in such extraordinary fashion, uh, would be significantly less, and so So you, you actually think there is something very symbolically important about him actually being in Kiev and And, and the [00:04:00] message that sends to the world that like, he's, he's not wavering so the world shouldn't waver.
Exactly. Yeah. And, and the fact that he is able to, I mean, he's now serially talking to world leaders. Uh, he spoke to the Canadian parliament, he spoke to the British parliament, he spoke to the U. S. Congress, he spoke to the Bundestag, uh, in Germany. I mean, he's communicating this message, uh, asking for assistance and showing that with that assistance, he and his government and the Ukrainian people are willing to stay in there and defend their country.
And yeah, I think that's, that's a very big difference than if he had been, you know, in London or. Warsaw or take your pick of safer places. And I think it's also been inspiring. I'm clearly to his own people. Um, this is not what the Russians bargained for, obviously, uh, when they did this invasion in the first place and thought they'd get a quick win out of [00:05:00] this.
Um, so there's no telling what it would have looked like had he gone into exile. I think Ukrainians very likely would have fought anyway. Uh, but, uh, but certainly. Uh, his resolve has been, uh, contagious. You recently penned a, uh, long, uh, an important piece for the Wall Street Journal. I want to, it was called The World That Putin Has Made, or The World That Putin Made.
I want to quote here. You wrote Putin's unprovoked invasion of Ukraine has resulted in geopolitical shifts astonishing in their scale and rapidity the outlines of a new global order are Already perceptible and in many ways they are precisely the opposite of those the Russian president seeks. So what, what are these new outlines of a new global order that you are already beginning to visualize?
Well, you can start by looking at what Putin wanted and what he actually got. He wanted [00:06:00] a smaller NATO or at least a NATO that would agree never to expand any further. He wanted a weaker NATO, one that was divided internally, um, one that didn't have its troops or materiel in Central or Eastern Europe, the redeployment of all that stuff previous to 1997.
Uh, he wanted a Ukraine that was somehow one with the Russian people. Uh, in some sort of a bond politically or, or de facto or otherwise, and you could sort of go down the list of things he wanted. And of course, he wanted a return to Russian greatness in partnership with, with China. Um, there was a kind of major revisionist manifesto that Xi issued in February, just a few weeks before the invasion, talking about the world that they wanted to see.
And you look at what he's gotten, he's gotten a NATO that's more united than. Any time and at least a generation, if not [00:07:00] more, um, in terms of a smaller NATO or a NATO that won't expand, that's not gonna happen. And now for the first time ever, Sweden and Finland are talking NATO membership and majorities in both those countries favor joining.
Uh, he wanted Ukraine out of Transit linked institutions and somehow bonded with Russia. Just the significance on Finland, I mean, it's a country that not only had not been part of NATO, but shares in like an 800 mile border with Russia. Right, and the word Finlandization was the term given during the Cold War to the fact that Finland was able to maintain its domestic autonomy and its, uh, territorial Integrity and sovereignty.
But as the Soviet Union had an effective veto over its foreign policy, so it could not align with the West. And of course, Sweden has been, uh, neutral. And you know, those things are quickly going right out the window. This cannot be what Putin had in mind. [00:08:00] Um, You know, the, he wanted to show that, that Russia is great again as a major military power, must be contended with or respected.
It's military is bogged down in Ukraine and showing itself to be weaker than anybody thought, uh, before it was tested in this fashion. How, how many casualties do we think, based on latest estimates, that the Russian military forces have suffered? The estimates from the Russians are very low. The estimates for the Ukrainians are, are, are high.
But what the U. S. uh, officials are saying, um, is about 7, 000 Russians killed, not just casualties killed, and perhaps another 12 or 15, 000 injured. Those are astonishingly high numbers. I mean, if you think about that number, 7, 000, that's more than the United States. States has lost in all of its wars since Vietnam combined, and they didn't, and they didn't Iraq in 16 years of Iraq, where something approximating 4, 400 us.
casualties, [00:09:00] right? With 16 years, which is a searing wound in, in the American psyche. And obviously for all of that every day. And these casualties you're talking about for Putin are for Russia in a matter of weeks, right? Three weeks, three weeks. And, and, and, you know, potentially many more to come. And he's tried to hide the reality of the war.
I mean, Russian pronouncements and Russian media. Inside Russia are not allowed to call it a war. It's now against the law to say that it's a war rather than a quote special military operation. They continue to say that this is fighting taking place only in the Donbass and Ukraine's east rather than across the entire country.
Um, and at some point, you know, these families who have now seen their, uh, their sons and mostly their sons, but maybe some daughters too. Uh, be killed are going to have to wrestle with this terrible reality, and, uh, we don't know what [00:10:00] the political effect of that will be, but, you know, as one other point of comparison, if you look at the horrible experience that the Soviet Union had in Afghanistan, they lost about 15, 000 troops over a decade, over a decade, and that was, that was a lot.
And of course they pulled out, uh, at the end, uh, without success. But it took them about, it took them about a decade though, right? Exactly, exactly. So it took them about a decade to get to that number. In 1979, the Soviets go into Afghanistan and it's, and even though they, they suffered considerable casualties, it still took a decade for them to decide grinding it out wasn't worth it.
