Chris Preble on Ukraine
2022-02-07 · Guest: Chris Preble (Scowcroft Center for Strategy and Security) · 52:29
US Foreign Policy Principles and the Ukraine Crisis
Bob Zadek and Chris Preble discuss the historical and constitutional foundations of U.S. foreign policy, contrasting the founders’ vision of restricted war powers with the modern era of undeclared conflicts. They apply these principles to the 2022 Russia-Ukraine crisis, exploring the “security dilemma” and the parallels between NATO expansion and the Cuban Missile Crisis.
Topics: Foreign Policy, Constitutional Law, War Powers, Russia-Ukraine Conflict, NATO, Founding Fathers, James Madison, George Washington, Cuban Missile Crisis, AUMF
Speakers: Bob Zadek, Chris Preble
The Final Exam of Foreign Policy [00:16]
Bob Zadek: Good morning, everyone. Welcome to the Bob Zadek Show, the longest-running live libertarian talk radio show on all of radio. The show of ideas, never once the show of attitude. Thank you so much for listening this Sunday morning.
This morning’s show will be very much like a flashback to when we were in college and we were not prepared for the final exam. The final exam comes and what do we do? We, as it was said in those days, we pull an all-nighter to prepare for the final exam so we can understand the questions and supply accurate and coherent answers.
The final exam in this metaphor is what the U.S. will be doing in its foreign policy, in its defense policy, tomorrow. Well, not actually tomorrow, but in the very, very near future. Russia is amassing troops, combat troops, on the Ukrainian border, and we don’t seem to have—we being the government—don’t seem to have expressed a coherent policy as to: Do we care? Should we care? If we do care, do we care enough to go to war? Do we care enough to declare economic war on Russia or further economic war on Russia?
Basically, I dare say, in this final exam of how we Americans ought to feel, I don’t think that the American public and the media and all those who observe what’s going on in foreign affairs—I don’t think we understand enough about the issues involved in the Russia-Ukraine conflict. And more to the point, much more to the point, I don’t think we have a firm grasp of the principles involved—yes, the principles involved—which ought to influence how we feel about this soon-to-be on the front pages all over conflict between Russia and the Ukraine on the one hand, and how we are affected and how we should be involved in that conflict.
Introducing Chris Preble [03:00]
Bob Zadek: In order to help us sort out both what is going on and, of at least equal importance, the principles that we ought to apply in reaching our own individual decisions on what is the appropriate policy for the United States, I’m happy to welcome back to the show Chris Preble. Chris has written an important book, Peace, War, and Liberty: Understanding U.S. Foreign Policy. Understanding U.S. foreign policy. I dare say the voting public in this country, as well as the media, needs to have a heavy dose of understanding U.S. policy so that we can take the principles and apply those principles in the context of what is going on.
Chris was co-director of the New American Engagement Initiative at the Scowcroft Center for Strategy and Security. He has been a student of foreign and domestic policy for most of his life. He has spent lots of time at the Cato Institute before joining the New American Engagement Initiative and has written a number of books on the subject, including The Power Problem: How American Military Dominance Makes Us Less Safe, Less Prosperous, and Less Free. When he wrote that book, Chris was kind enough to discuss it with me on our show. So to help us understand and put the Ukrainian-Russian-U.S. issue in the forefront and to put it in the context of American history and the lessons of our founders, I’m happy to welcome Chris back to the show. Chris, good morning.
Chris Preble: Hey, good morning, Bob. Good talking to you.
The Founders’ Core Principles [04:58]
Bob Zadek: And Chris, thank you so much for writing Peace, War, and Liberty: Understanding U.S. Foreign Policy. Now, the founders, our founders, were of course concerned about foreign policy. They were building a nation from scratch and they had to learn from the lessons of the past. What should be our country’s core, root Ten Commandments, if you will, of foreign policy? And the reason I’m asking the question is not because I thought it interesting to have a bit of a history lesson, although for sure I do, but because it’s astonishing to me how appropriate those lessons are today. They, if you will, they travel well over the period of time since they were formed as part of our country’s founding principles. So take us back to the founding era, as you do so beautifully in your book, and give us an insight into the core principles which the founders hoped we would follow in the operation of foreign and defense policy of our country.
