i'm very excited to welcome

michael kimmage celebrating the release of collision as the origins of war in ukraine and the new global instability in which he offers a widening all historically informed account of the origins of the current russia ukraine war. michael is a professor of history at the catholic university of america and a nonresident senior associate at the center for strategic and international studies from 2014 to 2016, he served on the secretary's policy planning staff at the u.s. department of state where he handled the ukraine russia portfolio. he is the author of the conservative turn, lionel trilling whittaker chambers and the lessons of anti-communism and the abandonment of the west. the history an idea in american foreign policy. he writes regularly.

foreign policy, the new republic among many others. today michael kimmage will in conversation with dr. linda kinstler, the executive editor of the dial and a contributing writer to the economist and the end to jewish. her book come to this court and cry how the holocaust ends when a wedding award in 2023. in this short listed for the wingate prize and jewish literature, she teaches at georgetown school of foreign service. so without further ado, please join me in welcoming to politics and prose michael kimmage and dr. linda kinstler. hello and it's wonderful to be here and to celebrate michael's

achievement in the introduction of this important work of history to the world at this moment and thank you to our hosts of politics and prose for having us. i delighted to be talking about this book, which we have been talking about some years now. and really is a kind of comprehensive reflection of michael's deep years of thinking, both in policy and in academia, about the dynamics have led to the current or in ukraine. so to begin i wanted to ask you, michael, if you could speak to us a little bit about how you approached this project, which was which is quite unique in. the annals of ukraine studies. you know, to think about it as a particular the history of conflict and not just to it as one war as you write, but as a

series of wars that are happening simultaneously. and that kind cascade across the globe, you document and of course, one of the things that i've always found so fascinating about your approach to history is the wide lens with which you bring you this kind of all encompassing very beautiful aperture that you lend to your studies and in this book it manifests with your use of facilities and the peloponnesian war, a frame to think about the ukraine war. and it manifests these kind of beautiful epigraphs that you have throughout the book. so maybe you could just open by telling us how you kind of began to conceive of this project. well, first of all, so nice to be with here, with you here, linda. this thank you so much to politics and prose for hosting so nice to see so friends in the audience and i suppose those who are not friends i can look at admiringly as potential

customers. so so nice to see everyone here and let me delve into your your rich question immediately, linda, in terms of facilities, it seemed to me that. one of the challenges of writing about this war course is that it's ongoing. and because it's ongoing, i don't think that we really have much of a context for it. and so when you're without a context, it's good to go back into the past and it's good to go to books that just in and of themselves. can provide context. and so what more natural choice is there for anybody writing about a war than to turn to lucidity is but when you do, i think that there are a couple of things that jump out in terms of this particular war. one is that there's something of a structural similarity that. the first 50 pages of the acidity is don't map on to the last five years of history or the last ten years of history in terms the war in ukraine.

but are there are parallels. it's about two alliance structures and, you know, sort of a city state that falls in between them in a kind of battle that ensues is. and so you can relate that to the current war. secondly through acidity is wrote the history of the peloponnesian war before it was over so that to me was just sort of inspiring to see it can be done and that value can be extracted from an event that you don't know how it will end. and finally, in terms of the acidity is the acidity is is famously the dry scholars argue about whether this was a pose. this was actually his writing style or his manner of thinking. but he's very detached from the subject, and i think that that's valuable when you're writing about a war that's ongoing, inevitably a lot of emotion attaches to it, and it should. but that's not the best place to begin an analysis of events. and i think it's the lucidity is a simply a role model in that regard. he was a participant, was an athenian general. he was ostracized. he had all these difficulties. but that was not his story. the story was the story of the

war. and then to the question of collisions in terms of the point of departure for the argument of the book, it is primarily a story of russia and ukraine and, somebody who knows more about ukraine. i happened to do could make that the centerpiece as you know sarah he blog his wonderful book the russo ukrainian war does that to a t my background is a bit more rooted in this country so i wanted to bring i wanted to bring that and it seemed to me the moment i did that analytically you get three nested conflicts in one russia ukraine which i've mentioned a moment ago russia europe which is integral ukraine's relationship to europe is the beginning of the story in some ways. and europe played a very important role in prosecution of the war and russia, you see, if you look at lot of the rhetoric in moscow, it's as if this is a war against the united states, is rhetoric that one wants to

regard critically. but still, that framing of it means that you to bring the u.s. into account. and of course, the u.s. has played in extremely important role in assisting ukraine and, you know, doing diplomacy around sanctions, forming a coalition in support of ukraine. it's legitimate to put the u.s., i think, somewhere near the center of the story. and in some you do that, you get a war that's not quite a world war in the way that the first world war or the second world war was. but certainly a war that's global. and we could go far europe to talk about the global dimensions this war as well. yes and i, i think we will. but i want to speak a lot of your emphasis, as is as you write, on u.s. russia relations. and i think one of the most important moves that you offer in this book is that you, in your choice of where to begin in this moment of contingency where, as you write, this script was not yet written in 2008,

