 It's always a pleasure to join New America. Just in brief how I came about to write this book and what's at the core of this. The idea came to me when I was in Ukraine in February 2022 as the invasion started, as the tanks were rolling across the border and the first missiles were falling on Ukrainian cities. And it struck me that while the seeds of this had been planted and had been growing for some time, the decline in the relationship between the US and the Western Russia, but also Russia's growing aggression in Europe, that its decision to carry out a full scale invasion of Europe's largest country by size and population was a clean break with the relative peace and stability that we'd enjoyed since the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989, the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991, that we were in a new era here. And by the way, that era extends from Europe all the way to Asia, given the relationship between Russia and China and their shared interest, strategic interest, not short-term interest, but strategic interest in not just weakening the US, but also in either bringing down or greatly modifying the current rules-based international order because from their perspective, they see it as not in their interests, frankly. That invasion, I said on the air at the time that this is a 1939 moment and I continued that thought process as I was researching and writing this book and it's a central part of the book and I believe it to be true. Putin may not be Hitler, he has not been the architect of the Holocaust, though he shows no reluctance to kill civilians wholesale in Ukraine and elsewhere. But what he shares with Hitler in 1939 is a revanches view of history and a willingness to redraw the borders of Europe by force of arms. And the fact is we had warning signs about this. You go back to Georgia in 2008, he sliced off a piece of Georgia. Ukraine in 2014, he sliced off two pieces then without firing a shot. And other attempts to either subjugate, co-opt or weaken other countries throughout a coup attempt in Montenegro, the largest nation-on-nation cyber attack on Estonia in 2007, that the signs were there but this one took us into a new level of conflict and exposed the extent of Putin's willingness to take down that order. Now, in researching this book and even in those early days of pre-invasion and the early days of the invasion, there's not a single person I spoke to or interviewed for this book. In Europe, Asia, in US, Republicans, Democrats, intelligence agencies, Pentagon, you name it, who do not draw a direct connection between events in Ukraine and China's designs on Taiwan that both of them have a similar view of the world order. Both of them have already proven their willingness to redraw international borders. China did it without firing a shot in the South China Sea by gradually over time, taking over territory claimed by half a dozen nations, including nations that are treaty allies of the US and then building its own unsinkable aircraft carriers there in the South China Sea while lying about it all the time. So they've proven their territorial designs in Asia. Taiwan, of course, would be a different step because the fear, right, is that they carry out a full-scale invasion. Although as I detail in the book, there's more and more thinking that the more likely approach might be a boa constrictor strategy of encircling Taiwan and squeezing it through economic pressure and political pressure to come to the other side as it were. But the two are connected in that one, China and Russia do have a shared interest in breaking up, disrupting the current world order. They have declared a node limits partnership, which they announced just weeks before Russia's invasion of Ukraine. And in Taiwan, in Ukraine, in Europe and here in the US, the clear sense is that she is watching the invasion of Ukraine for lessons to be learned about his own designs on Taiwan, both military lessons. How is Russia's larger military faring against Ukraine's smaller military? What can they learn in terms of tactics, technology, but also what the world's response is, both in terms of how much it supports Ukraine against Russia and for how long? And does it run out of interest as it were? Does it lose patience? Does it show exhaustion over time, which you can make a pretty good argument? We're seeing play out right now regarding US support for Ukraine as we're many months into a delay in the renewal of US military aid there. But she looks at that and says, hmm, if he can get away with it ultimately, and by the way, far from clear that that's the case, but if Putin can get away with it, perhaps I can get away with it in Taiwan. Bigger picture, it's not just about Russia and China because as I described in the book, there are a whole host of middle powers that are aligning themselves with the various players here, with the great power players. You can look at North Korea and Iran as two glaring examples of that, both of whom, by the way, are supporting Russia militarily in Ukraine, Iran via drones, North Korea more recently with ammunition. And they are playing this game, not dissimilar from what we saw during the last war of who's allied with whom and on which side of the dividing lines between the great powers. Another follow-on effect of this is that, and a danger I think is that while this has parallels to the last Cold War, it has some marked differences that make the mix more dangerous. One of those is that you have three great powers now, not just two with the emergence of China, but you have fewer treaties. Russia has pulled away from two of the main nuclear arms reduction treaties, the INF, the ABM Treaty, which of course the US pulled out of because they said Russia was not abiding by it. There are no nuclear treaties with China regarding its vastly expanding nuclear arsenal. There are no treaties governing cyber warfare and cyber weapons, which all the great powers have and have deployed quite extensively around the world. In theory, there are treaties in space regarding weaponization of space, but doesn't appear that Russia or China are abiding by those given the kinds of space weapons they've been testing, including recent discussion of a Russian plan to put a nuke in space. So it's more dangerous because you have fewer guardrails to regulate the conflict and the standoff among the great powers, fewer communication lines too. I spoke to CIA director Bill Burns for the book and he described this new world order as being one in which we're playing without a net. We