Chris Preble: Sure. So I think there’s a lot of insight into the founders’ views on foreign policy in the Constitution itself. And I think it starts with what Madison referred to as the most important clause of the entire document, which is that which vests the war powers with the Congress and not the executive branch. Arguably, this is the person who understood and appreciated not merely the substance of the Constitution, but the philosophy behind it. And he and other founders were very anxious about the concentration of power in the hands of the executive branch. They believed that warfare—that the decision, the most important decision that could be made, was to take the country to war, and that that decision would not be taken lightly. It would not be taken by one man or by a small number of people, but it would be with the consensus, or something approaching the consensus, of the American people in the way that you express that, of course, is through a declaration of war.
We haven’t had a declaration of war in this country since the Second World War. And I think that the founders’ predictions or concerns about the concentration of power in the hands of the executive and the erosion of control on the part of the Congress—and many of this has been just willingly relinquished to the executive over the last 75 years—is something that would have concerned them a lot.
The other element of this that’s expressed very well in Washington’s Farewell Address is that just as they were worried about concentration of power in the hands of the executive in the White House, they did not wish to have large, powerful militaries. And again, the fact that Washington expressed this sentiment perhaps more eloquently than any of the other founders says something because, of course, George Washington was not a pacifist. George Washington was a military leader and spent most of his life in some way involved in fighting or preparing to fight wars. And yet in his Farewell Address, he says that he does not wish the United States to have what he called overgrown military establishments, which were always a threat to liberty.
And then lastly, these two things go together, is the founders were very anxious to control and limit the spread of the state, the growth of the state. They saw war as the health of the state. And so I think their approach to foreign policy was to advance U.S. interests as much as possible and our prosperity and our liberty, but to do so as much as possible through peaceful means, through diplomacy, through trade, and not through war. It’s not always possible to do that. The founders were not naive. After all, they wouldn’t have been able to build this country in the first first place if they hadn’t have won it through warfare with England. And yet I think generally speaking, they were of the mind that war was harmful to liberty and should be avoided whenever possible.
The Erosion of Congressional War Powers [10:37]
Bob Zadek: Now, what’s also interesting is most people, or many people, aren’t aware of the fact that applying those principles to post-World War II, the Korean War was not a war because war was never declared. And war wasn’t declared because Congress wouldn’t have voted to declare war. And therefore, it was only by the executive branch doing an end-run, calling it something which sounds benign: a “police action.” Oh my god, a police action, as in Officer O’Malley with a billy club? A police action. And that was—and by the way, as I recall, the police action or the statute creating the police action is still in effect. So I think we still are technically conducting a police action in Korea. Also, I think with Vietnam, there never was a declaration of war, if I’m not mistaken.
Chris Preble: No, that’s right. There was no declaration of war with respect to Vietnam. That’s right.
Bob Zadek: So two wars—but focusing on the Vietnam War—the founders were right. We had a war that was grossly unpopular, which means it didn’t have a majority of the country supporting it. Now, I don’t have statistics, but for sure it was not a popular war. And it was not a popular war because the people, through their representatives, never voted for it. And had there been, either we would not have been in Vietnam or it would have been done in a way that the public was won over first through the legislature. And then the whole issue of the conflict between the peace movement and those who wanted to conduct the war in Vietnam, which was not a war, may not have happened. So once again, the prescience of the founders nailed it both in Korea and in Vietnam. And shall we include also the so-called Iran war—or the Iraq war, rather, the Iraq war, which again, there was no declaration. There was some rough congressional action authorizing the use of military force for a short-term basis to kill terrorists. It sounds rather benign if you read the legislation. But certainly there was no declaration of war. Aren’t I correct about that as well?
