>> From WXXI News.

This is Connections.

I'm Evan Dawson.

Our connection this hour was made in 2019 when a new organization called the Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft was founded.

It is not often that an organization with many prominent political connections is not easy to pin down politically.

Quincy has declared itself essentially open to anyone who wants more diplomacy, less war, more negotiation, less bombing.

As a result, its early funders included George Soros, Charles Koch, the Ford Foundation, the Carnegie Corporation, strange bedfellows.

Over the past six years, critics of Quincy have included some high level Republicans like Senator Tom cotton and plenty of Democrats who think Quincy is now going too soft on Vladimir Putin.

It's our good fortune that Quincy Institute's director of grand strategy is visiting Rochester today, and he's with us in studio this hour.

George Beebe's resume includes two decades in government, working as an intelligence analyst, a diplomat, director of the CIA's Russia Analysis.

He was a staff advisor on Russia matters to Vice President Dick Cheney.

Six weeks ago, Beebe wrote a piece calling for the Trump administration to try to thread a very difficult needle and end the war in Ukraine.

Beebe says that Ukraine will have to cede some of its territory, but he goes further than that.

He writes, quote, Trump's path to diplomatic success lies in refocusing on the geopolitical conflict underlying the war while continuing to enable Ukraine's defense.

During negotiations, one element must include concrete assurances that Ukraine will not be in NATO and NATO.

Member forces will not be in Ukraine.

End quote.

So what would Ukraine get out of this?

Beebe will explain, and we'll talk about, for example, the bombing of Iranian nuclear facilities, along with how to draw the line between isolationism in general and responsible statecraft.

Just a few days ago, Vladimir Putin was center stage with the leaders of China and India at the Shanghai Cooperation Organization's event, Putin, along with XI Jinping and Narendra Modi, promised that American tariffs would not bully them into cooperation.

And further, they described a new world order that largely sidelines the United States.

Let's talk about it with my guests this hour.

George Beeby is director of grand strategy for the Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft.

Welcome.

Thank you for being a Rochester.

Thank you for being on the program today.

>> Thank you very much, Evan.

>> By the way, let me just start there with understanding a little bit more about Quincy.

I've enjoyed reading both the wide range of praise and criticism of Quincy, and I'm sure you've read it all.

Writing in the Free Press, Jay Solomon described Quincy as neo isolationist.

Is that a fair description of your organization?

>> Well, obviously I don't agree with that characterization.

I think that term isolationism is a pejorative that people that disagree with the foreign policy vision that we have tend to employ.

I don't think it's fair at all.

Isolationism implies that we believe the United States should disengage from the world, retreat behind the the oceans that protect us from from the outside world, and don't really involve ourselves significantly in international affairs.

And there's nobody that I'm aware of at Quincy that even remotely believes that should be the case.

The United States is a trading power.

Our prosperity and our security depend upon engagement with the world.

What really is at stake here is what kind of engagement are you talking about?

Are you talking about an engagement that is largely coercive?

One where the United States tries to bend the rest of the world to our will through economic sanctions, use of force, that sort of thing?

Or are we trying to engage with the world diplomatically to achieve a balance of power that protects us and allows the United States to thrive?

And obviously, I'm an advocate of the latter conception there.

>> Well, I wouldn't be a courteous host if I didn't also read some of the praise then.

So let me read some others in the nation, the Quincy Institute, according to The Nation, the Quincy Institute founders believe that the existing foreign policy elite is out of step with the American public, which is far more skeptical of military adventurism.

Mother Jones said that the Quincy Institute offers a rare voice of dissent from foreign policy orthodoxy.

Daniel Drezner, who I've read for many years, writing now in the Washington Post, described the institute as a think tank that advocates a sober version of restraint, and Hal Brands and Bloomberg described it as a well-funded think tank that's part of the new Restraint Coalition, a loose network of analysts, advocates and politicians calling for a sharply reduced U.S. role in the world.

Now, I think that last line you might disagree with, again, it's a question of what how we exercise the role.

But I think Dresdner's point is interesting.

heterodox is not a pejorative.

in your view, heterodox is probably praised, isn't it?

>> Well, yeah, because I think the orthodoxy has failed.

I think we're in a situation where the the foreign policy vision that the United States has pursued for more than 30 years now, since the end of the Cold War, has actually been counterproductive.

It has made the United States less secure.

It has made the American people less prosperous, less well off than they would otherwise be.

And the elites that have overseen this foreign policy course for the past three decades are quite content with continuing it.

They don't see anything wrong.

