Eric Edelman: A Struggle Between Democracy and Tyranny

Hi. This is Bill Crystal. Sitting in for Charlie Sykes for this special Bulwark podcast on December twenty second, day after President Zelensky’s speech to Congress and at his meeting with President Biden and first conference and President Biden. Very pleased to have Eric Edelman, the host of shielded of the republic. Very qualified to discuss the meaning of the Zelensky visit, but also the broader question of where we stand in the war.

In Ukraine and the broader implications of it. Eric obviously served very senior positions in the US government and the state department and defense department and White House. Does a lot about how these presidential business go and and also does a lot about Russia and Ukraine. So perfect guess. So, Eric, thank you for joining me.

Bill, it’s great to be with you this morning. So let’s get right to the chase because we we have a lot to discuss this pretty amazing day yesterday. Didn’t you think what you think about the speech, the visit? You’ve seen many of these in your career?

Not like this one. This really was, I think, an incredibly historic and important visit Zelensky was clearly coming here to shore up support in the capital of his most important international patron in the middle of the most consequential war in Europe since the end of the second world war. And in that sense, it really does bear I think, comparison to two other historic milestones, one of which many of people have observed, which is the speech that Winston Churchill made to the United States Congress in the aftermath of the attack on Pearl Harbor during his two week visit to Washington, in December and January of nineteen forty one and forty two, but I would also, in its moral sense, compare it to the speech that Vauxhall of Havel gave to a joint session of Congress in February of nineteen ninety after the fall of the Berlin Wall and the collapse of the communist block in Eastern Europe and the triumph of the velvet revolution in Czechoslovakia in November of nineteen eighty nine. And I think Zelensky’s speech compares favorably, I would say, to both speeches historically. I mean, I I went back and checked the record, and Churchill was interrupted seven times by applause by the joint session of congress, drew a particularly big roar when he said of the Japanese, what do these people think were made of?

But Zelensky was interrupted by standing Ovation twenty three times in a twenty six minute speech. Which gives you a sense of the strength of the as he put it, bipartisan, by camera support that he got. And I think he did not hit a wrong note by the way Churchill did. I mean, I I think both you and I yield to very few people in our admiration for Winston Churchill, but Churchill in his speech actually tried to go back and talk about the interwar period and American isolationism and there were a lot of folks on both sides of the isle who had been part of that isolationist tradition between the wars who kind of sat on their hands. During the speech and didn’t applaud Churchill as raucously as Zelensky got, you know, greeted.

So it really was an incredibly historic moment.

Yeah. God, I didn’t think I’d be here hosting a podcast and we’re criticizing Winston Churchill. But, you know, I suppose that wasn’t maybe his politics because he as he could have been to maybe he wanted to really bring home to people that was kind of a mistake, you know. Kind of a good lesson for the next eighty years actually. It’s not that he was wrong.

He was right. Right. No. Of course. That’s the problem.

Right? In politics, it’s usually the things you say that are right that are most worrisome.

Well, people can’t forgive you for pointing out that they were wrong. Oh,

that’s pretty yeah. We’ve learned that the last few years. Right? Yeah.

The Havels which

I hadn’t thought of at all, and I I guess I was in the White House then and I don’t really remember it. I mean, that’s so interesting that you thought of that though. The

thing that struck me about Zelensky’s speech last night was it didn’t have the kind of rhetorical flourishes, obviously, the Churchill would bring to the table. And by the way, FDR had to go deliver state of the union a week or two after Churchill, and there was a lot of concern in the White House that Churchill had up staged, Ebola, Roosevelt, did quite well in that speech. And actually Zelensky made a reference to that speech. But in a novel speech, it was not just about kind of the war as Churchill’s speech was a novel speech was sort of an elegy to the end of the cold war and talked about the importance of truth versus lies and the importance of the the moral as opposed to the material. And, actually, your mother, Richard Hemmelfarb, the late great historian of Victorian Britain, wrote a really terrific essay about Marx and Hegel and Havel’s speech.

