 Hello and welcome to this conversation with Sir Lawrence Friedman to mark the launch of the latest Lowy Institute paper, Modern Warfare, Lessons from Ukraine. I'm Sam Rogovine, Director of the Lowy Institute's International Security Program. The Lowy Institute papers are our flagship publications. They are peer reviewed, long essays written by experts on the key international issues of our time. We're proud to publish these papers in association with Penguin Random House Australia. The paper retails for $12.99 here in Australia and it's available at all good bookstores as well as online. For those joining us from outside Australia, we recommend purchasing via penguin.com.au. And now to our guest. Professor Sir Lawrence Friedman is a non-resident fellow of the Lowy Institute. He is Emeritus Professor of War Studies at King's College London. Among many distinguished appointments, he was official historian of the Falklands campaign and in 2009 he served as a member of the official inquiry into Britain and the 2003 Iraq war. He has written on international history, strategic theory and nuclear weapons. Among his recent books are strategy, a history, the future of war, a history, and command, the politics of military operations from Korea to Ukraine. Lowy's sub-stack newsletter, Comment is Fried has become compulsory reading for those following the Ukraine war. And I know it was a rich source of ideas for this Lowy Institute paper, which I had the honor to edit. Sir Lawrence Friedman, welcome back to the Lowy Institute and congratulations on the publication of this fine paper. Good to be with you. Sir Lawrence, let's start at the beginning or at least at the launch of Russia's invasion on 24 February last year. Having observed this war closely since then, you've written countless columns and now this book, are you any closer to understanding why Putin did it? Can we know why he did it in the sense of his reasons, what he hoped to achieve? I mean, the difficulty, I think many of us face, which I faced before the full scale invasion when I was one of the skeptics as to whether he would do it is why would you do something which was inherently so difficult, which is to subjugate an entire country which is a historically hostile to Russian control, certainly over the last 20 years. So the puzzle was not what he was trying to achieve because it was always been difficult for Russia to accept Ukraine as an independent country, not in a sense part of the Russian sphere of influence. The puzzle really was why did he think he could get away with it? And I suppose there's a degree of hindsight because he obviously didn't get away with it as anticipated if certain things had gone right for the Russian armed forces, if the FSB had been able to assassinate Zelensky right at the start, if they had moved into Kiev, would we be talking about a very different situation and assessment and saying how bold and audacious he was. So a lot depended on the success of the operation which as we now know failed. So let me now ask you a simple and you might well say justifiably simplistic or reductionist question, who's winning? It's a very important question because there is a distinction between not winning and losing. It's very difficult for either side to lose at the moment in a traditional military set by having their armed forces defeated. It's hard, we can't imagine Ukraine from marching to Moscow and overthrowing this government as the allies did at the end of the Second World War to Berlin, but that's not how it's gonna end on the Russian side. It's very hard for them to lose in a sense that would be easily recognized as having their forces pushed out from all their holdings and so on. Equally, the Ukrainians are showing themselves resilient, able to resist and the chances of Russia having yet another go at Kiev for the moment seem remote certainly as long as the allies continue to support them. So we're looking at the implications of not winning, which are difficult for both sides. For Ukraine, it's frustrating because it's exhausting. The casualties are painful. You've got to keep the society and the economy mobilized and you've got to keep on nagging your allies for support. For Russia, I think we tend to discount the importance of not winning. There's a sort of assumption in a lot of the discussion that the only problem is that the West doesn't try diplomacy enough. If Zelensky could only come to terms with losing some of Ukraine's territory, you could have a peace. But there's no evidence of that from the Russian side. There's no evidence that Putin is satisfied with the current situation that the ceasefire was declared today. He would think this was a good outcome. And that's because he's, last September, 2022, he expanded Russian objectives by annexing four additional provinces to Ukraine, which he doesn't hold at the moment. And the idea of having bits and pieces of Ukrainian territory, which is battered, depopulated, will require substantial reconstruction and subsidy and will be difficult to occupy and defend while the rump Ukraine goes off to the EU and NATO. I don't think he sees that as a good outcome. So not winning is a real problem for both sides, but also for Russia. And I think that's what makes the current situation frustrating for both because it's not easy to see how it ends because neither has got a real incentive at the moment to end it on the current disposition of forces and holding. So we're certainly gonna come back to the question of how this war ends because that's where your book ends as well is to offer a quite a pessimistic assessment on that question, as I think we've just heard