Deep Dive
Shownotes Transcript
Welcome back. I'm Max Bergman, director of the Stuart Center and Europe-Russia-Eurasia program at CSIS. And I'm Maria Snegovaya, senior fellow for Russia and Eurasia. And you're listening to Russian Roulette, a podcast discussing all things Russia and Eurasia from the Center for Strategic International Studies.
Hello, everyone, and welcome back. This is the first episode we've recorded since the U.S. elections on November 5th, 2024. So we're going to use today's discussion to assess what the return of Donald Trump to the White House could mean for Washington's relationships with Moscow, Kiev, and the future of the war in Ukraine. And joining Maria and I today...
is our friend and colleague, Michael Kimmich, who is calling in today from Berlin. He's been there for the last few months. Michael is the chair of the Department of History at Catholic University, a former member of Barack Obama's team at the State Department, a former member of the policy planning staff at the State Department during the Obama administration, and most importantly, one of our senior associate non-resident fellows on our team here at CSIS.
Michael, great to have you back with us. Great to be with you. So let's jump in. Let's sort of start with the obvious, and I think we're sort of playing jazz here. We're going to kind of just riff back and forth on maybe some of our hot takes on what this election means. There's been some news trickling out of Washington that Marco Rubio is likely going to be the secretary of state. Michael Waltz, the congressman, is going to be the national security adviser. Those are kind of the two most prominent positions. Elise Stefanik is going to be the UN ambassador.
But Michael, maybe we'll start with you on what you think this kind of means for Russia policy for Ukraine. One of the promises that Trump has made that he is going to kind of end the war on day one and is pledging to sort of bring peace to Ukraine. Okay. You know, that's an election campaign promise. Michael, what are you sort of thinking is going to happen when it comes to these negotiations? And what do you think the prospects are?
It will occupy a lot of the media space, I think, where foreign policy is concerned for the first couple of months of Trump's second term. And to that degree, it will be important. You know, it'll be something that other governments are going to have to respond to. And it will be, I think, a
prominent administration agenda because it's just been such a prominent part of the campaign. Now, many things are unpredictable with Trump and unpredictable with this war, but I do feel fairly confident in saying that the prospects for a negotiated settlement, whatever that might mean, armistice, ceasefire, real resolution to the war, I think that they're exceptionally small prospects for this to work. And, you know, I think it's a
couple of factors that are at play here. If you go back to Trump one, he did do diplomacy, you know, the Trump administration had some achievements in the Middle East, or they, you know, made some diplomatic moves in the Middle East that were significant. And certainly Trump changed the nature of the relationship to China. And there were aspects of global commerce and trade that they reconfigured. But on the issues where Trump didn't know his own mind in Trump one, which is to say Russia, Ukraine, he made statements and he had a meeting with Putin, but he didn't get anywhere.
And I think that that's kind of where he begins on the war in Ukraine. I don't think he has an idea of what the territorial issues are or how to address them. You know, I think the military stuff is hard to reckon with. I think he doesn't know his own mind. And I think that's going to make it really hard to get anywhere. Secondarily, you know, I think on this issue, what you would need to do is empower the mid-levels of the bureaucracy.
and in a meticulous fashion work your way up to a set of structured agreements that involves lots of negotiation with allies and partners and competitors and adversaries. And I just don't see that working out for Trump in this regard. I'll just mention two other points that make me think that this is not going to happen and
One is that the United States is an important factor in the war, but it's by no means the only factor. There's lots that Ukraine might do in disagreement with the United States. And for the countries of Scandinavia, the Baltics and Poland, and perhaps other European countries as well, if the US is aiming for a bad deal in their assessment with Russia, I think that they'll just go in a different direction. And I don't think that the US can compete
to propel everybody to follow its course. It's not 1995 where you can just send Richard Holbrooke over to Europe to end a war as Holbrooke put it in his memoirs. Those days are over and it's a very, very different situation. And finally, if one is to be very serious about a diplomatic settlement to the war, China is going to be at the table. They're an important partner to Russia. They're probably going to be a crucial factor in the reconstruction of Ukraine. And I just can't imagine the Trump people, especially
Mike Waltz and Marco Rubio sitting down and gingerly debating and discussing with China how to end the war in Ukraine. But if they're not willing to do that or not able to do that, they're just not going to get very far. So I think there are a million reasons why it's going to be extremely difficult to get anywhere. Let me push back on that a little bit, because I'm not sure Putin would want China at the table, because I think that would be rather humiliating for him. I haven't
really digested that. But I think it's an interesting thought of like, what is China's role in a potential peace negotiation? You may be right that what Putin envisages is a kind of US-Russian grand bargain where it's, you know, Yalta or Potsdam, where he's sort of in that role. But I think the fact of the matter is that China is a player in the region
Already, it was Ukraine's biggest trading partner before the war. It's given Russia a lot of material support. It does have interests in the region. So I guess you could play it two ways. It may not be there formally at the table in the discussions and negotiations, but it's going to be a part of the overall picture. And it's not going to be one that I think this Trump team is going to want to deal with in any way that would be beneficial to China. And so that makes China, I think, very reluctant to get involved in a way that would benefit the Trump team. So, you know, I think it's yet another reason why all of this stuff is going to be effectively a non-starter.
