Transcript
Cold open [00:00:00]
Samuel Charap: Russia is at war, full-scale conventional war involving a whole range of high-end weapons systems, including long-range strike, in a country that borders four NATO allies.
The idea that Russia would be completely deterred by the presence of a small number of UK and French forces inside Ukraine I think is low probability. I think it is a higher probability that the promise of such a presence will deter Russia from accepting a ceasefire.
If Moscow were to see itself as losing Belarus, it would not hesitate to act.
There are lots of risks attendant with this war that we’ve sort of become accustomed to, but every once in a while we see an incident and we’re reminded that at any moment this could spiral out of control.
Could peace in Ukraine lead to Europe’s next war? [00:00:47]
Rob Wiblin: Samuel Charap is the Distinguished Chair in Russia and Eurasia Policy at the RAND Corporation, and one of the most influential voices in the US policy debate on how the war in Ukraine should end. He’s argued for a negotiated settlement since early in the war, sticking with that position even when it has been highly unfashionable in DC and attracted heated criticism. He’s been specialising in Russia–Ukraine relations for decades, speaks both Russian and Ukrainian, and in 2017 wrote Everyone Loses: The Ukraine Crisis and the Ruinous Contest for Post-Soviet Eurasia — If anything, I would say an understatement, in hindsight. Welcome back to the show, Samuel.
Samuel Charap: Thanks for having me, Rob.
Rob Wiblin: Your most recent piece, “Europe’s next war: The rising risk of a NATO–Russia conflict,” argues that the risk of a direct NATO–Russia confrontation could actually be higher after a ceasefire in Ukraine — which I think to many people will seem kind of counterintuitive. It’s somewhat counterintuitive to me.
So let’s start with a big-picture question: How seriously should we take the risk, the probability of a direct military confrontation between NATO and Russia?
Samuel Charap: Well, I think in looking at the security environment after the war, so after the hot phase of fighting between Russia and Ukraine is over, we can see a lot of the trends that have emerged during the war — that is, the remilitarisation of Europe; the further militarisation of Russia; a deep sense of resentment and in fact even stronger feelings towards the West after so many Russians have died, as Russians see it, at the hands of a Western proxy; the fears that are quite pervasive in Europe about Russian aggression; and the lack of communication and the sort of breakdown in the entire infrastructure of interaction that used to exist both on a societal and on a state-to-state level between Russia and NATO and its member states — it’s an environment that’s ripe for the kind of miscalculation, misunderstanding, miscommunication that can lead to conflict.
And what we’re saying in the piece is essentially that there’s got to be some thinking put in now to how to stabilise the postwar environment and avoid the worst-case outcome. We caution against maybe focusing too much on the opportunistic aggression scenarios which you hear a lot about — like Russia up and deciding that it, say, wants to take Lithuania or accomplish a sort of fait accompli in a Russian-speaking area in Estonia, say — rather than more sort of breakdown in the security environment that, you know, one thing leads to another and you end up in a war, but not necessarily because one side had initial aggressive intent or intended for that outcome to occur.
Rob Wiblin: What do you think are the most likely accidental escalation scenarios?
Samuel Charap: Well, we could easily imagine, for example, the ceasefire in Ukraine, when there is one — and I’m sure there eventually will be one — breaking down, because often ceasefires do break down. And when that kind of thing happens, I think a future Russia–Ukraine war could drag in European neighbours, and not only European neighbours, much more so than now when there’s sort of unwritten rules of the game that direct involvement is off the table. But I think a lot of European leaders have basically said, “If this were to happen again, we’re going to be much more deeply involved.”
So that’s one scenario. Another is, for example, instability in Belarus. Belarus is essentially Russia’s most important ally. It provides Russia with this sort of strategic depth between itself and NATO. And if Moscow were to see itself as losing Belarus, it would not hesitate to act. And we’ve seen the potential for instability in Belarus, given that it has a highly authoritarian political system. In 2020, in the summer, you might recall there was this large-scale protest movement after the results of a presidential election were falsified. We have Alexander Lukashenko there as president, for now, going on 30 years. So the potential for instability in an authoritarian system like that is always there.
Between Russia and NATO directly, one can imagine any number of different scenarios. I think it’s in the news, these sort of “hybrid incidents” — I mean, I don’t love that term, but nonetheless — sub-threshold of conventional war. So sabotage: these Russian paid agents apparently blowing up factories or attempting to subvert Western military aid for Ukraine — never involving uniformed Russian military personnel firing direct shots, but nonetheless are getting increasingly more assertive.
There’s an increasing demand in a lot of countries, particularly in central and eastern Europe, to respond. A response could easily engender the kind of snowball effect that you’ve seen in the past when wars like that break out.
Equally, Russia conducts, or has in the past conducted snap exercises, so no-notice exercises. Most military exercises are scheduled in advance, and press releases are made and so on. But Russia’s gotten in the habit of having these no-notice exercises, and that has been the cover for aggression against Ukraine in the past. So if it were to occur on the border of a NATO ally — and we should note, of course, NATO and Russia’s border has expanded greatly since Finland’s entry into the alliance in 2023 — we would be in a potentially dangerous situation, where an ally might see what Russia is doing as preparation for aggression and might respond in kind.
Rob Wiblin: Why don’t you think of the risk of Russia deliberately attacking a NATO country as being that likely? I guess the scenario I’ve always been most worried about is Russia attacking one of the Baltic states, trying to engage in a fait accompli there. And then I guess that could just quite clearly escalate to a full war.
Samuel Charap: Right. To be clear, neither in that piece nor do I personally rule that kind of thing out. I think militaries have to plan for worst-case scenarios. That’s their job. So having some plans on the books to think about how to respond to that, not having them would be negligent. So I think it’s important to do that.
But when we’re thinking about what should be, we shouldn’t be exclusively focused on that scenario — in part because Russia itself sees itself as the weaker party vis-a-vis NATO, and it sees itself as likely to lose a war and therefore has been hesitant to engage. Now, that might change if the US were to, say, withdraw. But for the time being, despite all the ambiguity that political shifts in the US have inserted into all of this, I think the fear about a united Western response to anything that looks like a conventional attack on a NATO ally serves as an effective deterrent.