Chris Preble: That’s right. So you’re absolutely right that the war in Vietnam was—the irony is, after the Gulf of Tonkin resolution, which is what ultimately paved the way for the dramatic expansion of the war after 1964, was overwhelmingly popular, but it was premised on a falsehood, that is the attack that allegedly happened in the Gulf of Tonkin never did. So, but we have to remember that in the 1960s, this is coming after the Cuban Missile Crisis and crisis over Berlin in ‘61 and other incidents. There was a lot of support for fighting the Cold War. We thought everyone was a communist. We thought that the North Vietnamese, because they were communists, were allied with the Chinese and the Russians and everyone else, which in reality was not entirely accurate.
But it’s certainly true that as the war dragged on, it grew less and less popular. And by the time U.S. involvement ended, most Americans were glad to see the war come to an end. Tragically, tens of thousands of Americans died before that happened, and of course, a much higher death toll in Vietnam.
But with respect to the 9/11 wars, the Authorization to Use Military Force after 9/11 to go after Al-Qaeda, that AUMF remains in effect and has been used to justify and as authority to wage military operations in over a dozen countries around the world. And the AUMF with respect to the war in Iraq is also still in effect. There have been some members of Congress that have tried to repeal those authorizations, but those attempts have been foiled by those who worry that removing those authorizations would tie the president’s hands. But I would urge them to go back and read the Constitution and read the Federalist Papers and read Madison’s statements on this because, of course, that’s precisely the point: that the president’s hands should be tied except in those extraordinary circumstances that actually call for the use of force. And if they are so extraordinary, then there should be strong public support.
Euphemisms for War: AUMFs and Kinetic Action [15:28]
Bob Zadek: Now, before we leave the issue that you highlighted a little bit earlier, discussing what Madison considered to be the most important single provision of the Constitution, which is war can only be declared by Congress and not by the executive branch, not by the president. If only Congress can declare war, and we’ve conducted what is called the Korean War, the Vietnam War, the war in Iraq, the war against terrorism—were those actions by our country simply unconstitutional? And if so, that’s a big deal to have core provisions of our Constitution be violated. Oh well, we’ll do a better job next time. Just so that it doesn’t happen again, even though it will. How did it come to pass that we conducted what everybody refers to as a war without a declaration of war, which means the word war cannot apply in the constitutional sense to Korea, Vietnam, Iraq, and the like? How did it happen?
Chris Preble: Right. Well, sure. Well, two things. First of all, when the founders wrote the Constitution, of course, there was no standing army, Bob, and they were quite adamant about that. There was a Navy, but there was no standing army. They said that if the nation needed to go to war, then it would raise an army and fight the war, and then the understanding was the army would go back and be disbanded and you’d go back to militias or what we now know as the National Guard. But since the Second World War in particular, the United States has had a vast military establishment in being that exists and that is at the discretion of the president with few exceptions—the War Powers Act and other legislation that attempts to tie his hands. But as a practical matter, Congress, once the president has committed U.S. forces to fight, Congress is understandably, I think, quite reluctant to cut off funds to the forces in the field. And that’s something that the founders just never would have anticipated because they just didn’t imagine the United States having a standing army in the first place.
As far as the legislation, the authorizations exist, and I think when the conduct of the wars are challenged legally, the courts have generally concluded that an authorization to use military force is sufficient. But there are very few instances in American history where the courts have overturned decisions of war and peace. This is an area where they are most deferential to the other branches. And in effect, I think the argument would be, well, to members of Congress, it’s up to you to do your jobs. If you are upset or offended by this erosion of your power, then it’s on you to take it back. And so far, we haven’t seen sufficient interest, frankly, on the part of many members of Congress to do that, and so the status quo just sort of prevails by inertia.
Bob Zadek: What’s fascinating to me, and it got very little attention—nobody seemed to actually care—is that take the very phrase of the authorization which was immediately following 9/11: “Authorization to Use Military Force.” If you were to ask somebody in the fourth grade, “What is a war?” they would probably say, “Well, it’s the use of military force.” Gee whiz, that seems like it fits. So “Authorization to Use Military Force,” so long as you don’t call it a war, is fine with us. Can anything be more hypocritical than that? To authorize—if it said “Authorize a war if you want, Mr. President,” that would be an improper delegation of power. So better not use the word war, take it out of the draft, and let’s just call it something benign: “the use of military force,” but not a war.