In fact, they push back against anyone that says, wait a minute, we need to rethink what we're doing and how we're doing it.

So to be called heterodox in that kind of situation, I think, is in fact, praise.

>> So let's talk a little bit about, Shanghai, the Shanghai Cooperation Organization.

And what did you see in the image of Vladimir Putin literally walking hand in hand with Narendra Modi in what?

I mean, people were sort of speculating, was this a planned event?

Was this a signal to the world?

But they are they are walking hand in hand.

Putin is sharing an embrace with Xi Jinping.

And these leaders seem to be laughing at the United States, their tariffs, their calls for the ends of wars.

And they're talking about a new world order of security, of economic prosperity that largely does not include the United States as central partners.

What did you see there?

>> Well, I think this is very symbolic of the changes that the world order has undergone over the past 30 years.

The Shanghai Cooperation Organization began at the turn of the millennium, when Russia, and the Central Asian states that used to be a part of the Soviet Union were working with China to settle what at that time were unresolved border disputes.

Where does the border between China and these various countries lie?

And the biggest dispute was with Russia.

the Soviet Union and China had in fact gone to war back in the 1960s, in part over these border disputes.

And these countries worked very hard to resolve those disputes.

They ended the conflict over where that border was going to lie, and they turned that process of cooperation to resolve the border problems into an organization that was meant to expand on that cooperation.

and then that in turn, has been built into a broader organization with a much more ambitious agenda.

And I think what this symbolizes is the change from what had been a unipolar world after the fall of the Berlin Wall.

The United States did not have any peer rivals left in the world when the Soviet Union dissolved.

We were alone at the at the top of the pyramid with a big gap between our capabilities and any other countries.

Well, now we're in a situation where the world doesn't look that way at all.

We have an order that looks increasingly multipolar, where countries like India and China and Russia and others have options.

They don't have to submit to American coercion.

America can say to them, okay, this is what we want you to do.

And they can say in turn, yeah, no, we have alternatives to you.

And I think that's what that Shanghai Cooperation Organization summit meeting really symbolized.

We had been trying to pressure India to cut off, or at least greatly curtail its purchases of Russian oil.

And President Trump had imposed an additional 25% tariff on India in an attempt to prevent India from purchasing this oil.

And the Indians said no.

And not only no, but we have options and and the presence of India at this SCO summit meeting was a very strong signal to the United States that we're going to have to approach the world in a less coercive way.

We're going to have to rekindle an old lost art, which is called diplomacy, balance of power.

If we're going to navigate in this new multipolar order.

>> Well, in a moment, we're going to talk about your specific ideas for Ukraine and what I think is a very interesting set of proposals that I understand why some might recoil a little bit at first with some of what you are proposing there.

But in general, before we even get there, I want to just ask you about the idea of leverage, because I think what you are describing is if you go back 30, 35 years to when Fukuyama was writing The End of History, it was a very different time, and we had a lot of leverage.

We had kind of all the leverage.

And so now if you continue to operate that way and you don't understand how the world in power has changed, you're going to run into some, you know, very frustrating situations.

Perhaps now the idealists will say, well, doesn't matter if the power dynamics have changed.

If we are pursuing noble goals, we ought to stick to those demands and not and not give away either land.

We'll talk about that in a moment.

>> assurances of security, because it's the right thing to do.

I think what I'm hearing from Quincy is you better understand leverage and what has changed.

If you want to make any progress at all.

Is that a fair reading?

>> Yes.

I would say what we're saying is you have to be pragmatic.

What's going to work and what kind of outcomes are you going to get?

there are a couple different ways of assessing ethics.

One is what you might call an ethics of conviction.

You know, you have to do the right thing.

Whatever is principled, no matter what the outcome is going to be.

We have to stand up for what is right now.

We applied that standard of ethics when we approached Iraq, and we have a brutal dictator, Saddam Hussein, running Iraq.

What he's been doing is wrong.

He must be replaced.

That's the principal thing to do.

We did the same thing in Libya.

now juxtaposed to that approach to ethical foreign policy is what you might call an ethics of responsibility, which says intentions are one thing, but outcomes matter a lot.

And if you look at the outcomes that we produced our good intentions in Iraq, our good intentions in Afghanistan and Libya, you get a much different balance sheet of just how ethical that was.

We produced a great deal of of discord and violence and death and disorder.

We're still dealing with the aftermath of that today.

So where I come down on this and where I think Quincy more generally comes down, is you have to focus on outcomes, be responsible, try to anticipate how good intentions can produce disaster that you didn't anticipate.

That really, to me, is the story of the last 30 years of American foreign policy.