I think Europe’s going to have to put a lot of effort into trying to bolster that as the US — I think inevitably, under this administration or another — shifts its focus. But nonetheless, I think for the moment, and for the foreseeable future, Russia is deterred precisely because it thinks it’s not a war it could win. It entered Ukraine, I should note, thinking that that would be a war that it could win easily.
Rob Wiblin: Something that surprised me… In the article, you’re saying it’s plausible that it could be an even more dangerous period after we have a ceasefire in Ukraine. That makes me wonder, do we actually desperately want to bend over backwards to achieve a ceasefire if we think that in fact that is only going to be the beginning of another set of provocations or of risks that are created? It’s horrific for Ukraine, but in a sense, you have Russia bogged down in this quagmire in Ukraine. They don’t have attention or resources to focus on anyone else, to be hassling other countries. So maybe that’s actually quite a convenient place to leave them stuck.
Samuel Charap: What we say in the piece is that the risks won’t dramatically decrease with the ceasefire, that they won’t disappear; not that they’re necessarily going to be greater after a ceasefire than they were before.
I think you hear a lot of that rhetoric: that essentially if there’s a ceasefire in Ukraine, then Russia is going to be coming for us, NATO, next. That I don’t buy.
I also would say that there are lots of risks attendant with this war that we’ve sort of become accustomed to, but every once in a while we see an incident and we’re reminded that at any moment this could spiral out of control.
So Russia is at war, full-scale conventional war involving a whole range of high end weapons systems — including long-range strike — in a country that borders four NATO allies. Meanwhile, Ukraine is fighting with weapons that have been supplied by the alliance, and Russia is engaged in all these activities to subvert that supply chain. So the potential for escalation in this war I think is quite high. And for that reason alone, not even taking into account the Ukraine piece of this — which I think it’s in their interest too to see this end, as they themselves have now articulated — but I think it’s certainly in the alliance’s interest to have an end to this conflict sooner rather than later.
The escalation risks are one factor, and another, of course, are the resources. It’s going to be an ongoing struggle for Europe to arm itself while it is emptying its caches of weapons to provide to Ukraine. And the fiscal challenges aren’t going to get easier as time goes on when this war and Ukraine becomes more reliant on the UK and the EU for financial lifelines and so on.
So there is a resource argument here too, but I think first and foremost the escalation risk and the broader security environment being so volatile and trying to get that under control would be certainly a stronger case than saying that Russia’s bogged down here, so therefore they’re not going to engage in this active opportunistic aggression against NATO.
Do Russia’s motives for war still matter? [00:11:41]
Rob Wiblin: So back when we spoke in 2022, you thought that the war was, as I understand it, primarily motivated by Russia’s security fears — NATO encroachment and encirclement — as opposed to a genuine ideological belief that Ukraine is and always has been Russian, and that Ukrainian nationality is basically fake.
I guess since then, we’ve gotten many years of track record of Russian behaviour, including forced Russification, child deportation on a very big scale. Does the identity or nationalist motivation now seem any more central to you than it did back then?
Samuel Charap: I don’t think I ever argued exclusively that it was one set of issues that drove this decision — in the way that some, like John Mearsheimer, have argued. I don’t think that is the case. Usually decisions to go to war are motivated by a variety of factors. Monocausality is very rare in these contexts.
But it’s clear that, as Putin has articulated in his decision making, there were both these sort of imperialist drivers and security-driven factors. So to say that it was exclusively one or exclusively the other, I think would be too black and white.
Now, I also think that the question about why the war started and how it might best be ended or how it could end have really now diverged — in part because so much time has passed, and also because this hasn’t gone how the aggressor, Russia, thought it would. So whereas I think there’s enough evidence to suggest that Russia was initially seeking regime change in Ukraine, since it retreated from the capital in the spring of 2022 almost four years ago, it’s hard to argue that they’ve been pursuing that same objective. They’ve been pursuing other objectives that are perhaps no less objectionable, so to speak, but their goals have shifted over time.
So I think it is an important question about what motivated Putin to go to war, and I see a mix of motives there. But I think in a way the question now is much more about what he’ll need to stop, essentially.
Rob Wiblin: Right, right. In a sense, Russia’s security position seems worse now, right? NATO in many ways is more up in their business; it’s got a bigger border. Europe is rearming. The negativity towards Russia is enormous. Is it possible that, if anything, the security concerns are more salient to Russia now perhaps than they were years ago, because they’ve accidentally, I guess, weakened themselves?
Samuel Charap: I think that’s absolutely right. I think if you take a step back, this is a strategic catastrophe for Russia. It has set itself back in terms of economic development by generations — demographically, strategically, in terms of its place in the world, and its reputation. Really, no matter how the war ends now, this is a strategic catastrophe for Russia, and I think many in the Russian elite recognise that.
But in terms of their threat perceptions now, they have a whole lot more to worry about to their West. If we look at European military budgets before the war and now, it’s almost doubled. And the German military, which was previously sort of something of a laughingstock, is now spending a lot of money, with the Chancellor saying, “We want the Bundeswehr to be the most powerful military in Europe” — and that not to be controversial also anymore.
So I do think that Russia’s position geopolitically, and particularly in Europe, has been seriously set back, regardless of where the line is drawn. And I think that was clear from pretty early on that this had been a huge blunder.
Rob Wiblin: The reason why I ask about the balance of motivations is that I think so much of the discussion about how to achieve a ceasefire is focused on the “assuaging Russian security fears” angle. I guess it’s a very centralised, authoritarian country in a way, where Putin’s personal opinions unfortunately carry so much sway. If he just literally is incredibly motivated by absolute contempt for the notion of Ukrainian nationality and independence, then making pragmatic concessions on Ukrainian neutrality or bringing weapons back further from Russia’s border, maybe that won’t be the thing that will enable a ceasefire to get over the line.
Samuel Charap: I think that we can’t rule that possibility out. But we need to test the proposition that there might be some mutually acceptable accommodation that can be reached, and that the security motives — which I think even those who would point to imperialist motives as being the more significant ones, can’t deny that they’re there — that appealing to those can be compelling enough to overcome any of the sort of lingering imperialist drive.
Now, I should say that I don’t think that Putin is going to be happy about the existence of an independent Ukraine, regardless. The question is what he can accept in order to end the fighting and the bombardment of Ukraine. So this is not going to be his ideal outcome. He’s still going to be contemptuous of Ukraine and Ukrainians. I think the question is: is there something where basically we can get to an end of this conflict and see some degree of stability on the ground?
