Deep Dive
Shownotes Transcript
I think that this idea of a Yalta 2.0 is based on a very 19th century thinking about great games and about world markets that are essentially not globalized. And despite the fact that we've seen the rollback of globalization, of course, we know that globalization and independence is still there and in some ways is deepening. So I'm not sure that this is going to work.
And I think we might see a frustrated Trump administration in fairly short order, in which case I will be, I think we might all have to sort of buckle our seatbelts. Welcome to Stop the World, the ASPE podcast on security and international affairs. I'm Olivia Nelson. And I'm David Rowe. And today, Dave, we continue with the task of keeping our listeners on top of the rapidly moving events around Ukraine, Russia, the United States and Europe. Yeah.
Yeah, today we have the brilliant Constanza Stelzenmüller. Constanza is Director of the Centre on the United States and Europe at the Brookings Institution. She really is one of the wisest people you can hear from on transatlantic security matters. As listeners will hear, she's straight out of the gate in this conversation saying that she's never in her considerable career seen anything like what she's seeing now. It really does set the tone for the conversation, doesn't it? It sure does.
Constanza talks about the remarkable urgency with which Europe is discussing a massive increase in defence investment, her take on Donald Trump's goals for his revolution in international relations, the longer-term risks to Europe if Putin feels emboldened by his aggression against Ukraine, and also her personal thoughts as a German who lived through the fall of the Berlin Wall.
And Liv, I feel like I say this every time, but I really, really did enjoy this conversation and I wish it had gone on for twice as long at least. I could tell that, Dave. Okay, let's hear from Constanza. I'm here with Constanza Steltenmüller. Constanza, thanks for coming on the program. Thank you very much for inviting me. Pleasure to speak to Australia, although it would be preferable to actually be in Australia.
You're welcome any time, of course. It's a long flight. Just, yeah, brace yourself. I'm sure you've been through it before. Let's just start with an assessment of what we've seen from Europe in terms of the statements and the actions over the past few weeks. I mean, things are moving quickly, obviously.
How persuaded are you that they have the necessary sense of urgency? I mean, it seems to be becoming more clear that they have the resolve and that sort of thoughtful planning that is going to be required. How convincing are you finding things at the moment? So I can give you a very short answer to that and a slightly more detailed one, if you'd like. The short answer is that I've never seen anything like this in my life and that things are moving with extraordinary speed. And here is why.
I've been in this business of analyzing European defense and security now for, and I know this dates me, 30 years. I started out as a rookie journalist in the early 90s. I was there when a German brigade went to Somalia to support a UNOSOM force under a UN mandate. I was there when German transport planes flew into Kigali after the end of the Rwandan genocide.
And I've covered the Balkans Wars, the White War Crimes Tribunals, the Afghanistan Wars. I've seen a fair amount, and I have never seen anything like this. We should go into detail of some of the things that have been happening, but I think what's important for Australian listeners to know is that there is going to be a European Council tomorrow, so a meeting of the European heads of state and government,
together with the European executive organs, in other words, with the European Commission,
to decide on defense spending, on the remit of the European Investment Bank, on mobilizing private capital. And what's being put on the table is extraordinary. And you can add to that some truly astonishing developments at the national level, especially in France and in Germany, but elsewhere as well.
So what are some of the extraordinary things that you're thinking of? What's jumped out at you as being, you know, when you've heard it, you've said, OK, this is epoch making. So the European Commission is proposing to mobilize a total of 800 billion euros over four years towards supporting Ukraine and rearming Europe.
The core part of that is a 150 billion program of financial support for member states to rearm. And it's literally called Rearm Europe. That, for the herbivorous European Union, is astounding. My second point would be the French offering nuclear deterrence to all of Europe.
Now, the details of that are very much TBD, but that is the French slaughtering their most sacred cow in public. And Macron did that in a speech, televised speech to the nation today, calling Russia the greatest threat to European security, the enemies of the East. Truly remarkable language. And then in Germany, you are seeing two prospective coalition partners, the incoming conservatives and the social democrats, who are
48 hours ago, we're staring at each other in great and justifiable bitterness at lightning speed, deciding on a program of about 1 trillion euros for German defense spending and infrastructure spending, and the incoming Chancellor, Friedrich Mahzer, conservative, using the famous expression, whatever it takes.
