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This episode is sponsored by Womble Bond Dickinson, an international law firm of more than 1,300 lawyers across 37 offices in the United States and United Kingdom. In today's complex world, new problems need new perspectives. Womble Bond Dickinson thrives on change, bringing together people with different skill sets and experiences to give their clients a competitive edge.
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Welcome to The World in 10. In an increasingly uncertain world, this is The Times' daily podcast dedicated to global security. I'm Alex Dibble, and I executive produce the podcast. The World in 10 is partnered with Frontline, the interview series from Times Radio, available on YouTube, with expert analysis of the world's conflicts. At the weekend, we bring you Frontline interviews in full. Here's one from this week. I hope you find it interesting.
Today, we're very privileged to see Ambassador Kurt Volker back with us again. Now, Ambassador Volker is a former U.S. ambassador to NATO under the Bush administration and special envoy to Ukraine under Donald Trump's first term. And he's now president and founder of the Alliance of Strategic Advisors and a distinguished fellow at the Center for European Policy and Analysis. Welcome to Frontline again, Ambassador. Thank you. It's great to be with you. Now,
There's a few things that have been happening over recent, I was going to say months, but it's not even weeks, it's days. And the first one, if I go back to the weekend, on NBC, President Trump said about Vladimir Putin that you could say that I was very angry, and he then said pissed off when Putin started getting into Zelensky's credibility, because that's not going in the right direction.
he was responding to comments Putin made on Friday that suggested Zelensky did not have the legitimacy to conduct peace talks and the Russian leader floating the idea of placing Ukraine under UN control. But then later on on Sunday, President Trump told reporters that he and Putin had always got along well and seemed to be trying to defuse the situation. Yeah. What's going on? Yeah. So you have,
President Trump trying to get Vladimir Putin to agree to a ceasefire. And it's a bit of push and it's a bit of pull. We still have all the sanctions in place that were put in place during the Biden administration. And indeed, on the last day, last Friday of the Biden administration, they tightened that package and included vessels transporting Russian oil. Mm-hmm.
President Trump allowed a waiver to lapse that the Biden administration had had in place on Russian banks. So there's a little bit of tightening there. And
I think he's sincere when he says, look, he wants Vladimir Putin to have a ceasefire and he's not doing it. And he's delaying and he's coming up with new issues. And so he's frustrated by that. But he's also trying to entice him because he realizes that Russia has the means to keep up the fighting and will continue to do so. So he's trying to pull them in and give them carrots and offer enticements and at the same time keep some pressure in place.
And I think we are at a stage now where it's obvious that unless there is more pressure and more direct pressure applied, Putin is simply not going to stop the war. So that is where I think Trump is frustrated right now. He doesn't really want to go down the road of confrontation with Russia. He'd like to set up a lasting peace and a bilateral U.S.-Russia relationship that can work.
And, you know, I think he's finding that that is not what Vladimir Putin wants. Yeah, but we've seen him put pressure on Zelensky first and foremost. Quite, from an international commentator's perspective, brutal pressure on him, including what happened in the Oval Office. I agree. Why the difference? Well, leaving aside the Oval Office, because I think that was teed up to be a good meeting and it just went off the rails as President Zelensky started arguing with J.D. Vance.
But more broadly, what they did is they suspended U.S. military assistance and intelligence sharing for about a week or more in order to demonstrate to Zelensky, you need us. Don't play games and don't continue the war on your own. You need us.
That was the message delivered. And I think President Zelensky understood it. They seem to have realigned around the idea of a full ceasefire. President Zelensky looking forward to a lasting peace agreement. And they are trying to work out a deal on minerals is what we're talking about.
Which is basically aimed at changing the political narrative. Instead of being US taxpayers giving money to Ukraine, it's now Ukraine paying its own way. And this is politically much more sustainable in the US. I'll come on to minerals in a moment, but do you think
Part of what President Trump is doing is a throwback to the relationship that Zelensky had with Joe Biden and all of the history that's there. Or is that just something that...
would always refer to that famous phone call they had in July of 2019, which was the precursor to impeachment hearings in the U.S. And President Trump said, look, Zelensky was a stand-up guy. He was a man of steel. He didn't throw me under the bus, said it was a perfect phone call. So he was actually very complimentary.