don't have those guardrails that we had in the past that could help prevent further escalation. And then a final piece of that is that as countries look at Ukraine's experience, they begin to believe that, well, perhaps nuclear weapons are something that we need. What distinguishes Ukraine from others who were not invaded? Nuclear protection. Add into that mix a choice in November, and this is key, it's a chapter in the book, between a Biden presidency, which would represent a relative continuation of what had been a bipartisan approach to the world and US alliances and US adversaries with one in Trump who has expressed open disdain for alliances such as NATO or the US defense commitment to South Korea and Japan. That gives voters an enormous influence on the direction of America's position in the world based on their choice in November, which of course has consequences far beyond the US. You have voters here making decisions that will be really strategic national security decisions for our allies in Europe, for instance, and allies in Asia. I spoke in great detail to several of Trump's former senior advisors, John Kelly, John Bolton, Matthew Pottinger, et cetera, and they describe a Trump second term as a 180 degree term from what America has, how it has generally approached the world for eight decades since World War II. And by the way, they describe him as having an affinity for dictators, which is, we saw in his last presidency and we've seen in his public comments as he runs for president again, which not just would represent a shift in America's position of the world and approach to great power competition, but would weaken the US because however superb a negotiator Trump imagines himself to be, these are strategic decisions by Russia and China to weaken the US, strategic decisions to weaken the international order. That's not, those are not gonna change based on the personality of the man in the man or woman in the oval in the oval office. So a brave new world, a new world disorder, I think you can argue, and one in which this November election will represent a major decision point for America's position going forward and how it reacts to and responds to this new era of great power competition. So that is the thesis in a nutshell. I will turn myself over to Peter's wise questioning. Well, you know, typically in US presidential elections, foreign policy can be almost, you know, not, you know, the debates, I think there was one between Al Gore and, you know, during that election and Bush and like foreign policy literally wasn't mentioned. It's not atypical for presidential debates not to get into foreign policy. But here we have Ukraine, the future of NATO and the war in Gaza, all of which in different ways will be front and center. And then a candidate Trump who's taken pretty strong position at least on Ukraine and NATO. So if the election was tomorrow, I think it's likely that President Trump would win based, you know, and obviously a lot of things can change. But so, you know, based on your discussion with people like John Bolton, Matt Pottinger, John Kelly, you know, he's privately threatened to take the United States out of NATO, you know, is that, and also there are no now attempts in the, on the hills to prevent that possibility. But there's another way, even if you have a legislation in place that will make it very hard, he can still say, I'm not going to come to the defense of Estonia or you mean, he's still the commander-in-chief. So what do you anticipate if he were to be elected? Well, Kelly Bolton, others I spoke to for the book believe he will leave NATO or attempt to in a second term. And they describe in detail his attempt in 2018, though short lived at the NATO summit then to take the US out of NATO then, basically out of just personal peak, right? There was no grand national security discussion. He was just angry and came back in a half and said, I wanted to pull out. So that was 2018, but they believe in a second term, which would be more purposeful from Trump's perspective, he would attempt to take the US out. Now, to your point, there's legislation requiring congressional action, et cetera. But also to your point, he could neuter NATO just by inaction. As you say, he's commander-in-chief. Tanks roll across the border into the Baltics, which by the way, Putin also says, do not exist much like he says, Ukraine does not exist as an independent state. And Trump can just make a decision that that's not our fight. And listen, these aren't secret conversations or positions. He said, in public the other day, Russia do whatever the hell you want if he perceives that they're not spending enough money. By the way, the Baltics are spending quite a large percentage above the 2% mark for NATO in terms of defense that have been very forward-leaning in their support of Ukraine, but that doesn't seem to enter into Trump's calculus in any sort of consistent way. So yes, they expect him to leave it. And if he can't leave it by fiat, he can neuter it by just refusing to abide by Article 5. And the same can be said for US treaty commitments to South Korea or Japan. Again, they're only as good as the credibility that both partners and adversaries invest in them. And that's another piece here just about nuclear proliferation that countries in Asia too might very well make what would be a not unreasonable decision that without an explicit and credible US commitment to their defense, that their best national security strategy would be a nuclear one. So a nuclear South Korea, a nuclear Japan, and then you can imagine the follow-on effects of that. Yeah, and as you sort of suggested, I mean, one of the lessons of the Ukraine war is don't get rid of your nuclear weapons if you have them. Yep. So one thing that's very interesting, this discussion of Trump versus Biden is also I think relevant to the question of Xi versus Putin. So I think the sort of zooming out a bit is the confrontation that the United States is having with China and Russia in different ways, which is by the way, as you well remember, in the Trump national security strategy just as much as in the Biden national security program, even if Trump himself may have personally different views. But is it sort of inherent in the systems in China? You were the chief of staff at the US Embassy in China as China was beginning to kind of move into this more aggressive posture. And or is it really down to Xi himself making certain decisions? That's what question one and then question two, just the same version of the same question, which