That's astounding. And if you think infrastructure, in other words, Germany's rail system and roads doesn't have anything to do with the military, it's important to realize that Germany, because of its location in the middle of the European landmass, is the place that serves as the hub and the host for any military forces moving towards the eastern frontier. So infrastructure matters greatly for Europe's military mobility in Germany.
And then finally, if I may, just by way of semi-amusing detail, the Financial Times had a story yesterday saying that the Irish were willing to contribute peacekeepers towards a force in Ukraine. That's astonishing because Ireland has carefully protected its neutrality policy and has been quite rationally, one has to say, been able to be a free rider in
somewhere between the United States and the UK. And clearly the Irish are reconsidering their position as well and feeling a bit vulnerable. At the risk of being facetious, they'll be fighting alongside the British as well, which I think would be a new thing for them. Indeed.
No comment. I think that's good to say. So let's look at the Macron nuclear umbrella for a moment. I mean, that stands out to me as an extraordinary, apart from an extraordinary gesture towards European neighbours, also an extraordinary gesture towards Washington at the moment, on top of many of the other things that have been said. And I haven't seen all of Macron's language at this point, but it's just extraordinary.
As a statement of lack of confidence in the United States right now, it is staggering. I mean, do you see that as just an enormous statement towards the US? You know, honestly, I think that this was piling up and the famous Oval Office conference with Zelensky and before that, the Vance speech in Munich were sort of the straws on the proverbial straws on the camel's back.
What I think people who don't live in Europe don't really realize is the degree to which Russia has been interfering malignantly in the European political space with propaganda and disinformation, but has also been committing acts of sabotage, including attempted murder. And it's been doing it in a way that, in fact,
doesn't even attempt to hide its origins anymore, but in fact is quite easily attributable. And on the other side, you were seeing European intelligence services, including the Germans, who were always exquisitely reluctant to ever admit that anything was happening, much less to attribute it, being very fast on the uptake, saying this is what's happening publicly,
And this is who we attribute it to. And the Russians not denying. That has really contributed to a sense in Europe that it is not just Ukraine's sovereignty on the line, but our safety and security and civility as well.
That's a fascinating insight, really. I mean, if you were an average American right now, you could be almost forgiven for feeling that, you know, Russia is, you know, if you weren't paying attention to European news closely and you were listening to some of the political statements in the US, you might be forgiven for thinking that Russia is just behaving the way that a great power behaves, is trying to protect its peripheries and its borders.
you know, that there is some sense of equivalence between the way Russia has behaved and the way that Ukraine is now behaving. It's clearly a very, very different perspective. I mean, just apart from the obvious facts, if you actually have followed the situation in Ukraine, but also living in Europe, it just feels very, very different. Yeah. Yeah, I think that's really important to understand, right? There is a, the other point that I want to make is that I was at the Munich Security Conference and
And in fact, I spent three days in Brussels at NATO headquarters and at the European Commission and the European External Action Service before that. And the latter two are never taken very seriously by the Americans and by others as well. And I came away from those three days thinking that I had seen people working day and night to increase European capabilities, extremely worried about the future, extremely worried about Russian activities.
and also deeply concerned about the messaging coming out of the Trump administration. And that, again, was before the Munich Security Conference and before the NATO ministerial. Ministerial, sorry for you Australian listeners, is a meeting of defence ministers, NATO member state defence ministers, where the new American Secretary of Defence, Pete Hexeth, spoke for the first time and really quite radically called into question
The prioritization of European security in American thinking. That is what set off really a cascade of shockwaves in Europe and what I think is leading to this sort of frenzied activity in Europe and in European capitals ahead of the summit tomorrow.
Obviously, the energy is there in Europe. The sense of gravity and urgency is there. How strong is the sense of collective action, do you think? Obviously, it's very important to...