I mean, she was drawing that only on Havel’s speech obviously, but our friend Frank Fukiama’s essay that had appeared that fall on the end of history. What she said seems to me to be very Apropos. She finished the last words of her essay, very Apropos for what happened last night. And it says, the real movement of history it turns out is fueled not by matter, but by spirit, by the will to freedom. And I think what Zelensky incarnated last night, you know, on

the floor of the US Congress was the will of the Ukrainian people to freedom. No. That’s terrific. I I should tell our listeners that you and I didn’t coordinate this ahead of time, and I’m I don’t actually remember that. Let’s say, in that way, we’ll go back I have this podcast.

There’s so much work to do this afternoon. I have to go back and read Havel’s speech and read my mom’s essay and put the sound app. So what about the visitors as a whole? I mean, you’ve been I said you’ve seen many of these very close-up and then, of course, also as an ambassador looking back at the US when when maybe where the president or one of your countries would visit and so forth. So what struck you about the president Biden and the Oval Office meeting, the press conference?

Well, before we completely leave the speech,

I mean, this is both, I think, a function of the speech, but also the photo ops and the joint press conference that President Zelensky and President Biden held as well as what I believe were the messages that Zelensky delivered in his private consultations with leaders in congress, particularly Kevin McCarthy. And I think that the messages were the following. First, thanks an expression of gratitude for all the support almost twenty two billion with the addition of the one point nine that president Biden announced. Yesterday of military assistance to Ukraine, plus the financial assistance. So expressing the gratitude, not just of Zelensky personally, but of Ukrainian people to the United States, very, very important.

Second was a statement that despite the disproportionate material resources between Russia and Ukraine, and all the doom and gloom that, you know, accompanied the initial invasion, February twenty fourth, where people thought the Ukrainians would fold up and no time against this Russian assault. He delivered the message as he said in the speech. Ukraine is still alive and kicking. And has every prospect if it continues to get support of victory, very important message, I think. He framed it very well as did Biden in the press conference as as struggle between democracy and authoritarianism and tyranny and for a liberal rules based international order where no sovereignty is respected and territorial aggression is resisted.

Nonetheless, I think he also made an argument that despite all the port and the large s that Ukraine has benefited from, it still needs more. And finally, I think in a very important argument, as he framed it in the speech. This is not charity for the Americans. This is an investment in international security and democracy. And even at a hundred billion dollars, the destruction of Russian military power that that has accomplished is

a bargain, I think, by anyone’s estimation. So that’s just such an important point from a even for a realpolitik point of view, if you assume Russia’s not a friend, which seems like a good assumption, a little weaker Russia’s better for the world and better for us. As a pure kind of cost benefit trade off, it’s, yeah, it’s a good point to make. People don’t make that point enough.

Absolutely. And I think he framed it very well. And he he also look, I mean, part of rhetoric is an appeal not just to reason, but to the emotions. And so I think he very effectively, you know, tied, you know, the battles in Ukraine to historical battles in American memory. I mean, he had talked about the battle of the Bulge when American soldiers repulsed the Nazis, which was a a way of getting in the point that the real Nazis here are are the Russian forces that are entering Ukraine and creating territorial aggression against Ukraine as opposed to the alleged, you know, Nazis in Ukraine that Putin and his propagandists keep talking about.

It was a I thought a nice way to connect with Americans. And then he talked about the battle of Saratoga, which was of course crucial battle in our own revolution. The importance of which probably was lost on most of his listeners, frankly, but the point there was that after the battle of Saratoga, when the Americans defeated General Burgoyan’s effort to divide the colonies, France came in as an ally of the United states and provided from that point on about ninety five percent of the shot and powder that were used in the revolution absolutely crucial to American victory there. So an important, I think, connection to to an American audience. And he also made two other points in speech, I think, that are worth touching on for a second.

One is the emerging Iranian Russian alliance knowing full well that there are very few countries in the world who scored as negatively with American audiences, Iran. But also making a point which could have gotten lost in all of this that the Russian public, as he put it, is being poisoned by the Kremlin, making the case that, you know, this is not a war against Russians. It’s a war against Putin’s regime, really. And that I think

was an important point to make as well. No. That’s good. I mean, you really bring home, I think, how much she said. In a very in a short speech, you know, twenty six minutes with all the applause interruptions, probably twenty minutes of reading or something like that.

