We Will Never Have an Honest Conversation About Russia Again
Round table
Four Times Opinion Writers Clarify Russia'southward Invasion: 'The World Has Changed Overnight'
Lulu Garcia-Navarro , Farah Stockman, Ross Douthat and
Ms. Garcia-Navarro is a Times Opinion podcast host. Ms. Stockman is a member of the editorial board. Mr. Douthat is a Times columnist. Mr. Bruni is a contributing Opinion author.
Russian troops invaded Ukraine on Thursday, attacking over a dozen major cities and towns, including the capital, Kyiv. The attacks began the first major land war in Europe in decades. "This aggression cannot go unanswered," President Biden said every bit he appear harsh sanctions against Russian federation, including blocking major Russian banks and "corrupt billionaires" from access to the U.South. fiscal system as well equally deploying troops to NATO's eastern flank. Times Opinion writers Farah Stockman, Frank Bruni and Ross Douthat discuss what's to come with Times Opinion podcast host Lulu Garcia-Navarro.
Iv Times Stance Writers Analyze Russian federation'due south Assault on Ukraine: 'The World Has Inverse Overnight'
A roundtable discussion about the latest developments in Ukraine.
The following conversation has been edited for clarity.
Lulu Garcia-Navarro: Russian forces are pouring into Ukraine. Russian President Vladimir Putin is alarm that any country attempting to interfere will create "consequences yous take never seen." That'south a reminder of Russia's nuclear arsenal. The Ukrainian military has mobilized to defend the land. There have been scenes of chaos in major Ukrainian cities, as civilians have flooded shelters or tried to abscond on clogged roads. And Belgium's prime number minister is calling this Europe'due south darkest hour since World War Ii.
As European leaders vow to punish Russia for launching this conflict on their continent, what happens now? This is enormously consequential. It is not an understatement to say the world has changed overnight, I call back.
Farah Stockman: I really worry that Americans aren't ready for the consequences of this. What nosotros're going to be faced with is the increasing bifurcation of the world between East and W. And it'southward time now for the United States and Europe to really recollect about how — well, to actually act, correct? We have to make this hateful something. Nosotros have to meaningfully stand up at this time. And I fear that a lot of Americans are embroiled in fights with each other. And we have a lot of piece of work to practice.
Garcia-Navarro: Ross, Farah thinks that this is a fight between the East and the Due west. Exercise you see it the same way?
Ross Douthat: I mean, I certainly agree it'southward an incredibly consequential and kind of amazing moment. It's been clear for a while that the invasion was a alive possibility, that Putin and the Russian government were taking it seriously every bit a scenario. But it is a really, really radical move that carries dramatic downstream consequences for, obviously, the Usa and the Western globe, but also dramatic consequences for Russia.
It is a tremendous run a risk that Putin has taken. And I think at that place are brusque-term and long-term questions here.
Short-term, there'due south the question of: Nosotros're not going to go to state of war ourselves for Ukraine. That'due south been articulate for a while. And I think we've honestly had a somewhat failed strategy vis-à-vis Ukraine, and this has brought that to a head. Only we take to have a response, and there'southward questions virtually what is the firsthand response, how far can you go with sanctions, what will European countries be willing to do and what kind of hurting volition everyone be willing to comport at the gas pump in item.
But then longer term, this volition reorient defense postures and energy policies essentially for NATO and for the Eu, over again, in ways that will not be good for Russia. There will be some kind of sustained push for free energy independence in Europe, I think on a scale we oasis't seen earlier. There will be a realignment of NATO forces in the East. Information technology'due south possible that Finland and Sweden volition join NATO. All of this — I think those long-term responses are ultimately going to be more important than the decisions we brand about sanctions today. But obviously, those decisions are the ones that are immediate and necessary right now.
Garcia-Navarro: OK, lots to consider there. But fundamentally, what nosotros're looking at is a sort of reorganization of the post-World War II consensus. Is that the way y'all see it, Frank?