where you have kind of obama and medvedev both, you know, in power and pursuing this kind of, you know, reset as it was. so what does that, looking back, enable us to do and? why did you think it was important to begin at this moment of contingency? so the other choice would have been to begin in the city of in 2007 with the famous speech that putin gives the munich security conference. and from that, draw a straight line 2007 to 2014, the sort of first phase of this war, and then to 2020 to the beginning of the second phase of the war. but that's something i really did not want to do, although the munich security conference speech figures inevitably in the story that's being told it seemed to me that to begin with, obama and medvedev is to begin at a moment and at least with a mood where the conflicts are not inevitable, or they don't seem inevitable. and, you know, when obama

becomes president the idea of a war in europe borderline unthinkable and major conflicts with russia is not what obama has in mind when he becomes president. the financial crisis, it's winding down. the global on terror. it's his domestic agenda is right nation building at home opposed to big adventures abroad. and similarly with medvedev, who's more complicated case, at least the surface he's speaking about modernization, integration into europe, goes to silicon valley and opens his twitter account in the presence of the twitter ceos, and then to build a silicon valley near moscow. and you can challenge how profound his commitments to those kinds of things were and that's that's legitimate. but at the time, it you know, it seems like a new departure. so there is not i think, any kind of great inevitability in 2008 29, 2010, 2011 is already a shift when putin signals that he's going to come back to power and he's going to come back to power in a very bad mood, and that's going to already change

the dynamic. but i really think and i'll just stop the point here because like the efforts to compare and contrast what happens in. 2014 to 2022 or to the present with the first world war, the event that seems to me very similar to the assassination of archduke ferdinand in june of 2014 is the flight of viktor yanukovych from the city of kiev and and from ukraine, i believe on the evening of late evening of february 21st or early morning of february 22nd, 2014. that to me is something of an accidental event. i think accidental perhaps in his own thinking. accidental, possibly russia. that which orchestrates departure from ukraine, accidental for a lot of ukrainians and accidental for the us policymaking apparatus, which not ready for that particular moment or expecting that particular. so i think once that happens, it's not as if everything else becomes inevitable, but a kind of rubicon is crossed and a phase of conflict has begun

that's very, very difficult to exit from. and sadly, that phase of conflict has sort of intensified year by year. but i think until we get to that moment, i would be very reluctant to use the word inevitability. it's pretty inevitable. he fails. yeah, but i think, you know, i think the most successful works of history not only serve as documents, but also illuminate the counterfactuals, you know, these kinds of nodes of possibility, change that you encounter along the way. and you do write fascinatingly that if viktor yanukovich had stayed in power through 2016, that putin may not have gone into syria in the way that he did. so i'm curious, you know, how do you think about the war in ukraine as, a global war, you know, one that is impact did precisely by what going on in afghanistan and iraq and syria around these times and how those conflicts impacted the decision

making around ukraine. the global dimensions of the 2014, 2015 phase of this war are visible, but not dominant. i think when we have russia's annexation of crimea and incursion into the donbass or eastern ukraine, this feels very much like an event in european history, although the us vigorously a part of the response and i think all the world takes note of what happens in those years. it doesn't feel to me like an epochal global event, a turning point in europe, to be sure. but gradually and then suddenly russia begins to break away from the west. and i think the move into syria is very significant. that's, you know, sort of 2015 where russia felt comfortable as if it had to challenge the us position in the middle east. i suppose election meddling in 2016 could be fit into that continuum. and then, you know, i think russia is constructing with or

without the intention of invading ukraine massively in 2022. it's hard to know, but it's sort of constructing the capacities to live outside and in confrontation with the west. and the only way russia can do that is by being global power of a new kind and drawing on the chinese economy for certain kinds of sustenance, drawing on its relationship, india for certain kinds of support on the relationship to brazil and south africa and many other countries, not for partnerships, alliances, but for the things russia needs to run its economy and to manage its its war machine. we could speak of all the ways in which the war itself has had global consequences food security, inflation, all of that. but i have more in mind sort of russia's global purview, which is there as a very aspirational thing. in the 1990s, you have the figure, yevgeny primakov, a russian foreign minister who speaks of a multipolar world in the late 1990s. but that's extremely aspirational at that point. and what's significant, i think, is year by year, russia sort of

actualize is that vision. and if russia had not actualized that vision, it would not be able to fight the war in ukraine for two years or two and a half years going. so the global piece of the puzzle is, i would argue in some ways the central piece of the puzzle. yeah. and also a kind of helps us understand as write that, you know in certain ways. you know 2014 and then 2022 there are ways in which neither of those are perfectly ideal timings for the russian government as well, which leads to this kind of sense of. improvization as they went along, that for sure, you know, how much of a blueprint there is for any this on the russian side is difficult to know and another reason just to be skeptical of the more linear arguments that are out there, that this is predestined by moves that peter the great made or you know sort of because stalin did x, y or z. this is why are happening at the present moment. you know that's that's that's really quite dubious there had

