[applause] is it true that you accepted bribes, is that true? [inaudible conversations] the vice president to senior

director at the atlantic council thee schoolcraft center and also professor at georgetown university. the topic this morning and the conversation about nato and about the continued support of ukraine with the secretary-general coming to the white house today,, a delayed appearance by the secretary-general broadlyoa in general for nato how has the support of ukraine held up? >> i think the support has held up better than many people expected. joe biden has said that the united states will support ukraine as long as it takes and the united states has been the traditional leader of the alliance and we have seen the strong support for many allies when it comes to military assistance but also accepting refugeeser from ukraine and elsewhere so i suspect this will be one of the top items on the agenda for the meeting between the president and the nato secretary-general. >> how has the ukraine conflict prompted the nato countries to take a look at their defense

spending and contributions to the nato force? >> i was talking to a nato official that said before the further invasion he thinks the remaining people in the nato alliance who essentially thought that the major war in europe was impossible and of course russia's further invasion in 2022 really shattered those illusions. romania, poland and others and then to countries that had been neutral in sweden's case instead of the napoleonic wars so i do think we see nato as stronger and more unified that has been anytime since the end of the cold war. >> with some regularity the ukrainian president zelenskyy has criticized or asked for more defense capability from the united states and more broadly

from nato. i understand the frustration for the survival. the united states and nato has been indecisive when it comes to military support. first we said we were not going to provide long-range missiles. then we decided we wanted. we said we wouldn't provide tanks, thenn we said we would. we wouldn't provide aircraft then we said we wanted to so the approach has been incremental. there's a reason though the white house is trying to avoid escalation with russia. it was worried if we provided too much assistance to early, russia might attack a nato member using nuclear weapon so i think that is explains this kind of incremental approach. >> the latest piece of this you mentioned providing training for the pilots to other nato

countries, correct? >> that's right. so in addition to the aircraft, we will also be training ukrainian pilots which is important. that's one of the reasons the y white house resisted providing aircraft before they said that the time it would take to get there to get them trained they would take too long and they wanted to focus their assistance on artillery shells and other things that could have a more immediate effect on the battlefield. >> are there other nato countries as concerned about a possible retaliatory attack or incident from russia based on the increasing amount of armament and support they were givingng ukraine? >> there were more than 30 countries in the alliance now so they don't always agree and i think essentially you see the eastern flank countries, the baltic states tend to be more kind of aggressive in their support to ukraine and they understand the threat. it's more western european

countries, the germans, the french, and i think the biden white house that have been more cautious. >> you've covered, you've written about and researched about nato and about the international relations some you've been part of the defense and security administrations with the obama administration, with the trump administration. in your view how is nato different today than it was at the start of the ukrainian war? >> it's more united for sure that's one thing that was surprising that it was able to come together after the invasion. i think it's stronger because of the increased defense spending because of the capable allies sweden and finland entering the alliance and itsan increasingly

global. we've seen not just the european countries but japan, south korea, other allies that are supporting thea, sanctions agait russia and recently announced nato would be opening an office in japan so this is a new era fora the alliance. >> our guest is the vice president and senior director of the atlantic council schoolcraft center. we welcome your calls and comments. we are talking about the u.s. nato effort in ukraine's war against russia. here are the lines, 202-748-8001 republicans, 202-748-8000 for democrats command for independent and all others, 202-748-8002. if you want to text a comment or question that is 8003. just make sure you include where you are texting from. back to the sanctions and other things like that there was a

story in "the new york times" about south africa. there was a bipartisan group of lawmakers that asked the biden administration to punish south africa for what it is these is the country's support of russia's work in ukraine by moving major trade conference schedules to be held this year to another country. so it seems like the diplomatic flank, the administration is pursuing their case. >> that's right. if you look globally, i think one of the things that was surprising about the reaction to the war in ukraine is the free world, nato and u.s. democratic allies in asia are more united than many people understood. i think we are also seeing that these kind of revisionist autocracies especially russia and china but also iran and north korea are working closely together to support the war but you have this third group that has been unwilling to take a side so that includes india,

indonesia, south africa, brazil so this is a big challenge facing the united states and its allies how doun we get these countries in the global self southonto our side and so thereo good strategy we are kind of feeling it out are their incentives, are there punishments in this case it would be an example of a punishment to say it's important. >> in your view what's the best possible outcome? >> the best possible outcome is that ukraine succeeds in reclaiming all of its territories and it seems unlikely now, but the ukrainians are engaged in the counteroffensive and you never know the russian morale could collapse. the russian forces could turn and run. we saw a couple of years ago the russian withdrawal from afghanistan. we saw the russian military could collapse. ukraine could win and i think