Your point about, you know, who's the Richard Holbrooke, maybe there is no Richard Holbrooke in here that is willing to sort of bash the heads or has the connection to the White House and the backing to really push any sort of peace negotiations, I think is apt. You know, who is the Russia expert, the Russia hand inside of Trump world? And I can't
really think of one. And I think that's in part because no Russia hand has really wanted to be in that world. I mean, in the first term, it was Fiona Hill and she left and she was not really of Trump world. And so I don't really see, you know, when we think about Marco Rubio as Secretary of State, you know, before Marco Rubio was a China hawk, he was a Russia hawk. He voted against the Ukraine supplemental. And, you know, so did Mike Walz. I mean, they had reasons, I guess,
But I think those reasons ultimately were they didn't want to be on the wrong side of Trump. And so to really push forward a peace agreement that is going to be hard to do, that is going to require a lot of work and effort. I don't know if this team will have the bureaucratic
initiative or energy to do that. And that's not really disparaging. It's also not sure that the push from the White House will really be there. But Maria, maybe turn to you. I mean, part of what I wonder is why would Putin come to the table right now? You know, what's in it for him? I mean, because it looks like the war is kind of going his way. And so we sort of assume that, well, all it takes is the U.S. to say, OK, time's up.
let's have negotiations, but I don't see what really brings Russia to the table in a meaningful way. Maybe they show up, but like,
to actually engage in actual productive negotiations. And I should note that you have an excellent piece out prior to this election on U.S. foreign policy towards Russian Ukraine. The Heidel did now come up for grabs. What can Russian Ukraine expect from the next administration that sort of previews what a Trump administration may do? We're going to have to probably update all of these. But Maria, turn it over to you.
In that piece, we actually were in a very unfavorable position of trying to decipher Trump's forthcoming policies towards Russia based on his rhetoric. And because he managed to say a lot of very opposite things about Russia during the electoral period and Russia-Ukraine, it was actually very hard. But so far, as you flagged, the early appointments, they look promising. It doesn't seem like there's going to be a complete sellout of Ukraine to Russia based on these appointments of people with fairly hawkish standing. But the big question precisely is why would Putin
want to negotiate. And my concern is that much of that is also based off Putin's rhetoric, who never ceases to mention that Russia is open to negotiations. You know, Russia has already flagged all of the negotiation points, referencing probably the Istanbul agreement points. But
The problem is Russia right now finds itself in quite a favorable situation. And that is under, still under the administration, Biden administration, that was actually offering Ukraine help. Nonetheless, we see that in the last couple of months, Russia is able to move forward. And here I'm citing the ISW recent analysis, which
for an area less than a third the size of Delaware, throughout Ukraine and Kursk Oblast. That was done not without huge losses and sacrifice. They simultaneously have an estimated of 80,000 casualties over the last two months, which again, the site compares to the cumulative losses that the US forces suffered during almost 20 years of operations in Iraq and Afghanistan. There are still 20,000 more. Russia accumulated 20,000 casualties more than that,
It's shocking. It should be shocking, but Russia is able to pull this off, right? We do not see, unfortunately, many of the indicators of the social discontent. I've just finished a big report on Russian public opinion changes. The main conclusion is you generally can trust polls in terms of the trends. They probably overestimate support for the war by about maybe 6 to 10 percentage points, but still not enough to radically alter our conclusions as to the majority embrace for the war.
And again, shall you blame the Russians, you know, who are experiencing, frankly, rainfall of state funding, state resources falling onto them? Probably we still should, but it's understandable that they have their own rationale underlying that. Just today, there was another report published by a team of great economists and political scientists, Sergey Oleksandrovich, Vladislav Anasemtsev, and Dmitry Nikrasov, who come to similarly pessimistic conclusions about
showing that the economic adaptation over the last two and a half years has been extremely successful in Russia, that yes, definitely sanctions did work in the sense that they limited the revenues that Russia accumulates, isolated somewhat Russia from access to international technologies and whatnot.