actually. But before we get to that, there's a few other issues that we should cover. And first of all, I wanted to ask you about one of the key themes of your book. In fact, the framing device that you use to understand the Russia-Ukraine war. And that is the distinction between classical and total warfare. Can you explain briefly those two terms and how they relate to this war? Yeah, so the classical approach, which is favored still in the West, is basically that you win wars by defeating the enemy armed forces. And as much as possible, you confine the war to battle military operations. This is, even if Ukraine might be tempted on occasion to do something different, the fact is it's fighting on its territory and it doesn't want its civilians to be harmed. So it has every incentive to stick to what I call the classical approach. The Russian armed forces don't disregard that. They want to win their battles too. But it's very much part of the Russian strategy to put pressure on Ukrainian society and economy as much as possible, which was very evident in the period from autumn to spring last year, or the attack on Ukrainian critical infrastructure. But you can see it in the bombardment of residential buildings when they're trying to take territory. They don't. It's not always that they deliberately attack civilians, sometimes they do. It's largely for intimidation, for coercion, or just because they're careless. But it's a much more total approach. They seek to gain victory by bringing down the current social and economic order, if you like, in Ukraine, while Ukraine seeks to gain victory by beating the Russian armed forces and pushing them to withdrawal. Now, on Russia's total war approach, do you expect Moscow to target Ukraine's energy infrastructure again, as it did last winter? And I'll just add, last year, those attacks had well and truly begun by October, but we haven't seen a concerted campaign yet this winter, have we? No, it's an interesting question. So, as I tried to point out in the book, the, although Ukraine, in the end, survived this campaign, it was touch and go at times. This was a real challenge. Now, they've done a number of things to prepare for it this time round. They've thought much more about resilience, how they repair the electricity system, their energy systems, their water systems, all the things that were attacked. And they put quite a bit more into air defences. On the other hand, we know that Russia appears to have been stockpiling missiles, and it has started some attacks on, I mean, it's not that we haven't had ignored these targets in recent weeks, but it hasn't had this sort of dramatic effect that we saw with those massive attacks on Kiev and elsewhere that began October-ish last year. So, there is a question as to whether, this is sort of the calm before the storm, or whether Russia is waiting, I think, and just conserving its missiles for other purposes. I think that in the end, you know, Russia could look at all this effort, and I know it didn't actually work that well last year. Zelensky has spoken of Ukraine's ability to retaliate this time, and one of the differences is that there have been a variety of attacks with drones and sabotage and so on against energy systems, fuel dumps, bases inside Russia proper. So, that may be a fact. I would still have to say, expect something. I mean, I'd be surprised if we got to the spring without a major Russian campaign of this sort because, you know, nothing else is really making the same sort of difference. Well, I'd like to ask you now about what's at stake here in the war for both sides. At the beginning of the Russian invasion, it was pretty clear that the stakes for Ukraine were literally existential. Russia sought the overthrow or the dissolution of the Ukrainian state, and possibly even Ukraine's territorial reincorporation into Russia, if not formally, then at least by a way of installing a pro-Russian puppet regime. Are the stakes still that high for Ukraine? At this stage, can we say the threat to Ukraine's existence as an independent state is over, even if it risks losing a large part of its territory? So, the Ukrainians would say losing 18% of their territory is pretty existential, and the fate of those under occupation bothers them, and certainly if any more went under Russian occupation, that would bother them more. I think they're more confident that they can now continue in some shape or form that they have a future, but it's very hard to think too hard about your future when everything gets geared to the war effort. So, I think the stakes for Ukraine are still very high, and they fear that if they relaxed and said, let's call it today, this would only be a pause before the Russians came back again. So, I think the Ukrainians still feel themselves to be under an existential threat, even though they pushed it back, shall we say, for the moment and can see ways forward to guaranteeing their security in the future. So, that again depends on NATO and the EU. For Russia, this started as a special military operation, notionally with quite a limited intent, which was to secure the position of the pro-Russian enclaves in Donetsk and Lchansk in the Donbas. A man gradually expanded, as often the case with wars, into much more basic, much more ambitious objectives, taking in Khrisun and Zaporizhia as well as holding on to Crimea. And I still think it's actually very difficult for Russia to imagine a stable peace with a hostile regime in Kiev. That's basically now part of the Russian problem. It's not existential for Russia that if it withdrew, then, you know, there's regime change in Russia or the Russian