is would a different Russian leader be making different decisions than Putin or is this really down to Putin? Well, in both cases, I think you can make a good argument that China is Xi today, much as today's Russia is Putin, that they have made the state themselves in effect, both of them have removed systems, constitutional protections to the extent that there were some term limits, for instance, in Russia, the role of the Politburo in China diminished that this is very much term limits in China as well broken through that they have both made themselves the state. So for as long as they last, this is the aspiration and this is the way and we have a good test taste of what they're willing to do to meet these ambitions. In China, the ambitions extend beyond the man Xi because a lot of these things have been in CCP statements and position papers and plans for some time, goals by 2049 to supplant the US economically. I mean, they're out there in public. I wrote about this in Shadow War too, that most of the stuff is not secret than it's not buried in dusty rooms and in the Forbidden City or in the Kremlin that these are, they've said out loud what their aims are and how they aim to achieve it. And then they've shown us through action. So we know what they're willing to do and we know what their ambitions are. What a different leader strike a different position. I think you could make a pretty good argument that yes, in China that at least less aggressively so, right? Because if you look at, for instance, the relationship between the US and China appreciate arguably more predictable, right? Doesn't take away the longer term ambition but certainly not as in your face. And then with Putin, Putin is just going back to 2007 that speech at the Munich Security Conferences. One by one made it very clear how he wants to deal with the West. Now, there are folks who look at Russia and particularly when we went back to the moment when Prugogen was marching towards Moscow and they say, listen, don't imagine that Alexei Navalny, God rest his soul will be the replacement for Putin, right? You can arguably swing further to Putin's right flank like the Narishkins of the world if he were to go. And I think you could make a similar argument for China. It's not like either of them has a viable, you know, open society or more moderate candidates out there. And by the way, both Putin and Xi have over the years destroyed anyone who even comes close to having the stature to challenge them. Long lists that look at Russia, Mikhail Hodorovsky, Boris Nemtsov, Alexei Navalny in China, Bo Xilai, Jack Ma, I mean, not not even exclusively political figures, but anyone who challenges authority, they get crushed. They get crushed. So, you know, these guys are, they are, you know, in it for themselves, in it to win it. And they believe they're the ones to do it. So in China, I mean, this change from having, in fact, I remember talking to a China expert, he said, you know, this two-term thing really kind of limits that power, the limits of the leader. And obviously she changed it now as, but also Xi seems to have really made, it was, was it more consensus-based when you were posted in Beijing? Or is it now just a one-man show? That was the thinking then, certainly, and it was. I mean, they had a deliberate division of responsibilities, right, to some degree, even within the Politburo, you knew the guy who was basically running the economy, right? The person who was basically running the security services, but she has, you know, greedily taken over, in effect, as the chief of all positions. So it's, listen, by the way, I mean, these were, these were all things put into place by China precisely to prevent the rise of another Mao-like figure. That's why you have term limits. It's why you had a functioning Politburo and Xi has done away with them. You know, I mean, Russia had some of the same things and Putin long ago did away with them. And by the way, in our country, we've shown a ability, a capability to do away with some of our own checks and balances and so on. So it's, you know, those things only exist as long as you keep them alive and well, right? And even one man can take them down or whittle them away. So the opening of the book is interesting on a lot of levels. It's the sort of basically the months before the Ukraine invasion, you were talking to lots of people who were telling you, this is coming. But I was struck by the skepticism. I mean, it's well known that there was public skepticism, even Zelensky himself didn't seem to believe that the invasion was happening. Forget about the Germans and others. And it was only the British and the Americans who really seemed to think this is really happening. And then there's this very interesting thing about putting the intelligence out there, which I thought was very smart to me, secrecy is not a policy. Secrecy serves policy. It's a policy is served by putting out this information. Even if it didn't really slow Putin down, it probably changed some things on the ground, right? But you know, there was a lot of, you mentioned skepticism from your own colleagues that this was happening, which I thought was interesting. It was happening into like who the specifics were. But why do you think that skepticism was, it's a holdover, I think you suggested in the book of WMD Fiasco and what is it? It's, I think it's a combination of things. I've been right up until hours before the bomb started falling. Some of my colleagues were saying I was in the pocket of US intelligence, right? And bring back a rock WMD, which by the way is absolutely fair piece of skepticism to bring back that said, these were fundamentally different in that you could see and they were declassifying images. You could see the forces arrayed along Ukraine's border. I mean, more than half of Russia's entire conventional force, some pieces moved from the far East, most of their fighter and bomber aircraft, most of their air defense units, field hospitals, et cetera, you could see it and there were intercepted communications among Russian commanders planning. So why the skepticism? I think some of it is legacy of a rock WMD. I think some of it is just a kind of natural, there goes America again, right? You know, that sort of thing. You know, which I've encountered, we've all encountered in Europe and other places. And by the way, the US, listen, it's been wrong sometimes, but it's also been right sometimes, right? And, you know, in this case, by the way, it was not an isolated low confidence assessment, right? I mean, this