to have been a plan on the shelf for the annexation of crimea. i don't think it could be so rapid if that hadn't been planned for everything else. so certainly what russia does in eastern ukraine after the annexation of crimea has to improvization if there was a plan, it's has to be the world's worst executed plan and know when a plan sort of crystallizes for the 2022 invasion is a question that i envy future historians to think and write about because they'll know a lot more than we and i do about that we just have no real evidence but it's difficult to look at manner of the war that russia has since the 24th of february 2022, and say that there's a lot planning behind it. the improvisatory element of this, it's not always a debit for russia. it can be in some ways a kind of source of russian flexibility and and perseverance, but, you know, blueprints are precious precious, precious, hard to find in terms in terms of all of this. in that sense, if we're to one more to go back to the analogy that is on many people's minds, i think hitler is quite a

different figure. i mean, labor's realm does come up already in the twenties and his eyes are on the east and on ukraine and, you know, there are, you know, sort of evident plans that he does act on over time the russian story. it seems to me fundamentally different. right. and i want to ask you, you know, since you also have policymaking experience and we're sitting here in the united and you also emphasize the kind of enduring role that the cold war thinking has on this conflict. and so i want us to think about maybe could talk about how these missed opportunities in terms of u.s. policy during obama years, this kind of this lack of action, perhaps and then what you describe during the trump administration as empty years essentially is wasted time. that kind of it was during that moment that putin decided to re invade you argue so what is behind that reasoning so i can

of three missed opportunities and the first is in this a two year period before. november 2013. so among these contingent c is in addition to yanukovych is flight from ukraine. february 2014 is the outbreak of revolution in which as far as i'm aware, very few people were predicting prior to the fall 2013. it is a source of regret for me, although it's hard to know how much of a difference. alternative policies would have made if there was so little engagement. between russia and the united states on the issue of ukraine prior to 2013. you know, you have snowden in the background. you have, you know, a fraught putin return to power in 2012. and, you know, difficult relations between moscow and washington. so maybe not much would have come of extensive dialog and talks about eastern central europe and and ukraine. but you know, you have this very frenzied period of diplomacy in the middle of february 2014. and everybody rushes to ukraine

on the russian side, european side, us side, and they're all speaking of improvization. they're all furiously improvising. and then yanukovich runs away in it and it falls apart. it does seem to me that, you know, maybe some of the chaos of that moment could have been avoided and some of the terrible effects that moment has had could have been avoided through through greater dialog earlier, a little utopian, probably. but but but to be considered. secondly and this would be true in a sense for obama, trump and and biden, it feels, you know, sort awful in retrospect to look back at the details. ukraine should have been armed in 2014. they should have been a comprehensive commitment based not so much on the idea of sovereign t. i don't think it was really possible to get russia to exit crimea or even eastern ukraine probably without fighting a major war. but there should have been a commitment to the notion of deterrence. that should have been the organizing principle of western policy. and really in a kind of very hard nosed military sense.

if you want to keep russia out, russia has to be deterred from entering and that just wasn't the framework for the obama administration. it wasn't the framework for the trump administration. and when biden becomes president, you know, january 2021 is sort of too late and that's also not the framework then. so a lot of the questions got broken down into very small pieces do we send this arms, you know, sort of they recur in the present moment, but do we send this or that? and it was thinking too small and. there was a kind of deadly optimism that all of this would just work out over time, which in this part of the world is is rarely the case. so that's, you know, sort of second missed opportunity. the third is the trump years, which are complicated when it comes to russia and ukraine for reasons that, i'm sure everybody in this in this audience knows inside and out and it's not you the time or the place to hash out the merits of what he proposed or didn't propose just that the to me the basic story is nothing was done right there

was the suggests then that trump had this new agenda for russia. you could never figure out what it was. he didn't act on it. he goes to helsinki and, you know, sort of confuses everything a in a in a in a catastrophic press conference and then kind of retreats and focuses on other issues. china and you know, things that the middle east that seem to matter to the trump administration more. and so you have four pivotal years. and, you know, the u.s. is just not pushing for anything. and that seems to very, very unfortunate in in retrospect. so those are you know, the path not taken, which is for historians, a kind of easy thing to do and shouldn't be done to more realistically. but but that's that's where i would go with the with the hypotheticals. yeah. yeah. and i mean, surely. any optimism that was president has certainly vanished long ago and you write about how it has kind of shattered some pre-war assumptions that were thought to

be quite entrenched, perhaps even after 14, but certainly not after 2022, in that it has you know, not only fundamentally altered this country, but also has shifted the terms upon which european powers have to understand themselves. so can you what are those assumptions that have been kind of destroyed to assumptions i can recall, i think there are three in the conclusion of the book, but there are two that two that come to mind. and one is about optimism, which i think on balance, where taught to to like and to and to try to try to be. but optimism come with its price. and there was just so much optimism about europe in particular after 1991. it really is not any one u.s. administration. that's at fault here. it's a whole generation really of thinking about europe in europe. and i think also in the united states that these peaceful mechanisms would sort of take