state collapses, and there's a particular reason why that should take place or if it does take place, it'll take place for very Russian reasons, not because of Ukraine. So, that's why, you know, Ukraine will carry on fighting and Russia doesn't need to. But the problem is for Putin, this is quite existential. I mean, this is his thing, this is his legacy, and so far he's blown it. And so, you know, part of the problem is that Putin is nervous about a peace that doesn't give him something that he would recognize as a victory. And so, it's very difficult to keep on going. The matter, I think, is without regime change in Russia, it actually is quite difficult to see the incentives that Putin faces to end the war, other than a growing sense of frustration and futility in the Kremlin and in Moscow and in the wider Russia. So, it's not existential for Russia, it is for Putin. And it wouldn't be the end of the Russian state. It could lead to a different sort of Russian state if they ended it. But so far there's no incentive for them to do so. So, we could argue, in fact, is it fair to say that the stakes for Russia have actually risen simply because the war has gone so badly for them? And is what's at stake now Russia's status as a great power? And is that in itself existential? Yes. I mean, I think it's certainly the case that the stakes have risen. I mean, this is just the nature of war. You talk about what Russia might want in January 2022 and the different ways they might get it and the role of diplomacy and the possibility of some deal on Ukrainian neutrality or whatever. You can talk about all of those sorts of things before the war. Once you start a war, that adds an interest, not being defeated, becomes an interest in itself. And as I've already noted, as the war has gone on, Putin has raised the stakes. It wasn't initially about annexing territory. Now it is. That's a massive change in Russian interests. The great power point is a very interesting one and difficult to get the measure of. I think it is important to Russia to be seen as a great power. It's always been important to Russia to be seen as a great power. The sense of being second to the United States, arguably now third to the United States, is it bothers them. And you can see quite a lot of that in the rhetoric and in the way that they play the bricks and the nature of their relationship with China. But I think the problem for Putin, and this may over time have an effect, is that Russia has been diminished as a great power. I mean, there's nothing that says you're not as great as you thought you were by trying to occupy a weak, and able, and failing. And they can bang on about their nuclear capabilities, which are not irrelevant in this conflict. But those by themselves have not cowed Ukraine, and Ukraine's fighting back and has embarrassed the Russians. They've lost a lot of kit. They've lost a lot of people. And while it's true the economy is on a war footing now and production is rising, basically the business of Russia is now military, that by itself doesn't turn you into a great power. And I think they must concede international diplomacy now moving on without them. I mean, they haven't been particularly involved in the diplomacy around Gaza. Xi and Biden have met relations between US and China, hardly warm, still suspicious, but on a slightly better footing than they were a year and a half ago. Xi is clearly pretty unimpressed with what Putin has done, whatever he may say. I think these will diminish Russia as a great power. And I think that is something that does nag away at the elite in Russia. They're bothered by it. Lorie, snow's now beginning to fall on the battlefields of Ukraine, which means the summer fighting season's over, and we can perhaps draw some tentative conclusions about Ukraine's counter-offensive launched in June. Ukraine equipped several divisions with, if not state-of-the-art Western equipment, then certainly near state-of-the-art Western equipment for that summer offensive. What's your overall judgment now about the successes and failures of Ukraine's counter-offensive? Yeah, I mean, as it happens, I think the conclusions that I drew in the book still more or less hold. And that was in August, early August. It's so slightly odd that the public conversation, I mean, I don't think I was out of line with the analytical community, but the public conversation has sort of caught up with the sense that, perhaps overstating it that this was all a failure, but I think it became apparent quite early on, certainly by the end of July, that the sort of optimism with which the coming offensive was spoken about in the spring was overdone, not mainly because what the Ukrainians were trying to do was very difficult. And as I can point out in the book, the main lesson you draw from all the fighting is it's very difficult to overcome well-organized defences, well-resourced defences. The Russians, you know, failing again at the moment to do so with any sort of decisiveness, they failed at the start of the year when they had an offensive then. They ended up with Batmurt, which is certainly pretty useless for them. So it wasn't surprising that Ukraine struggled, but it was apparent that they were not going to get great maneuverous breakthroughs quite early on, and they adapted to a more nutritional form of warfare quite quickly. So I think there is a sort of disappointment that there's not more to show for it, and it's quite hard, I think, for outsiders to get a sense quite of the reckoning in terms of the consequences of who's lost more and what it means. The Ukrainian offensive hasn't stopped. They're still peaking