But the authorities in Russia have been able to respond quite effectively. And as a result of the combined market forces, sanctions or convention skills, assistance by third parties and just professionalism of the Russian ruling economic bloc, they are actually to pull this off. We should not anticipate the collapse of the Russian economy anytime soon. And even worse, the Russian militarism is likely to continue regardless. That's their conclusion. Regardless of the war, Russia will remain very much a threat internationally.
whether the war continues or not. But given all these factors, right, the military advancement, yes, there's a lot of casualties, but they're still able to recruit more volunteers. The societal acceptance of the war, the economic quasi-stability. Unfortunately, there are few reasons to believe that Putin would be willing to stop this war. It seems to me from conversations with some of the possible members of the upcoming Trump administration that they bet on Putin
really willing to negotiate if he's guaranteed that Ukraine will not join NATO anytime soon? To me, it's a mistake. Because I think if anything that we've learned from Putin over the last quarter century, it's not just about NATO membership, right? He really wants to control Ukraine in all the other ways. And the problem is, what is it that we can offer to Putin to make him comply with certain requirements? That's not clear to me.
Russia already had a veto over Ukraine's NATO prospects prior to the invasion because they were occupying Ukrainian territory. And the concept of Ukraine joining NATO was, you know, all but dead. And if anything, Putin has revived that by doing a full-scale invasion. Although, if I may jump in, he may counter that by saying that nonetheless, Ukraine was deepening its cooperation with NATO all this time. Probably that will be the counter-argument the Kremlin would give. Yeah, you know, for me, maybe I'm sort of a supplemental truther
or funding truther in the sense of that to me it's all about the money and if there's no supplemental for ukraine there's no additional u.s military aid package
in 2025. I don't see how Putin comes to the table to negotiate because the light at the end of the tunnel is really bright. Another year of this war of attrition and you are going to break them down. The Europeans have not ramped up their defense industrial capacity enough. They've given away on the European side most of their kind of reserve equipment, so they don't have a lot of stockpiles to give away. And if the U.S. stops aiding Ukraine, it's over. You know, this has sort of really frustrated me
about zielinski in the ukrainian posture i think
over the last six months year has been really focused on nato membership and when i understand that you know as sort of trying to sort of short circuit a way to security that if we can get an invitation for nato membership then maybe that will unlock and send a message to putin but that's all gone now right there's no nato membership coming for ukraine anytime soon over the next four years under a trump administration and what the ukrainians weren't focused on
Zelensky's victory plan is really a tangible way to ramp up armaments production. And there should have been a lot more pressure on the Ukrainians, on the Europeans who have this capacity, who have an ability to borrow money that they haven't done. I mean, this was at the European council in June of this year to do Euro bonds. So this is my hill to die on, but the Ukrainians didn't demand it. And instead they're coming to Washington sort of saying,
let us into NATO, let us escalate with deep strikes into Russia, which may be a good idea, but then you look at it and they have like 10 missiles to fire. The problem isn't U.S. restrictions on Ukrainian missile use. The problem is that there aren't enough goddamn missiles. So that to me is the big problem
problem that Ukrainians weren't focused enough on and that I think is the big question for a Trump administration. I'm sorry, I'm going on. But for a Trump administration, it's not how are you going to get to peace on day one. It's is Donald Trump going to go to Congress where there's lots of MAGA members that are strongly opposed to Ukraine funding and say, oh, by the way, actually, we need another $60 billion.
I mean, people are thinking maybe, yes, you know, I think Rubio and Waltz may sort of actually push for it. But I don't know. Maybe there's a way they can, like, make it loans, which you can do. But this is, I think, the question. If not, I don't see how Russia stops fighting. So, Michael, over to you.
Sure. You know, I would very much just underscore what Maria just said. I mean, I think there are lots of reasons why Russia is not going to stop fighting. Not only that they're making incremental gains at the moment, but I don't think the current configuration, as far as I understand the Kremlin, works for them. I mean, it's parts of Zaporizhzhia Kherson Oblast and not all yet of Donetsk Luhansk Oblast. So, you know, it's...