care of themselves. and the europe is this motor and engine that's going to build legality and deliberation and peace. and of course, what's true is that this was the case for three quarters of europe, often in places where you would least expect it. right. france and that goes back to the to the 1940s, but still know a very peaceful relationship after the fall of the of the berlin wall germany not to be taken for granted. and you have a relationship after the fall of the berlin wall and many other such relationship that could make you feel very, very enthusiastic. europe's prospects. but, you know, russia is a part of the european picture way or another. and know when you extend that optimism, there about europe as a kind of engine of peacemaking, uh, you know, russia buys into that vision or doesn't, and i think it never really did at point. and you that was swept under the carpet and sort of not fully and the optimism was in the foreground in russia's you kind of vituperative noises were put the background and know that

clouded our vision in some way and we should have just been more not pessimistic about europe but a bit more guarded, a bit more to think about where things might go wrong or go wrong. and that came, you know, that came much too late. second assumption, and i don't say this with any enthusiasm, because as i hypothetical, it's something i myself would have liked to have. but russia integrating into europe. so this looked upon as something that was. happening in the 1990s. of course, it was in many ways and was just bound to continue. so there an overinvestment in medvedev when he comes along a quasi integrationist this guy is going to do it and and he doesn't and then i think with putin this expectation of sort gradually lost but the astonishing thing you know regarded historically is the years between 2015 and 2022. what to the west, to russia in these years, you kind of go back to an integrationist model. you know commercially in the case of of germany and sort of

european powers you know trump suggests that he wants to sort of get back on board with a with a kind of partnership and the early agenda of the of the the biden administration was the removal of guardrails in the building of a kind of working relationship, which again, is something that anybody would like to to see as a very, very serviceable and attractive ideal. but you know, it wasn't happening. and the ways in which it wasn't happening weren't given their proper attention. and so, you know, sort of putin's willingness to wage war against, europe, we can put it that way, let's say, really 2022, there should have been a bit more of an intellectual frame or context or not in the precise military details, but just that that sort of thing could happen because half of it had already in 2014 and yet it never came into. it never came into focus. yeah. i mean, and it is striking to read putin's early or remarks

that not only is not his nato's not russia's enemy, but that it could even be dangerous to frame it as such. you know to read that today is quite jarring so since you finished the book, you know, this is about the origins of the war in ukraine. and we are now in a different phase of the war as ukraine looks to secure additional funding, to continue defending itself and how are you thinking about the war now? this yet another moment of extreme that we find ourselves yet another moment in which outside of ukraine are shaping how this is. so i think that the longevity of the war which is a part of the war, i think if you if you recognize how deep its roots are the longevity of the war to

matter not to impress me it continues to to be there. i do say in the book and i stand by the argument about the need to think of this as a generational challenge, which is to say to be construed or to be approached in decades, not in years and that's in part because this war, decades, if not centuries in the making. so history can illuminate at least that much. i think that this is not something that russia has superficially. it's not something that ukraine is pursuing superficially. obviously, it's about ukraine's existence and survival as a as a nation. and so longevity, i think, is built the conflict that is sort of in the book and i'll stand by that. now, if anything, i think the global iterations of the conflict are more extensive, more wide ranging than i was able to gather up and put forward in the in the book. the book is finished before october 7th and october 7th is not a plan hatched in moscow, but one of the ways to understand october 7th is as an

event that is connected to the war in ukraine, because the war in ukraine has built a dependance in russia weaponry from iran, and that has in turn created new kind of relationship between russia and iran. and that, i think it's safe to say, has in a more emboldened iran, more emboldened north korea, too. but that's you know, that's not crisis that we're seeing unfold in real time before our eyes. so that's almost something i couldn't have conceived when writing the book and, you know, that's to me rather, startling. i think what's bittersweet about, the conclusion in terms of. and i'll just say i hope the point true but i'm you know, as as skeptical as many people washington are at the moment about it. but i do say the war transformed the us approach to europe and has made the us much more engaged involved, you know, sort of dedicated to questions of, of european security that was a

self-evident point in the first year of the war. it was a sustainable in the second year of the war. we're now in the third year of the war. and that's obviously, you know, very much in. so i think there there was a certain failure to anticipate how a long war could maybe play out and activate the impatience of various forces within within the united states. i do say in the book, and i think this sort of the fourth consequence that i can recall writing about and i think that this point will be true. but again, you need a very long time horizon. ukraine will join the west. joined the west is a part of the west. whatever we understand by the west, it's a part of the transatlantic relationship. it's a part of various european structures. and that trend going to continue. however, war comes to a comes to a conclusion. it's a point that carries its own pain and difficulty in terms of the sacrifices made and some of the reluctance still to sort of bring ukraine on board. but that, i think will happen. but again, we need to try to

