Point of inflection.
I'm Michael Smerconish in Philadelphia.
A meeting in Germany
among Western defense officials
united against Russia's
invasion of Ukraine ended
without resolution.
As to whether President
Vladimir Zelensky will get the advanced
battle tanks for which he pleaded.
This after Russia warned
that if NATO's further arms
Ukraine with battle
tanks and long range missiles,
it will lead to a whole new level of war.
It's been nearly a year
since the Russian invasion.
The United States
perspective has shifted during that time.
Remember the unwillingness
to be
a participant in a three way deal
that would have had
the United States backfill
Poland's fleet of fighter planes
after Poland
gave MiG 29 fighters to Ukraine.
The Biden administration said no.
Initially,
the administration was unwilling
even to acknowledge providing
Stinger anti-aircraft missiles.
But with the passage of time
has come
a softening
of the Biden
administration's reluctance to go all in.
Today, Ukrainian troops are in Oklahoma
being trained
to operate the Patriot Air
Defense System, which the U.S.
is now supplying.
The U.S.
is also providing
Stryker combat vehicles
to transport Ukrainian soldiers
on the battlefield
as part of a new and massive $2.5 billion
aid package.
And reports suggest a U.S.
willingness to greenlight
Ukrainian efforts to target
Crimea
annexed illegally by Russia in 2014.
So what accounts for the change in U.S.
position?
Has the Western
objective changed
from giving Ukraine what it needs
not to lose
to arming Ukraine
with what it needs to actually win?
And is our weapons supply
no longer tempered by concerns over
provoking Putin by crossing his red line?
My next guest says the latter
is the wrong question to be asking.
Nigel Gold Davis is the former U.K.
ambassador to Belarus, former
head of the economic section
of the British Embassy in Moscow,
now senior fellow
for Russia and Eurasia
at the International Institute
for Strategic Studies.
And the author of this recent piece
in The Times.
Putin has no red lines.
Dr. Gold Davis A Red Line.
That's a trip wire for escalation.
Why do you think it's flawed?
Thinking to be guided
by an adversary's red lines
Yeah, I think
that a red
line is a bad and unhelpful metaphor
in thinking about our policy towards
Russia.
It implies that
some special category of action
that if we undertake it,
will automatically in a trigger
like way
provoke some dangerous
and escalatory action.
In practice,
that's really not
how international relations works.
It's not how we should be thinking
about Putin.
Putin wants to assert
there are such red lines,
but his nuclear bluff in particular
has been repeatedly called
and shown to be empty since this war,
since his invasion began in practice.
The actions
he will take at any given point
will depend upon his assessment
of the risks and benefits
of doing those actions.
And he might claim he might threaten
that he'll do something.
Dangerous and radical against us.
But in practice, what he does or doesn't
do will be based on a practical calculus
So our goal should be
not to deter ourselves
by fear
of what he might do,
but to persuade him Putin that escalating
the war is
radically against his own interests.
In simple terms,
are you saying that no longer
must we worry
that his response might be nuclear?
If we do X, Y, or Z,
we should always be concerned
about the possibility
of nuclear escalation?
It's not there's not a zero risk of that.
But our efforts should be focused
not on wondering and worrying
about what might cause him to do that,
but to persuade him
that under any circumstances
he's going nuclear and breaking that
taboo
would invite
disastrous consequences himself.
So we should be aiming to deter him
from going nuclear,
not deterring ourselves
from doing things
that might cause them to go nuclear.
Dr.
Gould Davis,
has there been a change in Western
thinking that initially
what we wanted to do
was supply Ukraine
with what
Ukraine needs to do to repel
the Russian invasion
to now
given the strength
of the Ukrainian effort?
Hey, they can win this thing.
Let's give them what they
need to actually win the war.
I think that's right.
And that's partly
a consequence of the tenacity, bravery
and heroism and adaptability.
That Ukrainians themselves have shown.
I also think there's now
there's a growing recognition
that there's no
practical distinction
between on the one hand
helping Ukraine to stave off defeat
and on the other
hand, enabling Ukraine to win.
Anything short of a Ukrainian victory
would ultimately mean
that Russia is better off
and not worse off
than it was at the beginning
of this invasion.
And that would be an intolerable outcome.
It would show that
flagrant aggression is rewarded.
That would be
an object lesson
to anyone else in the world,
including China, watching this.
There's also no prospect
that any outcome short
of a Ukrainian victory
and a defeat for Russia
would be a stable outcome
if this war was somehow
to end with Russia better off
occupying territory
and also
violating the people on that territory.
There's every expectation that Russia
would, in
due course,
seek to launch a third invasion
after the first of 2014
after the second of 20, 22.
So that would not be a stable outcome.
The only stable,
durable outcome
that serves Western security interests
and international morality
and international law at this point
would be a defeat for Russia.
But I think it's also very important
for the West
to send a message
to Russia, the message of reassurance
that if Russia will to retreat back
to its internationally recognized borders
no one threatens Russia,
that will be a safe
and stable outcome for Russia.