What does a good ceasefire deal look like? [00:17:38]
Rob Wiblin: So what are the main obstacles to a ceasefire deal right now in your mind? And what are the elements you think need to be in it so we don’t just set ourselves up for some other future disaster?
Samuel Charap: Maybe we start with the elements and then get to the impediments.
I do think that the question about Ukraine’s status, as you mentioned, is going to be a big piece of this, and how the reality of Ukraine’s non-alignment would be codified. Russia is going to be, and has been, quite focused on the nature of Ukraine’s postwar security relationship with the West more broadly. In other words, how much and what kind of weapons Western countries will be supplying Ukraine in the postwar period. They’ve been focused on the nature of the postwar Ukrainian military, how they would be postured vis-a-vis Russia. So I think those are all elements that Russia is going to have on the table.
The Ukrainians have been insistent on getting some security assurances, essentially, from Western countries, that if this were to happen again that they wouldn’t be on their own.
So basically: security guarantees, Ukraine’s status, and the nature of both sides’ postwar military posture, I think those security issues are going to be front and centre.
There are other secondary ones. Russia might raise the question about the section of the Orthodox Church that previously was part of the Moscow Patriarchate in Ukraine — complicated story — or the nature of the Russian language and its status in Ukraine. But I think the security issues ultimately are the ones that are going to be front and centre.
Then there are also questions about ceasefire modalities. This is a huge line of contact, by global standards: almost over 1,000 kilometres — and that is extremely difficult to monitor and to have effective disengagement of forces that are quite close. And one could imagine also the importance of having thinned-out zones — so major cities not in artillery range and so on.
One of the big issues that’s on the table now is territory, and specifically Russia’s demand for the part of the Donetsk region essentially that it doesn’t control, which Ukraine refers to as its “fortress belt.” You know, I still consider the territory issue, despite all the ink it’s getting, as a secondary one that could be potentially more easily resolved if the bigger picture security issues were addressed. That said, that territorial question is going to be, I think, based on what we’ve seen from the negotiations so far, a really important one to resolve.
And you know, actually both sides have indicated some degree of flexibility. I’m not saying this is necessarily grounds to conclude that there will be a compromise on that issue, but for example, the Russians have said that they don’t have to have their military there, they could just have the National Guard. And the Ukrainians have said they could do this as a DMZ, so that Russians would retreat to a certain distance if [Ukrainian] forces were pulled back. So neither are saying that we must have 100% control and we’re going to treat this like the rest of our country — in Russia’s case, of course, this is occupied Ukrainian territory, but nonetheless they have told themselves that it’s theirs.
So those are all big and important issues I think that need to be resolved. Frankly, I could imagine, with some creative negotiation and all the parties at the table, coming up with compromise solutions along these lines relating to all these issues. It will take a long time, and it will require some well-structured and well-managed negotiations — think back to how the Good Friday accord was negotiated or Dayton in Bosnia and so on.
To get to the question of impediments: one major one, and I think we need to start here, is Russia’s current optimism about the course of the war. I don’t think they are in a rush to end this, because they think that time is on their side, regardless of what an objective military analyst might say, and there are different views on that. But I think it’s clear that they view time as on their side, and that they have the momentum, and that therefore they’re in no rush. And they see their position improving in six months compared to where it is today. So why make major compromises if you don’t have to? And particularly that pertains to territory, where they have been slowly but surely gaining territory essentially for the last three years, or even longer, since the Ukrainian successful counteroffensives in the fall of 2022. So that’s the big one.
The second one I would point to is that these negotiations have been structured in a unique way, let’s put it that way. There are siloed arrangements between certain parties where the others are not privy to them. For example, there’s a Ukraine–European security guarantees document. There’s a Ukraine–US Security guarantees document. This has all been reported; none of it’s been published yet, which is a good sign the confidentiality has been maintained. There’s an agreement about postwar Ukrainian reconstruction. There’s some US–Russia document. And then there’s this direct question about territorial compromise.
So my concern is that you don’t have all the parties at the table at the same time talking about all the issues that are central to their concerns. So it’s all well and good if the UK and France and several other members of the so-called “coalition of the willing” have committed to deploying a force to Ukraine, I think they’re calling it the “multinational force in Ukraine,” after a ceasefire. If Russia says, “That’s completely unacceptable and we’re going to keep fighting if that’s the conditions,” if that’s what happens when there’s a ceasefire, then it’s not going to work.
So getting all the issues on the table with all the parties at the table — and that would include the Europeans and the Americans as well as the Russians and the Ukrainians — I think would be an important step.
So there’s sort of a “structure of the process” problem that I see, in addition to the big open question about Russian willingness to compromise.
Rob Wiblin: I guess on the Ukrainian side, their reluctance to reach any ceasefire agreement with Russia is largely based on the fact that I think they don’t expect Russia to stick with it. I mean, Russia’s torn up all of the previous agreements that they’ve had with Ukraine. And it’s an understandable suspicion that basically Russia will just take the opportunity to rearm, to refocus, to regroup — and then whenever the time feels ripe to them, to basically reinitiate the war and try to take more territory.
What strategy do you have in mind for assuaging that fear, and indeed making that outcome less likely?
Samuel Charap: So as a general matter, I think it’s important to note that this is a fear that is common to belligerents who are trying to end a war. Particularly one that’s been protracted and been quite bloody. In other words, that they both will suspect that the other side is just going to use the ceasefire period to rearm and potentially refocus their efforts and reattack. And by the way, I think Russia is convinced that Ukraine might do the same. So both sides, I think, are going to be preparing for that outcome.
But it is important from a Western perspective and a Ukrainian perspective to structure a negotiated outcome that leaves Ukraine in the best position to deter a potential future Russian attack, and there are multiple layers of this.
The first and most important piece is having a capable Ukrainian military. I think the Ukrainians have come to terms with the reality that nobody is going to fight for them. And therefore helping the Ukrainians, assisting them to have essentially a defensively oriented [military] — in other words, a military that is capable of holding territory, and making any gains for Russia to be incredibly painful, too painful in fact, to initiate, will be the first layer. That does involve, of course, Western assistance. But first and foremost it’s a job for Ukrainians.
