Dr. Fiona Hill - What's Next for the Russia-Ukraine War | Prof G Conversations

The big difference between Trump and Putin is that Trump is a totally one-man show. He's destroying the state. He's not acting with Congress and with the Senate unless they're like rubber stamps. Putin operates within the state. He's a creature of the deep state. He's not dismantling the Russian state that was already dismantled, you know, under Mikhail Gorbachev and Boris Yeltsin from the Soviet. For Trump, he doesn't really pay any attention to any of the people around him. He uses them as emissaries and envoys, but he doesn't do his homework. They can't actually advise him on anything. They just kind of come back. God knows what kind of conversations they have. Do they have notes? Do they fully understand, you know, what they've heard? And that makes Trump very unpredictable. In Russian terms, you know, the Russians have moved on beyond that. So, I think if Putin's looking at his own crystal ball, he also can't say.

It finds me in my office at the Brookings Institution in Washington, DC.

Well, it's actually a pretty complicated situation because we're tending to see this in a bilateral sense between the US and Russia, and also then with Russia and Ukraine. President Trump has inserted himself into what he's basically saying is a conflict with two sides, with Ukraine and Russia, but it's far beyond that. Russia's been supported, certainly since well into the war in the first year in 2022, by an array of other countries in its ability to continue the fight with Ukraine. It's gone from being a special military operation to the largest land war in Europe since World War II. China, North Korea, and Iran have come in on Russia's side, initially on the parts of Iran and North Korea to provide Russia with all kinds of ammunition and drones that it didn't actually have in its arsenal. And China has facilitated the transfer of all kinds of other dual-use projects, although it hasn't actually actively supported Russia in the same way as Iran and North Korea. We have North Korean troops fighting against Ukrainians on the Russian side, and the Iranians have been building drone factories in Russia. And I want to put that on the table because it just shows how complicated this whole situation is. And on the part of Ukraine, obviously, Ukraine is a European country, and this has really serious implications for all of Ukraine's immediate neighbors, including the Baltic states and Poland, because Belarus, which is another supposedly independent country, which Russia is in a tight union-like arrangement with, has been used as a launching pad for the war into Ukraine as well. Belarus directly borders the Baltic states and also Poland. And of course, for Europe, this is an existential European security issue. They are under assault 24/7 from Russia, one way or another, either by cyber attacks or critical national infrastructure attacks, poisonings, assassinations, all kinds of things, sabotage operations. It's just been announced in the last day or so, right ahead of these negotiations, that the GRU, the Russian military intelligence, are being held responsible for arson attacks at shopping centers in Poland and also in Lithuania, as well as other sabotage attacks at warehouses around Europe. So, this is a very complicated situation. Trump wants to get face time with Putin. I mean, we should already anticipate, I think, that he's had a whole host of phone calls. I find it hard to believe that Steve Witkoff has been talking for hours with Putin without any other sets of interactions with President Trump. In the meantime, basically what President Trump wants is Ukraine put to one side so that he can get on with having a big deal with Russia. We've heard reports today coming out of Russia that there are plans for the heads of the Russian sovereign wealth fund, the Russian space agency, and others to meet with Elon Musk to talk about space collaboration, including with Musk's aim of getting to Mars. I mean, remember, of course, that the Soviet Union and Russia were the countries that put the first satellite, the first dog, the first man, the first woman in space, and obviously a personal dream of Musk, not just to access space but also to get to Mars. So there's a lot going on here, and in the midst of all of this is Ukraine, that was basically fighting for its survival, and Russia wants a maximalist approach still with Ukraine. It's been very apparent from all the statements coming out of Russia that Putin is not prepared at all to concede beyond the goals that he laid out at the beginning of this conflict, which was taking control one way or another of key territories in Ukraine and having a say about where Ukraine goes in the future.