And then he also was very complimentary about Zelensky's leadership. He was also referring to him as a man of steel and greatest salesman on earth, which he takes as a compliment because he's going around the world getting support for Ukraine. So he has some affection for Zelensky.
But at the same time, I think that February meeting did go very badly because it convinced Trump that Zelensky is not ready for peace. He wants to keep fighting. And therefore, he had to pressure Zelensky to say, no, I'm ready for a ceasefire. That's Trump's. I don't agree with that. But that is, I think, Trump's perspective on how he saw Zelensky. And what do you think President Trump really thinks of Vladimir Putin?
I think he thinks he's a tough guy. You know, Vladimir Putin is in charge. He's powerful. He has a big military, has a big country. And you have to deal with him. If you want to stop the war, the guy who created and is continuing the war is Vladimir Putin. So if you want to stop the war, you got to deal with him. Mm hmm.
Do you think that there's a desire for a peace deal in the first 100 days? Because we had that infamous, but at any cost, because we had that infamous, I'm going to achieve peace in Ukraine within my first day. And then as his team formed up, it very quickly became 100 days and we're on, what, day 68 or something like that.
And that 100 days gets us right around the time of Orthodox Easter as well. And that has been kicked around as a target date for a ceasefire. And I think Trump would declare, you know, not a final victory, but view that as a success if we got a full ceasefire by the Orthodox Easter.
And I do think there's pressure for that. And to be fair to President Trump, I think he sees this first and foremost as a humanitarian issue. He wants to see the killing stop. And he repeatedly says thousands of young people every week are losing their lives. They really are on both sides. And, you know, the Ukrainians have a smaller population and it is taking a toll to be losing so many young people, men and women.
And on the Russian side, they are losing even more from a bigger population, but they are losing even more. And he just wants to see the killing stop. Mm-hmm.
And then you're going to have a long-term dispute. Then you're going to say, okay, we don't agree with Russia's occupation of large chunks of Ukrainian territory, but we're not going to, this is Ukraine, we're not going to seek to restore that to our sovereign territory through military means. We'll pursue that by other means.
But then in diplomatic terms, I think the United Nations described their operation into Cyprus after the 74 War as a short-term operation. Yes, yes. Well, and you could also point to the example of East and West Germany, or you could point to the occupation of the Baltic states.
So we've been through these things. They're not fair or not what anybody wants, but it may in fact give Ukraine a chance to prosper as a sovereign, independent European democracy, find its way into the European Union and have this long-term dispute over occupied territories.
Again, over the weekend, pro-Kremlin Russian newspapers accused President Trump of not fulfilling his obligations, was the word that they used, to stop Ukraine from striking Russian energy infrastructure. And of course, we've got this. Is there a ceasefire? Isn't there a ceasefire? That's going on at the moment.
And the paper went on to say all agreements on the level of President Trump are only worth a few pennies. On market day, Moscow is prepared to make a deal with the US president as leader of the free world and the undisputed boss of NATO and the Lord Master of Kiev. But right now, the leader is not leading.
The boss is not bossing and the Lord is not directing his vassal. Do you think that'll go down well? I don't think so. No, this is all about this is what Russia does is they say things in order to try to spin the narrative, to influence people's thinking, shift the blame for what they're doing to somebody else. They do this all the time.
And President Trump has been fairly clear, just saying, I want there to be an immediate ceasefire. As you said, he squeezed Zelensky pretty hard, who says, yes, I'm ready for an immediate ceasefire. And the Russians are not doing it. And we see the bombings overnight, every night in Ukraine, including on energy infrastructure. And the defense secretary...
Umarov was in Washington and brought with him reams of evidence of recent days saying these are the things that Russia has been striking in Ukraine. Now, you alluded to this. I don't think there has ever been an announced ceasefire, even on energy infrastructure. They've talked about it. Russia has set conditions for what it would require in order to do that.