Frank Bruni: Yes, admittedly. And I'yard struck, listening to both Farah and Ross, at this sense of disbelief that all of united states of america seem to experience. And I feel it. I encounter it all around me. Farah said Americans aren't ready for this. I think she's absolutely right. Ross called this "astonishing." I think that's absolutely right. This feels like a page from the 20th century. And here we are in the 21st century. And I'm struck by this sense I choice upward in everyone around me that the world, we were somehow past this, that state of war in Europe was something that we wouldn't see.
And and then I don't think nosotros're ready for this. I think people don't know how to procedure this. I don't even call up they've gotten to the indicate of fearfulness and terror all the same because they're nevertheless in that state of shock. And I wanted to also follow up on something Ross said. He talked virtually the incredible chance Putin is taking here. I recall when people mention that, they're unremarkably thinking of the take chances he's taking internationally. But he has taken an enormous, enormous risk internally, too. The Russian people are going to experience this gravely in their economic system. They're going to feel this in terms of lost lives. And he is betting — and it is fascinating and terrifying — he'south betting that this flexing of might and the stoking of national pride is somehow going to transcend and compensate for all of that. I don't know that we know that to be the case.
Garcia-Navarro: Farah, what does the very audacity of this act say about Putin's plans?
Stockman: Well, look, Putin's been taking bites out of Ukraine since 2014. And before Ukraine, there was Georgia. So nosotros might exist in disbelief, only there are people living there who have seen what'southward happening. So I remember he has nothing to stop him. He is not answerable to a democratically elected congress. He doesn't have an opposition. His biggest opposition is in prison. And and so what's stopping him from doing this?
A lot of people consider this to be a personal obsession of his. He has a personal obsession with Ukraine. It has a lot of historical meaning to him. But I as well see this every bit a bigger bargain. It's bigger than Ukraine because he'due south been watching for the last, I don't know, 20 years — he's been watching the United States do things like this, in his heed. He hated what we did in Great socialist people's libyan arab jamahiriya. He was furious. He hated the Iraq state of war invasion. He has been seeing us throw our might effectually and call it international law.
And I think he's only saying, well, I can play that game, too. And this is really about telling the The states that it'southward no longer the sole superpower and showing that we are weak. He went to Beijing before this and basically got some kind of agreement from President Xi that somehow Cathay was going to back them upwards with economic deals then that they could live maybe without Europe for a while. I worry nearly where this is all going.
Garcia-Navarro: Putin wants this, of course, considering he sees what happened after the Soviet Union cruel as a huge mistake. And then that is one of the reasons why he's fixated on Ukraine.
Douthat: The irony of Farah's point is that, of class, most of the interventions that she'due south describing that the U.s. made from its ain position of greater forcefulness x or 15 years ago accept ended very badly, with Afghanistan, obviously, being the near recent example. The Republic of iraq war was not exactly a sterling story of American success. The Libya intervention left that country in a state of civil war that has remained off and on to the present solar day.
So for a long time, Putin wasn't only aroused at America about those unilateral interventions, those symbols of American might. He as well had this sort of reasonable critique of how they went badly, how they didn't work, how America was reckless and subversive and smashing things up and leaving things in pieces. And at some signal, seemingly in his own vision of what's possible for Russian federation, he has abandoned that part of his critique of the U.S., or he has the idea that Ukraine is shut enough to Russia culturally and weak enough in its own land capacity that he can succeed in conquest there in a way that all of America's efforts at nation building and and then on have concluded badly.
Only there is a real shift there from saying America is reckless and destructive and its wars accept failed to proverb nosotros tin succeed. We tin do what George W. Bush-league was unable to practise in Republic of iraq. We can conquer Ukraine in a heartbeat and reintegrate them into our own imperium. That's what'south so distinctive — and distinctive, too, relative to what he had done previously. It's true that he had been taking $.25 and pieces and creating frozen conflicts around Ukraine, Georgia, Moldova, elsewhere.
Garcia-Navarro: And Syria.
Douthat: And Syria. But all of those were limited efforts, often in areas that had sympatric populations, that you could pull back from if anything went wrong. And the scale is simply different. The gamble is just different hither.
