Ted Audio Collective music music Hello everyone.
This is After Hours.
I'm Felix. I'm Meir.
I'm Rawi. Rawi. Welcome back Rawi.
It's nice to be back.
It's nice to be back.
What a reunion. A reunion indeed.
Speaking of reunions, there's an alumni reunion on campus.
This week, yes. And you know what I saw in the program?
The three of us are presenting at the same time.
We are in competition.
Oh my god. I think we know how that's gonna go.
Rawi's gonna be talking big world issues.
And I'll have coffee with half a soul.
We have brought you back for a serious topic.
It's now, I think, seven, eight months since we talked about the war in Ukraine.
Yeah. And you provided such great insight on the historical roots of the conflict, how to think about it, and it's high time to have you back and tell us what's been happening.
Where do we think the war will go?
I have a million questions for you.
Indeed. Me too. And we might as well before World War III begins.
This is starting off on an optimistic note.
Yes. Very much. It's gonna go well.
So, Rawi, tell me about the surprises for you as you've seen this conflict evolve.
What do you think you've learned that maybe you didn't know before?
One of the surprising moments was when the Federal Reserve Bank of New York froze foreign exchange reserves that the Central Bank of Russia had in deposit there, which the Russians experienced as like, hey man, you stole my foreign exchange reserves.
I didn't even know that that was a thing that you could do.
Which has led to a lot of innovation around the world of trading various commodities not in dollars, trying to avoid the dollar to relieve some of the pressure from the secondary sanctions.
I think another surprise has been how robust the Ukrainian defense has been.
I don't think there was anyone outside of Ukraine who thought that the Ukrainian military and the civilian population too would be able to withstand this assault from the Russian military.
And then I think perhaps the biggest surprise is that European unity on this issue and transatlantic unity on the support for Ukraine has exceeded my expectations.
Which were probably low to begin with.
We're low to begin with and now we're in a very different place.
What about you me here?
What surprised you?
So I'm much more naive about these issues than Rowey, but certainly the fortitude of the Ukrainian people and their defenses, civilian as well as military has just been completely remarkable.
I think Russia remains a mystery to me.
Rowey in so many ways, up until the draft was announced, it seemed that Russia despite all these sanctions was kind of going on its way and there was large chunks of the Russian population that were just not really incorporating this reality into their lives.
And I think that was surprising to me as well.
And then it just continues to be surprising to think about how Putin thinks about the world and trying to game out what he may go for next.
It's this weird appreciation for his rationality but also his irrationality.
I think those are the three things that have really struck me.
Felix, have you been surprised by things?
Yeah, I think I was surprised by the partial mobilization because that always seemed to be part of what was working for Russia to basically keep the war invisible.
But then like everyone else, the relative success on the battlefield of the Ukrainians.
There's no question that the Russian regime expected this to go much more quickly and much more smoothly in part because so much money had been poured into the modernization of the Russian military during the Putin era.
I think everybody knew that some of that money was stolen and bought villas and yachts rather than weaponry or went into training.
But I think one of the things we're seeing is really just how much of that Russian military modernization involved movement of funds that did not make their way to the Russian military.
Until it's a lack of equipment, is your sense?
I think a lack of equipment, a lack of training, and the battlefield tactics, and I'm no expert on this to be sure, are so retro according to military experts.
When you run up against this stout Ukrainian defense, it's a very different kind of challenge.
I wonder what you make, Rawi, of the other interpretation of this.
You cannot underestimate the power of people's beliefs and when they are fighting for what they view as a righteous existential moment, that their will is just remarkable.
And that on the other side, when there's a slightly more dubious mission associated with it, it's just hard to stir up troops in that way.
So that's the first.
And then the second is, how do you make sense of the kind of armaments that have been provided by the West in the Ukrainian effort to fight back?
The forces that the Russian President had amassed in western Russia and in Belarus had been told that they were going on a training exercise.