away. They've had one big success, which I don't really talk about in the book, which has been more apparent of this last few months in really making the Russian position in the Black Sea extremely difficult, given that they don't have a navy, it's quite impressive. By using drones, missiles and so on, making the port of Zavastopol very difficult to use, setting up their own corridor to get grain out, so that's quite important. They've just established a bridgehead on the eastern bank of the Dnieper, which again complicates Russian planning, but meanwhile the Russians are checking stuff and trying to have Divka trying to have their own offensive and still suffering from this basic problem that the defense turns out to be stronger than the offense. So I think the pessimism at the moment is a bit overdone in the sense that I think we've known for some time that this was unlikely to achieve the dramatic breakthroughs. But we also know that the coming months are going to be difficult because, not because they're out of equipment, which the Russians sometimes appear to do, but because of the problems of shell shortages and people shortages. So it's a tough time for Ukraine and I think there is an avoidable degree of frustration at the hopes that they had in the spring were not realised. But I think this is also about the management of expectations. I think people got ahead of themselves and didn't fully appreciate just the difficulty. There's all sorts of other lessons about training, about the amount of time that they got to prepare for the offensive. I mean, we're losing too much of a rush, probably. And you just need more preparation. And you say what the Ukrainians were attempting was difficult. We might actually go a little further, couldn't we? We could say it was unprecedented in the sense that in modern times, no military has made major territorial advances without first achieving their superiority. Can you say something about the air war over Ukraine? Yeah, I mean, of course, the Ukrainians did have a breakthrough in early September 2022 at Kharkiv. But that was because the Russians were blindsided by their preoccupation with Kherson and they were just very thin defences in Kharkiv. And the Ukrainians quite cleverly and effectively took advantage. So there was a precedent. And I think it's also fair to say that there was a tendency to assume, which I was probably a bit guilty of as well, that the Russian armed forces were a bit weaker and demoralised because of the losses and the losses of their officer corps. But actually, when you're talking about holding lines, it's somewhat easier than when mounting offensives. But air power is important. And again, this is one of the puzzles of the war because if you look at a lot of the pre-24th of February 2022 rejections, Russian air power is scheduled to play a really important role. And it hasn't stopped being unimportant, but the Ukrainians still kept flying. Ukrainian air defences were more effective, I think, than the Russians prepared for. I remember the Russians' recent experience had been in Syria where they faced very little by way of air defences. So it hasn't been a very happy time for the Russian air force. But of course, the Ukrainians don't really have an air force except a small number of planes are getting some F-16s coming in. So the sort of way that the West would have mounted an offensive, which is basically you batter the defences in preparation, didn't happen. They could use artillery and high-mars for that sort of role. But it's not the same effect. And you can't call, as you suddenly find yourself facing opposition, harder to call in close air support as the West would do. So I think, again, early on in the offensive, it was a pretty obvious point to make, but it's very difficult for the Ukrainians to do it without air superiority, and so it proved. I think the F-16s will be more helpful in blunting Russian air power than making necessarily a lot of difference in future Ukrainian offensive. But that also just underlines a problem that the Ukrainians point to, which is that the West, having seen the need, is sometimes pretty slow to provide the capabilities. And, you know, quite a lot of the what-ifs revolve around earlier provision of equipment and training to Ukraine. It took really until the start of 2023 before there was serious thinking about what it would need to help the Ukrainians to win battlefield victories. So if you started to think harder about that a year earlier, then the Ukrainians might have been able to take much more advantage, for example, of the Karkiv breakthrough than they did. So there's lots of what-ifs here, but we are where we are. And Ukraine still has some fire advantages, but it doesn't have air power. Well, let me now press you then on that point about Zelensky, about his leadership of Ukraine and the support he's getting from the West. You were right in the book about his ability to galvanize world opinion and to draw military aid to Ukraine. Am I right in observing, though, that in more recent times Zelensky cuts a slightly frustrated figure, particularly when it comes to his relations with the US and Europe? What explains that? Yeah, I think, again, this could be overdone. The fact is that NATO countries are committed to Ukraine. It's not just the doctors doing it for Zelensky or doing it for Ukraine. They're well aware that if Russia was successful, the consequences for European security would be dire. And also the consequences for the credibility of NATO and the US would also be dire, having backed a country in this way, a country that is prepared to fight, still prepared to fight