can't imagine that they would stop before going further there. But I think that the ambitions to take Odessa are still there to make the Black Sea, access to the Black Sea inaccessible to Ukraine. And I think even I would go even a little bit further than that, you know, sort of getting Kiev to crack in some way, or perhaps even an effort to invade the capital city, I wouldn't rule it out. So I think that the Russian ambitions just remain really large in the situation. And I don't think that the election of Trump is going to make those ambitions
smaller may not make them dramatically larger either, but it's not going to make them smaller. And then, of course, if we turn our gaze to Europe at the moment, I mean, we have a German government that's going to be, you know, going into elections. You have Macron, who's a weakened figure after the events of this summer. You have Starmer, who's a staunch supporter of Ukraine. But, you know, the UK is not in the EU anymore. And I
on and on, you can kind of go down the list, but it's not as if the European landscape looks particularly frightening or worrisome to Russia. So I just think you have to factor in at this stage a fairly strong intent to continue the war. And perhaps we could turn our attention, if you wish, later to the North Koreans who have arrived in the war, perhaps in some ways to just widen the war effort beyond what it is at the present moment. So I entirely agree with you, Max. I think that when the negotiations run their course and don't yield a good result, the key question, and maybe it's the key question now really, is what happens
then. And I do think, you know, I can't read President Trump's mind and wouldn't make too many strong judgments just from the campaign itself, because if you go back to 2016, the campaign wasn't a great guide to what Trump did in his first term. He was quite a bit more hawkish as president than he was on the campaign trail. My sense is that basic
you know, raw American interests are going to be against millions of refugees flowing into Europe. Basic American interests are going to be against a war moving from, you know, basically a Donbas war now to a war that's going to be on the doorstep of NATO and basic American interests are going to be in favor of a Europe that's essentially at peace. And, you know, there are lots of economic consequences of a bigger war in Europe. And so I think that could definitely drive the Trump White House into not just another supplemental, but perhaps even into escalatory options that the Biden White House wouldn't
consider, which, by the way, is a fairly common point that's made in Kiev at the moment, that Trump is going to take risks that Biden wasn't willing to take in Ukraine. We'll see if that's borne out by events. But I think this combination of very intense Russian intent to continue and in Russian terms to win the war, that point is going to become a big problem for the Trump administration. And my guess is that they will not deal with that problem by just abandoning Ukraine, once again, because it's too flagrantly against basic American interests. I mean, the democracy arguments, the human rights arguments, the
European unity arguments, that's not going to be persuasive for this new team in the White House, but the interest will be there and they're pretty unavoidable, I would say.
Many of the folks that look like they're coming into this administration are very much China firsters that want to kind of fully complete the pivot. And, you know, that's in some ways what the Biden administration was coming in as well, really wanting to focus on China. And then events sort of interceded both in Ukraine, Middle East. And so there's always distractions. And I'm curious if what we're going to see is something similar.
where there's a real desire to focus on China, but they're never quite able to kind of do so fully. I don't think they're that worried about European security. I think that there's a sense, and I think this is true also permitting through the Pentagon, that Russia has actually showed that it's really not 10 feet tall. And so the Eastern European rhetoric and concerns about Russia invading tomorrow are actually not felt by the US military, where we kind of look at this and say, "Oh, we could take these guys very easily in a conventional fight."
And, you know, this sort of classic you either overstate Russia or you understate their capacity. And I think where we are right now is sort of understating Russia's capacity and say, well, OK, well, maybe we'll lose Ukraine. There'll be a lot of refugees in Europe. That would be bad. But ultimately, Russia is not going to cross that NATO red line.
And I think they might be right there. And so we don't really need to focus on it. That would be my concern. But maybe we should turn, Maria, to North Korea. It looks like there's about to be a major Russian counteroffensive. One more claim that we keep hearing from the Trump administration is the one way for them to put the Russian side at the table would be the sanctions, right? The problem, of course, is
We all understand that the energy sanctions have not been very successful in constraining Russia, and energy is really the hill. The budget energy-driven revenues are coming down. But nonetheless, we completely understand also that there continues to be this sort of the engine of the Russian economy, of the state resources that are being used to pump up the economic growth.
the question is how long will it take them right to do something about it on the surface it seems that the general policy priorities that under emphasize the climate change emphasize fracking domestic producer of oil and gas in the united states all of that seems to be congruent with this idea to push oil prices down and undermine russia's oil revenues but the problem
is the timing? How long will it take them to get there before really the oil price is low enough? And also it's notoriously difficult to predict how the energy markets are going to respond. So it's possible they're not going to get the oil price as low as they hope. But in the meantime, we already see the situation at
the frontline being very difficult for Ukraine. Even with the existing lethal aid provision, the frontline is not in a great situation. Russians are pushing forward, we've just discussed it. And it's just unclear to me how this is feasible to pull off. Are they going to be trying right away to negotiate with Putin without having any upper hand, without having really effective working sanctions and being able to provide Ukraine any sort of battlefield advantage?
Or are they going to wait until this energy policy is in place and they're able to push the Russian energy revenues down? But then again, how long will it take? And can Ukraine really wait until then? Can it hold? All of that seems to be quite incongruent. There seems to be like there's no clear vision as to how this is supposed to work. And that is certainly quite concerning.
Yeah, I could also see over the next few weeks during the transition, still the Biden administration taking action on the energy side in a rather strong way because, you know, the political fallout, if there is going to be a spike in energy prices or some sort of economic mix, well, you don't really care about that as much. I think there was a hyper concern about gas prices over the last few years, which meant that energy, going after the energy sector in a really concerted way was sort of off limits. But Michael, you wanted to come in here.
