Alexander Vindman: The U.S. Will “Decide The Fate of the World” on Nov. 5th

CHRISTIANE AMANPOUR, CHIEF INTERNATIONAL ANCHOR: And, still overseas, talking about democracy and freedom, another former Soviet Republic has made a move to break free of Moscow’s continuing control. Moldova has voted in favor of joining the European Union. In a referendum, which was much closer than expected, President Maia Sandu has accused foreign interference of undermining this democratic process, with Russian influence a longstanding concern. Recall Putin personally intervened to block Ukraine’s vote for closer association with the E.U. back in 2013, which set off a decade of invasion, occupation, and war. U.S. Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin is in Kyiv today announcing nearly half a billion dollars in new military aid for the country. But my next guest warns that a Trump win November could put all that at risk. Retired Lieutenant Colonel Alexander Vindman was director for European Affairs on the U.S. National Security Council. He also testified during Trump’s impeachment case. And he speaks to Walter Isaacson now.

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WALTER ISAACSON, CO-HOST, AMANPOUR AND CO.: Thank you, Christiane. And, Alexander Vindman. Welcome back to the show.

LT. COLONEL ALEXANDER VINDMAN, FORMER DIRECTOR OF EUROPEAN AFFAIRS, U.S. NATIONAL SECURITY COUNCIL: Walter, a pleasure to be on with you. Looking forward to the conversation.

ISAACSON: I loved your piece in Foreign Affairs, and it was very tough, but it said, what can be done in Ukraine? What can Ukraine do? What should we do with the possibility of Trump coming back into office? If Donald Trump comes back into the office, what will that mean for Ukraine? And how can they proceed with this war?

VINDMAN: You know, it’s — that piece was written because there was a request from senior policymakers, folks serving in government, for a theory of victory for Ukraine. We don’t have one. We have a policy which says that we’ll follow the Ukrainian’s lead, but that is not always in the U.S. national security interest. So, I do — I did what I did in U.S. government. I wrote the strategy for Russia, the national military strategy. So, I put together a strategy, a feasible, viable, realistic strategy for Ukraine that looks a year out, how we get Ukraine in the best position to compel Putin to end the war and to suit for peace. And what I settled on was a combination of what the U.S. can do, what the west can do its entirety of the NATO member states, democracies, and Ukraine, everybody has to pitch in order to help end this geopolitical earthquake, which is the Russia-Ukraine war.

ISAACSON: You just said something that was interesting, which is that the strategy now has been to follow Ukraine’s lead, and they have a plan for victory that President Zelenskyy just presented to the parliament. But then you said, no, we have to do what’s in our interest, not just follow their lead. Explain the distinction.

VINDMAN: So, that’s really what he announced his parliament. The errata is not all that dissimilar to what he briefed to the U.S., to Vice President Harris and President Biden when he visited here, when he’s — for the U.N. General Assembly. Really, we always need to remember that we are a sovereign independent state, our fundamental responsibility is to the American public. So, we are helping Ukraine, not because it’s simply in Ukraine’s interest, but because it’s in our mutual interests. What does that mean? It means that Ukraine’s security is tethered to the security of Europe, it’s tethered to this — to the global security, geopolitics. That’s why I spent so much time in this theory of victory talking about the — this pressness that we’re on, that will be — that will decide the fate of not just the U.S. but the world on November 5th. A scenario in which you have Harris, in certain ways, continuing on or branching off and maybe being more fulsome in support to Ukraine or a completely different world in which you have Donald Trump abandoning the world with an American first strategy, but that even in itself is a misunderstanding because it’s not America first, it’s Trump first. And that means we abandon our alliances. We are friends to our adversaries and threats to our friends. And that’s why it’s so critical that the Ukrainians and that the Europeans start hedging now. They start planning for this worst-case scenario, it is a worst-case scenario, in which they have to go out alone and belligerent, increasingly aggressive Russia already active in this hybrid — just below the level of full armed conflict means attacking European infrastructure has to be warned off, has to be deterred. But what gets us to a peace settlement is actually the U.S. being there, and that means a Harris administration. That’s why this is so important that the American public weighs in and determines its future, a brighter, more prosperous future, or one that’s highly regressive, isolationist, and frankly, a very stark departure from where we — at any point we’ve been in our recent history.

ISAACSON: Well, you talk about what would be the theory of victory we could have if Former President Trump does win. Tell me, what theory of victory is there if President Trump wins and U.S. support for Ukraine is cut off?