I think a second and important piece of that is external guarantees or commitments. And here it’s less a question about, as much of the European debate has been focused on, this issue of boots on the ground. I don’t consider that a particularly credible option, nor do I think Russia would accept it even if it were, but I do think there are ways in which we can structure a sort of snapback arrangement. In other words, that any benefits that Russia gets out of a ceasefire — be it sanctions relief; be it Ukraine’s non-alignment; be it limitations to Western assistance, say we wouldn’t provide targeting data in peacetime, that we would in wartime — snap back, meaning that all of the benefits, Russia loses them all if it chooses to have a major violation of the ceasefire and attack Ukraine again.
Rob Wiblin: So the idea with the snapback guarantees is that you might worry that Russia’s strategy would be to have a ceasefire for a bit, to weaken the assistance that the West is providing to Ukraine. And then they can restart the war, and then we have to kind of reorganise ourselves and very gradually ramp up the support for Ukraine again. And at every point, we have to have the political debate again about whether we want to do the same sanctions and whether we want to arm them with this and that.
So the way to deter them is to precommit that as soon as there is any violation, all of these things automatically come back into place. And did I read your proposal right that they would in fact come into place automatically — like you would need to vote them down rather than vote them up basically?
Samuel Charap: Yes.
Rob Wiblin: I guess someone would have to adjudicate whether the ceasefire has been violated. But has that approach been used in other ceasefires successfully?
Samuel Charap: So the snapback concept is actually from the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action, the Iranian nuclear deal, where there were sanctions that were relieved and that would be reimposed — that were in fact reimposed — in the event of Iranian violation of it.
But essentially, the idea of having commitments to undertake certain activities in case of certain contingencies as a general matter, that’s sort of the basis of most treaty obligations’ mutual defence clauses. Basically, even [NATO’s] Article 5 says, essentially, in the event of attack, we will treat it as an attack on ourselves and then think about what we should do in accordance with our constitutional obligations and so on.
So I think that the generic form of a precommitment to at least consider undertaking certain actions has been legislated before and could be legislated in the future. And we’ve had sanctions being contingent on certain things for sure.
I think the point we tried to make in that article, which I cowrote with Jeremy Shapiro also, in Foreign Affairs was that essentially legislating it and having some sort of review mechanism avoids the messy political debates problem and gets political buy-in in key countries — so that if there is in fact a violation, Russia is denied the opportunity to use the salami-slicing tactics that you describe to sort of whittle away and get what they want without having any consequences.
Now, it is true that what we propose in the piece is a slightly more severe version of what the West is doing now in terms of what would happen if Russia were to attack again, in terms of sanctions, military assistance, and financial assistance. But ultimately I think that’s not going to in itself be a deterrent; Ukraine is also going to need its military to serve as part of that deterrent as well. But I think that having a degree of automaticity will help make it more of an effective deterrent.
Rob Wiblin: Yeah, I think part of your model is the porcupine defence model: during the period of a ceasefire, as I understand it, you’re thinking the West would say we will only supply Ukraine with weapons that would be useful for defending and retaining territory, not for regaining territory. But that would immediately flip if the ceasefire were violated by Russia: then we would start rearming them with materiel that they could potentially use to regain territory from Russia. Is that the idea?
Samuel Charap: Yes, and there’s also another piece of that which is deep strike. The key weapons that have been the subject of the most heated debates in the West have been those that Ukraine could use with significant payloads to strike deep into Russia, missile systems. Essentially they can do that now with their own domestically made drones, but the payloads are much lower and so the impact is much lower. But those are weapons systems that are not necessary for defensive fortifications or for holding territory, but could be provided — and we in fact propose having stockpiles in neighbouring countries ready to go if Russia were to attack again.
Rob Wiblin: What sort of weapons can you use to defend territory? We’re talking like landmines or things that prevent vehicles from travelling?
Samuel Charap: That’s right. There’s a whole range of things that could be used defensively, and most important I think in Ukraine’s case is air defence. But yes, territorial defence goes everything from landmines and obstructions to prevent armoured assault to a full scale essentially surveillance network so that you can see and detect any incursions and particularly any air incursions. So anti-tank systems, anti-aircraft, those kinds of weapons.
Of course, there’s not a 100% clear dividing line between offensive and defensive. There will be those who will make the case that in order to deter, you need to be able to strike deep into Russia so that they will know that they’ll feel the consequences there. You know, that’s not completely unreasonable, but the question is: can you use that threat as an incentive both to agree to a ceasefire and to comply with it? So if Russia knows that if it complies with the ceasefire, it’s not going to be facing that missile threat from Ukraine, then maybe it has more of an incentive to do so.
Rob Wiblin: As I understand it, over the last three years, four years, despite a lot of fighting, there’s been relatively little territory exchanged, given the amount that’s been going on. In a sense, the technological equilibrium or the military equilibrium is quite advantageous for someone who’s defending territory.
I don’t know the specific details, but if that is generally the case, could it be the case that during the ceasefire, if we do supply an enormous amount of defensive equipment to Ukraine, that they could bolster whatever frontiers they end up on, such that it just would become… I mean, I heard that one reason why it was difficult for Ukraine to reclaim territory was that basically Russia put up landmines everywhere, they just made it incredibly difficult to reclaim space. You lose so many staff, it takes so long.
Can Ukraine basically use that strategy to their advantage? They have to worry about Russia rearming, but they could defensively arm even more effectively?
Samuel Charap: Absolutely. You could imagine Ukraine being in a position with defensive fortifications and defensive weapons systems that any Russian general staff officer looking at the situation would say, “This is going to be a nightmare.”
Now, again, that doesn’t necessarily deter irrational decision making. One has to imagine that there were people in the Russian military who knew something about the Ukrainian military, who thought the initial plan was crazy. But in any case, I do think that yes, what we’re seeing now at least is that with the pervasive use of UAVs [unmanned aerial vehicles], that has come to favour the defence, essentially — because both armoured assault and even small infantry group assault has become impossible. There’s this sort of kill zone, and the battlefield has become essentially transparent.
So yes, I do think that you could imagine quite an effective defensive fortification line. And we can also think about how a ceasefire could essentially create zones where Russia — both sides, but in this case Russia — would have to withdraw weapons from, so that there would be ample warning if it were to seek to cross that line again.