Yeah, I wanted to offer a slightly different interpretation of the crystallizing Trump team from what you just sketched a moment ago, Max. I'm not sure that they would find a Russian victory in Ukraine tolerable, acceptable, and would just sort of fall back to a position of defending the NATO member states. I think for Trump himself, any perception of defeat is very difficult to tolerate. And I think he knows, one has to acknowledge with the kind of victory that he won last week, that he's
got some canny political instincts. I think that he knows that the thing that really damaged President Biden's polling numbers and political reputation was the pullout from Afghanistan. So I think any replication of that on Trump's watch would be very problematic for Trump. For Vance, I think it's a bit more of a strategic question.
And I think what Vance wants to do is not to pull out from Ukraine and not to see Ukraine lose, but he wants to see Ukraine go into a defensive posture. And there have been a sort of series of statements to this effect, both before and even a little bit after the election in this regard. It's not, I think, a catastrophic position when it comes to Ukraine's security. It's still about defending and supporting Ukraine. But I think what Vance is taking off the table, and I suspect, you know, Trump would do the same and probably everybody on this team will acquiesce.
is the possibility of another counteroffensive. So that's quite different from the Biden team, which spoke about 2025 as a build year. If they thought if Harris wins, Democrats take the House and the Senate, then you get another supplemental and maybe 2026, you can get a counteroffensive and Ukraine can still think of really outright winning this war. And I think the Trump team is going to move in a different direction. And I'll leave it at that. But I think it's actually a pretty substantial shift in strategic approach.
Yeah, I think all the attacks on the Biden administration for having no victory strategy, well, you know, this is a strategy to end the war, i.e. to concede and to concede the territory. I think that there's been a misunderstanding on the Ukrainian side of some of the constraints on the Biden administration, which have not simply been about concerns over escalation, but have been also fundamentally about the administration being in somewhat of a box by both the Pentagon and by China firsters, where
where how do you rush support to Ukraine, right? Everyone's like, oh, the aid was slow. I mean, I worked in this office that had to deal with military assistance. This is in some ways an unprecedented level of aid that we've provided since World War II. But the way you get aid fast...
to a country is you take it from the U.S. military. But what happens when you take weapons from the U.S. military is they hate that. Because the bean counters at the Pentagon that have to deal with the readiness of the force look at their Excel spreadsheets and say, well, we don't want to go below this number. And if you go below this number on advanced weaponry like attack
And what happens is that suddenly you're depleting the readiness of the force to fight the Chinese or to prepare for the Indo-Pacific. And all it takes is one little story out of the Pentagon. And that place leaks like crazy where Congress flips out and says Ukraine is detracting from the Indo-Pacific.
And you have a Secretary of Defense that is going to be focused in Austin, a general that's going to be focused on forced readiness. So to overrule that Secretary of Defense, not Jake Sullivan that can really overrule him, has to be a presidential decision.
And so I think in some ways, the China firsters have really boxed in what you can do in terms of rushing aid. And that constraint is going to be there except even more of a focus, I think, with the Trump administration. So in some ways, that leaves me somewhat quite concerned. I think the Ukraine-China dimension, I think, is going to really come into conflict in a much more sort of public way in this administration and really squeeze the Ukrainians to change their posture and make certain concessions that I don't think they're quite thinking about.
And one other difference, just to follow up on your point about possible friction between Washington and Kiev in the next couple of months and years, the common rhetoric, both in Europe and with the Biden administration, that nothing about Ukraine without Ukraine. And it's really Ukraine that decides what the pace of diplomacy is or whether there's going to be a move toward negotiation or sort of how the war is fought. I don't think that's ever been entirely sincere on the part of, you know, Biden's Washington or Europe. But nevertheless, that was the framing. That's not going to be the framing under Trump.
They are going to be more coercive about how they approach things. They're going to set terms, you know, I'm sure will be more transactional and sort of give and take and what's expected. And the whole rhythm of things is just going to be different. I'm not sure if the Trump White House will succeed in setting the pace or necessarily convincing people in Kiev, but they're going to be more, this is how we think it should be. And if you don't like it tough, you know, sort of live with it. I think that's going to be a message. And that will be a bit of a shock when the transition is felt from Biden to Trump.
I want to ask one more question on this and then pivot maybe to a broader Russia policy. So we expect over the next few months a big Russian effort to try to take as much territory either in Ukraine. North Koreans are in Kursk at the New York Times writing about how an offensive is coming.