Chris Preble: Yes. During the Obama administration, we had members of the administration referring to the non-war in Libya as “kinetic military action.” So it gets quirky. But you know, Bob, the truth is that we’re moving into an era where wars are not even exclusively fought by overt violence, right? I mean, there are the potential for cyberattacks and malicious misinformation and disinformation that can be wielded as weapons to undermine governments. And so in the founders’ days, they would have understood warfare to be folks pointing guns and pulling triggers. It’s just not that way any longer, at least not exclusively. And so it’s grown even more complicated and, I think, all the more important, therefore, that we have a clear understanding in our head when the United States is in a condition of war and with whom, and the presumption otherwise should be that we are at peace.
And I think that’s the part, perhaps more than any other, that the founders would be genuinely disappointed: that the United States, which is an extraordinarily fortunate country in terms of our physical situation, our economy—peace benefits the United States in so many ways. And I think they would be genuinely puzzled that we seem so prone to wage war when it is not necessarily in our interest to do so.
Interventionism and the Power Problem [21:42]
Bob Zadek: Now, the second part of your book, you introduce the reader to a libertarian foreign policy, which includes, of course, foreign policy captures defense policy as well. Now, for sure, for sure, you are not about to describe passivity, sort of a Quaker-esque just turn the other cheek. So just to put it in stark contrast to what our policy is, give us, if you can, some insight into a libertarian—which by the way means a founders’ in this regard—a libertarian foreign or defense policy, and how a libertarian approach would have looked upon perhaps 9/11, looked upon post-World War II, looked upon what was going on in Vietnam differently, if at all, than how the country actually behaved.
Chris Preble: Well, I think that, you know, speaking just as this libertarian—I’m a libertarian—I think that the United States benefits from, as I said before, by peace. We benefit from trade, we benefit from exchange of ideas and people, people coming to this country and making a life for themselves and their families. I think that is consistent with human liberty: the ability to pick up and move is a fundamental human right. The ability to buy and sell with willing sellers and whatever buyers is a right. The ability to live at peace is a human right. And so I think it’s a mistake for libertarians to forget sort of how the individual is at the core of our philosophy.
And then we can agree to disagree on the best way to advance that. And as you note, I’m not a pacifist. I’m not, even though I respect the views of sort of traditional pacifists. I think the United States has waged war from time to time in ways that are justified, in ways that advance the national interest. I think that should be the number one cardinal rule for U.S. foreign policy: when the United States wages war, when we ask people serving in our military to risk their lives, that there should be a compelling U.S. national interest at stake.
As I said, I think there should be strong public support. I think that means a declaration of war. I think that we should have a clear mission that we’re asking our military to accomplish. We know what they’re going to do and therefore when the war will end, and then we can return to a condition of peace. And then I think, you know, sort of banal, but I think it should be as a last resort because I don’t think that war is civilized. The very notion of civilized people do not resort to force without first exploring other opportunities to diffuse a crisis.
And so I think you can go down the list. I think taking the case of the war in Afghanistan to go after the Taliban and to dislodge Al-Qaeda after 9/11—I don’t think it was a mistake, personally, to have launched a military operation or even call it a war to disrupt the Al-Qaeda camps and to dislodge the Taliban from power. I think the mistake was in changing the terms of that mission to a much more expansive one: to try to establish a functioning government in Afghanistan, which tragically we can see ended in utter failure because the government that we had spent thousands of Americans died to create collapsed at the first sign as soon as the United States withdrew.
I also think that in the case of the Second World War—this is a tough case for libertarians—I think some would say that the United States’ intervention at the time of the attack on Pearl Harbor was the right one. The truth is, the United States was already involved in a war with Germany in the summer of 1941 before the attack on Pearl Harbor, a naval war, mostly undeclared war in the Atlantic Ocean. And I think that if Nazi Germany and Imperial Japan and their few allies had been able to establish dominant control over their parts of the world, that would not have been conducive to American security. But I think that’s one that libertarians continue to debate.