But he he made those points and did so sort of tertiary, but also effectively. And yeah. So in that respect, the speech when you first crossed, I found was I mean, his English isn’t perfect, and the pronunciation isn’t always quite as easy to understand and and say it was of course moving and no question about that, but one sort of didn’t quite appreciate the artistry and it maybe until you go back and look at it a second time and and and a lot of themes that can be developed by friends of Ukraine here and, of course, by he’ll continue to emphasize over there. No.

I agree. I mean, it wasn’t as fluid as as Churchill or Havel, but, you know, the authenticity of Zalenski as a person. I think him across very well. Now look, it’s helped by the fact that, you know, he he has training as an actor. I mean, that does hurt, I mean, didn’t hurt Ronald Reagan either.

And so he knows how to rise to, you know, these moments. On the other hand, I think he was genuinely moved by the massive standing ovations that he received so many times during the course of the speech, and you could see that. I think in his face as he was speaking. It was a very moving moment.

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So

let’s talk

about the rest of the visit. There was a private meeting which we’ve gotten a little bit of readout from and then the press conference. Yeah. Well, let me

start by stipulating that, thank God, Joe Biden was a blanket president in November of twenty twenty because, you know, without that fact, you know, this would be very different conversation that you and I would be having and the Biden administration deserves, in my view, a lot of credit for the way it handled the run up to the war in terms of its release of intelligence as well as its efforts at both alliance management and now coalition maintenance since February twenty fourth. And I think they deserve a lot of credit. I give a lot of credit, particularly the secretary. Estate Tony Lincoln for that. But having said all that, there were some things that came out in the press conference that I found a a bit troubling.

I mean, on the one hand, Biden used the press conference to sketch out for the first time in a comprehensive way, some of the themes that Zelensky hit on it. This is an important war for Americans that the outcome matters that it’s a struggle between democracy and autocracy that the rules based order is at risk if the Russians succeed. All of that is something I wish he had done in a Oval Office address maybe a couple of months ago, but I suppose better, late than never, But I think he also managed to step on the message a bit in the very last q and a when he was asked about one of the systems that the Ukrainians have asked for, but but haven’t gotten the Attackham missiles, which have a three hundred kilometer range, which would allow the Ukrainians to get deeper and potentially into Russian territory, which the administration has denied the Ukrainians because of its fears of escalation risk And Biden’s answer after stressing in his opening remarks that the alliance is united as it’s never been that the EU is as United as it’s ever been. He then said, but if we give him attack him, so then, you know, the whole alliance will get blown up.

And then he said, I think I’ve talked too much and he kind of backed away from the whole discussion. But I think that, unfortunately,

it

sort of marred the visit. And I think it highlights what the administration still has ahead of it to do. I mean, you know, part of this visit, as I said, at the outset, was to shore up support in the United States because in the aftermath of the midterm elections with the Republicans taking the house with a very narrow majority, there have been a lot of voices and you, you know, some of them have already been raised on the MAGA right last night and today about this visit. You certainly saw, you know, Matt Katz and Ted Cruz and Lauren Beaubert on screen, not standing up as part of the standing ovations that Zelensky got. Zelensky obviously is sensitive to all that and wants to reinforce the very strong bipartisan support you see in polling although there is some distressing erosion among Republicans.

My view is if the administration wants to maintain public support, for this effort in Ukraine. And again, I give them a lot of credit for the forty billion dollar package. The package that’s moving through on the omnibus is even larger forty seven billion. By the way, the Congress plus that up from what the administration initially asked for. So I think senator McConnell really deserves an enormous amount of credit here because he’s been pushing very hard to give a terrific floor speech yesterday about this.

You know, all of that is to the good. But what I think the administration really needs to do now is, first of all, provide Ukraine everything it possibly can to win this war as quickly as possible. I mean, Putin’s clearly trying to play for time, hoping that the support here will evaporate at divisions between the United States and its allies will emerge. And so we have to, I think, operate in a much more speedy way And that means the attack comes, it means both manned and unmanned aircraft, more air defenses, one patriot battery is great. But that’s nearly not enough.