Maria, you expect we're going to see really aggressive fighting over the winter. As long as the weather conditions allow that, I think most analysts agree that indeed Russia has been accumulating a lot of reserves, primarily to liberate the Kursk region. And certainly, I don't anticipate the North Korean soldiers playing a decisive role there. Just to give you some statistics that Russia is losing, not in Kursk, but on the main front line, Ukraine, about 1,000 to 1,200 people.
in casualties per day. So you can estimate how many 10,000 North Korean troops will last. But nonetheless, indeed, that's the anticipation. And unfortunately, with the Ukraine weekend, and I do hear from my Ukrainian friends that the shortages of weapons are indeed real.
And Zelenskyy spoke up recently, right, that Ukraine actually has only received 10% of the long-suffering aid package that was ultimately passed by the Congress in the spring. So with that combined, we do anticipate indeed that the Kursk will be, quote-unquote, liberated by Putin. And also, I can see Putin...
preparing to these hypothetical negotiations, right? He is pushing forward very actively, regardless of the casualties, trying to occupy, it seems, as much territory as possible before any sort of talks begin. What is curious to me at this point is why doesn't the Trump team also trying to provide Ukraine with as much advantage as possible, so some sort of upper hand before any sort of peace talks can be started, right? You don't start peace talks
from a weak position. And obviously somebody who wrote The Art of the Deal probably understands that.
Yeah, it would be great if another supplemental somehow passed during the lame duck session of Congress, but haven't quite heard any idea that that will move forward. Maybe let's pivot to kind of a broader discussion about US Russia policy. Michael, every American administration since the Cold War has come in to try to reset relations with Russia. The Biden administration even came in wanting a stable and predictable relationship. Of course, there was the meeting between Putin and Biden in
June of 2021, which was seen as trying to park Russia to pivot to China. But it strikes me that, you know, I was thinking that we were going to kind of get out of that trap. But I think we're might be back, that there's going to be another effort to reset relations. How do you kind of think about this going forward?
And it also strikes me that Europe isn't really in a position where it can reset relations. So are we going to be pursuing a vastly different Russia policy than the Europeans that have to be in some ways a little bit more clear-eyed, I would think, and hard-headed about Russia? You know, I don't think that the honeymoon will last very long. You know, and it goes back to the first part of our conversation that there is one issue that
between Russia and the United States at the moment, and that's the war in Ukraine. Russia has completely refused over the past two and a half years to compartmentalize this issue. And the U.S.,
Under Biden did not compartmentalize either. And I don't think that Trump is going to get very far by compartmentalizing if he tries. So, you know, I think if there's no solution to the war in Ukraine, and I don't think that the Trump White House will come up with one, then there's no solution to the problem of US-Russian relations. And whether they talk about arms control, or whether they talk about climate, or whether they talk about...
the Middle East, I just I don't see it going anywhere if the war in Ukraine stays as it is, which I suspect it will. So there may be a honeymoon, you know, there may be a summit meeting, phone calls, all of that. But I think it will land things back where they have kind of usually been, which is a state of pretty high tension. Let's fold in one other point, though, at this stage, you know, that for the Trump administration, one place where they're going to intensify tension and conflict, presumably, is with Iran and with China. Yeah.
And you have a lot of Iran hawk coming into the Trump administration. You know, that's Trump world in general, very hawkish on Iran. And of course, you know, the China hawk we've already talked about. Well, it's a new world from what it was between 2016 and 2020. It's a new world in which Iran and China are pretty important parts of the Russian war effort. And so that's a real complexity for the Trump people to deal with. I think on the level of grand strategy, if Trump has some kind of emotional desire to make things better with Putin and with Russia on the level of grand strategy,
they're going to be pulled toward a more conflictual relationship with Russia because of their positions on Iran and China, because we could put North Korea into the mix as well. So they may not see it as an axis of the aggrieved. They may not see four members of this axis of the aggrieved, but they do have three of those members. And they're going to be jumping into pretty tense and hostile relations with them. So you're entirely right, Max, that we're back where we've always been at the beginning of the administration. But boy, are there like a million storm clouds and headwinds that are going to go against it.
Yeah, and Maria, just put ourselves in Putin's shoes and maybe let's just put the war in Ukraine to a side. How do you think he's going to posture towards the Trump administration, towards the United States? My reading of him is what he wants is an adversarial relationship with the United States and pursues that and aggressively seeks to confront us constantly.
But, you know, maybe there's some good vibes under Trump and it's an opportunity to roll back some of the sanctions or at least sanctions enforcement. I guess, how do you think he's going to sort of see the next few years playing out? Yeah, I just want to flag this quoted article by Henry Hill. He's a professor at George Washington University who just published that paradoxically, Max, for you.