Exactly. And, and so there's, uh, and so here, you know, you're at maybe half that number in three weeks. Right. And so the, the lesson one among the lessons here is that it was clear to, I think every observer that Putin is not bothered by. [00:11:00] Mass casualties among the, what he would see as the enemy. You can look at Grozny and Chechnya in the war in 1999, where he leveled the city and huge amounts of civilian and other casualties.
Uh, the way they aided and abetted Assad and his horrific attacks in Syria. Um, that clearly doesn't bother him. What is also true now is apparently Russian casualties don't bother him either. His own fighting. Men don't bother him when they die or injured in the course of this fairly quixotic Attempt at remaking the political dispensation in Ukraine So I want to get to the scenarios in terms of where this this could be going or where it could land but before I do Just understand how you where you come out of this.
Where are you on the spectrum of? Putin as Madman [00:12:00] versus Putin as rational actor because when I talk to analysts and policy makers They they tend to lean heavily in one direction or the other. Oh, he's a madman. He's unpredictable You can't you can't you can't Try to get inside his head because there's there's there's nothing rational about him in terms of his thought process He's lost his mind.
And then the other end of the spectrum is he's he's a shrewd rational Geopolitical strategist who while he takes gambles, they are informed gambles They're not reckless gambles and and therefore it is easier to kind of think about different scenarios I tend to lean towards the latter. Where are you on that spectrum?
I lean towards the latter as well with a but Um, I think, you know, there's a sort of concept of bounded rationality, rational within the confines of assumptions and beliefs that one holds. And if you look at the beliefs that Putin held, or at least seemed to hold before he invaded [00:13:00] Ukraine, there were three big assumptions from which his decision appeared to flow.
One was that the Ukrainian people and the Russian people were one sort of mystical, historical, civilizational, even religious group of people. And therefore, you know, the Ukrainians would greet Russians as liberators when they came to their country. Uh, the second was that the Russian military had made huge advances since the war in 2008.
And Georgia. It was modernized. It was disciplined. It was effective. And so if the commanders say, Hey, we can do a lightning strike and, you know, send the government fleeing and 24, 48 hours, then that's the kind of thing that's within their capabilities. And if not that they can do other things besides.
And the third is that the international community, the West was divided and feckless week and couldn't really mount anything like a serious response. And so Yeah. Yeah. He had stockpiled foreign reserves, tried to sanction proof his economy, and had he [00:14:00] faced the kind of sanctions, uh, that he got after Crimea or poisonings of various people or what he did in Ukraine's east, he could have weathered those and he'd be fine.
All three of those were completely wrong. So Ukrainians, of course, did not. Uh, greet Russians as liberators, but exactly the opposite. They're fighting back, uh, to a person against them. Uh, the Russian military has shown itself to be poorly motivated, poorly planned, bad logistics, unable to accomplish, uh, what it set out to do.
On at least a reasonably fast timeline. And then this astonishing response of the international community, not just the West, so to speak, but I mean, Japan, South Korea, Australia, Singapore, you know, formerly neutral countries like Switzerland, all putting draconian sanctions on Russia. So, but hold on unfairness him on that last one, one could argue that.
The, the outcome is not [00:15:00] what he expected, but he was not, he was not delusional. That's what I'm getting to. Exactly. So that's what I'm getting to. He's not delusional by, he was not delusional in anticipating or expecting that outcome. Exactly. So, right. So based on information that he had or beliefs that he held.
One could argue that he was making rational calculations on the base of those erroneous, uh, you know, beliefs. They were erroneous. Now, is he rational in the sense that he can discern a pattern in information? Is he suprobably. Is he suicidal? Probably not. Um, but But hold on, just on that previous point. I mean, if you look at every time He has, has leaned in some sort of aggressive posture, 2008 in Georgia, 2014 in Crimea, uh, every step of the way.
And we can, we can go back before that. And then obviously the US US policy 2015, Syria, 2000, uh, this past [00:16:00] summer in a Afghanistan, he could calculate that. Every time he has taken an aggressive stance, his, his appetite for risk has gone up because he hasn't been turned into a prior state. In fact. Russia hasn't been turned into a prior state, but U.
S. actions in these other theaters, like I said, Syria or Afghanistan, conveyed a general disengagement from the world, or desire for disengagement from the world, and so, I mean, after 2014, I remember, you know, President Obama saying that, that Russia would become all but a prior state, and the reality is they weren't.
They weren't a prior state. The world was dealing with Russia. They were fully integrated into the world. No one was really, there were some sanctions, but no one was really isolating Russia. So why, why wouldn't he calculate that this would just be another step in that direction? No, I think he, I think he would.
And he did. I mean, and, and of course the meddling in the 2016 presidential election was a direct assault against the democratic process in this country. He did the same thing in the [00:17:00] French presidential election. He tried to meddle in the 2020 elections to some degree in the United States. He poisoned Serge Skirpal in, uh, and Litvinenko in England.
He poisoned Alexei Navalny. I mean, you can, you know, the, the, the list of transgressions. Uh, you know, cyber attack. The list of transgressions is extraordinarily high and there have been responses, but there haven't been responses. So draconian as to change the way of life for the Russian leadership. And so, you know, there is this sort of pattern of thought of well, I don't You know, you go after South Osetia of Nicosia in 2008, you go after Crimea in 2014, you go after the Donbass or China goes after Hong Kong, take your pick of these kinds of things and the world reacts, there's some sanctions, there's outrage, but you fast forward a few years, cooler heads have prevailed, people want to, you know, work things out.