And then all of a sudden, they're invading another country where they have relatives and aunties and nephews and grandmas.
I imagine that basically none of the Russian military personnel wants to be in Ukraine fighting against Ukraine.
Certainly the people who have been mobilized do not want to go.
Whereas to your point, Meir, the Ukrainians are fighting for the territorial integrity of their country.
They're fighting for their homes.
So that's a very different set of motivations.
On the question of western support with various kinds of military equipment for Ukraine, I think this is one of the trickiest elements of the conflict.
And that is what the West has given to Ukraine so far has been enough for Ukraine to achieve a kind of stalemate in the war to halt Russian advances, but not enough for Ukraine to win the war in the sense of pushing all of Russian military personnel out of the territory of Ukraine.
And I think it is that stalemate that is one of the most complicated and frankly dangerous elements of the conflict that we have.
And are you referencing the fact that the West may not want to push things so far that Russia has an abject loss because that could turn into something much more dangerous?
One of the logics is definitely trying to avoid being regarded by the regime in Moscow as being a direct combatant in the war.
So like bumping up against how much the West can do without starting World War III because we are regarded as a participant as opposed to just supporting the Ukrainian military.
It also reflects an interesting reorientation on the Ukrainian side.
What does it even mean to win?
I think early in the war was while we pushed the Russians back to where we were in February thinking that you're not going to get back the land that was stolen in the east of the country, you're not going to get back Crimea.
That was the starting point and the weapons that were delivered matched that ambition, essentially stopping the Russian invasion and pushing them back to the old lines because of the military success.
All of a sudden what it means to win was something different.
Now when they talk about winning, I think it literally means pushing the Russians out of all the eastern parts of Ukraine and then getting back Crimea, which wasn't really on the table in the early conversations.
Now when you look at what it means when now they definitely don't have the weapons to accomplish that goal.
I think that's right, Felix.
Then I think it raises this bigger question.
If Ukraine can't win in that sense, how do we think about the fact that Russia won't lose in the sense that President Putin calls everybody back and says, sorry about that, it didn't work out so we're going to give up these territories that we have just by the way legally as far as we are concerned
in the Kremlin annexed, that's not going to happen either.
The biggest danger I see is this balance between the fact that Russia is not going to lose in the sense that we might want Ukraine to win.
Then how do we play out the scenarios associated with if the Russian military gets in big trouble holding territories that they claim to have annexed and they're not going to just leave what next problematic thing is going to unfold.
President Putin can't lose this war and stay in power.
That seems crystal clear.
Totally agree. That's pretty consistent with the historical record.
If you look at how do wars end, they're sort of the two extremes.
Full -fledged democracies are pretty good at ending wars and the most brutal dictatorships are also pretty good at ending wars.
The regimes that can't end wars are the regimes where somehow success on the battlefield is tied up with the personal fortune and the personal fate of those in power.
I think World War I is maybe the most extreme example where the Kaiser saw probably after half a year that the Germans couldn't win and it went on for another four years simply because you knew that's also the end of the Reich if you lose the war.
We're in the worst of circumstances.
We don't have enough dictatorship in some sense that he's just untouchable and we also don't have a country where what people want really counts.
I think that's exactly right and it raises the question of why wars get fought.
Wars all eventually end with some sort of settlement and they continue to be fought until it's clear what the contours of the settlement are likely to be.
Who is going to give up what.
That is absolutely not clear right now.
Probably the Russian president would be willing to end the war right now with her son and Zaporizhia and Donetsk and Luhansk and of course Crimea.
That's at the moment inconceivable for the Ukrainian president and for I'm sure the vast majority of Ukrainian people.
Until we know what the contours of some settlement will be, the fighting will continue.
Can I ask you about the role of the Ukrainian economy in all of this?
Inflation runs roughly 20 % or so because they're fighting a war that they cannot afford.
I think the central bank prediction is that by the end of year inflation will be at 30 % or so.