think in decades. yeah, and it's interesting i mean, i think one of the most impactful things about your book is that you kind of lay out all of these moments of possibly all of these different vantage point, vantage points in all of these different previews that have been shaping ukraine over the last 25 years. and then you kind of show how the aperture narrowed a little bit, how things became more set in stone, how russia did become permanently, it seems, oriented away from the west. ukraine became oriented towards it. you know, alexei navalny comes up several times in your book and, you know, now he's been killed by putin's forces. and so it is this kind of vision and we're kind of left wondering how to kind of regain our

coordinates at the present moment. i'm going to ask one more question and then i'm going to open up to the audience. so please start thinking about questions that you have for michael. and i guess i want to ask about not only the origins, but also, you know, this kind of reluctance, this hesitation in some cases, you know, aggressive pursuit of addressing the that all of them are rooted in personalities and at you know, you do describe how, you know, fluctuations in leadership new people coming in, others going out contributed to the outcome and so i'm wondering if can talk about how changes in leadership shaped how this war unfolded not only in ukraine also on the european side. well i think we should start and just if you don't mind that, i'll invert your question just

for a moment and start with the one area or one place where leadership has not changed, which is, of course, which is, of course, russia. and so it matters enormously that the figure who is there in 2000 is able over time to build russia into a dictatorship. i don't think without that the war is even thinkable. i think if putin had to deal with real political opposition, i don't think he would be where he is, you know, sort of militarily. so that's that's a crucial ingredient. and also the kinds of strategic ideas and grievances they intersect with putin, but the kinds of strategic ideas and grievances that he builds up over a 22 year arc are also very important. i can easily imagine kind of quote unquote, russian hardliner who might have succeeded putin and thought that the war, ukraine was a, you know, a senseless idea of, you know, an idea that you don't even need to consider. there are other ways in which russia could be a hard line country. it doesn't need to do that.

you can ask the question looking at it from. moscow's point of view is, is this war in russia strategic interest? and you can come up with a lot of good reasons why it's why it's not so. putin is, of course, the the pivotal ingredient and he's there throughout i would say the leadership change. between angela merkel and olaf officials. not that there's any evidence that i can use that, as you know, almost no evidence with putin's decision making on anything. so, you know, it's kind of true across the board, but it's true here. but i think it's important. angela merkel was a kind of linchpin of europe. she was not, you know, sort of militarily, you know, committed to to ukraine from from a german vantage point. but she was very committed to ukraine's sovereignty and independence and she was able to bring, i think, a lot of europe along with her. it's been different without angela merkel. everybody goes back now and criticizes her for all the things that she didn't do. i think we should remember with angela merkel of the things that she did do and think her absence is a felt absence.

and i think that that was part of the calculus maybe the sort of third and final point. of course, we could a lot about the personality of joe biden here. and it's interesting, but i sort of that to the side just for now in the kind of polemics about the war on our side what most prominently as the pullout from afghanistan in august 2021 which feels to me like a pretty partizan issue that, you know, sort of republicans latch on to it as a way of criticizing the biden administration. it's a debate to have about afghanistan and the timeline for putin's decision making, whether that had an influence, i think it had to have had some some of influence. but i think january 6th is the much more important moment. if you look at january sixth as an adversary of the united states, you know, especially prone to perhaps or wishing to exaggerate how it is the that the us didn't really have a peaceful transition from, you know, trump to biden, that there was politicized violence, you

know, and you know for four years americans could do nothing other than talk about polarization. and it was it was a good discussion to have. but i wonder not that we can debates here with an eye to all these other countries there, but i wonder if that was the most prudent debate have in the way that we did in terms of some of the impressions it created. because i think putin was betting on a polarized america. and, you know, that, too, is a part his calculus. so in terms of leadership, putin is there front and center. i think in europe merkel shots transition is meaningful and i think almost meaningful than trump is just the manner in which all of that played out and not to the advantage the united states. yes. and then, of course, we have zelensky center stage kind of rising to meet the challenge, although you know once again he is facing a moment of contingency himself to two quick points. they're the unsung hero of the ukrainian military story, petro poroshenko, who's, you know, a

politician who's not tremendously charismatic. and i don't know how great he was domestically for ukraine, probably in the middle in terms of what he achieved. but he did modernize the ukrainian military and that was frontline effort of his and. it paid real dividends over. so to be sure the charisma of zelensky the courage that he showed in the first few weeks of the war, his ability to communicate to global audiences is crucial to the war. for speaking about the decision invade it had to have been, of course, putin's misreading of zelensky that matters that he looks him as the comedian who can't get it together and won't be able to fight a war. but in actual war itself, zelensky is unbelievable, consequential. but i sometimes feel that poroshenko gets gets forgotten. he's, you know, he's there, too, in this in this picture. and he did some of the structural things that allowed zelensky to achieve what he achieved as a sort of political and commander in chief. okay, wonderful. well, i think i will it up to