Maybe some of the sanctions come off, maybe some of the sanctions aren't as harsh as they looked originally, and guess who still has Crimea? [00:18:00] Russia. Guess who still has South Ossetia, Akazia, and the Donbas? Guess who still has Hong Kong? And, and that's been the pattern here, and this, um, was the straw that broke the camel's back and is not the pattern any longer.
The one but that I would say in this, in this discussion of, though of, you know, is Putin rational in all of this, is, I, you know, it is disturbing. When he rants about, you know, Nazi drug addicts being in charge in Ukraine, um, or that, you know, the forces gathering in Ukraine were preparing biological weapons and we're going to attack Russia and therefore this was an intolerable situation that demanded a military response.
Uh, you know, these kinds of outlandish things, if he believes those things. Those are not rational. I mean, that, that is not a, uh, a rational [00:19:00] assessment of, of what's going on. I mean, it's just not true. And, uh, whether he believes that or not, I don't know. But that, that, that's the but to my, my Meaning if you take him at his word, then it is someone who's unstable.
Okay, now let's talk about the different scenarios for where This could be heading in the weeks and months ahead. Uh, I want to start with a, the possibility of a no fly zone. So I guess my first question is, do you, where do you, where do you come out on this? Do you think a no fly zone is unlikely to impossible to be implemented, declared and implemented in the weeks and early months ahead?
Or do you think, as some policy makers have I can commented, it's, it's kind of inevitable. I mean, we, we never say these things. We never say we're gonna, um, take these steps and escalate in this way. But if you look at the history of American foreign policy as these conflicts drag on, we, [00:20:00] you know, our posture winds up changing with time and things that we thought were impossible, uh, become normalized.
And that will be the same with the no fly zone. Where are you on that debate? I don't think a no fly zone will happen because it would involve Americans and Russians shooting each other directly. And, uh, for all of the daggers drawn between the Soviet Union and the United States during the Cold War, uh, we never, we tried to avoid stabbing each other directly.
Plenty of proxy wars, plenty of political warfare, economic warfare, information warfare. Um, but the potential for escalation between the two biggest military powers with two biggest military arsenals, uh, was so profound and I think remains so profound that we've got a strong interest in doing everything but, uh, turning this into a direct U.
S. Russia war, which is what a no fly zone would be. So can you explain why? Just because I think people throw terms around like No fly zones as though they're like passive acts like you [00:21:00] just declare it and then it happens and why? You know, it's like someone said it's like when we declare gun free zones around school You just declare it and then there's no guns in school neighborhood, which is not exactly true There may be guns in those neighborhoods But if they're not it's because there are cops walking the streets, you know Frisking people to make sure there aren't guns and you don't just declare a no fly zone You have to implement it and can you can you just describe mechanically what implementing it means?
Yeah, I mean, the classic way the United States has implemented no fly zones is to put U. S. warplanes and bombers up, uh, over whatever the, the area is, and to attack first the air defenses so that, um, you bomb all of the surface to air missiles, the radar installations, things like that, so that you have the ability to fly yourself around that area, and then if there are And a lot of those, in this case, are in Russia, so you'd be bombing anti aircraft assets.
And in Belarus and in Belarus and in [00:22:00] Ukraine, so they, they brought a lot of that into Ukraine as well. So, uh, so it's in those, those places then, um, and then, you know, to the degree to which their enemy. planes flying, um, violating your no fly zone, you shoot them down. And, you know, there, there's another concept in which you wouldn't suppress air defenses, but theoretically you could just, you know, shoot missiles from somewhere outside, uh, Ukrainian territory at Russian planes, but you can't enforce a no fly zone.
If the. Enemy air force wants to fly without shooting down the enemy air force. I mean, that's how a no fly zone works and um, that's what we would be in the business of doing so um, there there's you know, this sort of Potentially seductive hope that we would just declare a no fly zone and putin would say okay.
I'm not gonna do it I'm, i'm not gonna risk it, but you can't plan like that. You can't assume that he wouldn't risk it the other thing of course is that [00:23:00] Uh, no fly zone would help. Of course, uh, it would reduce the bombing of Ukrainian cities. But a lot of what we've seen over the past few days has been artillery and rocket fire.
And, you know, no fly zone stops airplanes. It doesn't stop, you know, incoming mortar shells or incoming missiles or things like that. So I think, um, what I would suggest is that we give the Ukrainians everything that they can handle in order to defend themselves, including Ukraine. Uh, air defense systems to take down Russian planes that are flying over missile defense systems so that they can shoot down what, as they can incoming rocket fire and, uh, and even, you know, there's now this debate over whether they should get these MIGs from, from Poland to, to fly.
And if they can do that, I think they should. So what is the, why, why is this issue of the MiGs so controversial? What, what, what, what, can you just explain why, why this, why this debate has, has, um, [00:24:00] gotten Sort of, uh, mired down in in non action. Yeah, there's a couple reasons. Well, one, um, our friends in Poland I came up with this idea that they would give their MIGs to the Ukrainians, but they didn't want to give them to him directly So they said okay Well, we'll fly our MIGs to a US Air Force base in Germany and then America can take them and then America can figure out how to get them to the Ukrainians.
