Speaker A
For Russia to do anything serious in Ukraine, she would need to concentrate forces, and we would immediately see that. You can't attack NATO with a battalion.
Poland’s Deputy PM explains why China won’t end the Ukraine war and discusses NATO, European security, and transatlantic relations.
Ask about this video. Answers come from its transcript only — with the timestamp, so you can check them.
Generated from the transcript and can be wrong — check the timestamp.
Key Takeaways
- Russia’s military actions against NATO would be detected early, limiting surprise attacks.
- Europe is resilient but faces significant geopolitical and economic challenges.
- The transatlantic alliance remains vital but faces internal and external pressures.
- China’s economic influence complicates Europe’s strategic calculations.
- Democracy and peace remain fragile amid rising populism and geopolitical tensions.
What the video covers
- Russia would need significant force concentration to attack NATO, which would be detected in advance, limiting their ability to launch a surprise invasion.
- Europe faces multiple challenges including the war in Ukraine, Chinese industrial overcapacity, and a sometimes strained US-Europe relationship.
- Poland has increased defense spending significantly and is investing in reindustrialization and defense capabilities with EU support.
- The postwar international order is fragile due to rising conflicts, populism, and challenges to democracy both internationally and domestically.
- The US political system is unique with significant influence of big money in politics, contrasting with European electoral practices.
- Russia is waging a hybrid war against the West involving political interference and provocations rather than direct NATO attacks.
- The transatlantic relationship is complex, with some US conflicts lacking full European participation and concerns about US democratic health.
- The US is reviewing its military posture in Europe, with uncertainty about future troop levels and strategic commitments.
- China’s role is complicated by deep economic ties with Europe despite geopolitical tensions and concerns over industrial competition.
- Migration and demographic changes present social and political challenges in both Europe and the US.
Chapters
- 00:00Russia’s Military Capabilities and NATO Threat
- 03:05Challenges Facing Europe: Russia, China, and US Relations
- 06:26State of the International Order and Democracy
- 09:26US Political System and Transatlantic Relationship
- 12:47Russia’s Hybrid War and NATO Security Concerns
- 19:08US Military Posture in Europe and Future Prospects
- 32:11Europe-China Economic Relations and Strategic Complexity
- 38:47Defense Spending and Reindustrialization in Europe
- 42:13Migration, Demographics, and Social Challenges
- 51:18Ukraine War Developments and Political Implications
Full Transcript — Download SRT & Markdown
Speaker A
You would need many, many divisions, right? The gathering of forces against Ukraine took them six months, a year.
Speaker A
I mean, they would do it the classic way on the pretext of an exercise and all that, but still, we would know well in advance.
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So he's not really capable of a running start invasion of NATO. What he's capable of is some kind of provocation that, in their mind, would show East Europeans that NATO is pathetic and would not react.
Speaker A
Well, first of all, we would react.
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[music] Welcome back to The Long Game. I'm Jake Sullivan, and I'm John Feiner. We've spent a lot of time on this podcast [music] discussing the state of America's relations with various countries around the world, especially our allies.
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[music] But today, we have our first opportunity to do that with someone who is sitting at the table managing those relationships from across the Atlantic.
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Ratislav Sakorski, who goes by Radic, [music] is Poland's deputy prime minister and foreign minister. He's been in and out of Polish politics for a long [music] time with previous stints as foreign minister and as defense minister.
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He is also a longtime advocate for the transatlantic relationship. So much so, in fact, that he married into one. His wife is the acclaimed American journalist and historian Anne Applebaum.
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He is the author of seven books on international affairs himself and, of particular interest to me, he began his career as a war correspondent during the Soviet war in Afghanistan and later in Angola.
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No one has a keener eye when it comes to NATO, European security, great power competition, and the transatlantic relationship, and we're very much looking forward to this conversation. So Radic Sakorski, welcome to The Long Game.
Speaker A
Hello, and thank you for the generous introduction. We really appreciate you taking the time today because I think our listeners getting your perspective will be really enriching. So let's get right into it.