I'm completely with you, Scott. I mean, it's not naive at all, and I think you're just calling it like you see it, which I think is how most people see it, you know, including in Europe and in Ukraine. President Trump was recently on Air Force One. I think yesterday I was reading, you know, some reports where he was talking about how over the weekend he got it all worked out at Mar-a-Lago. Well, who was he working it out with? His own team. You know, there's a lot of, you know, as you're putting it here, negotiating with ourselves on the US side, or at least, you know, Trump and his immediate circle. A lot of talking to Putin going on, Steve Witkoff, you know, meeting with Putin for many hours and hearing Russia's side of the argument here, and then them going to Ukraine and putting a lot of pressure on Ukraine. And as you're also pointing out, the Europeans have had to basically go into a parallel negotiation channel. I mean, it's certainly the case that we've had President Macron of France, Prime Minister Starmer of the United Kingdom, and others trying to interact with President Trump on this, but it really feels in many respects like they're fighting, in some respects, a rearguard action diplomatically, trying to kind of figure out, you know, how on earth they salvage something from this. It really smacks not just of 19th century or early 20th century secret diplomacy, but frankly of 18th century. Trump is going to preside next year over the 250th anniversary of American independence, you know, the American Revolution. And at that same time frame, if you kind of look back to that later part of the 18th century, there was all kinds of diplomacy going on in Europe over the heads of other countries. There was the partition of Poland, you know, for example. We're in that kind of historic space. And that's, you know, something that most of us would never have anticipated, you know, given how far we've gone in this last 250 years. But we seem to be just right back to that whole period where great powers just think that they can carve up the world and then make everybody else go along with it.

There absolutely is. And I think we're seeing some signs of this already. There's just a couple of issues that are probably, you know, quite significant obstacles right now, but it doesn't mean to say that they can't be overcome. I think you've laid it out perfectly, and you didn't also talk about the limited extent of the Russian economy. And there's a lot of talk about trade being restored between the US and Russia, but when we look back to the previous levels of trade, the volumes of trade between Russia and the United States, it was the same level as the US and Costa Rica. So it just reinforces the point that you've made and you've laid out there, you know, very succinctly. The obstacles are really that we're seeing in aggregate a lot of the efforts being taken by the European Union to basically put money on the table for reinvigorating the defense and manufacturing sector of Europe. And of course, not all of the key countries are members of the EU. The UK famously took itself out with Brexit, and that's obviously the UK revitalizing its manufacturing sector will be pretty critical here. You've got Norway, which of course has a major sovereign wealth fund, and as you've pointed out, is also a major arms and manufacturing power, obviously not to the kind of scale of others, but it's pretty significant. You've also got Turkey, which is a NATO member and has a really serious manufacturing capacity and also pretty serious military capabilities as well, and Switzerland, which is in obviously a strange position debating its own neutrality, but also has a lot of capacity in manufacturing, including in the weapons sphere. So absolutely, there is an opportunity there. The obstacles are getting past these seeming constraints of who's in what and actually agreeing to work on this together. And I think we're seeing signs of that because you are seeing all kinds of different meetings going on, all kinds of agreements of pooling funds and pooling some of this manufacturing capability. But the second obstacle is really speed, because you know the US is barreling along on this path, or Trump is barreling along on this path towards a ceasefire and is also cutting relationships with Europeans at the same time. These tariffs are essentially a sanction on your allies. And if you're imposing tariffs on the EU and on other European countries that might not be part of the EU but are part of NATO, you're making hostile claims against your NATO allies, including Denmark, over Greenland. Remember, Greenland is actually a member of NATO through its association with Denmark. You're menacing Canada and imposing enormous tariffs on Canada. And remember, Canada is also part of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization. You're actually also then hobbling, you know, your allies at a time when they actually do have this opportunity to stand up. So, I think that, you know, what we're going to have to see is European countries and Canada, which is part of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, really push back and get together and figure out ways in which they can actively cooperate on the military defense sector as well as, as you're suggesting, diversifying away from their reliance on the United States. It's long overdue, frankly. I mean, they should have been doing this decades ago.