and sort of let it down. I mean, this is on a scale far greater than Afghanistan. This would be very bad indeed. So I think they're still committed. They say they're still committed. They're still making the issue is getting the budget through the EU and through Congress, where there are spoilers in both entities. But I think they'll do that if they don't. That adds to the difficulty. And a production where in the US, shell production is certainly picking up and can make a difference in the EU and UK. It's moving forward, but not anywhere near as quickly as they said it would and should have made it. So there are issues, there are practical issues. And Zelansky is very frustrated. I mean, he's in a very difficult position. There's always been going on a long time. And it takes its toll. Just he's held up pretty well. And also, of course, you're seeing tensions emerge within your Ukrainian society and politics and so on, which were suppressed or just secondary during the first months of the war, as everybody came together and seeing more tensions and divisions now. Not that surprising. But again, it's not that surprising. And therefore, I don't think we should assume it's this that brings Ukraine down. I don't think that's at the moment the risk. But it doesn't need the long-term support of the West. The moment I think that's there, it's not really an enormous burden on the West to support Ukraine. And at the moment, I don't see them stopping support. But you've actually got to turn the good intentions into practical deliverings. And you haven't mentioned the T-word, Laurie, Trump. Trump. So this confidence that you have in Western resolve, can that survive a Trump administration? Well, who knows? Possibly not. It's generally assumed that that's one of the things Putin's waiting for. Although he didis it himself. When he was asked that, he said when Trump was in power, sanctions on Russia were increased, which is actually true. But I wouldn't want to rely on Trump for anything, myself, because whatever Trump does, Trump does for his own narcissistic reasons. So I wouldn't assume anything. But I think nonetheless, it's at the back of everybody's minds. And I think that the Biden administration will do its best to get enough stuff to Ukraine that can keep it going for some time. But that's an issue. I mean, of course, if I think it's hard to imagine anything else of comparable impact, changes of government in the UK or we have our elections next year, it's not going to make any difference. The opposition is very supportive and so on. Germany doesn't have an election for a while. In any way, the Christian Democrats, I think, will support Ukraine. Who knows after Macron? But it's a Trump that's the question. You can have endless conversations with the Marathons about will Biden stand and what difference does all Trump's court cases make and so on and so forth. There's all speculations still a year to go. But it's silly to dismiss it as an issue. Well, let me offer something else then that might be of comparable impact. And that is the weight of numbers. I read recently that the average age of Ukrainian military recruits is rising pretty dramatically. And that national morale, if I can put it that way, is perhaps not as strong as it was at the beginning of the war. There's less willingness to join the military effort. And of course, the Russian economy, despite being heavily sanctioned, is not nearly as badly hit by this war as Ukraine, whose economy effectively collapsed upon the invasion. Is it just a question of Russia being able to bring more bodies to the fight, more equipment to the fight, and more economic weight to the fight and that that will eventually decide the question? Not necessarily. I mean, check the economy. The first Ukraine's economy was growing. I mean, it did contract enormously last year. It's growing. It's also got a bit of a war economy. There's money going in. The Western Ukraine is all booming in its own way. So it's not that the Ukrainian economy is on a complete downward path. I mean, there's a massive amount to be done with it and all the corruption issues and so on. And then if you look at the Russian economy, yeah, it's growing. I mean, first Russia, so long as Russia can export energy, its economy won't collapse when it can't support energy. And, you know, if the oil price goes down, it's in trouble. If it goes up again, it feels better. The Russian economy is on a war footing. But that means it's got labor shortages. It's got supply shortages. So what you're actually getting now is an overheating economy. It's growing. You've got to be careful because nobody actually knows fully the statistics of the Russian economy, but it's growing. But the inflationary pressures are now considerable. Interest rates have gone up to quite high levels. And you don't get any sense from polling in Russia of great enthusiasm for the war or optimism about the future. I mean, they can keep going and they're not going to collapse. And they basically offer sufficient financial incentives for people to keep on signing up. I think, you know, the point about the old Russian soldiers is true. The old Ukrainian soldiers is true. But that's partly because a lot of those that were drawn in in the sort of the first wave of mobilization were those with experience and therefore tended to be that much older. There's actually quite a lot of youngsters available. Many of them haven't been fully mobilized yet. So they do have more that can come in. They need training. And I think that's I don't think it's necessarily they're going to run out of people. They have to use, you know, in a more open