I think the Vietnam War is a tougher one to defend, and especially based on what we now know. This was a war that was not ultimately in U.S. national interest. It did not have the support of the American people, and obviously the mission was unclear. So I use criteria like that to determine which wars are or are not in our national interest and make sense. And I think other people use different criteria. Maybe their criteria aren’t quite as stringent, maybe they’d be more stringent. But I think at a minimum, because the United States is so powerful, because we have this military that is so capable, we really have an obligation to have a clear set of guidelines for its use because otherwise it is used. That’s sort of the nature of my book The Power Problem: when you have a really big hammer, everything looks like a nail. And I think it’s become a little bit too easy for the United States to swing that hammer before asking the question, “Is this actually the right thing to do?”
The Morality of Foreign Intervention [27:30]
Bob Zadek: To what extent should military power be used for the simple goal of helping other countries achieve democracy—but I don’t mean mechanically—to what extent should we come to the aid of oppressed citizenry in other countries for the sole purpose of helping them enjoy freedom? Now, the founders have a clear answer to that, and to what extent is your answer our answer, if you will, the same as the founders’? To what extent, if at all, would we modify it? How much do we care in the military sense about how people in other countries live?
Chris Preble: Well, I think Americans care. I think the question is, as you point out, how much is the use of the military—is that the best way to express our concern for others? And the military is a blunt instrument, and the use of force necessarily involves violence and destruction of property and the loss of life. And so here again, you should be very careful in when we wield that power.
And the U.S. military is very proud of its—of the great care that it takes to avoid civilian casualties, but it’s not perfect. No military is. And so when we engage in military operations, we have to recognize that some innocent people are going to lose their lives in the process. And so I have a hard time with the argument that, well, the way we save and advance the cause of liberty is by threatening human life.
Now, as you know, there are instances in which people’s liberties are threatened by foreign actors. And I think here’s where a key distinction to be made. And actually, John Stuart Mill wrote eloquently on this back in the middle of the 19th century. He says, “Look, if a people is oppressed by a foreign power, a foreign actor, then there is some wisdom and even morality in helping them to throw off that foreign threat. But when you intervene in a civil conflict, when the people are struggling amongst themselves with a ruler that is of their own, and a foreign power comes in to sort of deliver the country to them, it’s really only a matter of time when they will lose control of it again because if they can’t throw it off on their own amongst themselves, then that’s a different thing.”
And I think that’s what we’ve seen a lot of interventions the U.S. has undertaken: is that we imagine or we focus on the role of external actors, but many of these conflicts are civil conflicts. They are internal conflicts, and they reflect a deep division of a particular country and an inability of the people there to come to a settlement. And I think those kinds of conflicts are extremely difficult for outside actors to adjudicate, and the end result is that the United States or other foreign actors get drawn into the process.
The Russia-Ukraine Crisis and NATO [30:56]
Bob Zadek: You have just done the most perfect, Chris, the most perfect segue into Ukraine. If it was intentional on your part, you should have your own—well, you do have your own blog—but you should have your own live podcast because you did it perfectly. You just now have framed the exact issue that I was about to frame in discussing how much we care—and I say care, I don’t mean in our heart, I mean in our use of military power kind of caring—how much do we care about what’s going on in the Ukraine? How much of the Ukraine writ large, how much of the Ukraine issue is an internal conflict between those who would have allegiance to Russia versus those who would not? How much is it a foreign power coming into a country as you have described, and therefore many would feel a moral sense of protecting Ukraine?
And in doing so, Chris, I’m going to ask that you from time to time, if appropriate, draw parallels between what Russia is saying about the Ukraine and NATO versus what the U.S. was saying about Russia and Cuba during what has been called the Cuban Missile Crisis. Because I see lots of parallels. So first, you have in the Ukraine—the Ukraine will be about to be the application of all the principles we have just been talking about. So first, tell us the big picture: Ukraine, NATO, and Russia. What is Russia’s stated reason for amassing troops on the border, and how much are they behaving consistent with the values you have espoused and how much are they contrary to those values?