You need a a layered defense against the variety of threats that the Russians are raining down from the air on Ukraine cities. Tanks probably would be necessary for the Ukrainians to take back territory. You know, there’s a lot of discussion about the M1 tank being too difficult for the Ukrainians to master. That takes time to train and they’re expensive to maintain all of which is true. On the other hand, these were the tanks we plan to defend Europe with against the Soviet Union.

So I kind of find it a little hard to understand the reluctance to provide them think the administration also needs to push allies more to step up on the economic side. I mean, I think Americans are willing to be the arsenal of democracy how long they’re willing to provide us a mention to Ukraine’s budget, I’m not sure of. On sanctions, I think there’s much more to be done. There’s been a lot of sanctions activity, but more recent assessments suggest that the Russian economy is only gonna shrink by three point five percent this year as opposed to the thirty percent or fifteen percent that people were talking about when this conflict started, which suggests that their scope for much more on sanctions. Former ambassador Mike McFall is part of a working group out at Stanford that’s issued ten reports that indicate there’s way more that can be done to cut off all Russian banks from the international banking structures and more that can be done in other sectors of the economy to sanction Russia.

And then finally, I think the administration ought to adopt as a formal aim, making Russia pay for the reconstruction of Ukraine. And that I think can be done by the three hundred billion in frozen and seized assets that Russia has outside the country. That was

really excellent, Eric, and it really shows that one could be extremely grateful that Joe Biden did not Donald Trump as president and praised the Biden administration appropriately, but also give him a lot of constructive suggestions and and a little bit of criticism. There’s a lot to be done by us. What’s your sense of the war? You’ve been following it very closely and the languages or at least to Russian night, but I Ukrainian is pretty close to Russian. Right?

You can you make your way through Ukrainian a little bit or not so much? Yeah.

That’s that’s pretty hard for me. And my Russian is a little rusty, although it’s been

getting a pretty good

workout on Telegram who

expected thirty years maybe after the end of the cold war that there you, you know, people like you studied Russian and grad school to need more effective diplomats and officials during the Cold War. It’s had a quite a workout here in thirty years, three decades later.

What’s your sense

of on the ground? I mean, how does it stand? What would you expect over the next month, two months? Who was the winter. Well, there are

a couple of different things going on. Of course, there was a lot of focus on bock mood, which is where Zelensky was the day before he got on a plane and flew to Washington, which is a city in in the Dunbar, where the Russians have just been throwing bodies into a meat grinder in a kind of world war one like trench warfare. I mean, you if you see the pictures that have come out of that area, the fighting. I mean, it really does look like Flanders fields, you know, in in photos from World War one.

Not

clear exactly why the Russians have put so much effort into bakmut. I mean, it’s not particularly strategic. I mean, it would be a big city that they could say that they’ve gained, but it’s a little bit hard to explain why why they’re doing it. Some of it seems to be tied to Pregosian, the head of the Wagner Group, who is also sometimes referred to as Putin’s chef because he’s done a lot of catering for the Kremlin. And is looking for a bigger role in perhaps more contracts as part of the Russian military effort.

And so his forces seem to be playing a big role there trying to show that they’re more effective than the regular military. The losses have been horrific on both sides. And the Ukrainians are taking some losses there as well. They continue to make kind of incremental, very, very incremental progress on the Spotovae, Kremlin line in Don Baja, as the Ukrainians are. But I think the terrain is not yet frozen, so it’s making it a little harder for them to move in.

And the Russians are throwing a lot of bodies into this from those the so called MOBICs, the people who they’ve mobilized. In the south, there’s again very incremental gains on the eastern side of the river the opposite person, which was liberated a a few weeks ago by by the Ukrainian. So I think the Ukrainians want to continue. They don’t intend to take a winter pause. I mean, the Russians seemingly would like to take some kind of pause.

On the other hand, they also seem to be suggesting that they might and the Ukrainians have suggested that the Russians may be gearing up for yet another offensive, maybe coming from the north. This is why Putin’s recent trip to Belarus to meet with Lukashenko may be important. He’s trying to get the Belarusians into the war, the Russian Zupin sending a lot of equipment to Belarus. They’ve been doing some training with the Belarusians. Lukashenko, it doesn’t seem to be that enthusiastic about doing certainly his military is not very enthusiastic about being a part of this.