society, the sort of losses that the Russians have incurred would be and should be totally unacceptable in Ukraine, throwing thousands of losing thousands of people over the last few weeks to take one place in Donetsk is is not something the Ukrainians would be prepared to do. So I think the challenge for the Ukrainians over the coming year is one of finding people to be sure, training those people, conserving those people. So accepting that the sort of ground offensives, which, you know, a year ago, they were starting to imagine as being decisive. You've got to put that out of their heads a bit at the moment. That's going to be very difficult. They need to find ways of fighting that gives them time to train people better, bring in more equipment, reinforce their positions. And that's not easy while the Russians are continuing to attack. So that I think is a challenge. It requires a different mindset. And I think that that's true. I think, you know, the Ukrainians one talks to, of course, you know, it's tough. It really is. But you don't get any sense of a lot of determination to carry on. It's just wearing, you know. And I think, you know, this is a people that's in the history of being through many horrible events, some of the hands of Russia, famine of the 30s and so on. There's a resilience and a resolution that I still think is there. But of course, it's not as, they're not as buoyed as they might have been if they were regularly giving the Russians a bloody nose. It's a much tougher fight. And it requires a much more realistic assessment of the situation in which they find themselves. Now, you spoke there, Laurie, about the Russian economy. And don't worry, I'm not going to ask you for an economic analysis, but the Western sanctions regime was quite unprecedented in its toughness. Never before had a great power been subjected to economic coercion and punishment on quite this scale, the swift payment system closed to Russian commerce, oligarch bank accounts frozen, access to foreign currency reserves blocked, imports of key technologies stopped. So I just wonder, do you think it's had any effect on Russia's behavior in the war? And can we form a judgment about whether these measures have worked? Yeah, I think the general assessment was that they worked to a degree, but clearly not enough. I don't think they were ever likely to work enough. I mean, I'm, I think I'm always a bit of a skeptic about what economic sanctions can achieve against an impoverished determined to find ways around them that's big, you know, is resource rich on its own terms has countries that are not prepared to enforce sanctions against them. It has held them up. It's great. It has created shortages of microchips and so on and so forth. They find work around, but they are work around. But it's very difficult. Anyway, a lot of the time, the role of sanctions is almost a political statement. This shows how cross we are with you. How can you expect this to do business with a country that is behaving so badly and so on? Any other questions about whether all the oligarchs were that worth sanctioning some of them? I think it was a misplaced view of Russian politics that these guys called the shots at all in Moscow for a very long time since they've done that. So I was always skeptical myself. And I think, you know, one of the problems was the belief that this could substitute for the hard material support for Ukraine, which is it makes much more different. So, you know, it hasn't helped Russia. It's turned Russia. And one of the things that's difficult to know is what sort of state Russia is going to be when it comes out of this. It's devoting a third of its economy to completely wasteful activity at the moment. There's still a lack of investment in other industries in the energy sector and so on. It's lost its customers in Europe. So for all these reasons, I'd be... I think it's too early to judge about the long-term impact. Putin in his speeches tends to enthuse about autarchy, you know, that it's great to be self-sufficient. But actually, it's pretty limiting to be self-sufficient in a way. So I think the long-term prospects have been quite damaging to the Russian economy, even though in the short term it's sort of booming on the basis of a sort of war economy. But, you know, the let down from a war economy can be quite brutal. Larry, I want to bring us back from the grand strategic level to the battlefield situation and some recent comments by Ukraine's senior military commander General Valeriy Zalushny, who described in an interview, described the war as being at a stalemate. And that caused some friction with his president, right? Who denied that term. What do you think? Is stalemate the right way to describe the war at the moment? I don't know the word stalemate for all sorts of reasons. Bad analogy from chess to start with. A stalemate in chess is the end of the game. And that's not what he means. He means deadlock, a lack of progress. And it's not static, the situation isn't static. But, I mean, that and the accompanying article he wrote were very candid, which I think is a good thing. I think I'd rather my generals were candid than sort of the cheerleaders like Shogun and Gerasimov on the Russian side. And, you know, what he's trying to think through are these really very important questions about how do you keep the war effort going, prepare for the long term when conditions are not particularly favourable in the short term. I mean, that's what he's trying to do. Zelensky's job clearly is to keep up morale and, you know, give his people hope. So I think he found the language, Zelumnian, adduced unfortunate. But, you