Chris Preble: Well, I think we do have to set the stage in the present, even though we’ll look back on history and sort of try to assess that. But the present crisis is clearly created by the Russians’ decision, Vladimir Putin’s decision, to station over 100,000 Russian troops near Ukraine’s border and also along the border to the north in Belarus. This is a very major military buildup. Russia has drawn forces even from its Far East to come to this fight. By some estimates, some perhaps as much as 70% of Russian military power is concentrated on the current crisis in Ukraine.
And so, you know, the moment we are in today, February 6, 2022, was created—this particular moment is created by a considerable escalation on the part of the Russians to put pressure on Ukraine. So the pressure is on Ukraine itself and indirectly on the United States and Europe and the NATO countries to commit that Ukraine not be admitted into the NATO alliance, the North Atlantic Treaty Organization. This is a long-standing complaint of the Russians. This is not a new concern of theirs. They do not wish to see Ukraine become a NATO member and the presence or the potential for foreign troops to be stationed literally on the Russian border is a great concern to them.
The U.S. position—and I think the person that’s probably stated this most eloquently is Secretary of State Blinken—is that countries are entitled the right to choose what alliances they make and who they align with, and that if the government in Ukraine wishes to be a NATO member, then they should be able to apply for membership like any other country. Now, of course, the other member states of NATO have to agree to this. This is not an open door in the truest sense of the word. It is countries can express their interest in being NATO members, but ultimately the existing members of the alliance have to agree to let them in, to invite them and let them in. So that’s the nature of the current crisis.
Bob Zadek: By the way, I want to mention, Chris, I want to just put a slight bit of context in what you just said. You referred more than once to “becoming a NATO member.” That almost sounds benign, like joining a country club. To be a member of NATO, it doesn’t mean free lunches. It means a defense pact. It means military in the—so tell us why becoming a NATO member is militarily, and from the standpoint of Russia’s integrity, why Russia cares so much about joining this new club.
Chris Preble: Ukraine. For those Ukrainians who wish their country to be in NATO, they look upon the core defensive article of NATO, Article 5, which says that an attack on any one member will be treated as an attack on all of them. And therefore, the presumption is that that collective military capability of all the 30 member NATO states is a deterrent, will be a deterrent to attacks by Russia or by other foreign powers, for example. And so other NATO members like Poland or the Baltic states or Romania, who are near or along the Russian border, they look upon NATO membership as being a key deterrent and a key defense mechanism for them. That’s the perspective of those who are already in NATO, who wish to be in NATO.
From a Russian perspective, the ability for an alliance of other foreign actors, up to and including the United States, could be a potential threat. It could be a staging ground for military forces, it could be a staging ground for missiles or rockets or for radar equipment that could be useful in a missile defense program or things like that. And so they worry about that as encroaching on—some would call it a sphere of influence—but I think the better way to think of it is just along their border.
Parallels to the Cuban Missile Crisis [38:23]
Chris Preble: And I think you point to the Cuban Missile Crisis. Of course, that’s the situation in 1962 when the Kennedy administration discovered that the Soviet Union had placed nuclear ballistic missiles in Cuba, in the island of Cuba. This was a shock to the Kennedy administration. It was something that they had not anticipated, although over the course of the crisis, the Kennedy administration was reminded that the United States had placed missiles in Turkey, which was for all intents and purposes sort of a similar distance from Russian territory as Cuba is to the United States.
One of the great sort of unknown truths about the Cuban Missile Crisis is that while it’s true that the Kennedy administration imposed a blockade on the island that made it difficult or impossible for the Soviets to resupply and to increase their forces on the island, privately, secretly, the Kennedy administration also agreed to withdraw the missiles in Turkey. They had concluded long before the crisis that the missiles weren’t really necessary to U.S. national security, and so it was not much of a concession at all. It was something they recognized was of concern to the Russians and one that the United States could concede.