Now of course, I should underscore that a determined aggressor will do what it wants, sometimes despite knowing that it will, in fact, lose. Right? So this is not a guarantee in the sense like, you buy a webcam with a guarantee: you can’t bring it to the store and get your money back. But these are, I think, the best we can do under very disadvantageous circumstances to create a sort of web of incentives and disincentives that makes future aggression far less likely.
Rob Wiblin: Some, including Ukraine I guess, would like a security guarantee of the form that NATO will come to its defence with its own troops and things if Russia invades again. Of course, that’s an extremely precarious commitment to make. Obviously it’s potentially not very credible to Russia, because are we actually committed to doing that? Would we be willing to accept the cost of war with Russia? And because of that, it’s very risky, because they will potentially call our bluff, and then maybe in the 3:00am phone call, we will join and we’ll end up with World War III as a result.
Do you think there is any room for this kind of security guarantee, or do we just have to give up on that approach?
Samuel Charap: I think perhaps most importantly, the Ukrainians themselves have taken a step back. While sort of saying that, “ideally, of course, we would want to be members of NATO,” they haven’t really objected to this being taken off the table. You know, politically how that is formulated is quite challenging, because of the way it’s been inserted into the Ukrainian constitution. But nonetheless when I was last in Kyiv in December of last year, I was consistently hearing the view that “no one is going to fight for us” — which is a logical conclusion to come to after four years of no one fighting for them. I think that has essentially been taken off the table.
Now, there is this question about it, and there’s a lot of planning going on, including in the UK as well as France — and in fact, the French president and the UK Prime Minister publicly committed to deploying this force to Ukraine after a ceasefire. You know, here I’m quite sceptical. I think that the credibility question really does come into play. And then we’ll face a question — or the alliance will, essentially, if these forces come under attack — of either retreating and essentially losing a lot of credibility that way, or of launching a Russia–NATO war, neither of which is a particularly good outcome. The idea that Russia would be completely deterred by the presence of a small number of UK and French forces inside Ukraine, I think is low probability. I think it is higher probability that the promise of such a presence will deter Russia from accepting a ceasefire.
What’s still holding back a ceasefire? [00:38:44]
Rob Wiblin: So what’s the motive on each side to accept a ceasefire? I guess you’re saying on the Russian side, they feel like time is on their side. Above and beyond the fact that they’ve been gradually reclaiming territory and rate their prospects to gain more territory this year, there’s also the fact that Trump has signalled so much impatience with Ukraine. He’s quite mercurial. It seemed at some points last year like he maybe was going to basically withdraw support for Ukraine.
Doesn’t that create an enormous incentive for Putin to just hold out and hope that at some point US support for Ukraine will be completely cut off, and then they’ll really be in the driver’s seat in the war?
Samuel Charap: Well, I think that the Trump factor plays both ways. Because while it is true that I think there’s a plausible case to be made that Russia might have concluded that all they have to do is wait and Trump’s impatience will lead to a full end to US support for Ukraine, I think on the flip side, they also recognise that Trump’s interest in negotiating an end to the war represents a window of opportunity. And the open talk about some normalisation of US–Russia relations after a ceasefire, I think they recognise is not something that’s going to be on the table forever. So I think Russia does have incentives in that regard.
I also think there are many in the Russian establishment that don’t view the acquisition of a few more kilometres or the destruction of X more percentage of Ukrainian energy generation as worth the costs to Russia. And that the economic pressures that have been created, both by the distortions of the war economy and the sanctions that are mounting, do represent an incentive to bring this to a close.
And I think Russia does have reasons to want to end this. That doesn’t mean that therefore they’ll be willing to make enough concessions to get there. But it’s not just true that everyone in Russia is confident that there will be a glorious victory in a year. I just think that the narrow military lens on this is probably one of optimism, to get back to my previous comment.
And Ukraine I think has come to the view that essentially the longer this goes on, the worse off they will end up being in the postwar context. And therefore they have accepted the idea that this ceasefire is in their interests. In fact, they would accept an unconditional ceasefire. It’s Russia that is essentially pushing to attach its political conditions to ending the fighting. But both sides are paying tremendous costs, obviously Ukraine disproportionately so, as this war continues, so you can see the logic of a ceasefire being seen by both as beneficial to some degree.
Rob Wiblin: I see. So that’s the thing that creates room to negotiate a deal that might be seen as mutually beneficial. It seems like we’re threading between many different challenging constraints here.
Samuel Charap: Absolutely.
Rob Wiblin: We need a deal that we believe that both sides will plausibly stick to, where Ukraine doesn’t feel too vulnerable about potential more Russian aggression. We need Russia to view it as in their interest, despite the fact that they feel on the front foot militarily. But we need Ukraine to swallow an incredibly bitter pill of effectively ceding a lot of territory and closing the window on getting revenge against a country that has caused them enormous harm and committed war crimes and so on.
Could you paint me a picture of: if things went really well over the next year or two, and we did end up with a ceasefire, in broad strokes what would the process look like, and what would the ultimate deal look like that seems most plausible?
Samuel Charap: Wow, that’s a good question. So there are multiple dilemmas here, but the biggest one in negotiations to end war is fundamentally about how sides that are currently fighting each other can credibly commit to stop in the other’s eyes. And that requires a process whereby, through the negotiation process, the other side can see that it’s actually in their interest to end this, and that they’re willing to take steps that potentially are costly to them — militarily, for example — to get them there.
So process wise, since we’re at such a phase of high-intensity war at the moment, you would want a phased ceasefire, moving from one domain to another. Say, starting with right now, what would be most important for Ukraine is energy infrastructure. Moving to no deep strikes at all — so that is a certain distance from the front line. Then maybe excluding the maritime domain, eventually moving closer and closer towards a full-fledged ceasefire on the ground. Have that process be gradual, so that both sides can have a degree of confidence in it. That would be part of it.
I think you’d want to have a comprehensive negotiation that would get you a ceasefire as soon as possible at the end of that phased process, and potentially link to that a framework for this broad and complicated deal that would get enough commitments essentially from both sides for them to feel confident, but without having to spell out all the details. That kind of thing is called a framework agreement.