know, this isn't unusual again in wars. And I think it's again, it's not unhealthy that you have these different perspectives. I think there is a problem in Ukraine in the, you know, Zelensky is a civilian with no military experience who's done a really good job in getting external support in embodying a fight and so on. But, yeah, he's still dependent upon his generals. And, you know, some of the generals, I mean, there are also divisions amongst the Ukrainian generals. I mean, it's normally put in terms of those very much of a Soviet mindset who are prepared to throw large numbers of people at a problem, a more modern reformist who are looking more for technical solutions to improve the military technology of Ukraine, and, you know, the thrust of a lot of the essays Zelumnian wrote to go with his Economist interview, proving electronic warfare, drones and so on, things like that. Which, you know, things like electronic warfare don't tend to get noticed very much, but have made a major impact on this, your ability to jam the drones or the four islands of the sky, the ability to spoof air defenses or whatever. All of these things are really quite important. So, it's fair to say, isn't it, Laurie, that he was describing in his comments and in his article something really quite similar to what you were talking about at the beginning here, which is the difficulty in modern military conditions for either side to make major breakthroughs against prepared defences. And he seemed to say that some kind of major technological breakthrough was required to get over, to break this stalemate. What do you think he meant? What is it about this war that makes it so difficult for either side to affect decisive breakthroughs? Well, the strength of the defense. I mean, if you're well prepared and you've got reserves and you're agile, you can defend. And so even if a bit of territory is lost, the cost of the enemy and the time it takes barely makes it worth it. I think it's going to be very difficult for either side to get a decisive military breakthrough. It could happen. It is possible to find points of weakness and vulnerability that allow you to push through, but it's hard. Because this is a very transparent battlefield. You know, drones are all over the place so people can see what's going on. But he was looking at things like electronic movements and drones and communications I mean, these are the sorts of things where you can do better. Personally, I think that they're important, but the training piece is also important. You're asking people without a lot of experience of this sort of warfare to do very difficult things. And that needs a lot of coordination, a lot of confidence in what other units are up to. They don't really have a good divisional level of command. It's just a gap. I think it's as important to use the coming months to try to improve that as it is to innovate. The innovation is important, but I think these things are also important. And you come back to this point about not winning. It's frustrating for the Ukrainians while Russians are still occupying their territory, but it's frustrating for the Russians too. And I think part of the challenge also for the next year is to add to the sense of frustration in Russia. In the end, it matters to them if they are not achieving their objectives. And we shouldn't just assume that they're the one sitting pretty waiting for Trump. I think Putin finds it pretty frustrating that after all this time and effort, he is still free and that he hasn't gained more ground. They've really put a lot of effort into taking more territory this year as well as the Ukrainians have and they've got very little to show for it. So, Laurie, as we come towards the close of our time, I just thought we'd lift our gaze towards that grand strategic level again. And I want to ask you about nuclear weapons and tell me if this is a reasonable characterization. There's a fascinating section of the book on nuclear weapons. And it seems to me that while nuclear weapons, thank goodness, no nuclear weapons have been detonated in this war, they certainly have been used in this war. What role have nuclear weapons played? Yeah, I mean, this has been one of the sort of constant themes of a lot of the public debate is that this will go nuclear very quickly. And I've never subscribed to that. The view I have taken is that nuclear weapons have been important in a sort of customary deterrent role. Putin has been absolutely clear that the role of nuclear weapons is to deter NATO from getting directly involved, fighting side-by-side with Ukraine, and Matti succeeded. NATO has not got directly involved, and when they're pressed to get so involved, as with the non-fly zones quite early on, that's the reason given. Equally, Russia has not attacked neighbors of Ukraine that are helping with its supply. That's also nuclear deterrence. Russia never directly threatened Ukraine with nuclear use. I mean, to start with it, they never expected that that would even be an issue, and it doesn't make an awful lot of sense, especially if you're aiming to subjugate Ukraine or consider this to be your territory. So I think it's been a debate that could have been conducted in a calmer way, acknowledging the role that the weapons play, accepting that we have been deterred in some ways because of Russian nuclear power, but not panicking ourselves into thinking that we dare not let Ukraine do well in battle. That's the suddenly prompt Putin to do something even crazier than launch the invasion in the first place. So that's where I began on nuclear weapons and where I still find myself. So accepting