The majority of Russians until 2022 actually saw Putin's policies vis-a-vis the West as being pro-Western. So he's a Westernizer in the Russians at least until 2022. That is just to demonstrate, right, that it was also always this balancing act. Like Putin is certainly after restoring Russian greatness and whatnot and
he definitely sees the West as the enemy. That is his professional training. Interview a lot of people right now for the book and they all flag that. You can trace Putin's anti-Westernism as early as mid 1990s back in his days at St. Petersburg. But nonetheless, there's also the effort to create Russia friendly governments all over the West. Otherwise, how do you explain the consistent backing of the various populist far right movements? That is certainly seen as a way to split the transatlantic alliance.
So my answer to that would be that he wouldn't mind a friendly US government, but he does not like the transatlantic alliance and the United West. He doesn't like Europe. That is closely linked to his united Europe. It's closely linked to his vision of the international security, right? He wants Russia being the major player in the new emerging international security that he gets to shape. NATO and the European Union, they prevent that from happening and whatnot.
With that in mind, I think that frame can explain to us why Russia was so actively implicated in backing Trump's candidacy back in 2015-16. At the time, there was a lot of euphoria. They opened champagne in the Russian Duma, and Margarita Semenyana notoriously promised to ride around Moscow with an American flag. Not so much this time. The intel was still reporting that Russia seems to have been backing Trump,
But there is no as obvious evidence in that regard. Putin himself was on record that he actually supported Harris. He may have been trolling, of course. But you can see today when it comes to the Russian elite society position on Trump election, there is much more cautiousness. I do not believe they've gotten from the first Trump administration what they were hoping for.
And indeed, right, there were actually sanctions, which were very tough. There was very much continuation of the previous Obama's administration policy vis-a-vis Russia. And it was even lethal aid supplies to Ukraine against their best hopes. So I don't anticipate that they envision this to change radically. And in that regard, I don't think that they're too really hopeful about, you know,
Trump bringing them everything they were hoping and more. It seems that the fact that they keep pushing forward in Ukraine, right, as we speak, actually hints at this lack of radical hopes. But nonetheless, Putin being a good psychologist, right, we know that KGB could have been bad at many things, but they were good at one thing. They're very good at psychology. He already started complimenting Trump in his public speeches, hoping to probably get some sort of better opportunities with Trump.
So I think that there's cautiousness, anticipation. In general, they wanted Trump over Biden, but they're not too hopeful that they're going to get what we want. And also, I think it seems that they're finding themselves in very much the same position of uncertainty as we are. One thing that definitely plays in Trump's favor is that he's playing the madman card.
He's probably the only person in the world who may play the Mad Men card better than Putin does himself. And this lack of certainty as to what happens is something that I think I'm picking up quite closely from the official announcements and statements that come from the Kremlin at this point. Yeah, no, I think that's a great point. I mean, I think during the first Trump administration for the Russians, they had to kind of perceive a lack of control of
on the part of Trump and the White House and stuff was happening. You know, the approval of Javelin missile sales, for instance, in my understanding, that sort of slips through. There was delegation for cyber attacks was delegated from the president to U.S. Cyber Command. And there was U.S.-led attacks on the Internet Research Agency, which in some ways were somewhat symbolic, but would have
never happened in the Obama administration. And, you know, I think there had to be a concern somewhere in the Kremlin that like, man, if we do something, would it be just Sackhure just acting without really the White House in control with SecDef saying go forth and a degree of chaos and also Trump as sort of
you know, very unpredictable, that kind of creates a degree of caution. I think there's an element of truth to that, especially when you think about the Biden administration and Obama administration as well, where, you know, there's a degree of math and everyone's doing the homework and everything is very judicious and how the actions play out. And,
And, you know, and I think there's a degree of predictability there that perhaps Russia could count on. Maybe one last point here is that some of these decisions that are being held up by the White House, such as strikes against Russian territory, you know, I think should be presidential decisions. But there's nothing in the rule book.
that says they have to be. I mean, these could be really delegated down and actions can be taken where suddenly the Russians like, what the hell is going on? But because it's, you know, an assistant secretary for political military affairs decide, no, we're just, we'll put this restriction on this transfer. You know, that sort of thing can happen in and doesn't have to necessarily be a presidential decision.
Just a quick anecdote, if I might. A friend just recently passed to me some impressions from the conversations with the Russian side. It's just, it's not high level leads, but people who talk to people, so to speak. And there was, again, all this perception of cautiousness about Trump and lack of euphoria this time around. And the feeling that he picked up from the Russian side was that there was a lot of frustration. There was all these hopes associated to Trump administration back in 2016 that never came through. And so this time they're like, OK, well,
Well, maybe it will not be as we hope it will. And certainly that is our hope too. That's not going to be as the Kremlin hopes.