was five eyes intelligence. So close US partners had the same view of this, UK and others. France, I mean, Macron, as you know, as you were referencing, I mean, he was in, I mean, he was in Moscow days before saying, oh yeah, we could reach some sort of deal here. Well, the other thing that's different and certainly different about this particular war is you've got Maxar technologies, which is commercially available satellite imagery, which is, you don't need any spatula. I mean, Maxar was out there with, as I recall, maybe I'm wrong, pictures of what was going on at the border, which clearly was more than just a routine exercise. So there was publicly available information. You didn't need access to classified information to say something is going on here. Yeah, no question. And listen, on the Intel intercepts, you know, the US had already shown greater access and insight into Russia than I think we realize, going back to Russian interference in the 2016 election, right? They had a very good sourcing. We did some of the reporting on that, including a source within Putin's inner circle that formed the basis of part of that report there, as well as intercepted communications around that time. So they had had shown their ability to penetrate Russian communications prior. So there was reason to take those intercepted communications with seriousness. On the flip side, I mean, I say this in the book, you know, when I was in Beijing, I had a high level security clearance. I read intelligence reports regularly and anybody who's covered them as well, you know that these are imperfect pieces of information, often a lot of it, right? But imperfect assessments by imperfect people. So you don't, rarely are they all right. And sometimes they're flat out wrong, but like anything, you look at the depth and breadth of the indicators to get a sense of what you find more credible and not credible. And by the way, in this case, you know, the weakest part of the assessment was how the invasion would fare, right? Because the US intel assessment was that Ukraine would fall, Kiev would fall within days, that kind of thing. And lo and behold, actually they held out better than I think anyone expected. Well, and you know, I think, you know, it's better than anybody else, but they're called estimates. They're not called, you know, and so these estimates were, as it turns out, quite accurate. But I guess, you know, there's a distinction in the intelligence community between secrets and mystery. So secret that you can uncover is how many troops are on the border. History would be, well, what is Putin gonna do tomorrow about these troops? I guess what you're saying here also is, maybe we never really could get anybody, let's say in Putin's inner circle to answer that, but there were enough signals intercepts about that kind of indicated that something other than exercise was happening. Well, also, there were already a lot of facts on the ground in the years leading up to February 2022. He had busted through borders and redrawn them by force before. This was not the first time, 2008, 2014, other attempts. And he had said in 2007 that, you know, he viewed NATO as a threat and that, you know, talking about resurrecting the old Russian empire, et cetera. So it didn't come out of nowhere. And part of the argument I make in this book, and even going back to the shadow war, right, is that, you know, the sort of collective wisdom of the West, it took them a long time to recognize what was right before their eyes, right? Which is a quite a territorially aggressive power with the willingness and the capability to use military might to achieve ends. And, you know, so the intelligence was a piece of that broader analysis, you know. Some of the assessment, right, was what he'd already done and what he said he's willing to do. Yeah. So, I mean, I want to ask you a couple of questions about the reporting for the book. So you are in the book as a pretty major character. I mean, it's really about how you were talking to people and was finding these things out and like, you know, did you make, what was the decision-making process around that? Because it seems to me that when you're writing a book, the two ways to do it, one is to keep yourself out entirely unless you have to put yourself in or you put yourself in a fair amount. You can't really do it. I feel like it doesn't really work if it's sort of a mix of both. It's either you're in or you're out as a character. So what was your decision-making process around that? Well, for one, when I write these things, I think it helps to take people to the places where things are happening, right? And to do that, I need to go there, right? And see it for myself. Well, I mean, and I was there anyway for my job covering the Russian invasion of Ukraine. But as I was doing my research for the book, I was like, okay, I got to go see how NATO is adjusting to this new world order. So let me get out on a NATO exercise in the Baltic Sea up to this new frontier and see how they're behaving and also see how to what extent European countries are changing their defense postures and investments. And this, for instance, this Baltic patrol that I went on had six or seven different nations who you typically don't associate with the most forthright defense policies, right? Portugal, Spain, but they're there. And clearly speaking to their commanders, there's been a shift in attention and attitude towards the Russia threat. With Taiwan, got to go to Taiwan, got to go to the Punghus where the Navy and Army and Air Force units are positioned and making plans and carrying out exercises. So what is the Punghus? The Punghus are tiny archipelago just to the east of Taiwan, which would be the first line of defense, right? In the event of an invasion. And that's where they have, for instance, Magong air base and some of the naval bases. Firstly, you know, front lines in effect, if there were to be a full-on D-day style invasion. But I went to these places because I wanted to see it for myself and then I wanted to bring readers to those places as well as it's happening and meet real people, not just folks sitting in air conditioned offices in DC making decisions about this, right? But folks who are out there experiencing it or going to Estonia. I think it's particularly important in a book like this because there's a vastly different view of the Russia threat, depending on how far east you go in the alliance. The Eastern partners certainly take it far more seriously. By the way, we can call them alarmists, but they