questions. we have mics that are going around if you want, raise your hand. yep. coming to you. hi, michael, it's michael. david fox. i appreciate your emphasis on continue nancy and i'm really looking forward to reading the book. and i think i agree it's about contingency. but i see two earlier turning points that i think are important. one would be the orange. in 2004 and the series color revolutions and rose revolution, georgia and leading to what my people called a preventative in russia that they see the color revolution potentially threatening russia and putin's power. and that sets on a path and then the demonstrations in 2011, especially really big political demonstrations in moscow. so before 14 and the reason i raised those two is because you know, the whole domestic

politics, russia sort of deterred really influence the anti western ism that developed in a way i think it's hard to that linkage you know so time it is hard to see in other countries i wonder so the anti western ism does seem to have deeper roots in that sense. oh, thank you so much for the question, michael. there's a citation, the book and i can't quite remember who it's from, but somebody close to putin who describes the orange revolution 2004 as quote unquote, our 911, and that sounds a bit hyperbolic to me, but but still indicative of how significant that was the the color rebel revolution theme i find very difficult to handle analytically because i think that it's true and it shapes strategic thinking in the kremlin and certainly putin's strategic thinking. and i also think that it's an enormous talking point and a

sort of propaganda. of course, you can have a propaganda point and a catalyst of decision making. at the same time, but i find it very difficult to disentangle. but certainly you're right that orange revolution is the across the bow as it's perceived in in moscow helps to explain the radicalism of the response to what's going on in ukraine in. in november 2013,. february 2014. and and thereafter. in terms domestic reform or anti-western ism in domestic russian politics just to elaborate on and the point that you made i tend to see again without much evidence but i tend to see the anti-westernism of the war, the break with the west economically, culturally, not as in in putin's terms, an opportunity cost of the war. and that's something that he has to live with. what a shame. i've got to deal with all consequences. and russians can't go to europe anymore. and how sad that makes that makes them feel. i think it was a part of the strategic design of the war. i think the war was intended to

drive a wedge between russia in west. obviously, there's a military strategic to that point, but there's also a domestic side. and putin has spoken of getting rid of pro-western russians is like expelling from your mouth when when you when you inhale them in the in the summertime. and i think that that's know sort of indicative for him it's a kind of purge know these metaphors of hygiene and cleansing or of quote unquote the real russians from those who are sort of the european europeanized fakes and looked at in that the war has achieved its purpose. so it is the final expression putin's dictatorship on the one hand, but also almost, i would say, unique in last 300 years of russian history, an anti westernizing gesture, a kind of anti westernizing logic that's difficult to exaggerate in its in its. professor kimmage since reading

your book, i've been thinking quite a lot about this issue of inevitability and the points along the way where it may have been possible of a different future, different outcome here of if the war wasn't inevitable. wouldn't you say that some of conflict was highly probable considering? what happened in 2014? what we know about, the collapse of empires, right? you've called them the wars of soviet succession. the many times russia has use violence, trying to hold parts of what had had been the soviet empire or greater russia during the czars times in parts of the world, russia has, and not just putin, the establishment has viewed historically russian culturally, that once the ukrainian who kind of are like on the sidelines of your book you know it's mostly about the global of the war the ukrainian people decided they wanted to go a certain direction the the clean break, you could say was made in 2014. joining the west, the eu trade

deal that yanukovich out. so if a hot war inevitable it does seem given the dynamics here that some level of with russia was hard to avoid. well thank you so much for the question, martin. i i would put it this way. i agree about tension and in a way, the point about the orange revolution is important because that tension palpable already in 2004, you know, sort of well before the maidan of of of 2014. and if there's any event that or anything that putin did that seems to be sort of generally popular in. russia, it's the annexation of crimea. so and if you look at navalny, if you look at gorbachev, you look at yeltsin, you'll find similar statements about the merits of annexing crimea. and in sense, tension to the of territorial annexation. again, i wouldn't use word inevitable, but there's momentum behind that. and, you know, it's probably case that after the orange revolution, unless you would

have a kind of viktor yanukovych, a pro-russian figure, unless you'd have endless viktor yanukovych is in ukraine, which is improbable, that that tension was going to was going to issue in conflict. so i will go that far but this is a book about the origins of the 2022 invasion and that to me seems more contingent even after 2014 even after, you know, some of the points of seeming points of of no return, such a big event and yet and i think there's sometimes intellectually a sort of hard to accept this it's such a capricious at the same time even as i was saying a moment ago by the standard russian hardliners and there's probably to emerge at some point a strong russian nationalist critique of this decision to invade ukraine. i think if russians were able to speak their mind now, it might be different. but at the beginning the war would probably have spoken out against it, which doesn't mean that it didn't happen, of course, and doesn't mean that it can't be justified after the

fact, and doesn't mean that in textbook writing that's going to go on, that it doesn't mean that it will seem like a capricious event in in sort of the kremlin propaganda. but i think it is that and in that sense, still shockingly accidental. so it's a typical historical problem on the edge of of of contingency and inevitable at the same time. yeah, i mean, you do get the sense they thought they were, you know, going into the past in some ways like the kiev that the russian forces arrived was not the one that actually existed in present. you know and i don't know i've been really struck when i was there last by seeing, you know, the tank tracks that you can see from russian forces that have now been withdrawn. you know, they left their marks. and now ukraine is obviously having to rebuild in places where it can rebuild and but i think that's a yeah very important to know. and the other question.