that we have been deterred, that's very interesting, and I want to just take us out of Europe and to the Asia Pacific region. It's commonly argued that the Ukraine war has given the Chinese some pause about the prospects of winning a military campaign over Taiwan. Could it be argued equally that it ought to give the Taiwanese some pause in the sense that the United States will be just as deterred from taking on another nuclear power just as it has been in the case of Russia? Yeah, I think they're both fair points. I mean, certainly, if I was Z, and some generals came bouncing up to me with some exciting plan for the decisive defeat of Taiwan, I hope the Russian experience would make me at least ask some questions about is this going to be so easy in practice? If the Taiwanese don't want us there, how easy is it going to be to impose our will? I think these still seem to be very basic and fundamental questions. I think you'd also be noting that the Allies held together, that NATO unity has not collapsed. But I think the American leadership has been in place and sort of worked. So all of those things I would have thought would be helpful. I think under any circumstances, a direct fight with the Chinese would be worrying for the Americans. But a lot of this depends on how you assume the Taiwanese scenario would unfold and does it start as a freedom of navigation issue and blockade issue and in a sense, would the Americans be daring the Chinese to attack American ships rather than the other way around? And so there's lots of very particular factors that would be involved. I'm sure the Chinese believe that the buildup of their nuclear capabilities reinforces their deterrent. But they've still got to work out, what's it worth? What is Taiwan really worth? Given they know that the U.S. has still got the ability to take out all Chinese cities. So I don't think... I still hold to the reasonably optimistic view that the effect of nuclear weapons is just to make people cautious when they come to clash with each other. Obviously, if that caution evaporates, then nuclear weapons mean you're in a much more calamitous situation. So Laurie, only time for one final question, and that's about your own thinking on this question, on the Ukraine war and on warfare, modern warfare more generally. I'm curious to know what have you changed your mind about over the course of the Ukraine war? What did you believe, say, 12 months ago, that you no longer believe? It's a fair question. I mean, look, I was... I was always prepared to believe that Putin would invade Ukraine. You couldn't dismiss the possibility that I always thought it was stupid, but I still think it was stupid. It was a foolish thing for Russia to do with catastrophic consequences for Russia and Ukraine, certainly for Ukraine. The reasons why I thought it was stupid I think remain relevant. It's very difficult to occupy even a chunk of another country, whatever your advantages, and over time it becomes harder, even if you... You know, you can build up your military forces. I guess... I've always found it difficult to try to work out how Putin would get out of this. And I was sort of optimistic in early September 2022 that the Russian military had been sufficiently embarrassed. Our insufficient difficulty that they really might try and cut their losses. That turned out to be just too optimistic. And by the end of the month, and certainly into October, I became pessimistic and I've been pessimistic ever since about an early end to the war. I mean, I don't think I was that... I've been that surprised by developments on the ground. I don't think I've... I think what we haven't talked about but it's interested me a lot is the role of cyber and so on. And again, to be honest, I don't find myself surprised by that or the limits of information campaigns. You know, my view of all wars is always to pay close attention to the political context, not just the operational issues, but other people know a lot more than I do about the operational stuff. And the... And as we've discussed, I mean, the hardest thing to get a grip on is that political context and to fully understand not why Russia did it but why it hangs in there and why nobody seems to be trying to find a way out on that side. So a lot of the debate in the West seems to assume that if, you know, some sense was knocked into Zelensky and realised he's never going to get this 80% of his country back and told, you know, now to first imagine his diplomacy, that he got a great Russian response but there's no evidence about it. So I'm puzzled still by all of that. I think it's a question of right or wrong and I'm just trying to evaluate the issue. So I think the challenge continually is in the politics. There are always operational surprises and the roles of just how important cheap drones have become. I don't think people fully predicted that. They didn't drone to be important. They imported thousands of cheap drones. I don't think people fully appreciated that and how that could compensate for the degrees for limits in air power. So the things we've learnt from this war that will be applied to future wars but it's the politics that always is hardest to fully get a grip on. Well Laurie, once again congratulations on the book and thank you for your time today. Thank you Laurie and thank you for joining us for the launch of Lawrence Friedman's Warfare Lessons from Ukraine. Once again the book retails for $12.99. Here in Australia it's available at all good bookstores and online. If you're joining us from outside Australia we recommend purchasing via penguin.com.au Thanks for joining us and see you next time.