Is the Ukrainian economy a big factor that at some point in time you should say, look, there's limited assistance in particular from the EU, not as much money has been given to Ukraine as many expected and as they promised.
Could it be that you get to the point where the economic cost for Ukraine is so big that you have to accept, even though maybe from a narrow military point of view you see opportunities still on the battlefield?
At least my intuition is simply no.
There's no economic logic that will push the Ukrainian president to the negotiating table, I don't think.
And the West's appetite for supporting him is pretty significant I think which can also let him ignore economic logics for a while.
Let me push back maybe a little bit.
So support in the form of weaponry, support in ways that more or less directly translate into pushing back Russia.
I think we have a uniform front.
But then think about what happens if the question is pensioners in Ukraine can no longer afford food, can no longer afford heating.
Is the West going to pay everybody's pensions for the next couple of years?
At that moment in time, even if you're in Zalensky's position, I think the calculus among the population in Ukraine will be different because it'll make life not only incredibly dangerous the way it is right now, but it'll literally make it almost impossible to exist in Ukraine.
I don't think, or at least I don't have any sense that the Ukrainian population has wavered for a second in its support of the cause because of anxieties about future economic realities.
If it's hard to imagine Ukraine ever conceding, how do we get to a point where the outlines of a settlement become clear?
And I hate to raise the specter of more harsh military actions by Putin, but is that where the stalemate breaks down?
What are the scenarios that allow that stalemate to break down until allow the outlines of a settlement to become clear?
So assuming that the Russian president remains in power over the course of the war, which is no longer the only reasonable assumption to make, but since we don't know whether the next Russian president will be a sweetheart or more challenging than President Putin, let's just assume for the moment it's
President Putin who's negotiating stance is the one that we need to take seriously.
Then the question is what is an off ramp for President Putin to declare some sort of victory, some sort of sense that military and strategic objectives have been reached?
And is there any way to imagine that that set of strategic and military objectives do not include territorial considerations beyond Crimea?
And I personally cannot see that right now.
Keeping Crimea is crystal clear that that's essential for President Putin.
Just keeping Crimea, but not having any other strategic or military objectives achieved, I think is not something that can be negotiated right now.
So your base case outcome is that, which is we're here for the next twelve months?
I see no way to a negotiated settlement right now, whether it's twelve months, or six months, or two years, or five years, but we don't have anything on the table that would be acceptable to both sides.
What's the role of the economy on the Russian side?
The sanctions are definitely undermining the medium run and long run health of the Russian economy.
There's no question about that.
They have certainly been effective in punishing some of the elites, the so called oligarchs, and many Russian citizens.
And there's no question that the sanctions have had some shorter term effects on the Russian economy that are disappointing, but not catastrophic.
Eventually, when Russia is cut off from technology flows and airplane parts and car parts, that's going to be very bad for the Russian economy.
But right now, as far as I can tell, they're sort of going along.
And one of the other tricky things is that the sanctions on energy have also limited the supply of energy in the world so that prices have gone up and on a per month basis the Russian state is making just as much if not more in dollar terms off of energy exports as they were before the war.
That's an interesting aspect of the sanctions that I'm not sure I completely understand.
There's this huge conversation, should you buy energy from Russia?
What are the long term consequences?
And I'm a little confused about that because if in fact you have sanctions so that no one supplies Russia with anything from outside Russia, you don't really care whether they're selling energy.
Because in a world where you have an amazing export business and you're earning all of these dollars, but there's nothing to buy with these dollars because you can't get access to technology, you can't get access to consumer products, the sanctions are working even in an immediate sense.
So people will point to the 260 billion dollar current account surplus that Russia expects this year.
And that's of course, it's a really big sum of money, but it's against a backdrop of imports being cut in I think a really radical fashion.
By March or so imports had dropped by about 50%, about five billion dollars per month.
And then Russia declared the import numbers a state secret, not by coincidence.
So I do think this complicated question, should we buy, should we not buy, should we freeze during the winter?