Good intentions, very bad outcomes.

>> No, I appreciate that.

And I for years I would tell my son that, you know, you do what's right and you let the consequences follow.

And I would always say that came from my father, your grandfather, until my father said to me, actually.

But I think that came from Cicero.

But regardless, the principle was there.

The point that you're making is you can't always tell if an action that seems good in a vacuum will lead to even worse results, and you've got to do a lot of work to try to think down the road there.

Does that mean that when you worked in the Bush Cheney administration?

I mean, have your views on this changed since then?

>> No.

>> They haven't changed.

No.

I mean, there were a lot of the criticism leveled at that administration was in 2003, for example, are you thinking ahead or do you simply have the idea of deposing Saddam Hussein and damn, damn the torpedoes all speed ahead?

>> Well, I think the the Bush administration thought that it was thinking ahead.

They believed that if we were able to bring democracy to Iraq, that there would be a domino effect in a positive direction, and the rest of the region that the prosperity and freedom that we were able to establish in Iraq would have a contagious effect on the rest of the region, and other countries would follow suit, and you would end up with a prosperous, free and stable Middle East.

Now, it wasn't that they weren't trying to think ahead.

It was their efforts to anticipate what was coming were badly flawed based on a number of assumptions that were, I think, sincerely held but mistaken.

>> So let's talk about Ukraine then.

And I want to talk a little bit about your specific idea for what could happen here, because the president himself has been clearly vexed by this when when he takes to social media and in all caps is writing.

Vladimir, stop.

I mean, it feels, frankly like a parallel universe that we're living through.

But at the same time, it's an indication that this is a president who really did think that his relationship with Vladimir Putin would produce more results now.

And can you describe a little bit about the plan that you would like to see in place with regards to NATO, regards to membership in the European Union, what you would propose and why?

>> Well, I think your prescription for what needs to be done to solve the war in Ukraine really depends on your diagnosis of how this situation came to be.

Why did we wind up at war?

and there are many people.

In fact, I would say this is the dominant belief, in the United States, certainly in the media and in much of Washington.

This was a war of imperialist aggression, plain and simple.

and if you go back and read media coverage of Russia's invasion, starting from the very, early days in February of 2022, up through most of the last three years, you always saw an adjective that was, preceding that word invasion in the coverage of this, and that was unprovoked.

This was an unprovoked invasion.

and this, I think, is a critical conceptual difference between those that believe the only way you solve this problem, the only way you end this war, is through brute military force.

The Russians are going to continue this war and continue their aggression against the West more broadly until they are stopped by force.

Now there's another conception for understanding what happened here, one that I tend to subscribe to, which doesn't look at this war like some sort of replay of Nazi Germany's invasion of Poland in World War two, but more like the way World War I began, where you had an entanglement of alliances countries that thought that they were enhancing their own security through building this network of alliances, through building up their military capabilities, all of which were meant to deter potential adversaries, but in fact ended up provoking alarming other countries on the other side of these alliances and military forces.

And you wind up in a spiral, an escalatory cycle of action and reaction that led to a war that nobody actually wanted in World War One.

Nobody actually expected it to be as bad or as extensive as it was.

it wasn't like some leader in 1914 said, you know, I really want to go conquer other territory.

This was a case of mutual insecurity.

And I think that is, to me, a better description of what we've been seeing in Ukraine.

The Russians, for many, many years, beginning in the early days after the dissolution of the Soviet Union, worried that the United States and its NATO allies were going to monopolize European security, that the overarching European security entity would end up becoming NATO and NATO would have a military presence on Russia's border in very sensitive areas that the Russians found quite threatening.

And they early on said, wait, this is not the direction that we want to see things take.

We believe we need to have a voice in European security matters and a principle that has been forgotten.

in Europe is the principle of indivisibility, of security.

That's the notion that one state or groups of states should not enhance its own security at the expense of another state security.

And they urged that we discuss how to apply that principle in Europe.

And we essentially said, no you don't get a say in what countries can ally with others.

That's a sovereign right that all states have.

So this, I think, is at the root of the conflict that we're seeing in Ukraine now.

There are other aspects to this that make this a difficult war to settle.

Things like the treatment of Russian speakers.

people in Ukraine that are culturally Russian, and, feel like they are not as protected from the the policies of the central Ukrainian government as they would like to be.

There are disputes over what territory should be part of Russia and what shouldn't those add other dimensions to this?

But I think at the root of this conflict is a geopolitical tug of war going on between what you would call the West, the NATO alliance, the EU.