that would be the best outcome. >> like we have the withdrawal in our memorywo of the russians certainly must have their 1979 withdrawal from afghanistan and their memories. >> that's rightta commander rusa isn't 10 feet tall. that's another thing that's been surprising, the russian military is much less effective on the battlefield than many people expected and they've lost the war in the past including as you point out the afghan invasion and subsequent withdrawal. >> were you surprised the russian military failures? >> overall, yes. i did publish a book in 2020 on democracies versus autocracies and great power rivalries. one of the arguments in the book is that dictators do have problems in the military, so i wrote a book about this, but even still i was surprised at how poorlyy russia performed. i assumed if they wanted to invade and conquer ukraine they could do it quickly and here we

are year and a half later they are having real problems. >> meeting with-- the nato secretary-general today what is the purpose of the meeting today between the secretary-general into the president? >> they have a few items to discuss. one is who will be the new nato chief. you don't want to change leaders in a time of war but he said he is leaving and there are some other potential successors, so that mighthe be one topic. the other topic would be the upcoming summit. there is an annual summit the next one will be july 11th and 12 so they will probably want to discuss that issue and in

particular one of the hot topics on the agenda will be what is the future of the ukrainian security guarantees. are there other measures that we can provide that would allow ukraine to defend themselves, so they would have plenty to discuss. >> and the sentiment is among the countries about having ukraine as you mentioned two new members already, finland and sweden. what about ukraine? >> it is a contentious issue, so the 2008 nato summit the alliance said that ukraine will join nato someday but no clear timetable but said they would become a member of the alliance so at a minimum they need to report that statement and i think many believe that we should do more after the invasionny of ukraine simply repeating the language from 2008. at the other extreme nobody

wants to say that they are joining tomorrow let's go to war with russia so what they are going to try to do is find that the space in the middle. what are some of the paths we canth take to move ukraine furtr towards the leadership without getting directly involved. >> host: we've got some calls for you. you mentioned in the term he's a former military leader from norway so the next secretary-general will be a leader chosen from among the nato nation house. >> because the united states is so important often the president can have it on an important influence. so some of thehe candidates undr consideration are ben wallace, the british defense secretary, and also the danish pre-

minister fredrickson are thought to be two of the candidates. >> and that will be made by when do you think? >> the term and is in september so you would want to have a little bit of time to plan between now and then. >> what's your first up from carolyn in georgia i am calling because i've always wondered the country looking pretty much week at this time i wonder if that helped mitigate the war and i can't get out of my mind how we left afghanistan the way we did. so we were looking week at that time. i just wondered did that give thede world an idea that we are weak as a country and i just

wanted to know if russia come if the war came about because of us looking so weak at the time like that they thought that was a good time to go on and it's gone on for long i can't believe it. we have helped ukraine to do better by giving them a lot of money and equipment and we are involved in this war they still have not succeeded. >> good question, there are many reasons why putin may have wanted to invade ukraine, but it's not just me who said this but general walters who was the supreme allied commander for

europe did say that he thinks thean withdrawal from afghanistn was one of the factors and the him thinkn that made that the united states was retreating from the world stage andcu made it looked to him lika military action to topple the government would be easy so i think that was a factor. in terms of providing support and fueling the war let's remember what's happened here. ukraine, independent state was attackednd by russia and they ae fighting for their freedom and so i think it's up to the ukrainians when they want to stop fighting if they want to stop fighting. if russia attacked florida, i don't think americans would say okay let's just give them peace. i think we would want to fight to defend the country and that is what the ukrainians are doing. >> we are doing this not just to help ukraine but it's also in the u.s. interest. to be able to provide weapons and ada to ukraine to have them

weaken one of the biggest rivals. lawrence is in atlanta on the democrats line. >> atlanta georgia, go ahead. you are on the air, go ahead. >> i just want your guest to tell me how he thinks that they can win this war when everyday russia keeps bumping ukraine and destroying for everywhere in ukraine to be destroyed so if you have the chance to also putin can think twice it seems

they are trying to dump all of their own equipment in ukraine. >> how well ukraine when this? >> i don't know that isut the mt likely outcome and one of the things i fear is that we will see a stalemate on the battlefield and russia will be left occupying parts of eastern ukraine. and i don't think that the western ukraine would be foolish enough to say that putinin you invaded ukraine, congratulations. you get half of ukraine but i can see a kind of cease-fire stalemate like we have on the korean peninsula. we don't have that peace agreement to end the korean war essentially a cease-fire they've been locked in place and i could see something similar happening in ukraine. >> looking at the potential