were living under the Russian yoke like yesterday, right? I mean, this is 25 to old men like you and me, Peter. It's a truck in the bucket. When, you know, Estonia, I speak to Kaya Kalas, 1991, they got their independence. So they have a very real visceral experience of what it's like to live under Russian power. Another question about the reporting in the book, I mean, you've got on the record, Bill Burns, the CIA director, Tony Blinken, the secretary of state and other senior members of the administration. And usually in a sort of Washington book, like a Woodward book, you know, everybody's not really clear who said what. I mean, I'm sure they mostly said what they said, but I mean, this book, you've got people to go on the record. Did you have long conversation with them and go back to them and say, can I clear this with you or how did that work? I mean, with all of them, you know, or Richard Moore of MI6, Mark Milley, some of them, particularly when you think Bill Burns and more, you know, the Intel guys typically are much less likely to go on the record. But I don't know if I demanded it, but I said I did want them to be on the record as much as possible because I just think it helps in terms of credibility. And I think, listen, it's not just my great charm or hard work that led them to do so for big portions of the book. I think that it's a reflection of how seriously they're taking this threat and that they do want the world to know how seriously they're taking this, how they're adjusting to it and also what paths to solutions they see, right? You know, both Burns and Moore speak very, consistently about we need to open communication channels, you know, that we need to be talking to each other to prevent small incidents from escalating into something bigger. You know, that's some of that's direct messaging across the, you know, to the other side, to the other side of the lines and to their own people, I think to let folks know that they're thinking about this in a not entirely hostile way. Looking for paths to peace, as I call that chapter. So I think it's a combination of one, I wanted to have them on the record for as much as possible, but also they want to be on the record because they want to message, they want to message some of that. And this does seem to be a kind of new approach in the Biden administration, you know, being much more comfortable about putting classified information, declassifying information if it serves American policies. Which I think is smart. I mean, we have this $60 billion intelligence enterprise, it works for the American public. Secrecy isn't a policy, it serves policy. So I think this is a healthy development, but it's interesting, as you say, CIA directors in office rarely go on the record about a lot of things. So that was great. To that point, they realized that, you know, part of this standoff is an information war standoff, right, that you have to play, listen, if China and Russia, as we know they are in North Korea and Iran to some degree too, interfering in our politics and, you know, interfering in elections and so on, you know, these are influence operations, they're information operations, and the US has to play in that field as well, otherwise you get crushed. And I mean, give the example, I spoke about this in the book a bit, prior to the invasion, Russia had all these false flag plans coming to be like, you know, set off a car bomb in Eastern Ukraine, say it's Ukrainian terrorists, and we have to come in and do a policing operation to, you know, kind of, you know, pacify the country. The US exposed those plans before they happened to just, you know, defang them. I mean, in the part of the book where I talk about the severe concern about a Russian nuclear strike in late 2022, part of that too was an information up by the Russians where they were creating this whole fiction of a Ukrainian dirty bomb plan that was coming, and the US looked at that, and that was part of their intel picture on Russian thinking on a nuclear strike was that they thought that was gonna be the false flag to say, oh, it was Ukraine who like carried this out or we were responding to a Ukrainian radiological attack. So, you know, some of it's playing in that information space. We'll go into that story in a bit more detail, Jim, so because you wrote about it at cnn.com and it's some of the news that's in the book. So, this is late summer, early fall, 2022 and a combination of things were happening and a combination of pieces of intel came together that led the US to believe Russia was very seriously considering the use of a tactical nuclear weapon or more than one in Ukraine. And here was the collection of indicators. One, Russia was losing ground in the South. They were losing Hursan, which had been their biggest prize in the invasion so far. There were thousands of Russian forces who were retreating and were in danger of being surrounded. And the concern in the US administration was that the loss of those forces, either killed or captured or both, would be considered such a blow to the invasion effort that Russia might calculate it. It needed a tactical nuke to reverse that momentum. Now, Jim, one other quick question about that. So, in Russian nuclear doctrine, if the Russian state is threatened, they are allowed to use nukes. Now, if in their own sort of view of the world, that this part of Ukraine is actually part of Russia, that would allow them, from a doctrinal point of view, to use nuclear weapons. That plus, so territory, they claimed is Russian and when the man is the state and if the loss of the war is such a threat to Putin's whole raison d'etre as leader, that was also a piece of it to say that he might calculate, this is my regime under threat, so therefore I can use this. So, you have the Russian retreat in the South, danger of troops being surrounded. You have this false flag being very aggressively shared international by senior Russian officials, including Sergei Shoigu, submitting a letter to the UN Security Council about a Ukrainian dirty bomb radiological attack. You had, in addition to that, the collection of intercepted communications which showed Russian commanders speaking about this possibility. And then you had this added piece of uncertainty where because they're tactical nukes and smaller and can be fired from conventional systems, the US wasn't, they had not detected movement of nuclear weapons or forces, but they weren't certain they'd be able to detect them. Size and so on. So that collection of things led them to believe this could very