Apart from anything else, just for sort of, you know, with a historical perspective in mind, in terms of Europe, if Europe is going to rearm, we want Europe to rearm together, not individually. No doubt Russia would be very, very adept at putting some divisions between European partners and trying to turn them against each other,
could get dangerous down the track. I mean, I don't want to overstate that, but obviously the sense of collective action is very, very important. How strong do you see that as presenting itself at the moment and how confident are you that it will endure? I am sure that we're going to see extraordinary amounts of disinformation and propaganda designed at exactly what you're saying, designed at driving wedges between Europe's member states.
And I'm not going to exclude the possibility of some of that having an effect, especially the prospect of Germany rearming. I think it's understandably, you know, make some of our eastern neighbors queasy.
That said, they have been berating us for not rearming enough. So I think they have to at some point, you know, they can't have both. And I think we would be willing to take advice. And, you know, I don't want to be too facetious here. The Germans are actually...
preparing to send an entire brigade of German forces to secure our neighboring country, Lithuania, one of the three very small and very vulnerable, exposed Baltic countries to the east that have a border with Russia or with Belarus. And
That is something that the Baltic states have welcomed. I think the larger question that you raise, for example, is how does this play out in NATO and in the EU when you have states opposing it? We know, for example, that the prime minister of Hungary, Viktor Orban, has already written a letter to the president of the European Commission, Ursula von der Leyen, saying we oppose these measures. Right.
The prime minister of Slovakia, Robert Fico, has expressed similar sentiments. Now, I think that that is important, especially since in the European Union, as in NATO, the principle of unanimity
or rather the consensus principle, is the basis for all key decisions. But I will also say that the Hungarians especially have, I think, over the past years, tried the patience of the other Europeans beyond endurance because they are, on the one hand, very willing to pocket European funds and other things that the European Union does for them, while at the same time being very overtly friendly towards both the Russians and the Chinese.
And in fact, you know, replicating Russian or Chinese talking points in public. And I'm sensing quite strongly that the patience of other European member states with that is running out. We'll see what happens there. There are, of course, other important divisions. And that is the fact that there is a rising populist or extremist right in Europe.
including in my own country, Germany, that is very often, and I think not casually, pro-Russian and pro-Chinese, and that is also able to drive wedges in politics. But again, I'm seeing, you know, Germany had national elections on February 23rd,
And the extreme right AFD, one of the most extremist right-wing parties in Europe and the most blatantly, overtly right-wing parties, came in at 20-something percent. Sorry, somewhat less than 21%. And, you know, that still means 80% of Germans want something else, right? And so...
Right now, I'm seeing coalition negotiations between the victorious conservatives and their prospective coalition partners, the Social Democrats, at, honestly, by German standards, lightning speed. And that is also a result of these external and internal pressures and attempts to drive wedges into the European project.
What about the bigger countries? I mean, Germany, obviously, France, you know, counting the UK as clearly, you know, irrespective of recent history, the UK is under Starmer is what, you know, very much wants to be part of this European security project that's emerging.
I mean, are you impressed with the, and von der Leyen obviously as well is a very important figure in this. Have you been impressed? I mean, it certainly, it looks like an impressive demonstration from some of the bigger nation European leaders to me. I agree with that, honestly. It is, also von der Leyen was hospitalized for two weeks with pneumonia and severe pneumonia over the new year.
She's on her second term. She's no longer young. She's in her late 60s, I think. But she is a remarkably dexterous and energetic political leader with, I think, very strong political instincts, has been very open towards working together with Trump's White House.
Notably, the Trump White House has not returned those overtures. She has also made very public attempts to work with the European right, including with the Italian Prime Minister, Giorgio Maloney. And she has...
I think, slaughtered some sacred cows of her own, or at least, I would say, repainted them. One of the signature legislative packages of her first term, she's just started her second term, that was the so-called European Green Deal. And she has repackaged that, I think, very shrewdly as an industrial policy.
And as a competitiveness policy, that takes some doing. But I think that people in Europe appreciate it as signs of a leader who is capable of pivoting when she needs to.
