well certainly one definition joe of uh
winning for ukraine is retaining and
regaining the territory they lost back
in 2014
and holding on to their land they have
no interest in letting it go
not one inch and then the question is
because there was the criticism that
nato as a whole hasn't really stepped in
in any way or you know
different countries have done different
things is there more that can be done
and is there more that is owed to
ukraine which you could argue is paying
the price for the safety of the world
right and in general there is a
differentiation it seems from the
ukrainians between nato member states
and what nato is the organization has
done i i've heard a lot of criticism i'm
sure you have too by people close to the
ukrainian saying okay great the member
states are doing extraordinarily well
but where is nato the organization
what's your response to that
well the response would be that nato is
doing what nato is chartered to do which
is defending nato countries what nato
has done very impressively and
effectively
is move additional forces into the three
baltic states into eastern poland and
into the eastern parts of the other
countries that have borders with ukraine
uh and they've done that very
impressively uh but their remit if you
will their mission is not to defend uh
ukraine that's a bilateral mission
between the different countries
that have been undertaking the effort to
support ukraine and in that regard i
think nato
has a whole resolve to do this and then
individual countries are the ones that
carry that out nato is not set up to be
a security assistance provider
necessarily to a country that is outside
of the alliance um you can ask whether
or not there should as a result of this
be some kind of guarantee at the end of
all this uh ukraine will certainly try
to be a member of the eu and and i'd
hope that that would be possible and
there's going to need to be some kind of
security guarantee short of actually
being a member of nato so that article 5
and attack on one is an attack on all
may not be in effect for nato but
there's going to have to be some work
around in that regard i don't see uh
ukraine being able to just go back to
the status quo that existed prior to 24
february without greater assurance and
indeed you know
again mika i think you touch on
something very important which is just i
i think ukraine in a sense has won
just by preventing russia from achieving
its main objective which was to topple
the government control heave and replace
president zielinski with a pro-russian
figure
all of these grand designs that putin
had for ukraine obviously have not come
to pass nonetheless the damage has been
enormous and the amount of ukraine that
has been taken away from their control
is significant
and again they are going to try
everything they can to get that back and
we ought to do everything we can to help
them get that back without
in a sense directly confronting russia
which i think has been the correct
direction uh that this administration
has taken you know no one is more
critical of this administration on
afghanistan than i was but in this case
i think they've done an aggressive job
so so general what are your thoughts on
the united states
making a mistake
uh possibly letting ukraine into nato i
know dr brzezinski starting in 2008 said
it should be their decision others have
said the same but most policy makers
thought it would be too provocative
antagonistic too antagonistic what are
your thoughts on that did we make a
mistake as a country not accepting them
into nato earlier
well the problem is of course that we're
making this assessment with what we know
now um and that's very different from
what we knew then and what we assumed
then
let's face it we assumed that the
russian military was vastly more capable
than it was we were taken in by putin's
information offensive if you will about
how much he had done to modernize this
great russian military we bought into
this idea of the gerasimov doctrine
named for the chief of the general staff
hybrid warfare they were supposedly
masters of and yet it's turned out that
they've been inept in virtually every
single category by which again you could
evaluate a military force
but at the time again i think a degree
of caution
was in order
we had to be very careful we thought not
to provoke russia
and as we have reassessed of course even
at the beginning of this war there was
hesitation even to arm
ukraine to provide certain weapons for
fear that they would fall into the hands
of the russians very quickly and so
forth so we've continually reassessed
this
but i think that the again that thinking
at the time
probably was correct it's impossible
knowing what we know now to objectively
look back
but it's really now about going forward
and i think the key issue here is that
regardless of ukraine's accession to the
eu there is going to be a need for some
kind of security guarantee that has to
be crafted
and of course i think
we are going to be less
worried about what russia might do
noting that they still do have the
largest
nuclear arsenal in the world
but of course there's much less concern
about them now now that also we have to
be a little careful not to be
short-sighted uh and remember
at the end of world war one and the
conditions and and so forth so
but but again we have a new context and
that context i think uh in that we have
done very impressively and we need to
keep doing that and that 40 billion
dollars that will be signed into law by
president biden presumably on this trip
is going to provide of enormous
assistance uh to the ukrainians by the
way also to our own forces
because we have to replace all of these
these various items that we have drawn
these out of our own stocks these
haven't come from an assembly line to
ukraine they're coming from our units to
ukrainian forces
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you