On the one hand, and Russia on the other hand.

Over how European security ought to be organized and what kinds of rules should apply.

>> So in a moment, we'll talk about NATO, NATO membership, European Union membership and everything as it relates to how you see a possible offer to sketch out a way forward here.

But even before then, I want to challenge part of what you're saying, knowing that I'm not really qualified to do that.

You speak Russian, I don't.

You've done this work for years.

I'm a talk show host, so let me do my best to humbly push on some ideas and make sure I understand you.

When you talk about understanding what would lead to the February 2022 invasion and your your feelings about the word unprovoked, feeling that like that doesn't fully describe the geopolitical, the tension that has been there for decades.

Does that ignore some of what I, I have read Putin himself, right.

And say about how he views Ukraine, how he views whether Ukraine exists or not, whether Ukraine deserves to exist or not as a sovereign state.

And that isn't about who is signing up for the head of the security detail across Europe.

That is a view of Vladimir Putin deciding your border is not your border.

And your sovereignty is not your sovereignty.

And we will take it.

And isn't that very different?

>> Well, no.

what I would say about those, those questions are that they tend to take some things that Putin has said out of context.

You know, he said things like you know, whoever does not regret the dissolution of the Soviet Union has no heart.

but they tend to omit his immediate next sentence, which was, and whoever wants to recreate it has no head.

when he says that Ukraine is an artificial state, what he's saying is it is the result of a series of decisions that were made in the wake of wars over the centuries.

For example, that moved borders and territories.

Ukraine is today an amalgamation of parts of what were once Poland, parts of what were once the Austro-Hungarian Empire, parts of what were once Imperial Russia.

And we wound up with the borders of Ukraine today, in part not because anyone sat down and said, this makes sense, but the result of historical events and accidents.

Now that doesn't mean that he is saying there's no such thing as Ukraine.

I think he he certainly acknowledges that there is such a thing as Ukraine and in fact, was willing to respect Ukraine within the borders.

It inherited with the dissolution of the Soviet Union.

But the conditions in which Ukraine existed changed quite profoundly.

One was Ukraine for most of its post-Soviet existence, pledged to be a neutral state, not a member of any military alliance.

Well, that changed to the point where Ukraine actually changed its constitution from insisting that Ukraine would be a neutral nation to its current constitutional formulation, which is that Ukraine aspires to be a member of the NATO alliance in one day, will be now, that's a much different situation.

for Ukraine geopolitically, than what was early on.

In its post Soviet iteration.

the other part that changed was the, the role of elections in determining what the composition of the Ukrainian government would be.

And this was 2014 with the, the Maidan revolution, where from Russia's point of view, you had a democratically elected president who was deposed by force and a new government took over through extra constitutional means.

And the Russians essentially said, now, wait a minute.

the United States and Europe recognized the legitimacy of this new government, even though it came to power through non-democratic means that the Russians found alarming and objectionable.

So,, for most of Putin's early tenure as president, he did not agitate for any kind of change in Ukraine's borders.

and the his approach to this, I think, changed when, the 2014 Maidan revolution occurred and Ukraine changed its orientation toward NATO.

Those for him were moves in a direction that changed the status quo quite significantly.

>> And so your proposal that you write about, let me go ahead and read a little bit of what you what you wrote about six weeks ago.

You write Trump should insist that Russia codify its support for Ukraine's membership in the European Union.

Such a reciprocal compromise would leave Ukraine militarily neutral, but politically and economically anchored in the West, an outcome that would allow Ukraine's reconstruction and facilitate the repatriation of millions of refugees who otherwise would never return to their homeland.

Such renewed strength will be essential to deterring future Russian aggression.

End quote.

So your proposal is to be clear on the territory.

You're going to cede the Donbas and and officially Crimea.

You're going to make a make a concrete pledge that Ukraine will not join NATO now or in the future.

No NATO peacekeepers in Ukraine, but Ukraine gets EU membership.

That's the broad outline.

Is that correct?

>> Well, no, not on the territory.

okay.

>> Take me through the territory.

>> Well, I think the territorial issue is going to be extremely difficult.

and I don't think that a territorial swap is the key to bringing this war to an end.

I think that, very hard for me to imagine a situation where the Ukrainians officially and legally cede territory to the Russians.

Crimea is a possible exception to that.

But that would be extremely controversial in Ukraine.

I think, many people in the West would find this quite problematic.

Where I think they're going to have to go pragmatically speaking, is to agree to disagree on the where the border is going to be drawn between Ukraine and Russia.