And I think something similar is happening with Starmer, who was considered a rather weak leader before this crisis. You saw the UK hard right party, Reform UK, ticking up to first place in the polls. You saw criticism of him as inexperienced and ineffectual. And the performance that he's been turning in in the past 10 days or so has been stellar, frankly.
I mean, even if Whitehall has gathered around him, they did an extremely good job. And I think that the continental Europeans are not just grateful for this, but are also...
I think I don't sense anymore this prickliness from Brussels or from Paris or Berlin saying, you know, the Brits have to make concessions before we're willing to talk to them about security. I think that there is such a sense of urgency now that people are just willing to drop all this and to just talk about what really matters. And that is Ukraine's and Europe's security.
And Friedrich Merz, as you pointed out, for a traditional centre-right fiscal conservative to say, right, let's spend a trillion euros. It's just a remarkable, as you said, slaying or possibly repainting of sacred cows. Well, this is actually not a repainting. That's a slaying.
Because what this trillion, the only way to mobilize that is by, you know, one, a special fund of 400, sorry, 500 billion for infrastructure, and then liberating all defense expenditures above 1% of GDP from the constitutional debt break. That is tantamount, right, to...
pretty much upending the constitutional debt break. And what's even more astonishing, just to explain the gravity of this shift to your listeners in Australia, is that the German central bank, the Bundesbank, right, one of the most orthodox central banks in the West, right, the president of the Bundesbank saying, we really need to modify the constitutional debt break. That is a, you know, that has never been seen before.
Let's ruin the mood a little. That's all very positive, but the practicalities are...
tough, are they not? Of course they are. Of the $800 billion that Ursula von der Leyen has talked about, I think $650 billion would come in sort of new debt raised by national governments. That equals 1.5% of GDP that would go towards additional defence spending. Now, I mean, either they issue new debt or they take money away from other areas, welfare, social services and that sort of
Just give us some sort of context on the practical and political feasibility of doing all of this. All right. I didn't go into all that detail because I thought that that might be slightly more than your listeners would be all that interested in. They're very resilient. All right. That's astonishing. But that's the Australian spirit. I applaud it and I'm grateful for it. But yes, I mean, you're right to say that this is different from the pandemic fund.
that we set up during the pandemic. It is, apart from the 150 billion that would allow national governments to take out debt, the rest of the money, the 650 billion, would be allowing member states to make exceptions from the debt break rules of the European treaties, which is
a parallel maneuver to what the Germans are doing when they say, we will allow everything above 1% of GDP to not fall under the constitutional debt break. And yes, this funding needs to be mobilized. But what Ursula von der Leyen wrote a letter today to European heads of states that has been spread widely, and where she puts on the table what I would call a
fiscal big bang, where you are at the same time allowing member states to borrow, you are reviewing the use of European funds, you are reviewing the regulations of the, or revising rather,
the rules of the European investment banks to allow for the funding of defense companies, which is currently not the case under existing so-called sustainability rules. And you are at the same time trying to create better conditions for private capital to mobilize around these issues. Essentially, the latter means capital markets union, in other words, the simplification of investment rules across the European space.
And that's already a great deal. And that's something that was being this package of measures, if the heads of state and government agree on it, would entail pretty much every government in Europe.
slaughtering one or two sacred cows. That would be very meaningful. Again, we have to wait for tomorrow to see what they actually sign off on. But honestly, even if they only sign off on a part of it, that is monumental. And I think for the Germans, the biggest economy still, despite two years of recession in continental Europe, to commit to a one trillion defence and infrastructure package
will have an enormous impact on markets. And you can see the impact of all this messaging that's been going on by the extraordinary uptick of European defense companies in the stock market. Absolutely. Yeah. Pivoting across the Atlantic, let's just talk about Trump for a moment, the enigma that is Donald Trump. How would you distill his foreign policy philosophy? I mean, we've learned...
I mean, we've had the contours of it, obviously, for a long time, but it feels like we've learned quite a lot in the last six weeks, just even in terms of how far he's prepared to go and how quickly. If you were to summarize what you think he wants to achieve in terms of, you know, renegotiating and reorientating America's relationship with the world, just give us your best distillation of that.