It's all seems to be predicated on a notion that somehow once Russia has dollars, it can buy whatever it needs for its own economy.
And the sanctions are supposed to make that scenario hard or maybe even impossible.
Well I think one of the challenges of the sanctions regime is that there's no world in which Russia could be sanctioned so much that the Russian president would change his calculations about the course of the war.
There's no mechanism to cause that to happen.
So in that sense it's not deterrence, it's not a change of strategy, it's really simply punishment.
So one of the questions that's been much discussed, and I would love to hear your thoughts about it, is whether the Russian president is bluffing when he threatens the use of weapons of mass destruction, whether it's a tactical nuclear strike in Ukraine or a chemical weapons attack or a biological weapons
attack, or in fact the purposeful destruction of a nuclear power plant.
What is your sense?
Oh gosh, so this is really hard.
My instincts are that there is a bright line around nuclear weapons.
I think, and I obviously hope, that the line that he won't cross is the actual nuclear line, because I think he understands that the consequences of that would be completely existential.
I don't know Felix, what do you think?
I think I'm a little more pessimistic than you.
Given Ravi's scenario which is there's just no negotiation, there's no space for any sort of settlement that we see at this moment in time, then the question is if the Ukrainians are successful in the battlefield, what do you do?
I think the response that we see right now is you go after civilian infrastructure, you try to inflict huge costs on the civilian population.
And the response from the west I think will be that countries will strengthen Ukraine's defensive forces.
If then Ukrainian success on the battlefield continues, the question is like what do you do next?
What's available? And there I have a sense that he will use tactical for sure, so not a big nuclear war, but he will use nuclear weapons.
And you can think of many ways to do it to limit the immediate damage that they will inflict on Ukraine.
So people have talked about maybe detonating one over the ocean, people have talked about in areas that are not very populated to begin with.
And one intuition that I have, and obviously I have no idea whether I'm right or not, is that what's the worst thing that the west can do in response to a nuclear deployment?
It's still the case, I think even after we see him use tactical nuclear weapons, that NATO does not want to fight this war.
The way I think about the red line is he does something that then draws NATO into the conflict.
And that obviously will be the end of Putin and a very different status for Russia afterwards.
So I think in my imagination his red line is I cannot do anything that will trigger NATO intervention.
But I think the use of tactical nuclear weapons is below that threshold.
Wow. Okay, so I disagree with that.
Robbie, what do you make of it?
So I think that's really the big question in a way, which is whether Meher's intuition is closer to the reality or Felix's intuition is closer to the reality.
And we don't know, but I think the logic from the Kremlin is trying to do something that would lead to the regime in Kiev to relent and come to some sort of settlement that would be acceptable to Russia, which might require horror, but the horror probably should not be large enough to draw NATO directly
into the conflict. And I think that the Russian president believes that a tactical strike in Ukraine is below that threshold for the West.
But we don't know. Yeah, I confess my intuitions are if there is the use of nuclear weapons on the European continent, I think Olaf Scholz, I think the EU, and I think it's a complete game changer.
I think another question is whether that's a game changer for other countries in the world.
If that's a red line for China or a red line for India, those are countries that have not yet taken a firm position on the war, but have certainly hinted that that might be one step too far for Russia.
Okay, that sounds good.
Let's do that after the break.
Okay, so if all that was not complicated enough, we have rising players like China and India who had been playing a more silent role.
But I'm not sure if you followed this recently.
Rawi, it seemed at least as it was portrayed in the West that in recent meetings, both China and India signal their displeasure with Russia in a new way.
I'm curious whether you think that's true or if it's just cheap talk.
And if it is true, what does that mean for Putin's position and how his calculations work and what does it mean for how China and India think about this conflict?
There are many countries in the world, certainly including China and Russia, and to a certain extent India, that have expressed the view that whatever you are managing in your country is your business, and that it's not really anybody else's business, whatever issues you're trying to manage in your
country. And one gets the sense from China and India that they almost are treating this as a sort of internal Russian or at least internal Slavic matter to be sorted out.