hello, my name's issa. i'm an undergrad at american university's school of international. i'm very excited. read your book on the question i wanted to ask is so starting off, there is a history of u.s. foreign policy not enough to win wars and prolonging them instead by doing too little? how do you think that the biden administration can take action in order to help ukraine in such a polarized political environment within the us without inflicting a hot war with russia? so like what kind of aid, what kind of policy specifically? thank you so much for the for the question, lisa, and, you know, i think in terms of avoiding a hot war with russia, i think the biden administration has been extremely disciplined. and the decision not to send uniformed american soldiers to ukraine sense in that light i don't know what channels exist between our government and the russian government to engage in some kind deconfliction or you know, avoidance of worst case

scenarios. but so far they seem to have worked very well. you can just gauge from biden's own about wanting to avoid war three that he's going to put effort behind that that sort of initiative. so it's a confrontation to high degree, but it's not limitless confrontation, the us side, and that seems frustrating as it is at times, like a, like a, like a prudent decision. i wish i had the recipe. how the biden house could crack the code of capitol hill. you know, they may not be able to they may just have to wait for the election, in which case, you know, the house of representatives going to the democrats and biden's reelection would mean one thing and then the other would mean something very different for ukraine. so that's, as we're all aware, is an event of of extraordinary drama. but, you know, to to speak normatively, just a moment, what the biden administration has to do is just live out its constitutional mandate to do foreign policy. they can't ignore capitol hill. they also can't take their cues

from the chaos there. and they have to do the best they can. and you see that mechanisms are kind of coming up along the way how the czechs just were able to provide certain amount of military assistance to. ukraine, you know, the national security advisor sullivan's recent visit, where he also provided a certain amount of aid not coming from congress. there are workarounds that will have to be engaged. but that's i would imagine, for anybody working in the white house tortuously difficult. but that's you know, that's that's that's politics. that's that's unavoidable. but in terms of worst case scenarios. i think. awful, awful, awful as this war is, you know, day by day in the last 24 hours have been especially it could be more still. and so those those those steps are being taken. the question has driven the relationship between china and russia from a transactional relationship to a strategic

relationship. i'm not sure you know china is resolute about not joining the war. they could of course, it's a choice for them to make they seem to be resolute about not the sanctions regime and they seem to be resolute about not providing even certain kinds of basic military support to to russia there is a lot of rhetorical support, no limited partnership. it's the fault narrow. you'll get that line from from from from beijing. and there are ways in which it's a strategic relationship for the two countries and that they can kind of enhance their powers. you know, china's enormous market for russian for russian goods and russia, because of its growing dependance on china is becoming a kind of vehicle of, chinese interests in the world. but the reason i think it's not such a pretty picture is that the war is kind of a mess for i mean, it's taking place right

where the belt and road initiative is supposed to be, you know, sort of linking china to to europe, the biggest trading partner for ukraine before the 2022 war was not germany or the united states. it was china. and that, of course, has been very much disrupted. and i think you see speaking to sort of this question of a moment ago about, you know, this going from a a somewhat contained global war to a kind of nuclear confrontation that china seems to be as concerned about that as as the united states and and any other country that's sort of looking on to this conflict and has the brakes on russia in a few cases to avoid to avoid nuclear escalation. so it's a it's i think it's kind of a mess in beijing, you know, probably russia. it's a workable relationship and allowing russia to continue war. so that's kind of good enough. but beyond that, i think it's not, you know, too strategic geniuses in beijing and moscow plotting their future course much more, much more chaotic. we're back to linda.

we're back to improvization. thanks to the cause, the war, to say the least, tells us, is the rise of athens and the and the fear that that cause in sparta. is that why you brought through cities in and is that the cause of this and if so, who is athens? who is sparta? it it is in part why why it is is there it has to be reconfigured. it has to be reconfigured somewhat. of course, you know, we're in washington, d.c., so russia has to be sparta and and everybody else is is is athens in this? you're right. that's true. yeah. is is athens in this case. where it doesn't compute that

there's no suggestion of direct military conflict between naito the united states and russia. and i don't think that that was the fear that russia had or a fear that russia had at all in terms of the future and not the motivating circumstance for its decision to invade. so in that sense, to it just doesn't map on particularly well to this particular situation. if you refine just a little bit, i think the core fear to the degree that it was, was rational. and that's not to 100%, but it's there is about the growing military relationship between ukraine and, europe and the growing relationship between ukraine and the united states, because that does there's a trend line after 2015 to 2022. and that trend is up. and if you on a map, you know, sort of continue trend line for another ten years, i think it's quite possible, moscow, that it was concluded that this is just not acceptable, this has to be