And then the Americans will reimburse us with F 16s, which is a more capable aircraft. Um, but they hadn't actually asked or told anybody on the American side. So there was, they just sort of. Put a statement on their website. And, you know, so there was a bit of, uh, uh, trying to figure out how this would actually work, uh, aspect to this beyond that, there's the question of where these planes going to operate from, um, it, you know, until a few days ago, it looked like Western Ukraine was relatively permissive until the Russians launched this major attack on the, on the base, uh, out in Western Ukraine, um, you know, dozens of rockets.
And [00:25:00] so there's been some thought that if you give additional Warplanes to the Ukrainians than they could, they could, or maybe they should. Operate those planes from outside Ukrainian territory, they should take off and fly from Germany, or they should take off and fly from Poland, um, and that is, you know, a potential expansion of the war to NATO territory.
If the Russians chose to try to fight those planes outside of Ukrainian territory. So there's a few things kind of bound up in this, this may also the training of Ukrainian pilots because I saw one study about the avionics in these makes have been updated to some degree that several times that That the Ukrainian pilots wouldn't be able to fly these versions of MiGs without Yeah, that, I don't know, I don't know what it would take for them to fly these MIGs versus the ones they've already been trained to fly.
I mean, that, that, that would certainly be an issue if we wanted to give Ukrainian pilots, you know, our own planes or something. Um, [00:26:00] but you know, so I think this though may be one of those things that, you know, we discuss and we discuss and we discuss and that at some point it just kind of happens in some way, shape or form.
Um, especially if the Ukrainians prepared to operate those from on inside Ukrainian territory, and if they are, um, then it doesn't seem to me that there's any particular reason why we shouldn't. I mean, I think we should be in the business of trying to give them everything they can to defend themselves.
So, going to another scenario, what, what, which is not inconsistent with the scenario we're discussing, is if this just drags on, this conflict drags on and on and on, and, you know, instead of a few thousand casualties, Ukrainian casualties, we're talking about tens of thousands of casualties, and Putin is just bombarding these, uh, Ukrainian cities and towns and we in the West as we tend to do just [00:27:00] kind of get distracted you know we just move on and we stop paying attention and the press coverage is not as comprehensive and consistent and all consuming and we you know it sort of starts to feel a little bit like the Balkans in the mid 90s which some of us who were very focused on it for a variety of reasons were paying attention to the minute to minute but But actually most people weren't really paying attention and people lost interest.
And there were periods where there was some, you know, major catastrophe that captured the world's attention, but that lasted for a couple of new cycles and then people would go about their business. Can you imagine a world in this? This drags on for, you know, we talked about Russia, Soviet invasion of Afghanistan being a decade.
Yeah, it's very hard to say, but, um, I think that we're at the early stages of this. How early? Early. I don't know, but there's clearly. Huge hopes bound up in the diplomacy [00:28:00] that's going back and forth between the Russians and the Ukrainians now everyone would like to see some sort of negotiated and the Russians from the very first day of this sort of teased various solutions, some of them sounding half reasonable, uh, that they would be willing to live with to stop.
Um, each of these seems to get thrown right out the window with the next statement by Putin. Um, and You know, if you think about the nature of wars, they often go on much longer than anyone anticipated the outset, especially if the political objective and the military objective that was spelled out of the outset were not met in the way that they were intended to me at the beginning.
And that's exactly the case here, right? So political objective was we're gonna change the regime. Military objective is we're gonna force the government out of Kiev. We're gonna take Kiev. We're gonna do that very fast. Neither of those things happen. Yeah. So, you know, if you transpose this, not [00:29:00] in any way on moral grounds, but just some sort of military timeline grounds to the U.
S. Invasion of Iraq, we would have what just gotten to Baghdad at this point, Dan and, you know, so, uh, and, and, you know, at the time, remember that was mission accomplished. So it that was supposed to be the end. And of course, as we know, that was just the beginning, so it's really hard to tell. But I think the chances that this goes on for a long time are depressingly high.
The other thing that this means extraordinarily tragically is that you know, it's the end. The Russians, again, tried this kind of blitzkrieg, we'll go in, lightning strike, grab the cities, the government will flee, you know, okay, it's all over, that doesn't work. And so now they're going to their more tried and true tactic, which we saw in Grozny in 99, which you saw in Aleppo and Syria, which is, you just bombard the cities.
[00:30:00] Until life becomes so intolerable, uh, that, you know, you try to force the capitulation of whoever's in those cities. And, you know, either through a combination of siege or just outright attacks on civilian and military targets. Uh, and, you know, we see the casualties piling up. And of course, this is before we've seen urban warfare in Kiev, which, you know, if bombardment looks bad.
And, you know, the casualties on both sides from street to street fighting in a city of a couple of million people in Kiev is going to be pretty terrible. So, um, I have as much hope, I guess, bound up in the diplomacy here as anybody else, but I'm not very optimistic about it. So let's talk a little bit about the diplomacy because there have been, as you said, some frameworks and like an outline of a possible ceasefire deal, obviously.
None of it has gotten real traction, but yet these ideas keep [00:31:00] being thrown around, and obviously there was the 2014 op ed, uh, by Henry Kissinger in the Washington Post, uh, that is, that many analysts keep referring to. So let, let's go through what a, what a possible, um, deal could look like, or that, that keeps leaking out or surfacing.