stalemate situation as you described, it goes beyond being the nato problem it becomes a world problem in the sense of rebuilding ukraine from many of the same countries i presume the united nations. has this been talked about? what does ukraine need in the likelihood this and in some sort taof stalemate how do we rebuild that country? >> it's a great point they are going to need a lot of assistance to rebuild. there is some planning going on for that. obviously the focus is on the military effort first and foremost, but there is some planning about rebuilding. and when it comes to aid, there is a bit of a transatlantic tension with them asking why is the united states providing so much, why don't the. europeanso more, so this has been identified as a kind of compromise with the united states providing the lead when it comes to military assistance but the europeans taking the lead when it comes to postwar

reconstruction. >> next in virginia on the independent line. >> hello, good morning. a couple of comments. they didn't have time to manage and send him down to keep him busy. it was really brutal and long-term. unfortunately again, ukraine is the same. ukraine was pushed to keep him busy and manage him. like the healthcare system in the united states, people are making money on this war and they will keep making money it is unfortunately unfortunate to build the tens of billions if

not hundreds of billions. not even a small school was built so that's what ukraine faced and my question to the guest why do we think the united states is in position by the good guys and the bad guys and to punish. the history says we could do that well and we put the united states in a bad position when we do that. i appreciate if you don't go into human rights and other speech just fewer interests and fewer talk about why the united states is doing this. thank you. >> thanks for the question and i think that you are right the

united states has made mistakes in its foreign policy in iraq and elsewhere but if you look at the bigger sweep of history, the united states has done a pretty good job of identifying the good guys and the bad guys as you put it coming to the defense of europe and world war i, coming to the defense of europe and world war ii to defeat hitler, fighting backga against japan ad imperial japan after they attacked us at pearl harbor. there are a lot of gray areas in the politics but i think that this is an area that is pretty black-and-white. it's clear to everyone putin was the aggressor and invaded ukraine because of the dreams of rebuilding the russian empire, russian forces committing human rights abuses. so i do think it makes sense for the united states and its allies to resist its aggression and help ukraine fight for their freedom. it's good for ukraine but as i mentioned before i also think it advances the u.s. interest by helping us to defend europe and

important political geo-political region for the united states and to weaken one of our greatest adversaries. >> next call from hollywood florida, nelson on thee. republican line good morning. >> good morning. before i i ask my question i wat to make it clear i'm very much in favor of supporting ukraine and i think we are doing the right thing in helping them. having said that, i would like to point out and ask your opinion to the continued expansion of nato, of course as youut know was put together to hold back the then soviet union and it has continued to do so to hold back on what is today russia and i'm wondering if the expansion of nato inadvertently

has caused the situation of somebody like putin being able to get into power and your thoughts on that. >> thanks. >> i think you are right in the sense that putin doesn't like nato expansion. to have influence in eastern europe, he wants to be able to dominate his neighbors. seeing them join the west and of the eu and nato is not something that putin once. with that said, i think that it is in the interest of the united states and europe, remarkable after the end of the cold war you have all these countries captive nations that had been locked behind the iron curtain rushing to join the west and adopting the free markets and democracy. europe is much wealthier and free today than it was during the cold war. this has opened up opportunities for the united states, markets

and other things. and then in terms of nato causing the war if you actually look at the patterns of russia and military aggression they've used the military force against almost every non-nato country in their neighborhood. they used force against georgia, against ukraine. they've intervened in belarus and the war between armenia and azerbaijan. so putin is feeling free to flex his military muscle in the region, but he hasn't yet attacked a nato state or estonia, latvia, lithuania, concord countries that have been part of the soviet union and so ick think part of the problem wh ukraine is not that we were letting them into nato but we gray zone. ..

let's take a listen and i want to get your thoughts. we are not only strong in her words when we say the reach of nato territory is protected and defended. weur are also showing it in action. last but not least an extremely important signal to the leaders to nato. there should be a very specific wording and also a message for ukraine because of the membership in nato. we have to move on from what we agreed to in 2008 and we have to

ask ukraine to understand what and when and how they can be accepted as full members of nato. >> therd estonian parliament member what you think of his process admitting ukraine to nato?? >> i've been talking to many allies and leaders in the country in the east and closes today russia's threat and ukraine are most supportive of ukraine joining nato and enhancing their security and in terms of the process i think this is what the alliance will need to figure out between now and then. they are a number of options in one option we can offer so-called membership action plan which is what we have given to other allies in the past and their plan for how they would join nato. the ukrainians have said they don't want a plan similar to