This is something that the United States itself did with the Soviet Union.

we never legally recognized the incorporation of the Baltic states into the Soviet Union.

Every U.S. map that was produced throughout the Cold War had a little note on it that said, the United States does not recognize the incorporation of the Baltic states into the Soviet Union, but we did not try to change that status quo through force.

We didn't go to war with the Soviet Union to liberate the Baltic states.

We recognized that this was an issue that had to be resolved diplomatically and politically, and eventually it was so I think that's the approach that the Ukrainians are going to have to take on this.

>> But no NATO membership now or in the future.

Right.

EU membership.

Yes, for the reasons I just quoted from and no peacekeepers.

>> Right.

>> And here's.

>> No, no European, no NATO member peacekeepers.

>> okay, so here's what I'm struggling with.

If you think that if Ukraine gains economic strength and a stronger relationship with the West and rebuilds itself in many ways, that that would deter future Russian aggression.

President Zelenskyy says that's baloney.

What will deter future Russian aggression is a peacekeeping force that it knows it can't mess with, that you are just inviting more aggression.

If you don't have defenses there.

Why is that wrong?

>> Well, let me recall what I said earlier about the diagnosis of the problem.

If you think we have a World War II problem, you know the Russians are the equivalent of Nazi Germany that are just going to continue to move until somebody stops them through military force, then absolutely.

That's the prescription you ought to offer.

I think that's Zelenskyy's conception here.

And I think it's the conception of a lot of people in the West that that's the kind of problem we're dealing with.

If, on the other hand, you think we have a World War I style problem, an escalatory spiral of insecurity where things that one side does that is meant to deter actually end up provoking, then the prescription that Zelenskyy is offering is exactly the wrong thing to do.

That actually makes the prospect of conflict even greater, not less.

Or you don't solve a World War I kind of problem by saying, guess what?

We need even more people in our alliance.

We need even more military production that only alarms the other side and makes the escalatory spiral worse.

So what I'm advocating here is to say, look, we need to create a compromise, a diplomatic solution to this in which each side gets its most vital interests, address.

But each side compromises on things that they would like to have.

They would.

They would be desirable, but they aren't essential.

So the diplomatic process, I think, has to focus on what issues fall into that area where you can afford to compromise and what issues fall into the category of absolutely must not compromise on.

>> Right.

And the reason that Zelenskyy and you're right, many people in the West would say that it is essential to have NATO peacekeeping is because they view this as a World War II problem, not a World War I problem.

Right?

Right.

So part of the reason I think they do is because they believe that all the evidence indicates that if Vladimir Putin had been more successful in this war, that they would have subsumed all of Ukraine.

Do you believe that Russia wanted to subsume all of Ukraine?

>> Well, I think in its dreams, sure.

But then there's reality.

>> But but then, doesn't that make it a World War II problem where no.

If it can in the future, it will?

>> No, I don't think so.

Because, that that, word can bears an awful lot of weight in your question.

The Russians aren't capable militarily of conquering all of Ukrainian territory, occupying all of Ukrainian territory and governing all of Ukrainian territory.

Ukraine is an enormous state.

It is the largest territory of one nation in in Europe.

and the Russians don't have a military that is nearly big enough to conquer, occupy and govern that territory.

you.

>> Don't think they could rebuild it in.

>> The years to come?

No, not even close.

>> To even attempt it, I guess.

>> No.

the an occupation force would be occupying a Ukrainian people.

That would be bitterly hostile and almost certainly would engage in active guerrilla warfare against the occupying force.

And the Russians would have to have a military occupation force that is many times larger than the entire Russian military is right now.

They would have their hands full doing all this.

And most of the Ukrainians would absolutely resist this sort of thing.

So the Russians, I think, have already shown on the battlefield that they're not capable of conquering all of Ukraine, let alone occupying and governing it.

So I think the what the Russians might in their dreams, hope really doesn't matter here.

The practical barriers to what they're capable of are quite formidable.

>> We know over time that what Barack Obama and Mitt Romney said on the debate stage about Putin and Russia has taken a I think Romney has largely been vindicated over time.

Obama looks worse and worse.

I don't know how you, if you view it that way.

Obama was downplaying the threat of Putin and Russia.

Romney was not.

and I want to go back to when you were advising Vice President Dick Cheney on this.

What was his view about Putin and his intentions and how he saw what Putin wanted over time?

>> Well, I think early on there was optimism about the possibility of building a partnership with Russia against terrorism.

And this these were the early days after 9/11, the focus of the United States was on this terrorist challenge.

And we were looking for other states to partner with us in addressing this challenge.