And it’s also not clear that the Russians can really generate much combat power with the mobilized forces that they’re trying to put in feel these people have not had very much training. They don’t have very good equipment. Putin just had a meeting with the military leader in which he said you gotta get them good equipment and you’ve gotta completely train them and do all this other stuff. It’s not clear that they can actually do that given the way the military institutions have been hollowed out by corruption. Again, I mean, at the risk of repeating myself, I think the imperative here is to allow the Ukrainians to build on the momentum that they’ve established and not let their counteroffensives culminate before they’ve been able to take back more territory.

And in particular, I hope they’re able to take back the territory along the southern coast from Maruyopel down to the isthmus of Crimea opposite, Harrison and Nikolayev, because that is really essential for Ukraine to have, to maintain

its independence and sovereignty. You know, that’s very helpful and very thorough. So it sounds that you don’t expect a huge amount to change and one never knows and war got knows. But in the next month or two, maybe more incremental progress. So I guess one just never knows if they’re breakthroughs and so forth.

I also wonder about Europe, you’ve served there, I think where UTM and FOG, if I recall correctly, and then I pass it over to Helsinki. Defendland. I mean, my sense is just that the European situation, both in terms of their political, will, actually, the energy situation, is better than we might have expected a few months ago, not huge amount of pressure from Europe to capitulate or too much foolish pressure on Zelensky. Is

that right? Yes. I mean, I think that’s basically right. The Europeans are much more united and certainly the Russian aggression and the war crimes have been a huge wake up call. For many in Europe who had illusions that Russia could be dealt with like a normal nation.

But I think underneath that, there are a lot of differences. So frontline states that is to say countries that border, Russia, like Finland, like Poland, like the Baltic states, I think have been in the forefront of warning against the idea of negotiations anytime soon, providing maximum aid to Ukraine. I mean, the Baltic states stick out in a per capita basis. They haven’t supplied, obviously, nearly as much as the United States has. But on our capital basis, they’ve supplied quite a bit of military assistance to Ukraine.

You’ve got at least two countries in Europe that are terribly ambivalent, Hungary, and Turkey, and it’s no accident, Conrad, that they are essentially run by authoritarian dictators, you know, Victor Harban and Rajataya Baerdalen, they have much more complicated relations with Putin. And as a result, you know, the Turks have made it clear that they’re not gonna abide by the sanctions. That the United States and Europe imposed, the Turks have nonetheless because under the Montreal Convention, they control access to the Black Sea. Because they have worked out this grain agreement because they maintain a line open line of communication with the Russians that they have facilitated some prisoner exchanges they continue to get some forbearance from Washington about the role also because they continue to threaten to veto the accession of Finland and Sweden tomato, which is actually one of the more important and underappreciated strategic shifts that this war has created. They’re getting a lot of forbearance and because both the EU and NATO operate on the basis of consensus, you know, Hungary as well, has been able to slow certain things down like the oil price cap and things like that.

Britain has been very steadfast in France and Germany Both have done better than one might have expected, but in both countries, I think you still see a lingering desire to get some kind of negotiation going so we could just return to the status quo anti and not have to deal with all of this messy stuff. You you see that both, I think, in Schultz and Macron that both of them have, I think, this kind of ambivalence about I mean, they continue to support Ukraine, which is good, but they also clearly would like to, you know, find some way out of this as quickly as possible. And when you talk to people

in Europe, my sense is I’ve just talked to a few, you know, think tech types or whatever. Just ask them what’s your what’s life like? I mean, how bad are your energy bills? And they’re not great. But it feels like it’s less dire than we thought it would be.

Is is that your sense — Yeah. — that’s due to just good luck or good policies on our part or or their part? It’s a combination of things. Some of it’s luck. Some of

it’s, you know, export of US and Algerian and other gas to Europe to fill the void created by cutting back on Russian supplies. I mean, since we started this podcast bill talking about Hegel, you know, he was famous for describing the cunning of history and The coming of history here is gonna be that Vladimir Putin will go down in history as the father of Ukrainian nationalism and the father of Europe’s turn away from fossil fuels to renewable energy sources and turn away from Russian fossil fuels. Russian fossil fuels. Yeah. In particular — Yeah.