VINDMAN: It is more of a — it becomes less a theory of victory and more of a survival because the world as a whole will regress to something that we haven’t seen in a long time, pre-World War II, where the strong prey on the weak. The rules of the jungle. In that kind of scenario, you will still have alliances that will coalesce absent the U.S. backbone. That means NATO minus the U.S., which has been already investing in massive resources to bolster its defense. 23 nations now meet that threshold of 2 percent spending. They’re already doubling down on what they need to do to defend themselves, worn off adversaries. But the U.S. is really the backbone. It’s the arsenal of democracy. So, what you have is a much more kind of evenly weighted struggle between authoritarianism and democracies absent the U.S., which is in a much, much more ambiguous place. Europe will have to be a lot more aggressive in defending its own interests. But seemingly with the opportunity for Russia to win, to exploit opportunities, to exploit divisions and fractures between Eastern and Western Europe. So, you have a mix, where I forecast it’s actually a mix for a spillover in the conflict. Europeans will have to be more aggressive. They’ll pour resources into Russia — into Ukraine, and Russia will do the same in reverse. And it’s much more — we don’t like fair fights. We want to be — we want to have the upper hand. And the U.S. being absent, the U.S. withdrawing gives our adversaries much more of an even fight to press their advantage.

ISAACSON: You talk about a spillover if all of this happens. It keeps spreading. Isn’t that deeply against America’s national interest?

VINDMAN: It is. This is what I’ve tried to — I’ve struggled with communicating to the American public at large. Donald Trump is not a peacemaker. He is not the person that’s going to avoid World War III. My next book that comes out, called “The Folly of Realism,” I talk about the fact that we can’t be overly transactional. We can’t be short-sighted and look at these ideas of — and each situation, minimizing risk because it actually doesn’t work. When those — when you do that consistently, you actually invite opportunism, aggression, build a sense of impunity and adversaries. You actually have to consistently defend your own interests. And in this case, that means fulsome support to Ukraine, being a good ally to our allies around the world, not withdrawing because that invites the kinds of aggression that is most dangerous to U.S. national security. That builds us to a confrontation in which China is more aggressive towards Taiwan, in which Iran is much more adventurous in the Middle East, in which our adversaries, again, cross thresholds that eventually we’ll have to defend. So, it’s better to be on a team like we are with democracies and NATO than to go at it alone, let our friends be picked off one at a time, and then be a very easy target for our adversaries that coalesce against our interests.

ISAACSON: One of the parts of President Zelenskyy’s victory plan that he presented over the past couple of weeks, both in the U.S. and then to his parliament, is that Ukraine has to join NATO. Now, of course, that’s a total nonstarter. Is there any way to deflect that issue, defer that issue, or do we — do you advocate Ukraine being brought into NATO?

VINDMAN: I do advocate for Ukraine being brought into NATO. I think it’s not realistic and not something that President Zelenskyy should be pushing for at the moment because it’s actually, in a lot of ways, a bit of a poison pill for the peace strategy that he’s advocating for. The smarter thing to do would be to get the kind of support he needs. What that’s — you know, we’re going to get a little bit more wonky into the military sphere, but to train his forces to be able to conduct complex combined arms operations, to get the kinds of equipment he needs in order to launch a successful operation, to get the investment he needs in his own industrial base, to produce more drones, to repair western donated equipment. Those are far more practical activities that actually gets him to where he wants to be, which is a end of the war scenario. NATO is going to happen. I’m confident it’s going to happen. It’s just not going to happen this year or next year. It might be five years. It might be a little bit longer, because that’s the only thing that really prevents Putin from continuing to conduct these kinds of aggressive moves periodically when he feels he’s rebuilt the strength. So, I believe in NATO. I believe that that’s where Ukraine should end up being, but it’s just not where — or what should be advocated for at the moment. We should be looking at much more practical solutions.

ISAACSON: Why did the Ukrainian offensive of last year fail?

VINDMAN: It failed for several different reasons. It failed for probably the most important one, which is something I advocate for strongly is that the Ukrainians were not trained to pull together a complex combined arms operation to really achieve their strategic objectives. They wanted — and they try to poke and prod to see where the Russians were vulnerable and they spread their forces too far apart. So, you need something called mass. You need to focus all your resources on the main effort. They didn’t really do that, nor could they synchronize operations between battalions within a brigade or brigades within a larger footprint. These are organizations of 5,000, 10,000, 15,000. They cut — they’re not equipped to do that. They’ve shown success in being able to do smaller operations, like the Kursk incursion with their elite units, but as a whole, they weren’t able to do that. That’s one. The other thing is that they were under equipped. The U.S. western equipment came in too late. It didn’t — we promised — over promised and under delivered. That’s another issue. I think the fact is that, you know, we under invested in Ukraine being able to build out the critical components of its own offensive capabilities. Ukraine was 25 percent of the entire Soviet industrial base. That’s languished. The Ukrainians themselves have invested in there. Mobilization, this is another thing that I push for. The Ukrainians need to mobilize troops all the way down to the age of 18. It’s a tough thing to do. They want us to preserve that.

ISAACSON: Well, wait, let me stop you there. That mobilization, you’re talking about 300,000 more troops in Ukraine. Man, Zelenskyy is getting a lot of public unrest about that. Isn’t that a dangerous thing to do?