And it's not really their business, whatever President Putin feels like he needs to do.
But it does seem like there are some red lines for those countries as well.
And what they are exactly not clear but might include some sort of use of weapon of mass destruction.
Then would that matter for President Putin's calculations?
And I think probably not.
I think that this war has gone so far that basically has its own logic, and so even if Russia as a country were completely isolated, including by countries like China and India, that it still would need to make its way to its conclusion.
Is the view correct that for a very long time China and Russia saw each other sort of as equals?
Well I think the Russians felt more that way than the Chinese.
But now in so many ways, including the supply of oil, the price of oil, in that relationship Russia is really the junior partner now.
I think that the Chinese have regarded Russia as a junior partner for some time.
But that relationship certainly has been clarified.
And that's costly to Russia or I should think it's oil, it's a global market.
There's always someone who will buy your oil.
That's not really something you worry about.
I do think they're worried about it.
I think they would prefer to have China neutral on this war for sure.
So they would rather not change that dynamic.
But if they have to then they probably will.
I do have one last question that is often on my mind.
As a result of everything that has happened, how do you think the standing of the United States in a geopolitical sense has changed over the last year or so?
I think it's mixed.
So the chaotic withdrawal of the United States from Afghanistan I think deeply undermined the legitimacy of the United States in the world, including the drone strikes that killed civilians who were not threats to the process of withdrawal and so on.
And then I think the leadership that the Biden administration has showed during the course of the war in Ukraine has recovered some of that legitimacy.
So maybe I would say on balance we're kind of where we started.
But I don't think we've had a great restoration of the legitimacy of American hegemony in the world over the last year.
Yeah, I kind of share your instincts, which is in some sense that the bar was really low.
You know, there was nowhere to go but up.
But I do think there has been a fortification of that role but to call it anything close to a restoration would be dramatically overstating the case because of so much that has happened.
But you're right to say, I think, that that is not an optimistic way to think about it but there was a serious question about what role does the US play that is positive in the world.
And that was called into question and I think people have come to the conclusion, perhaps grudgingly and perhaps half -heartedly, that yeah maybe there is a role and it's an important role.
But Rahi, I want to ask you one last question before we close.
Felix and I get to think about a lot of different things over these last eight months.
You've lived this for the last eight months as a scholar who thinks about these issues.
I'm curious what it's done to you and how it's changed your view of the world and how it's impacted you personally.
I have been thinking for a number of years that we have been headed toward the end of an era in several ways.
The end of an era of globalization, the end of an era in US leadership in the world, a sort of transformation of the system.
And I really feel like this war and its consequences have accelerated that transformation.
We are really moving into a very different kind of global system and the ways in which elements of the previous era have ended so abruptly, especially on issues on which I've spent lots of time and energy and thought, the Russian -European relationship, it's quite disorienting, actually, in an intellectual
sense, leaving aside the horrors of it, which I'm not mostly experiencing of course myself.
But it's very intellectually disorienting to be sprinting so quickly away from the way things were organized before and whatever's coming next.
Well, thank you for sharing your thoughts and your insights.
As always, it's just fabulous to have you on the show.
Such a pleasure to be with you both.
I speak for many of our listeners, which is we need you to write that blueprint for what the world looks like.
So, Pics, I hope you brought something that will give us sunshine and happiness and all the good things we want to experience in life.
Oh, no. That is not what I brought.
You totally misunderstood your assignment.
Yeah, so, Robbie, go first.
Sure. So, there is a new series on HBO Max.
It is called Irma Vep.
It is directed by Olivia Assais, a French director of some note, and it is super interesting.
So, in 1915 and 1916, there was a serialized film called Les Vampir, directed at the time by Louis Foyade.
It's sort of the beginning of French cinema.