So if you got a framework agreement and a ceasefire, and essentially a commitment to launch a process that would produce essentially some sort of political settlement — it’s not going to be a peace treaty in the traditional sense, because Ukraine and Russia will have territorial disputes; there will be lots of unanswered issues. But I think I would prefer to see the ceasefire up front and thus some sort of framework agreement to go along with it, because I think that’s what will get Russia to accept it. And then have a much more detailed and drawn-out negotiation process without people dying and infrastructure being destroyed and so on. Then there would be a process on the ground of withdrawal. You would want to have a monitoring mission there to ensure that. So quite complicated. This is not going to be easy.
And Ukraine is obviously the victim of aggression here, but there are ways to incentivise the peace for Ukraine too: keeping an accelerated path towards EU membership on the table, having significant financial incentives in the form of reconstruction and postwar military aid, a commitment to essentially build up the Ukrainian military into a very capable defensive force. So there are ways to link a settlement to benefits to Ukraine as well.
Why Russia might accept Ukraine’s EU membership [00:46:00]
Rob Wiblin: Yeah, I was a little bit surprised to find out that the idea of Ukraine joining the EU is on the table as much as it is. It seems like things are trending towards Ukraine agreeing to be neutral and not joining NATO, but it might be acceptable for it to join the European Union. Does that look plausible for Russia to swallow that?
Samuel Charap: Russia has accepted that since 2022. That was actually part of the Istanbul Communiqué in March of 2022, the deal that almost was in the early weeks of the war.
Rob Wiblin: I guess I have the perception that Russia really didn’t want Ukraine to be pulled into the Western sphere of influence. And it feels like joining the EU was really quite getting pulled into it.
Samuel Charap: I think you’re absolutely right, and I think it’s an underappreciated concession in a way. And a concession not necessarily to Ukraine, but to reality: to the reality that Russia is not going to be able to stop that process.
But yes, going back to 2013, of course, Russia undertook some pretty extreme measures, this is before the annexation of Crimea, put a lot of economic pressure and provided a lot of economic incentives for then-president Yanukovych to not sign an association agreement with the EU.
So basically, I think this is another element of the strategic catastrophe from a Russian perspective: that they’ve essentially politically and economically ceded the point that Ukraine, the government-controlled Ukraine, will be beyond Russia’s sphere of influence, so to speak.
Now, EU membership is a long and winding road. The US side seems to think that the EU could commit to doing that in 2027, which is just not going to happen. It’s a very bureaucratic process. But it can move relatively quickly, and I think Ukraine and the EU are both committed to making that happen.
How to prevent a spiraling conflict with NATO [00:48:00]
Rob Wiblin: I guess we’ve mostly talked about how we could make this palatable to Russia and Ukraine. Are there characteristics of any ceasefire that would be important to have primarily with a view to preventing escalation between NATO and Russia in other areas? You know, the grey war stuff, the hybrid war, or incursions elsewhere. Is there any relationship between these?
Samuel Charap: Well, this conflict, generally speaking, you can think of as having three rings, essentially:
- There’s the Russia–Ukraine piece;
- There’s the Russia–NATO piece — which I think is part of this dynamic, clearly, given both the assistance and the breakdown in relations;
- And then there’s the broader strategic stability, mostly a Russia–US ring, which has been directly affected by the conflict with Russian suspension of implementation of New START and the lack of a treaty to replace it — which I think is largely a function of the breakdown in relations that were caused by the war.
So I do think that in attempts to resolve it, we need to think about addressing all three rings, even if not immediately. What I could imagine being important to embed in a Russia–Ukraine ceasefire or framework agreement is a commitment to start a Russia–NATO negotiation process to ensure broader stability in the continent.
That is going to be a long-term negotiation, not something that can be done in weeks or months, but nonetheless that the sides would commit to begin it. Because right now there just isn’t any discussion of that, and I think we need to begin that. It’s going to be tough, but having some forum through which the broader concerns that you mentioned in terms of European security can be addressed I think would be important.
What’s next for nuclear arms control [00:49:57]
Rob Wiblin: Yeah, let’s talk about the nuclear arms control treaty. So New START expired a couple of weeks ago. This was a treaty that had limits for US and Russian active nuclear arsenals that had been in place for a couple of decades. Very sad to see it go. Russia, I believe, offered to extend it for a year, and the US just batted that away and said it wasn’t very interested.
If we could accomplish this kind of ceasefire, do you think we could have a new era of negotiations over these most severe issues that both the US and Russia, despite their differences, really probably would like to reach agreements on?
Samuel Charap: Yeah. Ultimately strategic stability is about avoiding, again, inadvertent conflict, making crises less potentially escalatory, avoiding first-use pressures in a crisis — so “use them or lose them” concerns — and avoiding misinterpretation. Under New START, every test of an ICBM was notified, every movement of launchers in and out of service essentially was notified, there were opportunities for inspection and so on.
So I think the way the Trump administration has approached Russia and the negotiations since it’s taken office has basically been, “We can talk about a lot of things after a ceasefire, but we need to see the war in Ukraine ended,” and that they’re very focused on that as a first-order priority.
Now, the question of what happens after that is more complicated. You’ve heard voices from the administration, including President Trump himself, talk about the need for a trilateral agreement, one that involves China. And in fact, that was the Trump administration position toward the end of his first term.
My personal view is that there is grounds for having US–Russia arms control despite the buildup of the Chinese arsenal — their buildup is much more significant in the last few years, and they’re projected by 2035 to have as many warheads as the US has warheads deployed under New START, at least. So although the US will still have something like three times as many warheads overall, that’s a huge buildup: five times larger than it was in 2019.
But the deterrence relationships between China and the US and Russia and the US are fundamentally different. And therefore, in my view, you would want two separate arrangements. Moreover, at the moment, China’s arsenal remains a fraction of the size of the US and Russia. We still control over 85% of the world’s nuclear weapons, and thus I think have a special responsibility to minimise the chances of their use and to at least have limitations, if not further reductions. I think there’s a debate in the US now about how many we need in light of the Chinese buildup, and maybe it’s going to be more than 1,550, which was the limit under New START. But I think having a limit — that is verifiable, particularly — avoids the kind of worst-case assumptions that often drive these things.
Finland and Sweden strengthened NATO — but also raised the stakes for conflict [00:53:25]
Rob Wiblin: Back in 2022 when we spoke, you argued I think against Sweden and Finland joining NATO, on the grounds that it would create too much of a risk of escalation with Russia, enormously expanding the border between NATO and Russia.