Yeah, I mean, it's not totally shocking when you think Secretary of Defense General Mattis was there. And so we'll see how the appointments shake out for the rest of the administration. We have just a few minutes left. But maybe a final question, Michael, Maria, when we sort of look at Russian foreign policy right now and project it out kind of over the next administration, do you think the Trump election changes things? Do you think there will be an effort maybe to dial back
some anti-US efforts, maybe aid to the Houthis. We'll see that dialed back. Or how will Russia sort of posture itself in a second Trump administration? Does it see opportunities to break out of its diplomatic isolation, which in some ways has already had some success in building ties with countries around the world? Do you think that accelerates maybe your kind of prediction for how things are going to kind of unfold or something to watch out for over the next few years? I think if you're Putin,
You have to be very skeptical that Trump can deliver what he would want on Ukraine. Again, we've talked about it a number of points. What he wants is something very radical. And, you know, I don't think that Trump could deliver it point blank. And even if Trump could, you know, the American system is more complicated than just what happens in the White House. And, you know, I think it's very, very tricky for Putin to manage that terrain. If you factor that in as an assumption,
That means that the highly anti-Western posture and highly anti-American posture that Russia has adopted since the beginning of the war is going to continue. So, yes, it might be in relation to the Houthis in some regards. It might be expressed in Russian actions in Africa or Latin America. Obviously, Putin takes advantage of things that come his way unexpectedly. And I think that that, I assume, would continue. The point I would want to make, the sort of final point I would want to make, is that Russia's posture toward the U.S.,
vis-a-vis the war, vis-a-vis Russian foreign policy is going to have a lot to do with the way that the Trump administration relates to Europe. And if they muddle through, as happened in the first Trump term, then it's just the status quo.
But if the Trump administration takes a kind of divide and conquer approach to Europe, so the access is no longer a Washington-Berlin access, but it's a Washington-Budapest access, and there's a massive trade war between the United States and Germany, and things become highly conflictual, that's an ideal outcome for Vladimir Putin. It's not going to change his relationship to the US, but he's going to try to use that in certain ways and exploit that. So the status of the transatlantic relationship, which is just a question mark at this
point and nothing other than that, the status of the transatlantic relationship is going to be a big part of Russian calculations. And it could work in Moscow's favor or maybe not so much. But that's, I think, the thing that could move or shift the situation. I think the anti-American, anti-Western posture is going to be built in. And maybe there'll be two, three months where in a cosmetic way it looks different, but the reality is going to stay on the current footing.
I totally agree with that. I think Russia in some ways will double down on its focus on Europe and undermining internal European cohesion. And I do think that there's going to be a ton of collisions between a Trump administration and the European Union and European countries and over NATO. And it's not just going to be trade. It's going to be climate. It's going to be tech policy. You know, does the EU go after it?
Twitter and Elon Musk's, you know, is there a blowback? And all of this will mean that there'll be a rift in the transatlantic relationship in which the U.S., I think, is less focused on Russia, but Europe feels very exposed. And I think that's something that Russia will really seek to exploit. But Maria, over to you for last word.
I think that Trump administration after maybe some regional effort at creative solutions will come across the just reality of the national interests of the United States and Russia that just fundamentally clash as long as Putin is Russian leader. And that is going to be the reality that they will have to deal with in the just the policy accordingly. One thing is that Putin may fail in his global aspirations to like rebuild the international global order.
But he has, it seems, found a way to offer an alternative model to all these third countries that do not necessarily directly benefit from the Western-led order, which actually constitutes a violation of the existing rules.
And clearly that is not going to be changing anytime soon. And that is somewhat catering into Putin's global aspirations, because he is hoping to offer this alternative, a corrupt, shady, violating the order that does not care about the rules, but does offer some of the opportunities that always exist, that consists of sanctions or conventions and whatnot. He
clearly is not going to abandon that opportunity because it does make Russia great again in his eyes, and he will be doubling down on that. I think we should anticipate safely that this will continue as Russia being essentially a major international spoiler when it comes to the liberal international order. And as long as the Trump administration cares about preservation of this order, it makes, of course, its interests directly clash with those of Russia.
That's a great point. I think there's a lot more for us to discuss and we will do so on this podcast. But unfortunately, we're going to have to leave it there. If you like this conversation, you should also check out the Eurofile. This week, we had a really special podcast with our friends at Brussels Sprouts, Andrea Kendall-Taylor and Jim Townsend. We sat down and talked about what Trump would mean for Europe. And we delved in a little bit on the Russia side. But you can check that out at the Eurofile wherever you get your podcasts. It's been a pleasure, Michael. Thank you so much for joining us and staying up late in Berlin.
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