One is, Ukraine gives up any claim to Crimea. So it's been invaded and annexed by Russia, and that's the end of it. Uh, uh, Donetsk and Luhansk, the two eastern self declared republics of, uh, of Ukraine, remain independent. So, so between that and Crimea, you're ceding something like, you know, a third of the country.
to Russia or to Russian influence and Ukraine publicly declares neutrality. It gives up its hope of joining NATO and does so and declares it. Does that, am I getting everything? Are those the big ticket items that are being kicked around as a possible basis for a negotiation? [00:32:00] By the Russians. Yeah, but this gets tricky because it depends on what Russians you're talking about.
So as recently as yesterday, Dmitry Peskov, who's Putin spokesman, came out and said, Oh, you know, we would be open to a solution that has Ukraine look like Austrian or, uh, or, or Swedish neutrality. Well, okay. Austria and Sweden are not members of NATO, though. Both of them, well, especially Sweden work with NATO, but they're not members.
They're both members of the European union, which Ukraine is not. Um, although it's now closer to being a member of the EU when all of this started, Ukraine, uh, could remove from its constitution, its ambition to be a member of NATO, it wasn't a member of NATO before, and was not about to be a member of NATO when this started, but they would have to amend their constitution.
I mean, it is in the, in the, in the Ukrainian constitution, it states. that Ukraine will pursue a path to NATO membership. Correct. Right. [00:33:00] So they'd have to change that. Um, but, um, but NATO membership is not now and has never been imminent for Ukraine anyway. So, I mean, part of the tragedy of this is the degree to which Putin was animated by a desire to keep Ukraine out of NATO.
It was out of NATO already and it wasn't about to come in. And everybody acknowledged that. So to fight a war, to try to acknowledge, to make something happen that's already, you know, in effect is, is Well, it would formalize it. Yeah. It would formalize it. It would formalize that Ukraine can't pursue it.
But, if you look at that, if the model is Austrian or Swedish neutrality, that is an unbelievable climb down on the Russian side. from the ambitions they had for this war, even a couple of weeks ago. Um, I guess the Nazis can stay in power in Kiev as long as, you know, it looks like Austria or Sweden. I mean, it's just, you know, I mean, there's a, there's a very serious cognitive dissonance here.
Meaning he's escalated the rhetoric so much in demonizing [00:34:00] the, the Ukrainian government that it just, this looks like he's breaching and accommodating. Well, he will have, he will have, he will have more territory than he had when he went into it. Maybe. I mean, so, uh, so the, the, the butt here is, well, you know, they haven't spelled out at least publicly what the.
Specifics are on something like that. But, um, but one could imagine an outcome like that, uh, where Ukraine didn't have control over Crimea before, and it doesn't have control of Crimea after Ukraine didn't have control over Luhansk and Donetsk in the east before. It doesn't have it after Ukraine wasn't in NATO before.
It wasn't a NATO after Ukraine wasn't in the EU before, but it's free to join the EU in the future. Um, that would be a Tremendous Russian failure, I think, um, but the Ukrainians have already rejected that, um, that framework and the, the, the, the hard part of [00:35:00] this is it's unclear whether this is trolling essentially by, uh, Russian speakers and, uh, in, in Moscow and diplomats or whether this actually has any standing because on the same day that Dmitry Peskov sort of floated that option, then, uh, uh, You know, then, then Putin comes out and basically says, you know, we've got to denazify Ukraine, we have to demilitarize Ukraine, we have to stop the genocide that's going on against Russians in Ukraine, and the plan is, it's all, everything's kind of going according to plan.
So what's really on the table? It's hard to say. I think there's a strong possibility that there's really nothing on the table and that the diplomacy is. Once again, a smokescreen for Russia to try to buy some time, seem vaguely rational and realistic and reasonable to the rest of the world. Um, while they continue to [00:36:00] bombard the cities and regroup militarily in terms of their ground offensives.
Is there a world in which they keep bombarding the cities to the point and so weaken Ukrainian forces and so isolate city centers that they effectively occupy Ukraine? And can do so for some extended period of time, not unless they go into the cities themselves with ground forces. And that's the. Part that certainly in Kiev, they have not been able to do and is always been sort of, uh, the thing that no one can quite figure out here, including me, including me.
So what's the concept? Yeah. So, so let's say you bombard these cities and you say, okay, we've done enough, uh, we've, we've killed enough civilians and the population is so desperate that, you know, they'll give up. And, uh, which I think is, is probably the concept and they'll, you know, [00:37:00] they'll negotiate the entrance of Russian troops.
Well, maybe, maybe you get that, but let's say you don't. Okay, so then at some point you move into these cities and then you're talking about urban warfare, which advantages the defender. The Ukrainians, uh, clearly have the appetite for a fight with the Russian invaders. And either way, let's say either there's a negotiated entrance into the cities or you fight your way into the cities, then what?
I mean, Dan, you and I and others have some inkling of what it's like to occupy a country that doesn't want to be occupied by a foreign army. I've told, I've told friends of mine, I've made this point, that among the many horrors that I most visibly I recall from our early months and years in Iraq was literally trying to get a country running again [00:38:00] where no government employees show up to the ministries to do basic jobs, providing basic services to a country you are trying to make function.
I mean, it is in the case of Iraq, we'd like 27 or 28 ministries. No one showed up to work, none of the technocrats, like good luck getting a country, good luck trying to get a country back on its feet and even if you have influence over it or in the case of Russia literally trying to run it when you have no real allies doing the job day to day in that country.