well happen. Throw into the mix that Russia had been rattling the nuclear saber publicly for some weeks and months leading up to it. So they began preparing rigorously for this possibility I was told, quote unquote, and that included direct communications with between US and Russian counterparts, Bill Burns flew to Turkey to meet Sergei Norishkin, Millie called Garasimov, Blinken called Natlavrov, our partners called their counterparts, but also Blinken described to me how they said, here's an opportunity to use unconventional allies in this, and that was China and India because they believed that China and India were just as loath to see the uncorking of the nuclear bottle in Europe or anywhere in the world as the US was. And as it played out, the US believes, and some of this was public, that India and China did not only pressure Russia but that that pressure worked. You had the Indian foreign minister speaking publicly about this. You had India cancel a meeting at a high level with Russia at the time. You had Xi Jinping during a meeting, a visit by Olaf Scholz released a joint statement on China's strong desire for there to be no nuclear conflict, but the US believes that that full court press, including folks they don't normally work with, helped push them back from the brink and push us back from the brink, but apparently from their telling, it was pretty darn close. So you spent a lot of time in Ukraine, you were there at the beginning of the war. There's a raft of academic literature about when people make peace. And usually, I mean, short of total annihilation of the other side, it's a mutually hurting stalemate. When both sides realize we're in a stalemate, it's hurting us both. This is like, so A, sort of, are we there? And B, what would the red lines be for? To be exact, we can, like, Putin's red lines certainly seem to be Crimea, it's not something he's gonna give up, I don't think. Yeah, and then Silesia has people, I mean, most Ukrainians and maybe ultra-nationalists who, he has certain red lines, but at the end of the day, a peace agreement is not, everybody has to give up something or an armistice agreement or whatever it will be. What do you think that might look like? Is it plausible? Or is everybody just waiting for the 2024 election before even this kind of discussion becomes real? Well, already last year, as I was doing interviews, you had folks talking about Ukraine fighting for a negotiating position, right? That there was some acknowledgement in private, largely that, listen, Crimea is probably a bridge too far and eventually we'll have to come to some sort of agreement, but we're never gonna push Ukraine to do it and we'll let them decide when is right. What's changed in the last six, nine months is that as the US has backed off support and there's an open question as to whether this aid ever gets passed, I gotta tell you, like every other day on the air, we talk about Johnson's plan, but it's just not clear to me it's a priority for him and for some Republicans, they very much wanna block it and the GOP nominee just doesn't want it to happen. So that combination of things could eventually kill it entirely, but now with that delay at least, the Russian calculation seems to be we can wait the Ukrainians out. Putin may have always believed that, but now there's no sign. That he believes he's gonna lose this anytime soon. He's gonna send more soldiers, can and father and field. There's big concern about another partial mobilization now that he's won his fake election and make a push in the spring to see if they could break through. So the dynamic has changed and it's hard to see how under those circumstances and Putin said as much the other day, right? Why would now be a time to negotiate when they're running out of ammunition? And then his perception and our perception should be, frankly, based again on public statements and what Trump's former senior advisors told me and others is that a Trump presidency support, effective support for Ukraine is most likely to end. So it's a good bet for Putin to hold out at least until November to see if he can get a more pliable sitch person in the White House. And I guess, you know, Stalin famous, he said that quantity has a certain quality of its own. So, you know, Russia has three times the population and it, you know, and I mean Zelensky, I think it's just at some political cost to himself. I was surprised to learn that the average age of Ukrainian soldier is 40. Yeah. And, you know, so they've just, I think, lowered the compulsory military service age from 27 to 25, which was politically, I think, quite hard. Zelensky himself has some, probably some political problems about, you know, like if this war just seems like going on forever and you're doing things that are politically difficult, like lowering the conscription age. So what does it, I mean, what does it look like for him? I mean, maybe it's impossible to answer. Well, I mean, he's, people talk about political pressure here and the relative political pressure is just not comparable, right? So, you know, as one democratic lawmaker told me on the air recently, he said, you know, what, a lot of the Republicans he's in the house, he speaks to, we'll say in private, yes, we need to help Ukraine. They won't say it in public because they're worried about Trump tweeting against them or primarying them, right? So that's one, that's one level of political pressure. As someone described Zelensky's political pressure to me, they said, he's got to deal with, whatever the figure is, 200,000 grieving mothers, right? If he makes an agreement that slices off 40% of the country, you know, that sons and daughters have been dying for, right? In any sort of agreement, he's got to explain to them what were they fighting for, right? So his level of political pressure is just an order of magnitude larger. On the other hand, as you say, in the history of human conflicts, right? If you don't have a signing on the USS Arizona, right? If you don't have that complete capitulation kind of thing, then you have some sort of agreement and some sort of, you know, I was, so who's describing this to me the other day? Post-Korean War, the US defense commitment, and to this day, 70 some odd years later, is to come to Korea's defense up to the territory controlled on Armistice Day. So in other words, the security agreement was up to that border, right? Not beyond. And that if you look at agreements like that, or even, you know, North and South Vietnam, you know, during that war that you could see a US or