There's no question that this is the way that Europe should go. A lot of the debate before was, if the US, this is here of course in the United States, was that this could be, you know, very detrimental to trust in the US economy, in US financial markets, in the Treasury. If we go back to Trump 1.0, for example, Treasury Secretary Mnuchin was always extraordinarily concerned about the impact on the dollar and the dollar's future as the reserve currency and the global currency if there was too much emphasis all the time on the punitive side of financial sanctions. Well, look, I mean, the United States, I think, is raising all of those questions irrespective of all of that again by the tariffs, which is again sanctioning your allies, adding a value-added tax onto every particular product here, and just the kind of chaotic nature in which all of this is being played out, as well as the hostile rhetoric towards the allies. So at this particular stage, if there'd been any qualms on the European side that were basically being transmitted from the US, those should have gone. And as Europe is now confronting the fact, as you've laid out very clearly here, that it's pretty much going to be on its own in sort of dealing with the aftermath, because what Trump seems to suggest is, 'I'm going to give you a ceasefire and then I'm going to cut and run.' But you know, we're already today, as we're recording this, looking at the breakdown of the ceasefire in Gaza, which Trump has made, you know, a lot of noise about and, you know, kind of and basically put into place with great acclaim, that's being basically pushed back on by Israel at this particular juncture. So we can't really expect that a ceasefire or truce is going to hold for any particular length of time. The Russians are most likely to drag out the negotiations. They're likely to, you know, perhaps even agree to something, but again with all of these preconditions, and immediately, you know, look for some pretext to violate it again and put the blame on Europe or on the Ukrainians or both, which will put Europe in a very tricky position where they're going to basically need to move with speed, with real speed, to build up the defensive capacity, and that is going to put the onus right back on the frozen assets, as you have suggested, along with basically the aggregate of their own capacities, which is again, as you've said, pretty significant.

Yeah, I did say that it wasn't the same as North Korea and Iran in terms of supplying weapons. And frankly, there was other countries like India that have been sending, you know, kind of weapons to Russia because they have also very tight relationships with Russia on the arms sales side. India traditionally got all of its weapons from the Soviet Union and also from Russia, but India hasn't rhetorically, you know, come out in support of Russia in the way that China has. President Xi and President Putin have very close personal relationships. You can't basically underscore enough about how close that personal relationship is. They have the same rough birth date, the same outlook on the world. They've met each other more times than any other, you know, set of leaders. And if you recall, just before Russia's launch of its invasion of Ukraine, there was the meeting on the sidelines of the Beijing Olympics, the Winter Olympics, that is, between Putin and Xi, in which they declared basically a strategic bilateral relationship, a partnership without limits. Now, the Chinese have been quick to try to point out that they didn't realize that Putin was essentially going to move into Ukraine quite so soon afterwards. I think there's a lot of regret that, you know, a bit of buyer's remorse there, that they made this statement and then that was so soon on the heels of this invasion. Of course, if it had turned out differently, if it was indeed a special military operation, not this largest land war in Europe since World War II, you know, China might have felt a little bit, you know, more sanguine about this. But nonetheless, all the way through, the Chinese have made it very clear to Ukrainians and others that they do not want to see Russia lose. Now, ironically, China was also the largest investor in Ukraine as a single country before the war. They have no beef with Ukraine. They've made that very clear to the Ukrainians. They've also said this to the Europeans. They see this as a proxy war against the United States. And so, they don't want to see Russia lose. Now, the interesting factor is that the United States is pulling out of this. Trump has also recognized this. He said that, you know, he never wanted to be part of this. They've recently started to say this. Now, the United States was never actually embarking on a proxy war against Russia like the Europeans. They were trying to basically help Ukraine defend itself, which Ukraine has every right to under the terms of the UN Charter. And of course, it's very similar to Kuwait, you know, back in the day, and to other countries that have been invaded by a much larger neighbor. But for China, basically the failure of Putin to prevail in this war in Ukraine would be very symbolic then of a mistake that would have been made by Xi in backing Putin as his horse in this race. And so the Chinese have been saying to the Europeans, and I was at the Munich Security Conference in February, you know, through the infamous JD Vance speech there, but where the Europeans were hearing from the Chinese a lot of pleasure, frankly, about the rift between Europe and the United States. And China saying to Europe, 'Look, there was nothing personal in our support of Russia here. I'm sure you understand our position, and we're going to be there for you. You know, when this war ends, we're going to help in terms of construction and investment.' You know, there's been a great deal of desire on the Chinese part to pull away European countries from the United States, but I think they have got a fundamental misreading of the situation. In fact, they're aiding and abetting this major war in Europe. And in World War II, China was on the other side of the ledger, right? I mean, China was part of the Allied powers. Of course, that was in its war with Japan after all the Japanese invasions of China. But this time, for the first time in history, China is on the wrong side, from the European perspective, of a major land war in Europe. And again, even if it isn't to the same extent as North Korea and Iran, China has been putting all of its focus on making sure that Putin and Russia are propped up and that they don't fail in this endeavor. And really, what is this endeavor? It's to slice and dice Ukraine and to dominate Europe.