Garcia-Navarro: Frank, we don't know withal if this will be an occupation, but it seems articulate to me that the intention is to overthrow Zelensky and, in some fashion "reclaim" Ukraine.
Bruni: It does, indeed. And at every step of the way for the terminal couple of days and weeks, things have gone beyond what people feared. We're seeing and reading reports now of explosions and aggressions throughout the country of Ukraine, not just in the areas that are closest to Russia.
And I wanted to follow up on something Ross said because I call up it's interesting. In that location'due south a difference betwixt Putin and Russian federation doing what he's doing correct now and some of our foreign misadventures that I think is striking, and it has a lot to do with how we ended upward in this place. He has much greater control over the information that Russians receive, over the story that they're told. When our foreign adventures become misadventures, when we end upwardly in spots that nosotros were assured nosotros wouldn't and everything goes incorrect, nosotros Americans get that information. We are the beneficiaries of a free press. I call up for the Russians, whatsoever they're thinking near all of this is colored mightily by a very selective and distorted version of the truth. And I call up that will hold true going forward, and that's a real problem in terms of coming to any kind of solution here.
Garcia-Navarro: Farah, when you look at this in terms of what Ukraine has symbolized in the region, for certain Russians, Ukraine has represented hope. Ukraine bolstered its democracy in 2014 when it overthrew its pro-Russian despot. And for those living in autocratic countries in the region, the Ukrainian revolution signaled that at that place could potentially be a different path. And that hope has now been shattered. Basically, the message here is cocky-decision volition not be tolerated.
Stockman: I recollect that'south true. I've been very worried well-nigh this because you can't only option upwards Ukraine and move it somewhere else. It shares a border with Russia. Russia was ever going to have the power to influence what was going on in Ukraine either by buying off its politicians or having its pro-Russian propaganda TV channels. And basically what triggered this buildup of troops was that the pro-Russian Television set channels were turned off.
So I retrieve Putin decided, hey, he tin can't proceed Ukraine by influencing its politics, and then he's going to go with a military invasion. He'due south going to go Ukraine no matter what. That's what he thinks, and he might be correct. That's the existent worry. I wonder about how we tin protect Zelensky. What are we going to do if they arrest the entire Ukrainian government and throw them in jail forever? Putin's good at this. He has done this to Russia. He knows how to do this.
I've always worried that we might exist giving them a footling bit of false hope that they can merely practice a total break with Russian federation and not have to call back most what Putin'due south able to do with his giant ground forces. I judge peradventure I'm a chip of a realist, but I think that the Ukrainian people have such — they deserve to choose their own path. And they deserve the democracy that they're fighting for. Simply they're always going to have to bargain with that very powerful neighbor. And I worry that nosotros cannot protect Zelensky. I don't know what the programme is right now.
When it comes to how we tin punish Putin for doing this, we're going to have to also get through some serious pain. Fifty per centum of Germany's natural gas comes from Russia, correct? London has been rolling in Russian coin for years now. Then if Europe wants to terminate Putin, we're going to have to go cold turkey in means that are actually difficult. And they're going to exist hard on Europeans, besides. This is going to be a suck-it-up situation, where people are going to take to say, we are going to accept to quit Putin. Nosotros're going to accept to quit the Russian gas and oil that nosotros're fond to. And I simply hope that nosotros're ready for that.
Garcia-Navarro: Ross, was this a massive miscalculation by Europe and Ukraine that they could even flirt with the thought of forming an alliance? Zelensky had explicitly said Ukraine wanted to join NATO. And Farah believes that possibly this was all really a grave miscalculation that led to this.
Douthat: I recollect that it was a grave miscalculation. I call back, in some ways, an understandable one, precisely because the steps Putin has taken are so extraordinary and so fraught with risk for himself and his regime that you could always tell yourself that he would go on to sort of selection away at Ukraine'due south borders but it wouldn't come up to this.