VINDMAN: It is a dangerous thing to do, but it’s navigable. Why is it navigable? Because if you have a viable theory of victory, if you’re getting the resources, the western equipment, the western training, that gives the troops confidence and morale in order to fight on, it gives the population some confidence in the fact that they will be prepared for those battles that they need to face. Right now, they — without a viable theory of victory people don’t want to sign up. They don’t want to be cannon fodder. They don’t want to — their lives squandered. But if you propose a vision for success and resource it with the ways and means to implement it, you can get people to sign up like you did in the beginning of the war, when people were very, very you know, in mass numbers joining in. There’s also corruption issues that have to be addressed. The rich are buying their way out of this war. It’s a war that is being waged by the middle class and the poor in Ukraine. That needs to end. It’s a whole of society problem. People cannot, you know, look for excuses to get out. So, if you address these problems and you have time to do it, it’s diminishing, every day counts, but you have nine months to address this issue, you could start filling your troops for rotations so people could work off those lines. You could train more new forces in order to bring him into the fight. You have time to do it, but it needs to be implemented sooner rather than later, and you need to have the resolve — the leader needs to have the resolve to cast a vision and then follow through on that vision.

ISAACSON: One of the parts of the resources you talk about needing — that Ukraine needs in order to do an offensive and maybe set the ground for victory is, of course, longer-range weapons that would strike in Russian territory. Which of those, do you think, the U.S. should be sending right now, and what’s the danger of doing that?

VINDMAN: I would say the danger is relatively minimal. We could never be dismissive of state and nuclear saber-rattling just because the consequences are too high. But when you look at risks, you don’t just look at the consequences, you look at the probabilities. So, in this case, the consequences are catastrophic, but the probabilities are negligible. Why? Because of this idea of mutually assured destruction. It is not in the Russians interest to wage nuclear war that risks their own wellbeing, their own national security imperatives. So, on that basis, you don’t want to then succumb to nuclear extortion. You can’t just every time the Russians say that they’re conducting a nuclear exercise, you bend and break because that encourages them to continue to advance this idea. And eventually, they’ll get to a point where we have to defend ourselves. We have no choice. You know, if it’s NATO at stake, if it’s NATO Article 5 at stake, we have to be able to, you know, demonstrate the resolve to be able to defend those key critical national security interests. So, what does that mean? That means it gives you lots of operating space below that. That means long-range weapons that are transferred over to Ukraine become the sovereign weapons of Ukraine. There are no longer U.S. weapons. It’s a standard practice international norms.

ISAACSON: But doesn’t our Congress require otherwise when we’re sending weapons overseas?

VINDMAN: We do something called end use monitoring. We have some constraints that have to abide by basic norms that they’re not being used for war crimes, for instance, or for terrorism that they’re not seeping into some sort of international black market exchange. Those things could be accomplished. Those laws — the provisions of those laws can be met. It’s a question of what we can do outside of that, with regards to arming the Ukrainians to be able to better wage a defensive war, a war of survival for themselves that also implicates U.S. national security. Look, we only have this choice in one scenario. If Kamala Harris is elected, we have maybe the continuation of a less than perfect policy, although there’s a huge opportunity for a relook a policy review that allows a Harris — the Harris administration to be more thoughtful in provisioning support to Ukraine. On the other side of the equation, you have Trump. There we know it’s clear also. We have a withdrawal of the U.S. from the international stage, catering to our enemies, a threat to our allies.

ISAACSON: But Congress is a player in this and Congress seemingly, just judging from what happened last time, is not about to pass a whole lot more appropriations aid to Ukraine. So, even if Kamala Harris wins, aren’t we in the situation you describe in your article?

VINDMAN: Yes, so I think actually we are not. What we have is the capture of the Republican Party, by an individual, a highly charismatic individual that has dragged the Republican Party, in certain ways, away from its roots. It’s Reagan era you know, Pointe du Hoc speech, defense of democracies, fending off authoritarianism. In some place — in some ways that’s a current for the Republican Party, but a lot of it is this charismatic leader that’s dragging him in that direction. So, once Trump is out of the picture, you have a portion of the Republican Party returned to its roots. And you do have — if you look at, for instance, the Senate, you have overwhelming support — for continued support to Ukraine. The House, which is far more kind of under the sway — you know, the rapture of MAGA and Trumpism and the extreme right wing tends to be more fluid. And we — in this moment, they’re not supportive of Ukraine, although they were compelled to move on that issue after nine months. Why? Because it wasn’t the speaker that moved him on that issue, it was individuals. It was the fact that you would have Republicans peel away and support aid to Ukraine. I think it’s harder now, nine months on, it’s going to be harder to get another round of appropriation. But with a theory and victory, with a vision where Ukraine — where the war could potentially wind down in the — in 2025, deeper into 2025, you could get at least one more push and support. What you want to do is you want to communicate resolve, though, and you don’t want to say that this is finite because that encourages Putin, for instance, to continue on, continue to wage the war for another year or two years. But he’s also — Putin doesn’t have unlimited resources. The Russians have lost vast quantities of troops, the vast quantities of resources. They’re running — starting to run thin. So, if there’s a successful campaign in 2025, we can get there and the U.S. can play a critical role in doing that.

ISAACSON: Alexander Vindman, thank you so much for joining this show again.

VINDMAN: Thank you. I look forward to the next time.