Ukraine is not quite twice the population of Iraq, but you know, not that far from it. Uh, the United States invaded Iraq with more troops that were more capable. We had friendly ground forces like the Kurds and things like that, and we still had a raging insurgency on our hands when anyone who could pick up a gun or plan an IED wanted to kill American troops for a long time.
Uh, the Russians have a much [00:39:00] less capable military, a highly motivated population to try to keep them out. Uh, by the way, a history of this, I mean, in, in, you know, the Nazis took Kiev and they took the city and they, they moved there. You know, the people who are going to govern the city in and, uh, and, and once they settled in the offices, the bomb started to go off, they had booby, the Ukrainians had booby trap places and the whole thing.
Um, so the Russians would have to either put some puppet on the throne here and then leave, in which case you're going to get a popular uprising against that puppet in about five minutes after that. And you're right back where you started. Or, they can try to occupy this country indefinitely with, uh, fewer troops than the U.
S. had, less capable troops, no ground forces to assist them, uh, and a high And the biggest country in Europe. Biggest country in Europe, and Bigger than Germany, bigger than France. And, and, with half the world pouring weapons into the resistance. [00:40:00] And, and so, you know, what's the concept? Which is why I think, at the end of the day, they will pursue some sort of negotiated Outcome, but I just don't know what those terms will be and what ultimately they will accept because Clearly, I think the ukrainians are not going to accept what the russians would like Okay, two other scenarios and, and, and, and one is much darker than the other, but I, it's the elephant in the room, people weren't talking about it, now they talk about it.
Uh, the, it's a very difficult topic to speculate about, but the potential for some kind of nuclear exchange, uh, which, you know, the war in Ukraine heightens risks of some kind of nuclear conflict, at least to a level. We haven't seen you and I in our lifetimes I don't think you know the u. s. Has seen since in terms of the heightened risk since the Cuban missile crisis I think the chances of a nuclear exchange are extraordinarily low but that still puts them higher than they [00:41:00] used to be a few weeks ago, and you know, this is a classic very low probability extremely high consequence Possibility so I think it I don't think it will happen But I don't like the direction that the numbers are going in terms of probability here, even though that's very low.
And, uh, it's not impossible to imagine An escalatory chain of some sort. I mean, I think Meaning trip wires, you know, crossed by inadvertently, like misreading signals. Not even inadvertently, but I, you know, the country that has the most tactical nuclear weapons, these sort of battlefield nukes in the world, is Russia.
Would they use nuclear, a tactical nuclear weapon in Ukraine? I don't know. Probably not. But they might. I don't think the United States would respond in a nuclear way to that or maybe not respond at all. But then you've broken the nuclear [00:42:00] threshold for the first time since the bombs were dropped in Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
That doesn't produce a nuclear exchange, but it's one more chipping away at this taboo that so many countries have Tried to put into place, uh, so that we don't, you know, risk the existence of the planet and, um, you know, even before you get to a nuclear attack, I wonder whether all of this talk of, you know, biological weapons labs in Ukraine, you know, fomented by the US, which is untrue and don't exist.
Is a pretext for the Russians to use some sort of chemical or biological agent in, in, in Ukraine. I mean, the, when they, you know, when they do their poisonings, they use chemical weapons. So, you know, they could use arsenic or something if they wanted, but they use chemical weapons. And so everybody knows, uh, one, that they've got those chemical weapons and two, who did this, even as they deny who did this.
Uh, and so, yeah, when I, you know, when I reduce this down to the [00:43:00] possibility of a nuclear change, I don't think Putin is suicidal. I don't think, uh, the United States, uh, or Russia wants to get into a nuclear exchange. Uh, Putin has, he put his nuclear forces on alert. They've got these DEFCON levels kind of like us and he moved them up one.
Uh, there's nothing has moved. They haven't seen anything move on the ground in terms of weapons movements or anything like that or mobilization. Uh, so I think that this is, uh, basically his way of telling the rest of the, of the world, stay out. I've got. Nuclear weapons and if you're smart, you'll let me tend to Ukraine without getting involved directly, but you know, it's a dangerous situation to two final scenarios before before we let you go one the possibility that Putin gets overthrown either in some kind of palace coup kind of situation where elites around him whether in the security apparatus or elsewhere In the government or among the oligarchs organize some kind of overthrow or some sort of [00:44:00] popular mass protest that results in some kind of overthrow.
You know these Regimes tend to be like hollow trees. Sometimes they look sturdy from the outside and they are until somebody hits them with a blow and it turns out that they were empty inside. And so if there is some sort of overthrow, then we probably won't know about it until it's already happened. I think if it does happen, it'll be a combination of the two things that you said.
It'll be some sort of popular agitation and then there will, but that won't do it on its own. I mean, this won't be a, uh, uh, you know, a storming the Bastille kind of thing. This would then prompt some of the elites. That kind of event is basically unheard of. Actually, if you look at Russian history, um, it just.
You know other than the russian revolution Well, right and but but so are so are internal successful [00:45:00] internal coups. I mean if you look from 1917 when lenin took over until today The only successful coup Was the second one that got khrushchev out of power when brezhnev took over the first one failed stalin died in office Uh, you know, Khrushchev again, he got out in the second one, uh, but Brezhnev and drop off Chernenko, they all died in office.