Merely fifty-fifty down to the concluding few weeks, there's been this very foreign dynamic where the United States — which does, for all our intelligence failures, seem to have pretty good intel on what the Russians are up to — kept issuing warnings of, it'southward really happening. The Russians are really planning to invade. And the Ukrainian government will say, oh, cease sowing panic, and nosotros don't call up an invasion is imminent and so on. I do think that for very idealistic reasons, some Ukrainian nationalists talked themselves into the idea that Putin would never movement like this or the idea that in the extreme event, the West would come to their assistance more than was always quite reasonable and plausible.
There is also the question of to what extent — what is actually driving Putin's determination-making here, right? Is it NATO? Is it his sort of mystical idea of the Ukrainian-Russian connection and the idea that yous can't detach Ukraine from Russia? Is it sort of immediate things — the crackdowns on pro-Russian parties and Russian language education and stuff in Ukraine? Presumably, it's all of those at some level. But you can't say definitively that if in that location hadn't been this 1 provocative footstep, it wouldn't have come up to this.
Simply what'southward articulate is that the U.s.a.' and the West'southward policy toward Ukraine in general was conditioned on this sense that nosotros could invest in that location on a calibration that wouldn't deter Putin. Nosotros knew information technology wouldn't deter Putin, but it would all work out, however. And now that we invested heavily in a authorities that we can't defend and is in danger of being destroyed, that is the sort of reality of power politics right now.
Garcia-Navarro: Frank, Putin has seized this opportunity in my view because he sees the Westward every bit weak and divided, and there's certainly an argument to exist made that that is indeed the case. And that has huge implications for the U.s. and for our political organisation hither. Many people are request, why hasn't President Biden washed more? He obviously can't ship troops into Ukraine, as two nuclear powers facing off would escalate things even further. But how do you see his handling of this crisis so far?
Bruni: Well, I think he has limited options, as y'all've just said. And there are weird means in which we feel backed into a corner, even though we are and have long thought of ourselves equally being this superpower. We're not going to be sending troops. Nosotros've fabricated that very clear. Putin knows that, and he seems to exist treating that as a kind of green lite. It'south unclear what at this signal will deter him. I don't recollect the sanctions are whatever surprise to him. I think they exercise need to be as severe as possible, as severe equally they tin can be in terms of the effect they're going to terminate up having on Western European nations and whether they're willing to tolerate the consequences there.
But part of what makes this and so hard to process and and then incommunicable to predict is there are certain responses that we've taken off the table, and we've taken them off the table for very good reasons. But at present that they're off the tabular array, what happens? Where is our leverage? Where is our pressure level? And how does this end? And if Putin gets away with this, and information technology looks like he very well may, given his personality, given his megalomania, what comes later on that? I think these are real questions, and they're scary ones.
Garcia-Navarro: There was simply a poll out showing that Putin was more popular amidst Republicans than any senior Democratic leader, including the American president. We heard that quondam President Donald Trump seemingly praised Putin's actions, calling them an act of genius. Ross, Republicans seem to be all over the place in regard to Russia. And on the 1 paw, in that location are decisions that President Biden will have to make. But we likewise have to look at what the American political landscape is.
Douthat: I don't think that poll quite captured what was going on. What information technology captures is that you have polarization in this country where Republicans don't think well of whatever Democratic leader at all. Merely the number of Republicans who really said they were favorably tending to Putin was small, too, right? So you lot're sort of conflating two different kinds of attitudes. If y'all polled liberals almost Donald Trump at the pinnacle of the pandemic, they would have given him 5 percent blessing ratings, likewise. So I'thousand a little skeptical of that.
I call back what yous run across from Republicans is there's a mixture of things in play. There'due south a faction in the Republican Political party that is sort of shaped by the Iraq feel, shaped by the failures of U.S. strange policy that has become distinctly noninterventionist in a way that shades into a kind of excuse-making for Putin, a kind of attitude of, why should we care? Basically what you get from Tucker Carlson's broadcasts, right?
Simply that'southward not at all the dominant attitude in the Republican Party. The ascendant attitude in the Republican Party is this more of a partisan-inflected view that says, this is really bad, and the problem is Joe Biden was weak and wasn't tough enough. And Putin didn't attack while Trump was president because he knew that Trump wouldn't let him become abroad with it.