prevented in some in some way and has to be turned back. and so in that sense, it's not fear of the western athens, but a sort of fear of what ukraine could become within that within that configuration. and there are many other factors at work, but that one is, i think, important a qualified just one degree. further, i don't think lucidity is right about this, but he could because he's very attuned to what he described as nature. it's really an affront to putin's vanity. you know, ukraine in the west is not frankly speaking a threat to russia's security, although it's looked at differently in russia, to be sure, but definitely an affront to putin's vanity and that i think is very difficult for him to deal with. it's sort of this prestige object, his eyes, and they're getting it and we're not and that's not classic lucidity and fear, but it is an important psychological that's at work. and they're the kind of zelensky putin relationship is extremely significant because again and again, i think zelensky is an

irritant to putin's vanity and i wouldn't underestimate the importance of that storyline. and i will just say i feel like we would be after that. not to note that you also write about tragedy as one of the, you know, of the iliad and the odyssey, using this frame as a way to understand that there is no triumph to speak of here. you know that there is like that is the denouement and there's always these questions about where does this go? where does this go? so why did you make that decision to bring tragedy into here as an analytic frame? yes, this is this is about and i know some people feel it's not right not to call out somebody in particular. i'm sure she wouldn't mind at all if i would say this. constanza stelzenmuller at the brookings institute feels that it's not right to call this a tragedy because that encourages defeatism and a sense that it's sort of unwinnable and that this is not, you know, sort of the correct psychological or

spiritual approach to the war to back up just for a moment to get back to tragedy in the second. i'm getting a little of flack, as one does on social media for the title, and it's the prepositional phrase, the war, ukraine and the expectation that it should be the war against ukraine, which is, of course, true and a very correct framing of the war. but going back to the cities just for a moment, i sort of felt that you achieve more intellectually by reserving any of moral judgment, by being almost amoral about a description of the circumstance, forces and factors that led to this conflict. but i also feel that once you establish that you can start to change and. so, you know, i used to adjectives to describe the war as sort of two thirds of the way through the book, one is criminal. you know, of russia's decision to invade and the manner in which they invaded and unhinged. so, you know, i think that you need to earn those adjectives over time. and, you know, that's i try to do in the body of the book but i didn't want to finish the book

with a sort of technocratic reading of it. and so it does end with the and the iliad and the image of odysseus, who 20 years after the war, is about to return home. but he's at this palace and he's being entertained, and he asks the bard to sing the story of his comrades travails at troy. and for the first time he sort of cries when he thinks about the war. and then homer has, as only homer can, this extraordinaire a metaphor about tears and warfare and the suffering of of civilians. so i land there. but it's not where i want it to begin. and it's not where i wanted to to to frame. but forget the tragic nature of the war in the sense of what the civilians and the people of ukraine are going through is to forget exactly what war is. so it was a sense this is where it should end. we have time for this last question. thank you. in light of today's horrific attack in moscow, do you feel that that is potentially a false flag? if you look at the timing of the

reelection, could this be used as a reason mobilization for an increase of, the attacks against ukraine, or is it a random, horrific terrorist attack? well, you're testing the outer limits of my of my expertise with all this stuff. i really don't know, you know, sort of anything terms of of the of the relevant details. but i do have, you know, sort of two immediate responses for whatever they're worth. the first is that the reichstag burned long ago in moscow. so, you know it's not as if putin needs the reichstag to burn to create russia as a dictatorship that's been done over the course rigorously done over the course of the last of the last 20, 20, 22 years. and in a sense, was clever enough to know that if you don't have a discrete moment where the reichstag burns, it's actually easier to do that kind of a that kind of a project. so i'm skeptical that this would be a false flag operation. that would be the intent. but it was a curious coincidence it's over the last 24 hours that

for the first time russia's government began to refer to this war as a war. so they retired. the notion of special military op or operation, sort of technical military operation. and then, of course, this event is not going to you know, it's not going to subdue the flames of wrath in moscow. it's going to it's to stimulate them. so even if was isis or, you know sort of random paramilitary figures moscow or what's interesting to speculate soldiers returning home from the front who you know would would win would do something awful like this even if the details can be established and are somehow known, which is not a given in the situation at all i would not be in the least surprised if this were used to justify a particularly round of of attacks civilians. but they're too i'm not sure how much of a turning point this is because that's been happening since the very beginning of the war. how much of a you know, how much more of a pretext does putin to invent? he's already, you know, of completely indiscriminate in the way that he is fighting the war. so my guess outside event that will make things worse.

wonderful note on which to end you know this is this this this evening's conversation. yeah let's give michael kimmage a round of applause.

and fred kemp president, ceo of the atlantic council. 2024 marks arguably the most important