Gorbachev, there was an unsuccessful coup and that didn't work. And, you know, Yeltsin died in office, Putin died in office. So it's not to say it won't happen, but this is not like being, you know, the prime minister of Italy where, you know, uh, if you, if you just wait a few more months and there's going to be a new one, I mean, that's, that's just not Russian history.
So, you know, people going into the streets have a strong. Signaling effect in an autocratic regime like this because they're taking such risk. I mean, they know they're going to jail if they go into the streets. And so that, that sends a strong signal to the elite that there's discontent in the population.
And it just [00:46:00] takes a few members of security services to get weak kneed and shooting on protesters once. I mean, it just has to have that where they kind of blink. Where the, where the, you know, that's where things can get very dicey, right? So I think that, you know, if there's a mechanism by which something happens, it's.
The popular discontent then signals to the elite that they're an intolerable situation and to be worse off by Putin remaining than him going and trying to work something else out. I mean, I think there's this other thing to the degree to which over time the oligarchs are really getting hammered hard by these sanctions.
You know, there's this sort of theoretical possibility that, you know, the Russians and Ukrainians come to terms and there's some relaxation of the sanctions. But honestly, the combination of The government sanctions by countries around the world and then the self sanctioning by multinationals and, and Western companies that are all pulling out of Russia.
That's not going to change as long as Putin's in power. So even if this ends [00:47:00] tomorrow, as long as Putin's there, it's, it's like, it's going to be like Assad. I mean, you know, Assad might wrap up this war. But, you know, no one's going back in. He's he's persona non grata. So, um, you know, again, I think the chances of all of that resulting in a Russian regime change are relatively low, but you know, they're not zero and they're higher than they were, which is yet one more irony in this little piece I did with the Wall Street Journal and you that you mentioned at the beginning.
I mean, part of this war is a piece of Putin's efforts to Restore Russian greatness and, uh, make Russia respected around the world and deal with its, you know, what it would say is it's legitimate security concerns show that it's a great power. It's having exactly the opposite effect. Okay, last one, which is China bailing out Russia in some way.
And this was This, I think many of us were speculating about. You talked about [00:48:00] the Putin visit to Beijing during the Olympics a week before the, a week before the invasion. And just the other day, Bill Burns, the director of the CIA, former ambassador to Russia, I probably should add parenthetically testified that their intelligence is showing that.
That Beijing, the Xi, that the Chinese Communist Party leadership is rattled by the response to Putin and they're, they're, I think he used the word shaken, uh, to describe China's reaction to what is happening. What, what is your reaction to that? To, to what Burns reported out and, or testified to, and, uh, two, do you, do you think that this whole China bailing out Russia is just, We may have all thought it was it had more teeth before the invasion, but now it just looks less.
So, well, on the first question, [00:49:00] I think that there's China would be Chinese leadership would be forgiven to not have a pretty strong dose of buyer's remorse. Um, having, you know, announced this quote without limits quasi alliance with Russia in February. Even if they have no moral qualms with this war of aggression, this barbarous attack on Ukraine, uh, what is going to result is a Russia that is weaker.
That is far more isolated internationally. That is poor. I mean, the Russian Russian GDP may contract by a third this year that they're about to default on their sovereign debt, whose military has been shown to be far less capable than everyone, including they assumed. Those are the opposites of what you want in your number one ally, right?
You want strong, unified, effective, competent allies, right? [00:50:00] And, uh, so, you know, this is what they've signed up for and this is what they're getting. Now that said, You know, there's some talk about, well, China's kind of on the fence and all that. Well, not really. I mean, they've, they've thrown in with the Russians.
I mean, they've thrown in with the aggressor here and they support what the Russians are doing. They're not, uh, criticizing it. They're referring, they're, they've adopted a lot of the Russian language about, you know, Russia's legitimate security interests need to be met. Kind of tried to blame some of this in the United States.
Um, their companies are going to be in a jam when it comes to the sanctions because their companies want to do business with in the U. S. Market, not just the Russian market. And so even if there's some desire to bail out the Russians in economic terms by more or their oil and gas, I'm sure the Chinese will buy as much as they can get, especially if they get a 20 percent discount like seems to be on offer these days from the Russians.
But their companies may well just have to [00:51:00] decide. And I could easily see them deciding to abide by it. Okay. The sanctions not because they like them, but because they feel like that's their in their economic interest to do. So the bigger question is about whether the Chinese come to the military aid of Russia, according to the latest reports, the Russians have asked the Chinese for everything ranging from M.
R. E. S. To surface to air missiles, which is an amazing thing. Commentary on the second biggest military in the world that after three weeks of fighting already has to ask the Chinese to send supplies. You know, uh, this is this could not have been how they thought this was going to go. But this is where they are.
You know, if the Chinese do this, I think I don't know that the Chinese leadership fully Recognizes the consequences of this. I mean, there haven't been coherent, really coherent blocks, geopolitical blocks like during the cold war, China [00:52:00] in one side and the United States of the Democratic or the free world and another side.
And it's because of all the business is being done. And the Chinese have seen Europe in particular as a power center distinct from the United States, one that they could Kind of, you know, peel off and do business with even if they're in this, you know, competitive and maybe confrontational relationship with the United States over time, what they don't want to face is, is, you know, a unified front of the United States, Europe.
Japan, you know, and a few other countries, because then you're talking about half the world's GDP. You're talking about the richest and most powerful countries in the world. If in Europe's time in peril, China aids the aggressor that has started and prosecutes this war on the EU's borders, I think that they've lost Europe.