And the Russians had their own terrorist problem at the time.

in the South Caucasus and Russia's North Caucasus.

And the Russians very much wanted to build a partnership with the United States, in part because they were concerned about terrorism, in part because the United States was the big dog in the world, so to speak.

And if you were going to be somebody, you know, there there was a great deal of incentive to bandwagon with us in order to magnify your own relevance and influence in the world.

And I think that's what the Russians were trying to do at the time.

So we did spend some, considerable effort trying to build a strategic partnership with Russia in that context.

Now things started to spin out of control, in part because we coupled that effort at geopolitical cooperation with a desire to advance internal transformation inside Russia.

We wanted a Russia that was not only a geopolitical partner, but a democracy.

with the kind of of liberal values and governance that we felt comfortable with.

And things started to go wrong in that area in part because Russia began to perceive the United States as meddling in Russia's internal political affairs.

And this dynamic reinforced itself.

The more the Russians perceived U.S. meddling, the more they cracked down on freedoms inside Russia, the more they cracked down on those freedoms, the more we began to think the Russians are not who we thought they were.

They're not suitable partners for being, you know, geopolitical allies against terrorists.

And the dynamic, I think, became self-reinforcing.

and I think Vice President Cheney was an early skeptic, that the Russians were going to become the kind of partner that we had early on hoped that they would be.

>> Are you concerned that this is a country, a leadership in Russia, that would use nuclear weapons?

>> in a in a limited strike in, in something more horrific?

obviously since February 2022, there's been a little bit of a revived concern about nuclear war.

Are you concerned about nuclear war?

>> Yes.

I'm not as concerned today as I was two and a half years ago.

but the question of whether Russia would use nuclear weapons or not is a function of how threatened the Russians feel at any given time.

Do they believe their existence is at stake?

And unfortunately, we've been testing how far we could push the Russians.

just how much we could put what they believe their vital interests are at risk in the hope that, you know, we could somehow prevail over the Russian military.

>> So you don't you don't think that a tactical battlefield use in Ukraine is likely.

You think if there is an existential concern at the Kremlin, then it's a different when Lindsey Graham says we need to take Putin out however we can.

That's not helpful.

You think?

>> Well, no, it's not helpful for reasons that go well beyond the question of nuclear use.

>> Calling for assassination is not helpful.

Quincy Institute's against that.

We can establish.

>> okay, yes, I'm against that for sure.

the problem that we have in Ukraine is that the Russians all along have looked at this war and at Ukraine as an existential threat to Russia, as something where Russia's existence is at stake.

And most people in Washington have not grasped this.

They've thought of this as an elective, as a nice to do, as a war of aggrandizement that the Russians certainly don't have to engage in.

And that's actually not the way Putin or most of the Russian leadership views this.

Now, the reasons why they view this as existential or complex and not easy.

I think for most Americans to understand.

But the prospect of losing Ukraine, having Ukraine become a NATO ally, having U.S. military forces stationed on Ukrainian territory, having American missiles, nuclear capable missiles stationed on Ukrainian territory, the Russians believe is a threat to Russia's existence and one that they will go to war to prevent.

so that's the issue that we're dealing with now for Russia.

We're in danger of losing the war in Ukraine.

And I think there were periods early on in this conflict where the Russians were worried that they were very much on the defensive and the possibility of losing the war was a real one.

Those were the times when the Russians were most likely to seriously consider the use of nuclear weapons, simply to send a very clear message that they're not going to lose this war.

And, fortunately, I think we're not in that situation right now.

But if we return to a posture where we believe we need to give the Ukrainians the ability to strike at strategic targets inside Russia, including Russia's nuclear triad it's you know, command and control capabilities.

It's strategic early warning capabilities.

Its bomber force, submarine force that carry nuclear weapons.

if we were to to enable the Ukrainians to go after those targets in a serious way, the chances that the Russians might react through nuclear use go up.

And I don't think that's, that's not a red line that the United States should flirt with.

for, for any reason that I can imagine.

>> I am extremely late for our only break.

It's a short one, and we're coming right back with George Beeby, director of grand strategy for the Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft.

He's in Rochester as a guest of the local chapter of the World Affairs Council.

And we'll come right back on Connections.

I'm Evan Dawson Wednesday on the next Connections, 2.4 million Americans could lose Snap benefits, food assistance.

We're going to sit down with the team from Foodlink to talk about who is impacted, what they are doing about it, and answer any questions you might have.

In our second hour, we sit down with Valerie Perry from the Democratization Policy Council in Europe.

She talks about the state of democracy in the United States and around the world.