Those conditions are over the top and unfulfilled. And so Russia is not abiding by that. And it's very disingenuous then for Russia to be accusing Ukraine of violating that ceasefire on energy infrastructure when they're doing it themselves because they have not agreed to it. Hmm.
Do you think President Trump might be concerned that the Russian economy would collapse completely given the increasing success that Ukraine has got in attacking their oil infrastructure? And if the European Union and other countries start to attack this grey fleet of vessels that are going around distributing Russian oil to countries that don't find it, the Russian economy is sort of teetering on the brink a little bit at the moment. I think, I don't know. I haven't had this kind of inside conversations, but...
My perception is that President Trump knows that the economy is Putin's real vulnerability. And he believes that Putin is smart enough to stop the war before it pushes Russia over the edge. And so I think he views this more as leverage than as worrying about the Russian economy collapsing.
Something we'll touch on later is trying to look at this in a wider geopolitical perspective. But are we seeing a reset in the perceived Trump-Putin relationship? Because everyone thought the perception is that Trump is getting into bed with Putin. And now we're seeing a rolling back on it. That has been a trope that's been around for a long time, all the way back to his 2016 election campaign and the famous dossier and all of that, where people have tried to portend
portray and assume that Trump is compromised or a Russian agent or pro-Russian or pro-Putin. And I think it's very different than that. My own observation of this is that he views Putin as powerful and therefore the person you need to deal with so you don't demonize him. But
And I should add to that, too. He also wants to avoid direct confrontation with Russia. He does worry about, you know, World War Three nuclear weapons, just as Joe Biden did. And I think therefore he's looking to work with Russia, push Russia, maneuver Russia, try to get to a place where we're not in confrontation and there's not a war going on. Yeah.
But, you know, if we look at things then from an economic perspective, because President Trump keeps coming back to that, and I can understand that from his business perspective, and you're putting America into that strongest position. You know, the EU's GDP is about $20.3 trillion. U.S., you know, $30-plus trillion. Russian economy is $2.2 trillion. Yeah.
Why is he seemingly putting more pressure on the EU than with, you know, that could be a much bigger trading partner and benefit a lot from or could hurt America economically and seem to be sort of
placating Russia a lot. Is this trying to force Europe to step up and pay for what it's taken for so long? Right. There's a couple of things. The example that you just gave, Trump would use to say Europe has all this money and they're not pulling their share of the load. So they should be doing more.
And with Putin, Putin's the guy who started this war. So you got to work with Putin to get him to stop it. That would be Trump's perspective. Let me broaden out just a little bit to say I don't think that Trump has a clearly defined strategy for how to end the war.
He operates on instinct and he sees Putin's behavior, Europe's behavior, Ukraine's behavior. And he's, I think, reacting with a lot of instinct to how to try to push everybody to a peace agreement. When I take a look at what that amounts to, I see kind of four consistent themes. There is immediate ceasefire. So you stop the killing.
There is what Trump would call reciprocity. So Ukraine is paying its own way rather than getting taxpayer money. There is deterrence, meaning you've got to have some way of preventing the war from breaking out again, preventing Putin from attacking again once you have a ceasefire. And you've got to have better burden sharing. You want Europe to do more.
And this is where Keir Starmer and Emmanuel Macron are putting together European security assurances, European reassurance force for Ukraine. So these pieces are all out there. And you see him trying to push all of them forward. I think it probably will work. I think that by the end of this year, we probably will have a ceasefire.
That's mainly because of the economy in Russia where Putin will have to do that. And I don't think we're going to have a full blown agreement because Putin will never agree to anything reasonable. Yeah, it's fascinating what's happening there. But again, if we zoom this out one step further, if President Trump is working on instinct with this,
Is he doing the same in the Middle East? Is he doing the same in Southeast Asia? And then we've got Doge attacking internal politics inside the United States. Any one of those issues for a very, very experienced government would be a major issue and would occupy a whole of their time. If you look at his top team, they're relatively inexperienced at that level of government experience.
Do you think he's got enough horsepower to be able to continue to survive on instinct? Or is there someone behind that with a bigger plan? No, no, no, no. So the bottom line to your question here, President Trump is the decision maker. He is the only one making policy. Everyone else is almost afraid to say what they think we should do in case they are saying something different than what Trump later comes out and decides. So everyone is being extra cautious.