It was a kind of very long film in multiple parts.
It helped to launch the career of a woman named Musidora, who was the actor who played a character named Irma Vep in this series.
Les Vampir is not about vampires.
It's about a gang that calls itself the vampires.
And Musidora is this iconic figure in French cinema who became, after she was an actor, a writer and a producer and a director.
And this is a kind of remake of the original serialized film, but it goes back and forth between the shooting of the remake, original scenes from the serialized version from 1915 and 1916, and just the lives of the people who are taking part in this extraordinary cinematic moment.
It gets very meta. It's really, really interesting and well acted and well written, and there are parts of it that are also hilarious, but it's just been a kind of revelation to spend some time with it.
Sounds fabulous. You know, Felix, Rowie always kind of raises the bar.
This is like serious stuff.
I'm pushing like different kinds of potato chips and he's talking about it.
So why don't we go from vampires to potato chips?
So, I have kind of a high -low recommendation, which is you, of course, are familiar with William Shakespeare.
You may be less familiar with his wife, Anne Hathaway.
And I have been taken by two different versions of her that have shown up in high culture and low culture, which I think are both really fantastic.
And they kind of really flesh out who this woman was.
And so the high version is a book that came out a couple years ago, which is called Hamnet by Maggie O 'Farrell.
And it really centers on Anne Hathaway, and of course the son, Hamnet, who is the original name for Hamlet as well, who died when he was a boy and how that impacted Shakespeare and their marriage.
And then the low version of it, although it's not so low, it's pretty darn great, is Anne Juliet, which is a new musical that has come to New York but has been in London for a while, that is a retelling of Romeo and Juliet as if Juliet did not kill herself after finding out that Romeo died.
And it's basically Anne Hathaway takes the pen away from William Shakespeare and is like why would she kill herself after that loser Romeo killed himself?
She would go on to have a great life.
And it also happens to have just spectacular pop music.
And so it's a musical retelling of the end of Romeo and Juliet.
But they both center on Anne Hathaway in really weird and interesting ways.
I love those. Those are great.
I noticed you're gravitating towards musicals now.
Well, it's been a couple.
I love them. Yeah. You know, I'm a sucker.
Fantastic. Felix, what do you have?
I have a pop recommendation also, but it's just music.
But as I recall, Felix, your definition of pop is not Ariana Grande.
It's like what is topping the polka charts in Brazil.
Is that the kind of pop you're talking about?
No, it's a bitter disappointment to you and many others.
But no tubas were involved in the making of this album, unfortunately.
But I have sort of a soundtrack of the summer.
Almost every summer I discover some piece of music and then I listen to it endlessly and sort of becomes associated with the summer and then almost always after the summer is over I stop listening to it.
But not this time. Somehow this album by Grace Ives' Janky Star stayed with me.
And it's the lightest, friendliest, happiest pop music you can possibly imagine.
Her very first, I think, work was a set of ringtones that she produced.
And it's still mostly her and her synthesizer but now they added some guitars and they occasionally they added some other instruments.
Even though it's simple pop it doesn't lose interest.
You know the songs, you can sing along, the texts are weird.
It's summer soundtrack in the fall.
I'm looking at it right now.
It looks great. I'll listen to it.
She is really easily overwhelmed as a person, she explains.
And she says she can't really stand long songs because it just gets too much for her.
So almost all the songs are really short.
So there may be two and a half minutes or so.
It's ten songs. I think the whole album is not even half an hour.
So it's something that's just right for the average attention span in 2022.
There you go. Well I think that's perfect for our listeners who just finished listening to us talk about the dire scenarios in Ukraine.
Pour yourself a glass of wine and listen to that soundtrack of the summer.
Jackie Star. And its first track is called Isn't It Lovely Felix?
Which sounds just perfect.
Exactly right. I hope that's true for the show.
This is it for today.
Thank you everyone for listening.
This was After Hours from the TED Audio Collective.
Thanks for watching.