So let me start my answer to your question with a caveat, which is that I am adjusting my answer to that question every day. And that I've been adjusting it over really since the day of the election on November 5th. Because let's keep in mind that Trump started making policy on the day after his election.
He made news with his demands about the national budget, with his nominations, with policy pronouncement every day to the extent that people were wondering whether the Biden government was actually still in charge. Of course, ever since the inauguration, that shock and awe approach has continued apace.
Let me make two general points here, and if we've got the time, we can dig into them. I will say that what is astonishing about this second Trump presidency is how prepared it was upon arrival and how extraordinarily ambitious its goals are, including in foreign and security policy.
I think they're aiming for nothing less than a reshaping of the domestic constitutional order in America and a reordering of the global rulebook in such a way as to preserve American primacy. But I say that with, you will have noticed that I made a pause, because I
I think that this is not a concept of America's role in the world that suggests that America, as it were, sits astride, as a hegemon, across a US-led global rules-based order. But this looks much more like a Yorta 2.0, a division of spheres of influence between America, Russia, and China.
There are a million questions to be asked of that, but I will make two additional points if you'll let me. One, it seems to be that they are downgrading the classical security ministries, the State Department, the Defense Department, and the intelligence services, and they are upgrading the ministries that are in possession of geoeconomic power tools, as it were. In other words, Treasury, Commerce, and the Trade Representative.
And the idea seems to be that the threat of geoeconomic coercion or the actual geoeconomic coercion is enough to make adversaries and allies do America's bidding. I'm not sure that that is going to work. The other thing that apparently is a sub-goal here is what I would call a, the French would call an arrondissage of territory and territories.
the Northern American hemisphere, and by which I mean, of course, the intention to acquire Greenland and Canada. Again, I have sincere doubts that that is going to work, but I think the intent is very real and we should take it very seriously. And finally, I want to say that I think that this idea of a Yalta 2.0 is based on a
very 19th century thinking about great games and about world markets that are essentially not globalized. And despite the fact that we've seen the rollback of globalization, of course, we know that globalization and independence is still there and in some ways is deepening. So I'm not sure that this is going to work. And I think we might see a frustrated Trump administration in fairly short order, in which case I will be
I think we might all have to sort of buckle our seatbelts.
Really fascinating points there. I mean, I think the geoeconomic coercion point that you make and Treasury and Commerce's role, I haven't heard that before. Perhaps it's a point you've made elsewhere. I don't know. But it's a really interesting, I think, a really insightful one. Let me, I mean, I'll just expand a little bit on what you said, and you can tell me whether you think I'm on the right track or not. But it seems to me that Trump's, well, first of all, that
that Trump's instincts are being translated into policy, almost unfiltered at the moment in a way that they weren't during his first term. And those instincts, you know, based on what we know of him as a, as a, you know, as a, as a person and throughout his life, uh, one of, uh,
business approach where either in every engagement, either you are getting something out of the other person or they are getting something out of you. And it's very much a zero sum kind of attitude towards business and engagement.
So that is, he applies that to foreign policy. He looks around the world and says, what exactly are we getting out of all this money and all of this effort that we're spending around the world, basically to make the world a safer and more prosperous and better place to live for everybody else? But what am I getting out of it?
So he wants to reorientate that. I do agree that he sees money as the natural lever to do that, that, you know, that geoeconomics is his natural terrain to achieve this. He seems to be averse to military money.
power to hard power in various forms. He just doesn't seem particularly comfortable with it, but he is very comfortable with using money as a sort of baton to bludgeon the other side. So, I mean, is that a sort of another version of what you're saying? Yes. I think it's very much a black and white, zero-sum world. And
again, it presupposes that weaker nations don't have means of leverage, which I think is just a fairly large geostrategic error and a lesson that America learned in Vietnam and a lesson that Russia learned in Afghanistan. And I think that there is going to be a great deal of friction coming out of these attempts to reorder the international system
But I think it's important to take these intentions seriously and to consider as America's allies what that means for us and whether it is possible and how to identify areas of continued collaboration with this America while at the same time preserving our own safety and stability.