Talk with you Wednesday.

>> Support for your public radio station comes from our members and from Plant designs offering custom interior, plant scape design and maintenance services for homes and businesses for 50 years with seasonal decor and color rotation programs.

Plant designs, landscaping the great indoors.

More at plant designs, comm and Mary Cariola center.

Proud supporter of Connections with Evan Dawson believing an informed and engaged community is a connected one.

Mary Cariola your.

>> This is Connections.

I'm Evan Dawson.

One way you become heterodox is you think that a lot of the establishment gets something wrong, or that groupthink prevails, and we've certainly seen groupthink in foreign policy.

One of the reasons that the Quincy Institute sees things differently is you've been hearing it from George Beeby this hour.

It is a view of the complexity of the situation in Ukraine.

We're going to going to ask about Iran coming up here in just a moment.

But I do want to read something that I suspect you will disagree with, but let me read it nonetheless.

And I was reading in the Atlantic today, a piece of history.

This is a little anecdote that I had not heard before, and I'll quote from their reporting this morning.

Quote.

Shortly after the end of the Iran-Iraq War, the United States Institute of Peace held an event in Washington, D.C. to discuss the Middle East's delicate prospects.

Panelists suggested suggested, ever more intricate ways to give regional peace a chance until the neoconservative Michael Ledeen spoke out.

Heretically you have heard the case for peace, he said.

I rise to speak on behalf of war.

He said that any peace between the United States and a government, as malevolent as 1980s Iran would be a sham and a prelude to more war.

Peace is what happens, quote.

When one side imposes conditions on another, Ledeen said.

In 2013.

He said it is not enough for both sides to stop fighting.

One of them must lose.

End quote.

What do you make of that?

>> Well, I think it's ahistorical and wrong.

A lot of wars end in compromises.

In fact, most do.

The number of wars historically that have ended in unconditional surrender of one side, the way World War II ended with Nazi Germany, for example.

That's the exception.

>> I don't I don't think he's saying it won't end.

I think he's saying that ending is a temporary.

And it's it is a chimera.

It is not a real ending of a war.

And that, for example, if Ledeen were alive today, he might look at this and say, go ahead, give Russia the Donbas or don't take NATO membership off the table.

Call a ceasefire.

You're going to get a future invasion in two years, three years, five years, ten years.

You're inviting more war.

There has to be a definitive loss for Russia.

Otherwise, you will invite more war.

I think that's what he is saying.

>> No, I agree, I think that is what he is saying.

And I think he actually believed that.

Now, I would add, however, a very important factor in all of this that changed in the 1940s and changed international relations profoundly.

That is the development of nuclear weapons.

The Russians are a nuclear superpower.

Together with the United States.

We control over 90% of the world's nuclear weapons.

Now we're seriously contemplating a situation where we're going to impose an unconditional military defeat on a country that has more nuclear weapons than any other country in the world.

So that, to me, is a formula for extreme danger.

>> And you're saying it is your view that this is not a regime that would accept losing that way?

No.

And that that would be the condition to which they might use nuclear weapons, whether it is tactically or whether it is in the worst kind of attack.

And so we can't achieve the victory that Ledeen is talking about here in this scenario.

>> That's right.

>> And so what happens then I hear whether it's former President Biden, whether it's many people in Congress now, many people in the foreign policy establishment, what they say is Russia must be defeated here.

They cannot win this.

Ukraine must win.

And that probably seeds the ground for no compromise, no cease fire.

Now there's no deal coming.

If that's the view of this,.

And I don't know what that leads to, I again, my hope would be that the idealists were right.

I understand why you're a pragmatist.

So what?

What happens if there's no deal?

Now?

What happens next here?

If nothing gets solved?

>> Well, if there's no deal, there are two possibilities.

One is escalation into direct conflict between Russia and the United States, which I think would not end well for anybody involved and is greatly to be avoided if we can if we can manage that.

A more likely situation is that the Russians continue this war of attrition, which they are winning.

this is not a war of maneuver with lightning.

Blitzkrieg efforts to break through and outflank and outmaneuver the other side.

The Russians are fighting this war to grind down Ukraine's ability to put well-trained and well-equipped forces on the battlefield, and they're making a lot of progress on that.

You don't measure that progress by looking at changes in the line of contact on a map.

You look at what kind of forces do the Ukrainians have, how well equipped and how trained are they, and can they sustain this.

And I think in that by that metric, the Russians are making a lot of progress, and they're going to reach a point where the Ukrainians are going to collapse in some way.