I guess they both did join, I think in 2023 and 2024, and Russia kind of accepted it without… Well, I guess they complained a bunch, but we’re all still here. And I think arguably it made NATO’s eastern flank somewhat more defensible, at least that the defence of the Baltics is substantially more feasible now than perhaps it was before they joined. Do you think your analysis at the time was mistaken, or did we get lucky, or is there something else going on?
Samuel Charap: Well, I’m not sure necessarily I argued against it. I just think I was pointing out the potential escalation risks. At the time, in mid-2022, of course we had no idea about this environment we were entering into. And if someone told anyone in my field that the US would be providing long-range strike to Ukraine that Ukraine would be using to hit cities inside of Russia in 2021, I would have looked for the nearest bomb shelter. So we’ve been learning, because these are unprecedented situations.
I think the reality is that public opinion in Sweden and Finland shifted pretty dramatically, and they had always been in the position of being as integrated with NATO as possible without actually being members, and thus positioning themselves to become members quite quickly. And so that has happened.
I think the question really is how we manage that after the war, and after Russia’s attention is not as directly focused on Ukraine. You know, from Finland’s perspective, the security environment in the immediate sense has somewhat improved, because a lot of the units that were previously stationed along its border have been chewed to pieces in Ukraine. But Russia has announced plans to dramatically increase its presence near Finland, in the Baltic, in the years to come. And while I’m sure they will be behind schedule and it won’t be quite what they advertise, I would imagine that some of that will come to pass.
So the real question, I think, is now that we have this new reality… You’re right: logistically it makes defence of the Baltic states much easier, but it does create a potential more unstable security dynamic involving Russia, and we just need to keep that in mind.
Finland has a long history of managing this, at least in the pre-2022 era. But since then their relations with Russia have been almost completely cut off, to the point of border crossings being closed. And I think in the postwar context, we’re going to have to, as an alliance, think about how to manage what is now a much longer border between NATO and Russia to avoid miscalculation and misunderstandings.
Putin isn’t Hitler: How to negotiate with autocrats [00:56:35]
Rob Wiblin: As a general feature of your worldview, you favour negotiations and trying to aim for pragmatic deals with powerful countries — even ones that we think are led by bad people doing evil things. And that’s kind of my realist, pragmatic instinct as well. But preparing for the episode, I was looking at the best objections to this entire mentality, and I think there are at least some reasonable reasons to think that perhaps it’s wrongheaded, at least in some cases.
First, meeting aggressor countries halfway, a country like Russia halfway, could encourage other countries to kind of engage in their own territorial conquest.
Second, countries of this type do tend to violate agreements whenever it’s convenient. So you might find that you negotiate in very good faith but then you give up stuff, and then you don’t get very much in return in the long run.
And third, maybe the one that stands out to me the most: there’s maybe a case that the West should just cultivate a reputation for being completely immovable in the face of aggression — even unreasonably so, completely stubbornly so, because that reputation is itself a deterrent to other countries. So you might suffer more in this war out of all proportion to the narrow stakes, but you’ll end up facing fewer wars overall if everyone expects that there’s nothing to be gained by invading countries that you’re friendly with.
Given all of that, why do you still prefer a pro-negotiation mentality, on balance?
Samuel Charap: I think that there’s this sort of Hitler analogy that does distort a lot of our views of nasty autocracies, right? Most autocracies historically have not thought the kind of world domination that Nazi Germany did. And particularly the sort of Munich analogy of any agreement just being a sort of pause before the inevitable aggression, and seeing that as more about the nature of the attempt to find agreement than about the nature of the adversary in question — in this case, Nazi Germany and its plans for continental and global domination — I think that does distort things.
But more broadly, your question relates to one of reputation. And I do think that what we know from political science studies of this is that essentially states look to other states’ behaviour in the particular case, not from somewhere else across the world. So just to be quite concrete: from what we know about how reputation has functioned in the past, China’s view of whether the US would respond to an attempt to take Taiwan is likely to be more shaped by US activities in Asia and the Asia-Pacific than it is by the US response to Russian aggression in Ukraine.
Now, that’s not an argument for not responding to Russian aggression in Ukraine. I do think that we need to attach costs to norm violation — that if we take the norm of territorial integrity seriously, if we take the norm of non-aggression seriously, we need to impose costs to states that violate it. I think that’s a clear-cut case.
But you know, since the advent of nuclear weapons, and given that Russia has more than any other country, there’s not going to be an outcome in confronting Russia that looks like Nazi Germany’s capitulation. And ultimately, we found ways of having stability, particularly in Europe, with even the Soviet Union.
And it’s that history I would look to, where we don’t think of agreements as transforming a relationship to become fundamentally friendly or something, but about how to achieve stability through negotiation — viewing negotiation as a tool of statecraft, along with coercive elements, rather than some alternative to using coercive elements, I think is an important way to think about how to deal with the problematic, just to put it mildly, countries that exist in the world today that are ultimately unlikely to disappear like the Soviet Union did.
That, I think, also colours our view of how confrontation with autocracies end. The geopolitical miracle of 1989–1991, where an empire largely peacefully — although it’s sort of overrated because there was some violence — imploded, and basically not only imploded, but also said, “Our model was wrong, and we accept yours,” that’s unlikely to happen. Or at least betting on that is not a wise foreign policy move.
So I think we need to accept these countries for what they are, not sugarcoat it, but also see that in the past, even with countries that are objectionable both in their domestic political regimes and their foreign policy behaviour, we have been able to find agreements that serve our interests while not giving up on any of the elements of shaping the environment using military and other means.
Why Russia still takes NATO seriously [01:02:01]
Rob Wiblin: Last year I interviewed Hugh White, who argued that we’re overall trending towards a multipolar international order, and that for better or worse, the US should accept the reality of Russian military power, their greater resolve to fight over some neighbouring countries and issues that are important to them in their near abroad.
Your work sometimes gets lumped in with that kind of thinking, and you’ve argued against that Ukraine shouldn’t have been encouraged or we shouldn’t have created the perception that Ukraine might join NATO in the past, for instance. How is what you’re proposing different than ceding Russia basically a sphere of influence in its nearby area?