And I think we should also think long and hard about the potential risk of being caught between the fronts of a friction between America and Russia or America and China when the attempts to make deals go sour, which I'm fairly certain that they will at some point.
The disappointment that you think Washington might experience down the track as a consequence of the approach that you're taking, are you thinking about things like European countries banding together and saying, well, if you're not here for us, then we will do our own thing and we will create our own nuclear umbrella and so on and so forth? Is that what you have in mind? Yes.
So let me address the bugbear that's always standing in the room silently when we talk about these issues, and that is the famous European Army or the European Defence Plan of 1952.
That is, in my view, not on the cards. I think most Europeans, including the French, who have hung on longest to the idea of strategic autonomy and a European security order that is somehow separate from NATO, I think we've all learned that our cooperation in NATO since 1949, really, has...
established nearly 80 years of muscle memory in European member states of planning together, generating forces together, and in the past two, three decades, going to war together in the Balkans and in Afghanistan, most importantly. And
I think that we all know that that's irreplaceable, right? So what I'm thinking really is a NATO where America steps back a little, perhaps even checks out for a while. I think that's still conceivable. We know that during the first administration, Trump was completely serious about leaving NATO and where, as it were, we reserve a guest room for the Americans, right?
where we attempt to continue to buy American weapons, which in some cases are better or more readily available than the ones that we would need to develop or just don't have the production lines for at this point. And where we would, I think at all times, endeavor to retain constructive and open conversations with the Americans about weapons,
policy and security. But that in the end, I think that that is probably the mood of most of Europe. I think the big question mark for many is, is that going to be the mood of Trump's America? But I think the one thing that we can, that I am seeing happening here, right, is Europeans genuinely attempting to shift the burden of European defence
onto Europe and away from America. I'll also note, though, that one of the more influential figures in Trump's Washington, Richard Grinnell, has been tweeting, you know, when the US wants peace, the Europeans are saying, and I mean, this is not a verbatim quote, but more or less, the Europeans are saying, let's rearm and fight. I think that that is a willful misunderstanding of what we're doing here.
Absolutely. And just grossly hypocritical in terms of all of the other complaints that have been made. Well, it's a little contradictory. Let me also note in this context that there have been news reports of an American business consortium trying to buy Nord Stream 2.
The pipeline that was blown up a few months into the Russian invasion and which the Americans, including the Trump administration, had been haranguing us about for years and telling us was making us dependent upon the Russians, which was, of course, perfectly true. One does wonder.
What would happen if that American ownership came to pass and what the expectation of the Trump administration would then be? I don't really see the Europeans or the Germans opening the spigots again and saying to the Russians, oh, we would love to have your Russian gas back. That would be delightful. Your point about the prospect of continued U.S. sanctions.
involvement in NATO. I actually thought, and I was discussing with a colleague yesterday before Trump's congressional speech, that he might even announce a withdrawal from NATO during that speech. As it turned out, he said almost nothing of consequence in the speech at all. So it was a rare sort of pleasant surprise to have no news for a 24-hour period. Let's
Let me just see if I've got the summary correct of how you think Europe should be approaching its relationship with Washington now in terms of a security alliance. I mean, if I've got it right, what you were saying a moment ago was essentially prepare for the worst, prepare to be able to act on your own. But...
continue talking in a way that tries to keep the Americans in some sort of constructive way as a sort of parallel goal. Is that right? Yes, I think it behooves us, right, to, and I think, frankly, anybody who knows anything about European security knows that we are in no position to replace American so-called strategic enablers, right? Intelligence, the nuclear deterrent,
long-range transportation, missile defense, that kind of thing, even in the medium term. That is a very genuine dependency. And at this point, it's a little open as to whether America is in the mood to continue providing for that. It's unclear, I think, to many people.
But I think we are in a much better position to ask that if we make a credible case that we have got the message, that we are doing what it takes, to quote the German incoming chancellor, to see to our own defenses. It gives us a bargaining chip. Perhaps it gives us leverage.
I think the more important open question, which I don't think I've resolved to myself and which may not be resolved in the minds of very disparate camps in the Trump administration, is whether they truly see a re-armed, capable, militarily capable Europe as an ally or as a competitor or as a distraction.