— which is good. We,

you know, and so it’s good both from a climate point of view and from a European independence liberation Russia if he’s only point of view. He’ll be the father of the green transition. Isn’t that something that is a kind of interesting thing? That’s assuming, of course, that’s we stay the course and and Ukraine is able to prevail more or less depending on what prevail means, but certainly deny Putin a victory that would be seems absolutely crucial. People can’t count on that until it happens.

Right? But what about the effect here? A couple of articles on Zelensky reminded us who we are and I sort of to believe that. I think over the stepping back in the speech, over the ten months or so, I guess, is it ten months now? It’s amazing.

Right? Since the war began, it was exactly ten months, February twenty fourth.

Right? I

feel like it’s had a big effect here, man, and big effect elsewhere in the world. I was talking with an Iranian dissident the other day, Iranian who lives here, but was has had been a dissident. That person said that he thought that Ukraine had a pretty big effect there too, you know, that, I mean, somehow the whole notion of liberal democracy being valuable and worth fighting for is sort of had a bit of a revival here in twenty twenty two. I think, maybe, hopefully, and I

think Ukraine deserves an awful lot of the credit for that. Absolutely. And Elliot Kone and I discussed this in our year end wrap up and shield of the Republic that this has been a bad year for autocrats. And you see this, you know, both in the popular uprising in Iran that you were just mentioning, but also in the protests against the COVID lockdowns in China where people were calling for, you know, down with the dictator with regard to Xi Jinping. So it was just COVID lockdowns, but it was the fact that one man could actually just decree this that I think seemed to have resonated with the Chinese public.

And of course, I think that’s one of the things that Chinese leadership is most fearful of its own people, which is why it’s been almost as much or maybe more on internal security than it does on its defense budget. So Yes. I mean, you know, Frank Fukiyama has written about this, David Frum has just written about it. There’s been a lot of discussion about the so called Democratic recession over the last decade or so as populist regimes and authoritarian regimes of one sort or another have risen up, you know, in variety of places, in Asia, in Europe,

in

other parts of the world. That, you know, that seems to now be a potential inflection point where the forces supporting liberal democracy are maybe now going to be more ascending and it’s one of the reasons why it’s so important for Putin to be defeated. It’s really important for people to not see that tenancy as as ascended and rather remember why liberal democracy is really important. And I think Putin’s war has done that. You know,

I do feel just talking to you and I were in government in the eighties. I came to Washington to be in the government research a little before that and they were in the foreign service. And quite senior position by the end of the eighties. And I feel a little bit the way I felt then that, you know, we really could be living through a historic moment, an important moment, and so important for us to try to get things as right as we can, not that we got everything right even then. But I don’t know.

I I just feel like it’s a moment sort of different not to minimize anything that’s happened in between, and we’ve full, I think, tried to do our best and contributed, maybe made some mistakes in various ways, but in all kinds of other important fights. But this I I just feel that this is a moment different from most of those over the last three decades. Yeah. I

couldn’t agree more. I think this is a a usually historic moment. That’s why I think Zelensky came. I think he recognizes. And I think president Biden recognizes that even if I have my criticisms, I do think he understands the importance of this fight and why it’s so important that Russia not succeed and and that Ukraine emerge victorious.

I mean, when I say that Ukrainian nationalism Putin will be seen as fathering it, I think there is a potential if the war ends in the right way that Ukraine will because it will have to be rebuilt because there’s been so much damage. It will be in some sense like Germany and Japan after World War II, it will be rebuilt on completely different basis, completely oriented towards the west, With a lot of emphasis on high-tech, David Ignatius has had two very interesting columns in the Washington Post about the

potential

military technical revolution that is being demonstrated on the battlefield in Ukraine with the use of drones and sensors and artificial intelligence, etcetera. And Ukraine clearly wants to be in the forefront of all this. And, you know, nothing could be I think healthier on the long run for Russia than to have a western oriented successful economically vibrant, technologically proficient, Ukraine next door.

That’s a hopeful note to end on appropriately realistically hopeful note to end on in this the middle of Hanukkah and Christmas coming right up. So, Eric, thanks so much for joining me for joining all of us on this very enlightening forward podcast today. You’re

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