I think that Europe will see China as of a piece with Russian aggression, which is not how they saw them before. Right. And [00:53:00] many of them rationalize still having their economies fully integrated with China's and that could change. And you are seeing the profound changes that Europe is making in such a short period of time with respect to its own defense, its economics, its consumption of energy, its relationship with Russia.
And I think that, you know, China, if it It takes this step to arm the Russians to continue to prosecute this war. I think the chances that it will lose Europe, so to speak, are, are significantly high. Um, so lastly, you are in close contact with senior administration, Biden administration officials, some of whom Worked with you at the Center for New American Security.
Generally, if you were to summarize, what is their mood? Are they feeling overwhelmed when you talked about the situation? Or do they also, while it is overwhelming, you know, dealing with a, with a international crisis of this scale, do they see this as a big opportunity for President Biden? That this is Biden's moment?
Again, I don't I [00:54:00] don't think he's handled it the way it's his moment, but I can imagine some of them, I spoke to one who, who said we should, we should throw our lot in with this fight. This should be, this should, this should define the presidency now for the next year. The reality is there's not much we can do about inflation, there's not much we can do with Build Back Better, there's not much, our congressional efforts are sort of going nowhere.
Obviously they'll get it. They'll probably get a Supreme Court nominee confirmed, but that's basically it. There's not a ton they can do on the domestic agenda that they can directly influence. Seizing this moment in global affairs. I mean, my gosh, if Putin were to fall or the regime, the Russian government were perceived to have a major setback, it would be a serious geopolitical moment for the United States and President Biden could own it.
Any, anyways, that's what one, one, one advisor, how one described it to me. And I'm curious what you're sensing in your conversations with them. Do they, do they get the, how consequential this [00:55:00] moment is and what, what an opportunity is for the U. S.? I think they do, but maybe in a different way. I haven't really talked to I talked to them a lot, but not much on the politics, the domestic politics of this, you know, is this going to make Biden's numbers go up or down?
Or, you know, can he sort of seize the moment of bipartisan unity on this to do things otherwise? Or, you know, what does this mean for the midterms or something? I've never had those conversations. And frankly, I'm probably talking to the wrong people if I wanted to have those conversations, because there tend to be other people in the White House.
Um, but, but, um, I would say, you know, there was, I, I, I discerned Not fatigue, but, um, a certain level of maybe even depression when Russia did what seemed so, um, so obviously costly and wrong by invading. I mean, the administration picked up the intelligence that this was in the [00:56:00] offing back in October. They took, I think, extraordinary steps.
Uh, to tell everyone to to engage in diplomacy with the Russians to get the Ukrainian, the Ukrainians and Europeans on board to threaten sanctions to, to get the Chinese to help out all of these sort of the spell out the cost. And Putin just went ahead and did it anyway, and I think that they were, they thought that was going to happen.
Um, but, you know, the reality of this is tragic and and, you know, these are people who are working on these issues. And I think the human side of this, uh, for everybody does resonate. Um, on the other hand, I think the opportunity. To act, uh, together as the West or as the free world, or I say the West, meaning not just, you know, the United States and Europe, but Japan and Australia and South Korea and even, you know, Singapore joined in the sanctions and, and, and other countries, um, you know, it turns out that we've We, [00:57:00] we're learning something in this process because, you know, there's been all this talk about, you know, the resurgence of great power competition, the rise of China, which will have the world's biggest economy and its military modernization, the, the aggressiveness and capabilities of Russia.
The jungle is back is Bob Kagan. Now, all of, all of that's true, right? All that's true. And if you add Russia and China together, which has been kind of the nightmare scenario, you get a more formidable. You know, potential adversaries still, but it turns out that the bulk of the wealth and the power and the military strength and the economic, uh, power still resides in all the other countries, you know, the, the, the G seven countries that sanctioned Russia are, you know, with a few others are roughly half of world GDP.
So Russia and China are a lot, but they're not anything compared to that, right? What it turns out is. You know, the countries that tend to [00:58:00] be tend to have these kind of Western institutions tend to be democracies, although not exclusively, um, are strong. They've just been fragmented and not working together and focused at home on what they're doing.
But this Spurred them into action. It shows what they could do. Does that translate into what could be done with China or Iran or North Korea? Maybe, maybe not, but it's not a bad sign. I mean, it countries are, you know, in this horrible tragedy, countries are getting together to exercise some geopolitical muscles.
They haven't exercised in a very long time, and they're finding the inner strength that they had all along. Let's, uh, let's hope you're right, and let's hope that inner strength endures. Thank you. We've kept you longer than, uh, than, uh, I, I offered when we negotiated this interview, so No problem. I appreciate you staying.
I [00:59:00] hope this doesn't mean that, that you, uh, you won't return. We're gonna, we're gonna get you back, because sadly, uh, this story is not disappearing. But until then, Richard, thank you for your insight and your pearls of wisdom, and, um, just hope, hope your voice continues to be out there. Thanks for having me.
Good talking to you. Alright. Take care.
That's our show for today. To follow Richard Fontaine's work you can go to cnas. org That's c n a s dot org and you can follow him on Twitter at r h Fontaine That's r h f o n t a i n e We'll post the Wall Street Journal op ed we talked about in our show notes Call Me Back is produced by Ilan Benatar.
Until next time, I'm your host, Dan Senor.