And I think that that remains to be seen. But again, I think that the burden of proof is on us to show that we are serious. I'm conscious of the time, Constanze, and with some regret, I should come to my last question because I'm really enjoying this. And alas, I can't finish on a bright note. So I'm going to ask about just the long-term risks to Europe at this point.
Macron, in his speech, one thing I did manage to grab from the internet before I came down here to record, he said, who can believe that this Russia of today will stop at Ukraine? Russia has become a threat for France and Europe.
I want to get your thoughts on that, the extent to which Russia is able to threaten the whole of Europe at the moment. I mean, obviously, its nuclear capability is a pretty big consideration. But just give us your thoughts on that. And in particular, how significant a factor is Trump's handling of the Ukraine war and
The need, I suppose, for Putin to feel as if he has had to pay some sort of price for his aggression and the converse risk that he feels rewarded for his aggression if no cost is imposed on him. How big a factor is that in, I suppose, the future threat that Russia plays to the rest of Europe?
I think a lot of us who have been trying to understand events since the Russian full-scale invasion or even since the attack on Georgia and the annexation of Crimea, which of course was in violation of international law, if you listen carefully to official Russian actors and read them, and if you read Putin's famous essay about Russian and Ukrainian history,
If you remember the two treaty drafts that the Kremlin sent to Washington and to NATO headquarters in December 2021, just before attacking, where it essentially said,
What it wanted was a rollback of the European security order to 1997. Then you, I think if you take that literally and seriously, which I think we must, then the image is a very, very dismal one, right? Of a Russia that continues to radicalize and become more totalitarian internally, where there is no discernible opposition and a quite extraordinary lack of empathy.
towards the attacked brother country or sister country, Ukraine. And at the same time, you see an external, brutal imperialism that is justified by Russian state media and official pundits in the most vulgar and repulsive terms.
I don't see how we construct an optimistic scenario of relations with Russia, between Europe and Russia on the Eurasian continent, unless that is in a context where Ukraine and Europe are armed to the teeth and able to defend themselves. And it saddens me immensely to say that because I was a young adult when the wall came down. And that seemed like an era of extraordinary promise.
because suddenly communist elites disappeared, the Warsaw Pact disappeared. So it was not just the Berlin Wall, it was the entire Warsaw Pact and finally the Soviet Union. And these countries subjected themselves to really rigorous transformation regimes and to join NATO and the European Union. That was unthinkable when I was growing up.
Remember also that at the time, we joke now about the people who said that was the end of history and the beginning of some sort of market democracy, global entropy, but the truth is that similar things happened in Latin America, in South Korea, and in Africa. There was some justification for thinking that perhaps democracy was on the upswing.
To me, these gains are precious. And I think I'm not the only one in Europe for whom they are precious. And they're very personal. All of us remember, you know, the stories of our grandparents and parents of the war in Europe. And for many of us, and I think that's also important for Australian listeners to understand, Europe is a peace project because we have seen the alternative. And because the stories have been passed on from our parents and grandparents, right? Yeah.
Every major European cities bears the scars of bomb warfare. So we understand what it means when the Russians bombard Ukrainian cities day by day. We have lived that as well, and we don't want it to come again.
Wow. Thank you for that personal reflection and thanks, Constanza. Yeah, I'm sorry. That was all much too long. I apologize. No, no, it wasn't. It was fascinating. It was riveting to listen to. You can edit. No, no, absolutely not. I will cut off the editor's fingers if she dares touch any of that. I joke, of course. But look, thank you so much, as well as that personal reflection, the thoughtfulness and the wisdom you've brought to the podcast today. It's a real privilege for us. Thank you so much for joining us.
My great pleasure. And hopefully one of these days I will actually make it to Australia myself. All right. You'll be a welcome guest at ASPE. Thanks. All right. Cheers. And that's all for today, folks. Next week, we'll be back with an episode about Syria, which I just felt we needed a thorough update on, given it was just three months ago that a six decade old tyrannical dynasty collapsed. Couldn't agree more. Looking forward to it. Bye for now.