Western defense commitment to Ukraine that does not extend the territory controlled by Russia, right? Which is an effective recognition of Russian gain. So there's precedent for that now. And I think what you're seeing now is more public discussion of that, whereas it used to be just purely private discussion. Question from the audience. Why does the US push Cuba into dependence on Russia and China rather than using our geographic, cultural, and economic advantage while respecting their sovereignty? I mean, no, yeah. I mean, Cuban American voters in Florida, right? I mean, isn't it as simple as that? I don't, I'm more a national security guy, but that seems to have been the calculation for years. And, you know, has that national security policy, has that policy succeeded from a national security perspective? No, doesn't seem it has, but the political calculation seems to be, can't make any, I mean, I don't know, what would squeeze it? You know, the embargo clearly hasn't worked. I don't know what the solution to that is, but it strikes me that politics are a major driver of that policy. Well, speaking of embargoes or sanctions, you know, United States has sanctioned Russia up the Wazoo. There were already a lot of sanctions in place after 2014. Now they've gotten even bigger, but the Russian economy is doing pretty well. I was surprised to read in the FT for a number of reasons. One, the Keynesian effect of a lot of military spending, obviously they've got a lot of oil, people are buying the oil. So, I mean, if you're all looking at from Putin, Putin, of course, has won unsurprisingly in the landslide in the election. Ukraine war is going not badly for him. You know, he's got till 2036 potentially to be remaining power. How's it looking from his point of view? Yeah. What might entrain me with? You know, we talked about China and India during the nuclear scare, you know, fine. They certainly have not hesitated to buy Russian oil. And that is funding the war effort that's propping up the economy and his leadership. So that's direct support to him and the regime and the war effectively. And I mean, and their oil imports from Russia, and I can't quote the figures off the top of my head, but it's not just like up 10%. I mean, it's like double triple. If it's, you know, their factors, it's multiplied. And in addition to other economic support that China, for instance, has given Russia, if it hasn't shipped tanks or ammunition, it certainly shipped dual use technology and other things that support Russia. So with those, with that kind of, that has blunted the effect of economic sanctions. Which shows the, you know, the fundamental weakness of sanctions as a primary tool of foreign policy, right? And it's become, you know, a primary tool for the US, not just related to Russia or China, but Iran and North Korea, right? And I mean, all the things those sanctions were supposed to do in terms of weaken those, or look at Cuba, weaken those regimes or even restrict their military development does not seem to have worked, right? I mean, all it took North Korea was to have a Russia willing to give them missile technology, right? And then with these new relationships that we're seeing in this new era, that cooperation only grows. I mean, the concern that a lot of officials I spoke with is what is the quid pro quo for North Korea and Iran for supplying what they have to Russia and Ukraine? For North Korea, the most obvious would be missile technology, they already got the nukes, but I'm sure they would appreciate more help. Iran certainly would love the nuclear help. China would love better access to Russian submarine technology which China is behind on, but would love to have to extend their power around the world. So that kind of, you know, both economically and militarily keeps this, you know, keeps this churning. You talk about the return of great power, what that's the name of your book. I mean, by implication is that, you know, the obviously post-911 with the war on terror was sort of the defining national security framework. Yeah, at the same time, you know, we had the attack in October 7th and you know, that's probably the most significant change in the Middle East since the United States invaded Iraq in 2003. We also had the ISIS KK attack in Moscow which killed at least 43 people, which demonstrates I think that, you know, sort of this terrorism threat is sort of still out there. You know, Hamas, you just mentioned earlier that it seems Hamas did this attack with no support from Iran or anybody else. You know, if Iran has supported them in the past. So how do these sort of, you may also mention middling powers, we talked a little bit about it, but what about these, you know, groups like Hamas which is 30,000 people in terms of fighters and not a big force and yet it's really kind of reordered the Middle East in kind of unexpected ways. And in fact, we, the United States and the Chinese, maybe even the Russians have an interest in this thing, the Middle East not just blowing up. So certainly the Chinese have, the Chinese are highly dependent on, you know, I think Saudi Arabia is the principal buyer of Chinese oil. So they do not want, they are concerned about the Red Sea, the Houthis, et cetera. So these non-governmental, these smaller non-state actors to use terrible term, you know, how does this fit into the return of the great powers? So I mean, a couple of thoughts come to mind on, you know, Russia, I think of Russia's relationship with Hamas. They had the Hamas leaders visit the Kremlin, you know, multiple times prior, and I believe since October 7th. So, you know, they look at that. They sent an S 300 system to Hezbollah after October 7th. Russia likes to stir the pot and they see chaos is serving their interests, particularly when it mires the US in difficulty and conflict or a US ally in Israel. So that's part of Russia's kind of spoiler way of operating in this new world order, but it's interesting. China, so you look at the Houthis, China benefits from open shipping lanes in the Red Sea just as much as we do, but China and Russia made this deal with the Houthis, don't strike our ships and did nothing to take part, you know, in any US operation to take out Houthi capabilities, which to me, it just struck me as a great representation of great power politics today. In other words, free passage for my ships, but not for yours, screw you guys. I'll make my own deal, which is also, I mean, not only is it cynical and zero sum, it's also arguably self-destructive in that China has benefited from open