No one can say when that point is going to come, but it's not going to be five years from now.

It's going to be well before that.

And then I think the Russians are going to dig in.

They're going to take whatever territory they believe they ought to take.

They're going to build defensive fortifications around it, dig in to make sure that the Ukrainians don't have any hope of retaking the territory that they've lost, and then they're going to say, okay, the rest of Ukraine, that rump that is left.

Good luck to you.

But it's not going to be reconstructed without Russia's say so.

And that means they're going to leave behind a country that's not going to look like a modern European country.

It's going to look a lot more like Libya does today.

A dysfunctional state plagued by warlordism, plagued by corruption and crime and disorder.

And Russia can prevent that country from being reconstructed in the form of missile and bomb attacks that the Ukrainians are not going to be able to prevent.

And no outside investor is going to put hundreds of billions of dollars into reconstructing Ukraine.

If the Russians can wipe out a new project overnight with a barrage of missile and drone and bomb strikes.

So if we want Ukraine to emerge from this war with some hope of rebuilding itself, of attracting the many millions of refugees that fled the fighting to come home, build a thriving economy, mend society, establish a functional government and prosperity.

The Russians are going to have to be involved in a compromise peace.

Otherwise, we're going to have, I think, a dysfunctional and disorderly.

Bleeding wound in the center of Europe for a long time to come, which will be not only greatly to the detriment of the Ukrainian people, but it's going to leave Europe itself with a huge problem.

That is a major drain on on Europe for many years to come.

>> All right.

Running short on time.

Let me just ask you about Iran.

The Trump administration decided to join Israel, strike Iranian nuclear facilities.

They said Iran is getting too close to their own bomb.

Did Quincy think that was a wise action?

>> No.

>> That was easy.

Why?

>> Well, because it is, I think, a formula for perpetual warfare.

it will require what the Israelis have referred to in other contexts, as mowing the lawn.

taking military action against terrorists and adversaries in countries around Israel so that they minimize the threats that they pose to Israeli security.

But you can't eliminate those threats altogether through military action alone.

so you have to mow the lawn, you cripple them, they rebuild their capabilities, you take another swing at them and weaken them again.

That's the cycle that we're likely to be in with Iran for a long time, unless we find a diplomatic solution to this problem, which I do think is within reach.

If we're willing to compromise to so I think, do you need to have the threat of military force that, serves as an incentive for people to compromise on issues?

Yes.

I think the reality in our world today is that diplomacy works most effectively when it is backed by convincing military capability.

we don't just hold hands and, you know, harmonious outcomes occur.

The world is a rough place, and it does require at least the threat of military force.

But I think in dealing with the challenge from Iran, we're going to have to combine our military approaches with diplomacy to get the kind of outcome that will prevent this from really being a source of serious conflict.

>> Does Quincy view what's happened in Gaza as genocide?

>> Well, I'm not sure that we have an institutional position on that, but I do think that a large numbers of people at Quincy regarded as such.

Yes.

>> okay.

but you seem to believe that Israel can change its posture and achieve peace with its neighbors, and it doesn't have to, quote, mow the lawn.

>> No, I wouldn't say that.

okay.

I think Israel lives in a very rough neighborhood.

Yeah.

it is a very, very challenging security situation.

and Israel does need to have formidable military capabilities.

I think if it did not have those sorts of capabilities, Israel would not exist.

It would have been eliminated a long time ago.

that said, the use of force alone, I don't think is sufficient to secure Israel.

I think Israel has to couple those military capabilities with smart diplomacy.

>> I'd like you to stay for another hour, but they won't let me ask you to do that.

So I'm going to have to let you go.

But I want to thank you for your generosity with your time.

And thank you for making it and coming to Rochester and visiting with us.

>> It's been a pleasure.

Thank you for the invitation.

>> George Beeby is the director of Grand strategy for the Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft, a guest in Rochester of the local chapter of the World Affairs Council.

We appreciate them working with us as well.

it's nice to be back here with this microphone.

And thank you for listening.

Thank you for watching on YouTube.

And to the whole team that I work with, you guys are the best.

It's really, really great working with wonderful people.

It's nice to be back and we are back with you tomorrow.

On member supported public media.

>> Oh.

>> This program is a production of WXXI Public Radio.

The views expressed do not necessarily represent those of this station.

Its staff, management or underwriters.

The broadcast is meant for the private use of our audience.

Any rebroadcast or use in another medium without expressed written consent of WXXI is strictly prohibited.

Connections with Evan Dawson is available as a podcast.

Just click on the Connections link at wxxinews.org.

>> And.