sweden where you're able to join immediately picked another possibility that's been floated is the so-called israel model and the united states doesn't have a formal treaty with israel. we have a memorandum of understanding we provide them with the weapons to defend themselves and the israel model may be a solution to helping you cranes. i'm personally more inra favor f the estonian official of having a more aggressive timeline but it's's unclear how this would work. saying you mentioned finland ane sweden. and turkey getting admitted to nato took some time as well. >> that's right and hasn't been fully resolved. erdoganat still has -- turkey hs two approves sweden joining and i was in stock, couple of weeks ago and they are optimistic and hopeful that they will join but

that remains to be seen and we are waiting to see when erdogan will and i think that -- now that he is one his election. officially he will let sweden into the lines. >> onto calls nancy in concord, new hampshire nancy on the democrats line. hi there. >> at mornington is a retired person i have a lot of time to spend watching c-span and reading reports and whatnot so i'd like to make three short comments and have your guests respond to them. these are observations on things that watched on c-span and will read and listen to the dod and whatnot to one of the things in western donald trump's presidency one of the things he did was shut down our open skies treaty and there were two planes that we had that used to fly on the border of russia. if there was any activity he sharedy information with other

european countries.he he shut that down and had the plain shredded so that happened before ukraine. the other issue is the leaving afghanistan the way we did.. i think it was a dereliction of duty on the part of trump because what he did in the last year and after he left the election was a tour down the troops and the country of afghanistan is about the size of texas. there were 10,000 troops there and when joe biden was sworn and with t only 2500 troops left in that country the size of texas and they were supposed to process it and secure equipment and evacuate our personnel and then shortly after trump left office he went to cpap for a rally and brag at what he had done and that biden couldn't stop it. so please tell us how this affected that withdrawal and to me if i had a child in the military who was one of those 2500 there were abandoned by the

government to secure that countryy and get our personnel t it there safely and you know the person who died there, she died and she came from the city i grew up in lawrence come massachusetts and it's an abomination that peoplee were were not outraged that our government and donald trump left 2500 soldiers to do the work. i'm an outraged individual because my father was a -- generation american. he was a submariner and meant to midway and he survived the war. three of my mother's brothers the same thing, went to war and we see these man trump and what he did to our soldiers. >> are right nancy thank you. >> thanks nancy. this was a treaty between the united states and russia are the two countries would overfly each other's territory and take images and the idea was that we

would see true movements or buildup of forces and there was a transparency measure for greater accountability. what happened was it was not relevant to united states because we had a better means of collecting intelligence from russia, satellite and we discovered the russians were using this intelligent on the united states to map our critical infrastructure with cyberattacks and other things. the united states decided this was no longer interest that russia was using it to their advantage in the united states pulled out. i h believe that was the right decision and you'll notice of trump -- i think there's bipartisan consensus on that. on afghanistan i agree with you. i think there's a lot of bipartisan plan to go around there too. we didn't have a 20 year strategy and we had a 21 year

strategy so there was never a clear strategy for what we were trying to achieve so i think trump deserve some blame and biden deserves some blame in previous presence as well. others including the supreme allied commander of europe said the withdrawal is one of the things that motivated the division. >> a question about what russia has been doing since the invasion in ukraine a comment i from freddie in north carolina what does your guests think about china working with russia on a cuban spy base and thank you for your answer. >> this is the biggest challenge of the united states right now how can we deal with russia and china at the t same time when ty are increasingly working together? china is clearly supporting russia's war effort. they have a no limit partnership even though china is not providing direct military aid to russia they are providing diplomatic and economic support

inor russia's war effort. china increasingly has global ambitions. they are conducting military exercises with russia and europe and iran and russias. and now ns of the spy base in cuba. this is concerning and i think while russia is the acute threat china is a long-term threat. next up is johnson city, tennessee franklin on the independents line. >> i met thatt morning. it seems impossible to talk about ukraine without mentioning the year 2014, victoria newland, antony blinken and what they did to twist the government in ukraine to lean more towards the west when ukraine had voted to lean toward towards russia. not only that, recently within the last year, zelensky himself

has said that his goal is to make ukraine a big israel you know, so and you never talk about the west side of ukraine was killing the people on the east side of ukraine because they were russian speaking people. this is a war that the united states wants an and peace could have been achieved by now. a cease-fire at least. , no. the u.s. wants this war. >> thanks for sharing that perspective. i disagree. i don't think the united states wants this war. i think the united states wants ukraine to be free and independent and wants the war to end and you mentioned going back to 2014 back when this started