shipping lanes in Asia and its economy benefits from that and its economy benefits from trade with the US and so on. So to make that kind of calculation seems to be pretty short-term, not long-term, and yet we're in this era, you know, it's not, there's nothing warm and fuzzy about the way the great powers are dealing with each other, even as these mid-league powers, you know, kind of flex their muscle. China had the sort of COVID kind of economic collapse, they still have a very statist economies, you know, their real estate crashes sort of in process and probably will affect their banking system and they're not well-liked around the world. I mean, negative views of the Chinese are at record highs. Belt and Road turns out to be, people suddenly realize that, hey, these loans are pretty usurious. And so, you know, a weakening China, that won't necessarily, you mentioned 2049, which I think is the 100th anniversary of the founding of the CCP or whatever, that their goal is to overtake the United States. I mean, A, is that really plausible with the trajectory there on, particularly with the demographic implosion that they're suffering? And B, does it make them more difficult, you know, kind of potentially more dangerous or less dangerous or we just don't know? Yeah, well, I think, and I say this in a book and I've said this a lot, you know, as I've been talking about it, is that we don't want to look at Russia or China as 10 feet tall, right? They have enormous weaknesses, arguably getting worse in some respects, to your point, China's economy is leveled off and far earlier than other developing economies. If you look at when Japan leveled off, the per capita income was many multiples of where China is today. And that demographic crunch is only going in one direction. They've tried to modify the one child policy. Turns out Chinese people aren't interested in that. So they've got weaknesses, they've got a massive debt bubble at home, over dependence on big infrastructure investment, that sort of thing. And then Russia is, you know, to quote McCain, it's a gas station masquerading as a power, although it does have more nuclear weapons than anybody in the world. But in terms of projecting power in other ways, you and I, we don't buy Russian cell phones or cars or we don't buy Russian anything. And by the way, Russia just lost one of its most vibrant energy markets in Europe. Germany cut off, quit cold Turkey, which is pretty remarkable. When we talk about the great costs that we have endured in this war, there's nothing compared to what Europe has done. They've had to find entirely new energy suppliers that's impacted costs and profitability to a degree that we just, this hasn't touched us. So, you know, those are weaknesses for them. And I, you know, just personally admit, maybe this is idealist in me, but I think history backs this up, right? Is that regimes like Russia's and China's tend to be brittle over time, right? They don't last forever. So... Yeah, but they can do a lot of damage. Sure. They can do a lot of damage. By the way, listen, we have our own quite visible rot in our own system. It's not on the same scale. So we have a lot of work to do at home. And in fact, Mark Milley talks in the book a lot about the threat of the lack of domestic cohesion in this country, that that makes you an easier target, right? Makes you weaker. If you can't agree on basic values and America's basic role in the world, or if you're demonizing each other internally to a degree that you once left for genuine adversaries, right? I mean, the Republican nominee is talking about the other side wants to destroy America, right? So it's, you know, we have our own problems at home. The final question from the audience. How great a danger is U.S.-China confrontation in the South China Sea when the United States has an explicit obligation to the Philippines and a strategic partnership with Vietnam? I mean, so what do, how do you score? I think you'd say the U.S. already lost there. And, you know, whatever its commitments to those partners. And yes, we still sail our ships and fly our planes over there to establish their international waters. But those islands, those unsinkable aircraft carriers are not going anywhere. And the U.S. got snowed on it, right? You know, you'll remember Xi Jinping told Obama I will not militarize while he was militarizing the islands. And I, you know, a lot of this started while I was in the embassy in Beijing and it always amazed me how much, you know the U.S. just underestimated the threat there and punted on it. You saw a whole host of activities beyond the South China Sea of what showed what China's intentions were. It starts with the fishing boats and then the, you know, the coastal patrol ships. And before you know it, you've got dredgers and then runways and surface to air missile installation. So I kind of feel like they lost that one, you know? And it's... Well, that's a pretty striking thing to say. They've already, the United States has already lost that one. I don't see how you reverse it, you know? Manufactured territory in the South China Sea. So it should be a cautionary tale for what China might try to do in Taiwan whether it's full-scale invasion or encircling. Well, one final question for me. So is that their version of kind of the Monroe doctrine which is this is going to be ours and we don't want anybody else in them? Yeah, I mean, listen, folks have made that argument, right? I mean, that China should have is, you know, and China, you know, you talk about the first island chain, the second island chain. So how far does that go? I remember when I was in the embassy, you know, folks would say China doesn't really have global ambitions. They, you know, in terms of a Navy, they want to keep it close to home, which was BS, right? I mean, when that aircraft carrier, remember the first one they got from Ukraine notably that, you know, at the time, there were folks in the government who said, that's just an ego piece for them. They're not going to use it. Well, lo and behold, they've very much want to create a credible aircraft-based kind of force and, you know, with somewhat global ambition. So we've misread them and underestimated them a number of times. And part of the message of the book is you've seen and heard what both these powers are willing to do. I'm going to try to readjust to it. The book is the return of great powers. Jim, thank you very much. Buy the book, everyone. And thank you, Jim. Thanks so much, everybody. Thank you, Peter. And thanks to all of you. Bye.