Another concession the United States made was to not attempt a repeat of the Bay of Pigs invasion of April 1961 just to overthrow the Castro government by force. So in that crisis, which I think many Americans are certainly aware of, some remember it vividly in their childhood or early adulthood, that crisis points to, it seems to me, a potential for some kind of negotiated settlement. And my colleague Emma Ashford has actually written about this most recently: that even in the midst of a very tense and dangerous military confrontation, or at least the potential for one, we should never close the door on diplomacy and dialogue and negotiation. And in the end, the various parties may conclude that the negotiating posture of the other side is simply intolerable, that the demands that they are asking are just too far. But there’s something to be said for trying to avoid escalation here because after all, we are talking about a nuclear-armed adversary. The United States and Russia have thousands of nuclear weapons, far more than any other country on the earth. And so the possibility of an escalation that would start with Russian forces and then could involve U.S. forces in some way—we have to think through the implications of what that would mean to escalate a crisis and to identify ways to really off-ramp or guardrails to prevent that from happening.
Bob Zadek: And of course, as far as pulling missiles out of Turkey, as I recall, Kennedy requested and got complete secrecy from the Russians regarding that. He didn’t want to appear to have made a concession, as I recall. So that was all—“Don’t worry about it, as soon as the crisis subsides, we will, without fanfare, will just quietly remove our missiles from Turkey,” and that’s what happened. So that was simply diplomacy, if you will, at its best.
Chris Preble: I agree. And one of the more remarkable things about that was that the Russians were not the first to spill the beans on that. It actually wasn’t revealed until decades later by Kennedy’s National Security Advisor McGeorge Bundy, but it was kept secret for quite a long time.
The Security Dilemma and Misperception [42:31]
Bob Zadek: And now how different, if the Russians are saying, “We don’t want NATO troops—NATO troops, not Ukraine specifically—we don’t want NATO troops right on our border, 50 yards from the Russian border. We’d prefer not to have that.” How dissimilar, if at all, is that different than the U.S. asserting almost the Monroe Doctrine of sphere of influence and no foreign troops this close? Isn’t their position identical to the U.S. position on the Cuban missiles?
Chris Preble: Well, it’s certainly very similar, Bob. I think from a Russian perspective, they see the potential for foreign forces, up to and including U.S. forces, to be on their border. I think they look upon it in the same way that Americans would look upon Russian troops or Chinese troops stationed in Cuba or Mexico or Canada. I think most Americans struggle with that. They don’t see an equivalence between the United States and Russia or again, China, that the intentions of the adversary are somehow a function of their system of government or of their culture or their approach to global politics.
And so I think the key to understanding this particular crisis actually is that we really do have differing perceptions of what we are doing—what we, the United States and our NATO allies, are doing—which we see as defensive, which we see as not threatening, which we see as consistent with a principle about countries being able to choose their own way. And we look at it that way. But an inability or an unwillingness to see it from the perspective of the other side.
The great political scientist Robert Jervis, who just passed away, he wrote a seminal book on foreign policy and international relations that focused on the role of perception and misperception. And what this really plays out here is what he and others call a “security dilemma.” That is that when a country takes actions that it believes are purely defensive in nature—and it can mean it and believe it to be 100% true—that’s not necessarily the way it’s interpreted by the other state. The other side looks at the placement of missiles or the stationing of troops or the movement of equipment and materiel in a particular way, and they look at it not as defensive but as threatening, as dangerous. And that’s where you get the danger of escalation.
So, I think without Americans necessarily having to agree with the way the Russians have staged this crisis and the way that they’ve portrayed it, you don’t have to accept their arguments, but I do think it requires a certain amount of empathy and ability to see it from the other side’s perspective and to determine whether or not those concerns are in any way legitimate, in any way worthy of consideration. Or if they’re not, what are you prepared to do? This is where we’re fast approaching: what are you prepared to do if in the end you conclude that these differences are irreconcilable, that they cannot be negotiated, there is no potential for negotiated settlement, and therefore what are you prepared to do to compel the other side to back down, up to and including the use of force?