the russians first invasion but i think my understanding is it's a little bit different than what you portrayed to the ukrainians did want to join the european union and united the united states wanted to train to be able to join the eu to be able to look west to become democratic and fight corruption and it was a complicated episode but i think that's when putin saw as an opportunity to invade the first time and the war has been going on ever since. i do think the united states wants peace. snack folks at the council on foreign relations keeping track of the money and the aid the u.s. provided to ukraine since january 24, 2022, $76.8 billion nearly $4 billion in humanitarian aid $26.4 billion in financial aid and the

security system for total military assistance for grants and loans for weapons is almost $47 billion since last january of 2022 and each time the additional aid is requested certainly it heightens the political debate here at home entering into a political year, presidential and election-year in 2024. what challenges does it present ukrainiansad? >> i was a couple of things. it comes to 5% of the u.s. defense budget so is this a good idea or not? i would say 5% of the defense budget for our adversary is of value in helping ukrainians defend themselves. they are mostly republicans in congress who object to the aid and i've talked to steph and what they said it's not that they i are opposed that they hae

questions about biden strategy and does he know what he's doing an essay for organs weapon systems and he says as long as it takes about what is his goal and his plan to get there and biden were to make it clear he could win over some of the skeptics. >> one of the lessons learned in afghanistan the accountability that money should be and we are doing a better job of that in your opinion? >> it's not an issue i've trackedtr closely. its eyes a challenge when you're spending a large amount of money and there will be weapons that are unaccounted for. some of that you just have to factor in as the cost of doing business but i haven't tracked it closely. b >> and webster massachusetts steve on the republican line. go ahead. >> thank you for allowing me on c-span today. a little history for the region

i'd like to touch upon history in my opinion and war crimes. history the area was conquered bynq catherine the great in the late 18th century and not many people know this. zoom up 10 years after the crimean war in the 1860s the russians commissioned the english particularly the welsh toar take advantage of the regin to build a steel mill. my bottomll line is this is all about oil for the russians and it's in their national interest to export oil to the world and that's why they want that land bridge to crimea. my solution w would be russia is dug in right now fighting a defensive war. my solution would be to compromise bring nato into or bring ukraine into nato and you have a large russian dais as

well of course and the cure song area as well as crimea. as for war crimes this is ava pic moving mess when i never thought russia would actually invade. but as far as war crimes what putin has done is awful. they are always war crimes and if this goes to court i would say putin's defense would be legitimate or illegitimate and one is to defend russians in the donetsk region and he will submit that. how many americans did bush save when he killed 70,000 or how many americans were in iraq when he went in and 200,000 iraqi's dive? it's a mess and i'm trying to look at this objectively.

>> lots of points with a couple minutes left with our guest. i'll let him respond to some of that. >> a lot of good points raised. i think you are right that russia does want asset and would like to be a will to export energy but i don't think the war was necessary. it was a naval base in crimea exporting oil and gas throughout europe so i think it's motivated by something else and putin had to resort the russian empire. >> have you laid out a comparable plan for compromise? the only differences china hasn't shown an interest in negotiating. we can negotiate all they want. we need to get russia to the table in the best way to do that is the near term helping ukraine on the battlefield putting them in a stronger position than that's the only thing that's going toto get putin to tear.

he said the defensive war for the allsop c. and that's a body of water in ukraine and the mainland russia. are they no longer able to make gains in other parts of the craned? >> could you repeat that? >> you said it's become for the russians a defensive war and they claim they have control. >> you think it's mostly an offensive war. i thinkth they want, they still want to take a look ukraine. some of their reporting i'm seeing suggest he still getting happy stories from some of his generals. things are going poorly now but we havee a planned. it's a temper setback. we'll take a look ukraine. it looks like russia is not

going to succeed now. >> a quick question does he have the manpower in terms of military? >> he definitely does so he's pulling up these conscripts pushing in on the frontlines. russia is a big country and they are more young men unfortunately who'll probably be sent to their deaths. >> one morepr quick call lawrenceburg missouri on the democrats line. you're on. >> this dispute between china and ukraine supporting china and ukraine and that was the number one policy and with russia.

we don't go back to world war ii. the last question on russia's view of the expansion of nato. >> i think russia doesn't like it because it gets in the way of putin's dreams of reestablishing the russian empire dominating his neighbors but i don't think we should be too concerned about what putin wants or doesn't want. we are in a day and age when dictators can establish empires over their neighbors anymore so i think nato has been good for europe and g prevented states ad it's bringing ukraine into nato and someday will strengthen your pain security. >> they plan to council the vice present senior director -- and you can see him on matthew

kroenig on twitter. thank you for being with us. >> thank you for having me.