Samuel Charap: I don’t think a Russian sphere of influence is a viable solution to the problems that exist in terms of Russia’s relations with its neighbours and contestation between Russia and the West over influence there. These countries don’t want to be subjugated to particularly this Russia.
But just generally speaking, they want their independence. Their elites have come to have a structured incentive to prioritise that. And so, as we discussed earlier, even with Ukraine, in the 80% of Ukraine that the Ukrainian government is likely to end up with, Russia’s influence will be dramatically attenuated. So I hardly see the outcome that we’re describing as one of ceding influence to them.
I also think that there’s no reason for, for example, the United States now, interestingly, under Trump, has taken upon itself to lead a process of reconciliation between Armenia and Azerbaijan — Russia’s near abroad. That seems to make sense to me. If the US can get it done, great. That war has been going on essentially since before the Soviet collapse. In other words, I think just saying this is Russia’s sphere of influence and we must retreat is not really a viable policy option, nor is it a desirable one.
So I think I end up with a somewhat more nuanced view: that it’s not a matter of just recognising Russia’s interests and therefore retreating, but taking into account the reality that Russian influence is not going to go away. We can try to counter it, but acting like there’s no consequences for any Western policies I think it would also be equally foolish.
I would also say that Hugh, in his interview with you, made the case that the lack of Western and particularly US military response to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine is somehow demonstrative of a broader lack of US commitment to NATO. And I would just disagree with that. I think the distinction between NATO and non-NATO Europe, particularly under the Biden administration, but even going forward under Trump, where we have just heard the undersecretary of war make the case for returning NATO to its sort of factory settings — in other words, focusing on territorial defence and deterrence — I don’t think that the US is going to cede the alliance commitments it’s made in Europe, and I don’t think it should.
I think each of these regions — and I obviously know Asia a lot worse than I know the European theatre in this context — but I think there are lots of nuances here that make broad-brush arguments about how the implications of multipolarity are that we should just accept spheres of influence a little bit too black and white.
Rob Wiblin: Yeah. In that interview, Hugh White also said that he suspected that Europe would end up ceding to Russia everything that it couldn’t convince them that it would be willing to fight a nuclear war to defend. Is that exaggerated in your view? Or does NATO/the EU need to convince Russia that there are lines beyond which it really would be risking its own existence?
Samuel Charap: I am convinced that Article 5 is an effective deterrent, that Russia believes in it, and believes that it would be at war with the United States if it were to attack a NATO ally. And I think Russia sees that war as one that it could not win conventionally, and that would have therefore the potential for nuclear escalation. This is not a scenario that Russia sees as beneficial, nor do I think it sees a particularly urgent reason to do it.
So ultimately, extended deterrence — which essentially means that the US is not only deterring an attack on itself, but it is extending that deterrent commitment to its allies in Europe and in Asia — rests on something of a bluff, or something of a commitment that we don’t know what will happen if called, an uncertainty. And that risk that leaves something to chance is precisely the kind of fear that deterrence is meant to create.
After all, deterrence comes from the word “terror.” It’s the idea of affecting adversaries’ psychology so that they are afraid of undertaking aggression. And I think there are ways that we can effectively continue to convince Russia that the consequences of attacking an ally would just outweigh any possible benefits, and therefore that they would be deterred from it.
Rob Wiblin: Yeah. Hugh was pessimistic about the chances that the US would intervene to defend the Baltic states. But I guess there’s another aspect to this, which is the risk/reward for Russia. And they might decide not to attack any of those countries, even if they thought there was only a 5% chance that the US or France would come to their aid — because what they stand to gain is so much less than what they stand to lose, potentially.
Samuel Charap: Exactly.
Rob Wiblin: So I guess maybe you could modify and say that Europe will end up ceding to Russia everything that it can’t convince Russia that there’s some meaningful probability that they would be risking nuclear war over. They don’t necessarily have to convince them that it’s a certainty.
Samuel Charap: Yeah. I mean, the same problem existed in the Cold War. I’m not sure why this is necessarily so novel. I mean, there was always the question of, “Would we trade Boston for Berlin?”
Rob Wiblin: Yeah. Hugh’s explanation, he says that basically the US spent enough money and put enough equipment in Europe to convince Russia that it actually was serious. And I guess he would say that presidents also convinced the US public that it was in their interest to draw this line and be willing to bear those costs. And it’s just that that conversation hasn’t happened today, and it’s maybe not credible that the US would view it as worth the cost anymore.
Samuel Charap: I mean, he makes an important point about the pervasive fear of communism, essentially, in the Cold War, being something that drove people to consider making unpalatable decisions for that reason. So it’s not completely off base, and obviously there’s a lot of political will questions here, and accounting for different US presidents and their different proclivities — which is sort of, in a way, contingent.
But it’s right to raise the question. And if I were living in Estonia, I would be concerned that the US public is not as taken with the Russian threat as they are. But I do think the US still keeps skin in the game. It has 80,000 forces stationed in Europe. It has nuclear weapons reportedly stationed in Europe. And it maintains, including forces that are conventional forces, but nonetheless in the Baltic states themselves. So you would have what they call a tripwire, which is what existed in West Berlin. In other words, a force that’s not going to defeat an invading Russian army, but will make it harder for the US president to ignore a bunch of US soldiers being killed in the process. Or British or French or German.
Neither side wants to fight this war again [01:10:49]
Rob Wiblin: OK, final question. If you were briefing US officials or NATO officials today on one way that they’re kind of getting the ceasefire negotiations wrong or overlooking something in their approach to ending the war, what sort of messages would you focus on?
Samuel Charap: I guess what I would say is two things, and I’m sort of repeating myself, but nonetheless: I think everyone needs to be in the room. That despite the current focus on territory, that ultimately both countries’ bottom lines relate to their future security and their desire to have whatever ending comes be the end. I don’t think either side wants to have reason to fight this war again. And that essentially thinking through the sequencing and moving with some degree of haste towards a phased ceasefire, combined with some sort of framework agreement, that that can end the bloodshed and begin a longer term, structured negotiating process.
Rob Wiblin: My guest today has been Samuel Charap. Fingers crossed we’ll finally see the end of this war in the next year or two or three.
Samuel Charap: I hope so. Thanks for having me.
Rob Wiblin: It’s been a pleasure.