And that really is where we are right now, it seems to me. We haven’t given up on diplomacy, there’s still the potential for diplomacy. But as there’s a famous expression—I think it was attributed to Napoleon—“There’s a lot of things you can do with a bayonet except for sit on them.” And when you station 100,000 or 130,000 troops on a foreign country’s border, those troops can’t stay there forever, right? Eventually, they’ll either be withdrawn or they will execute an attack. And I think that’s where a lot of the focus is now: on what the Russian military buildup looks like, what kinds of personnel and equipment and capabilities are being brought to bear, and sort of thinking through the different military scenarios that could involve, tragically, an actual military invasion of Ukraine.
Economic Warfare vs. Military Force [47:26]
Bob Zadek: Applying the foreign policy of the founders, specifically let’s say Madison and Washington, even though their own views changed throughout their lives as they experienced how their views were applied. We have only a couple of minutes left. Applying those principles that you and I so warmly embrace, what should the U.S. position—what should our headline—we can’t go into detail, we don’t have the time. But in headline format, what should our policy be, including how much do we care at all about how this conflict is resolved? Why are we even at the table? Is there a good reason? And we have about a couple of minutes, Chris.
Chris Preble: Sure. I mean, I think that the Biden administration’s position has been that the United States will use all manner of economic pressure, sanctions, punishment, the delivery of weapons to Ukraine, but will not use U.S. force, that will not involve the actual U.S. military in fighting. That’s been the Biden administration’s position, and I’ve seen no evidence to suggest that the American people would support U.S. military personnel being involved in this conflict. So that’s really where we are from a U.S. perspective.
And I think the founders could imagine in some respects economic pressure or embargoes or things like that—they did that in their day. They could imagine military support of various types or material support to Ukraine to defend itself from a foreign invasion. But I do think that we have to face squarely the possibility that all manner of pressure and threat and coercion that the United States can bring to bear short of the use of force—short of U.S. military personnel being involved in a war with Russia—short of that, it may be that those threats and those coercive threats are not sufficient to deter a Russian attack. And so if that were to occur, if Russia attacks Ukraine and the Biden administration and the United States carries out with its economic sanctions and various measures to punish Russia for the invasion, then what? What happens next? And I think as we, going all the way back to the very beginning, I think that it is critical in a situation like that for the United States and for the American people to understand the stakes because they are very, very significant. They’re obviously severe for the people of Ukraine—that’s the part we should remember first and foremost—but secondarily, the United States could find itself in the middle of a conflict with a nuclear-armed adversary, and I think that’s something that would give most Americans pause.
Bob Zadek: We’re running out of time, but I’ll just offer an observation. I find the distinction between the use of military force—that is, somebody with an American passport pulling a trigger on a weapon—as being the dividing line incredibly artificial, as opposed to harming Russia in other ways equally powerful, whether it’s economic or cyber. I find that distinction to be a distinction without a difference. It’s almost like political cover. If you’re behaving in a way to harm another country, whether it’s by a bullet or by economic pressure, you’re still trying to harm a sovereign country. And to say, “Well, we’re not pulling—Americans are not pulling the trigger,” is kind of a distinction that doesn’t feel different to the Russians. Just an observation. But we’ll have to leave—I’m sorry, I’ll give you about 10 seconds and then we’ve got to close.
Chris Preble: No, I think you’re absolutely right. But I think that we’ve seen the United States resort to the use of economic sanctions because the U.S. economy is very large and powerful, because of Americans’ reluctance to use force. But I think you make an excellent point that we need to think more seriously about the harm that some of these economic measures have on the people that we’re claiming to help.
Bob Zadek: Thank you so much to my friend Chris Preble for sharing his wisdom on American foreign policy as it applies to the present conflict in the Ukraine. Thank you so much, Chris, for an hour of your time.
Chris Preble: My pleasure. That was fun. Thanks.
Bob Zadek: Thank you to my friends out there for letting us into your homes and into your minds for this Sunday morning. Have a good rest of the weekend.