You do have some very smart, competent people in the administration who are seasoned, like Marco Rubio as Secretary of State or Mike Waltz as National Security Advisor. John Ratcliffe at the CIA, also very good. Besant, big Wall Street career and at Treasury. So you have some solid people.
Solid pairs of hands here. But Trump is the real decider on this. And what I'd say there's some consistency in the way he is dealing with the various region, regional conflicts that you've talked about. Take the Middle East, for
He is trying to push back on Iran. But he's also, he wrote a letter to the Supreme Leader and he's saying, you know, get rid of the nuclear idea and we can work together. So he's trying to push and pull with the... Of course, he talked about that with Vladimir Putin in his infamous phone call. Yes, he did. You don't give Iran the ability to destroy Israel. That's right.
Yeah, so that is a part of it. He's pushing back on Iranian proxies, Hamas and the Houthis, for example, putting pressure on Iran, threatening Iran, but also giving them a way out.
And in the case of China, he is very tough rhetoric on China, trying to focus on building U.S. strengths so we are in a better position to compete with China economically and militarily and trying to avoid confrontation directly with China as well. And this is where I have a theory. OK, let's hear your theory. Well, we keep hearing this emphasis on rare earth minerals deal in Ukraine. And then we've got
Greenland and J.D. Vance's visit to Greenland and the talk of we have to have Greenland. And I went and did some research and pulled out the 1951 treaty, the defense of Greenland agreement between the United States and the Kingdom of Denmark signed on the 27th of April, which effectively turns around and says that the U.S. can
station and base as many troops and have much military capability as it wants in Greenland and make a unilateral decision to do that. Denmark can come and put military officers in with it, but the US has got free rights to do that. But it's minerals, rare earths in there. And if we note that in rare earth minerals, China currently controls about 90% of all the rare earth mineral mines that are economically viable in
And I know that in the past, the U.S. Department of Defense has raised this at different levels as a concern because of the requirement for U.S. defense industry. Is this all about China? I think there is, well, yes, competition with China is,
establishing U.S. strategic independence for military, for economic purposes, for technology, for space, you name it, strategic independence of the United States. And that does rest on a lot of these rare earth minerals and things. So that is very important. And of course, you know, we talk about that with Ukraine, talk about that with China, Greenland, etc.,
That does not explain the rationale or does not give a rationale for saying the U.S. has to control Greenland or have to take over Greenland. As you pointed out, we already can do whatever we want to do. And Denmark is very supportive of that. We used to have 17 military bases on Greenland and it was a U.S. decision to pull them back.
It can be a U.S. decision to go back in again. And Denmark will provide infrastructure and provide icebreakers and provide host nation support. So there's no reason why we need to put it in terms of control and ownership. And I think the reason people are saying is because they simply don't know.
And when you start to explain this and flesh this out, they get to see it. I think Vance's trip to Greenland may have been helpful in that respect because I think he would have gotten a good briefing from the military up there. Here's what it is. The rare earths that exist in Greenland are under thousands of feet or hundreds of feet of ice. Not the easiest place to go extract.
And the weather conditions are very severe. Much easier to do this in the U.S. or in Ukraine or elsewhere. And I think that there's one other dimension to this when you talk about Greenland.
It just plays to this nationalist base to be beating your chest and saying, we're going to make the United States bigger. You know, it's that sort of locker room style emotion, not serious and not, I think, to be seriously pursued. And indeed, when it comes to security, where you have had China trying to establish a port in Greenland and more Chinese and Russian interest in the Arctic area,
it does make sense for the U.S. to strengthen its position in the Arctic and to do so together with Denmark. Well, again, you're the rhetoric that we're hearing about Canada, about Greenland, and then about Panama as well. If you look at that, that's all trade routes from the Pacific round to the Atlantic and round to the U.S. ports and bits and pieces. So there's a common theme there. Yeah. Well, Panama is actually more interesting and more serious. Yeah.