So there's Trump himself, who conspicuously admires disciplinarian leaders. That'due south non in question, right? So when Putin does something like this, y'all go the immediate Trump sound bite of, he's beingness very smart and very tough. But then Trump likewise wants to say, this never would have happened had I been president, right? So it's a complicated mixture, but fundamentally, in that location isn't a strong pro-Russian contingent in the Republican Party, outside of, you know, something Steve Bannon says on his —
Garcia-Navarro: People though with pretty big megaphones.
Douthat: Right, there are some people with big megaphones. But if you look at polls, at that place was a poll of how involved should the U.South. be in Ukraine. And what was hitting, virtually people said not deeply involved, somewhat involved. The partisan breakdown was really totally similar. Republicans, Democrats and independents looked quite like. So I think there's actually a adequately stiff American consensus that this is bad. There's also a fairly strong American consensus that we don't desire to transport in ground troops. And most of our politicians, Republicans and Democrats, are going to operate within that consensus, at least until the adjacent presidential bicycle gets going, and and so things could become a niggling crazier.
Garcia-Navarro: So where does that get out President Biden, Farah, in your view?
Stockman: He's in a actually tough infinite. This is the second big foreign policy crisis. And a lot of people volition say, well, the way the U.S. got out of Transitional islamic state of afghanistan is partly responsible for this. Wait, we need to show that NATO is going to exist stronger and more united and more active along its actual borders than ever before and show Putin that whatever he's doing correct now is going to produce the exact reverse results of what he wants to reach. I think that's the all-time outcome we can get right now.
But longer term, I think this idea that we can just buy gas from anyone, no matter whether they share our values, that we can just rely on other countries to produce our medicines. And as long every bit information technology's the cheapest, it doesn't matter. I recall Biden has got eyes wide open about how vulnerable that makes us and makes our allies and that he's, from 24-hour interval one, been working on how to make the The states more self-sufficient and more able to protect allies.
Because this is a long state of war. It'due south non going to begin and end with Ukraine. So I just think this is a large moment, and it should exist a wake-upwardly call for us to really think well-nigh how we desire to interact with the globe and how nosotros demand to be with our allies in order to set up for a future that near Americans aren't even aware is coming.
Garcia-Navarro: Frank, I'm going to end with what I started with. I'chiliad going to ask you, what now?
Bruni: [CHUCKLES] Boy, Lulu, exercise I wish I had the answer. For now, nosotros wait. We listen very carefully to what Farah just said about the magnitude of this moment and the fact that in a earth where we similar our gratification quick and we tend to lose track of and lose involvement in things very, very rapidly, we amend hunker down and realize that nosotros're going to exist living with what happened today and what happens in the coming days for a long fourth dimension. We're going to be living with it in whatsoever number of ways. And if nosotros tell ourselves anything dissimilar, we are being dangerously naïve.
Douthat: We've been talking a lot about the long term, and this is a huge change for the long term. But we are recording this podcast on the first twenty-four hours of hostilities. And a great deal of that long term will be determined in the very brusque term by what kind of resistance Ukrainians put upward to this invasion. G strategy questions aside, nosotros should all be hoping that they put upwardly some pretty fierce resistance.
Lulu Garcia-Navarro is a Times Stance podcast host. Farah Stockman is a member of the editorial lath. Ross Douthat is a Times columnist. Frank Bruni is a contributing Opinion writer.
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Times Opinion audio produced by Lulu Garcia-Navarro and Alison Bruzek. Fact-checking by Kate Sinclair, Michelle Harris, Mary Marge Locker and Kristina Samulewski. Original music by Carole Sabouraud and Isaac Jones and mixing past Isaac Jones. Audition strategy by Shannon Busta. Our executive producer is Irene Noguchi. Special thank you to Kristin Lin, Kaari Pitkin and Patrick Healy.
Source: https://www.nytimes.com/2022/02/24/opinion/ukraine-putin-russia-times-opinion-writers.html
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