Because President Trump pointed out that you have a company that is subject to Chinese pressure that controls the port facilities on both sides of the canal. So that's really rather concerning to him when that is of such strategic importance to the U.S. And as he likes to point out, we built it and we gave it to Panama, not to China. So he is very serious about that.
getting control of the Panama Canal or reestablishing control of the canal and the operations. And the Chinese responding to that have indeed put pressure on Hutchison as a company not to sell this to BlackRock. So it appears that Trump was onto something. Yeah.
Canada, completely different. Completely different. I think this was personally directed at Justin Trudeau to troll him. And Canada doesn't spend 2% of GDP. It's not just a NATO member, it's a Five Eyes member as well. And that will have worked well.
President Trump. And rightly so. Well, yeah. Now, in terms of defense spending and Canada's contribution to the common defense, he will look at that as free riding for sure. But there's no way that Canada becomes the 51st state. I mean, it's just trolling. But we look at the language that's coming out aimed at a territory that is under the control of another NATO member. Stick your old ambassador to NATO hat on. What?
What will you be saying in the sidelines to the other ambassadors about what's going on? And the...
commitment to NATO. This is all... You have to understand where Trump is coming from. You may not like it or agree with it, but where he's coming from is a belief that the United States has not been treated fairly by Europe. We've paid disproportionately for Europe's defense, while Europe has paid Russia for energy and invested in its own social welfare state and not contributed enough to its own defense. So he is determined to change that.
And if I were advising colleagues at NATO, let's set a high and realistic target that can actually be achieved for defense spending in Europe. Two percent is not enough anymore with this war going on. My guess is that we're going to end up around three and a half percent. And if that is agreed at the NATO summit in June and if there are serious plans for reaching it,
Like Poland is doing it. Denmark is close, but not quite. Baltic states are there. Others are not. But if we can have a goal and serious plans to achieve that goal, I think that's the way to both deal with Trump.
and strengthen NATO in the process. So you think that he'll continue with his support to NATO or is the U.S. focus elsewhere? Yeah, no, he will definitely continue U.S. support to NATO. He's just not going to say it that way because his intention is to keep the pressure on so that Europe does its part. The moment the U.S.,
eases up on the pressure, everybody exhales and everybody goes back to doing what they were doing. Yes, no, interesting. And finally, you're lifting us right out again. I've been at this game both in the military and then commentating for over 40 years. And I keep saying this is the first time I can see a clear path to global conflict.
Are we on a path to global conflict? Look, I think that there is a great risk of global conflict that is already in place. When you see Putin launching an imperialist war to take over another country, genocidal also because he denies the existence of Ukraine as a national identity,
which if successful would then cause him to look afresh at the land bridge, the land corridor that separates Kaliningrad from the rest of Russia and Belarus.
He would look at the Baltic states, maybe even Finland, and have claims everywhere. And if he's getting away with this, you see Iran had been pressing its desire to push against Israel through its proxies in Lebanon and Hamas and the Houthis. You see China with its ambitions on Taiwan, but not...
only there claiming islands from Vietnam and the Philippines. So all of the ingredients are there where tyrants and autocrats with means were not feeling deterred at all. We had something of a collapse of deterrence. And Trump's challenge is to reestablish deterrence
but to do so without going all the way into a confrontation. That is a tough task. And as I said, I don't think he looks at it in those strategic terms the way we just described them, but he understands it instinctively. Here's where he needs to go. Well, on that note, that gives us an excuse to be able to invite you back again. And, Dr. Volker, thank you very much indeed for giving us your time this morning. Thank you. Thank you.
This episode is sponsored by Womble Bond Dickinson, an international law firm of more than 1,300 lawyers across 37 offices in the United States and United Kingdom. In today's complex world, new problems need new perspectives. Womble Bond Dickinson thrives on change, bringing together people with different skill sets and experiences to give their clients a competitive edge.
Across a range of markets, they support businesses and private clients on critical challenges, from energy transition, digital transformation, and cross-border investment, to corporate finance, dispute resolution, and personal wealth planning. All with a mix of minds you won't find anywhere else. Womblebong Dickinson. A point of view like no other.
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