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Europe is simultaneously facing a Russian invasion that has produced the bloodiest conflict on the continent since the Second World War, Chinese industrial overcapacity that threatens to hollow out the manufacturing sector across Europe,
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and a US administration that seems, to put it charitably, less than fully interested in working with their European allies and sometimes downright hostile, though usually not to Poland.
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Since the end of the Cold War, Radic, has there been a more challenging time for Europe? How do you see the picture today?
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It is challenging. But give us credit for not starting wars of choice that we can't win.
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Credit given, given we do. And of course, I was speaking about the Russians. Right. Right.
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Of course, we are doing something about unfair Chinese practices. We've just introduced, partly inspired, I have to say, by the United States, a charge on small postal packages that were pouring in at the rate of 13 million per day.
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And since the 1st of July, the volume has decreased because of the EU charge at our customs barrier.
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Look, we in Central and Eastern Europe knew that the window of history in which Russia was cooperative wouldn't last forever. And we have been spending 2% of GDP on defense since 20 years ago, at a time when 2% seemed like a lot.
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We are now spending 4.8%, 8% on defense, hard defense, and 7% if you count dual-use stuff, and we are reindustrializing in the area of defense from our national budget and also from EU funds. The EU has passed a safe mechanism, soft loans, 150 billion euros in total, almost, of which Poland is getting about a third.
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So yes, there are many challenges, but I wouldn't count Europe out. We are still a very big single market.
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We are a confederation. We don't have the unity of command that you have in the United States. We are slower. It takes time for us to synchronize, but it also means we can't do anything rash.
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And that, of course, has its advantages too.
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It surely does. So I am interested in the optimism, the tempered but real optimism in your answer, and wanted to just zoom out for a minute to something that you wrote last year.
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You wrote about being asked what keeps you up at night, and you said the answer, and this is a quote, is the fear that the postwar international order shaped by memories of World War II and the trauma of the Holocaust and built on the foundation of political compromise, respect for other countries' sovereignty, free markets, civil liberties, and the protection of minorities may collapse.
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How do you assess the state of the international order today? What's your diagnosis? And then what's your prescription for what collectively those of us who want to stand for the principles that you wrote about, what we should be doing?
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I still have those fears both internationally and internally. Internationally because the wars in Eastern Europe, Russian aggression against Ukraine, and in the Middle East seem to be widening.
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Russia is getting help from Iran, North Korea, and some significant support from China. And as you know, an Iranian ship was hit in the Caspian Sea for, I think, legitimate reasons. Iran was sending military support to Ukraine.
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But nevertheless, that's a link between the two theaters. And we now have a problem not only in the Strait of Hormuz but also with access to the Red Sea.
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So the international situation is not getting better. It is actually getting more concerning, and internally it seems to me that with the passage of time, people are forgetting how fragile both peace and democracy are.
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And there is popularity on both sides of the Atlantic of populist forces that are fueled by nostalgia and by a sense that nothing bad can happen. We can have everything that we want without paying a price, and we want it now, and we don't have to compromise.
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And that worries me. It means that we have constitutional and political challenges inside our own countries.
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Let's talk a bit about the United States. You know us better than most for a range of reasons. We have a president who sometimes seems to prefer the company of authoritarians to that of democratic leaders.
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We may or may not be involved in our own war of choice that's unwinnable, as I think you hinted at, even if you were really speaking about Russia.
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How do you rate the current health of the transatlantic relationship? This is the first US conflict in recent memory, if ever, that none of our transatlantic allies participated in a meaningful way.
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And then, as an official from a country that has flirted with its own illiberal turn in recent years, what about the state of American democracy?
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Well, we don't interfere in the internal affairs of our great allies, and of course, we expect the same in return, and we don't always get it.
Speaker A
[laughter] But we have different institutions. So, for example, when I speak to Americans, and I was just on the West Coast, made a speech at the Reagan Library, visited Stanford, and so on,
Speaker A
in the United States, people no longer seem to realize how unique the role of big money in politics is in the United States.
Speaker A
When I tell people in the US that I was elected to be a member of the European Parliament for five years and my electoral budget was $30,000, they don't believe me.
Speaker A
Wow. And what was your opponent? Was that standard?
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It's the legal limit.
Speaker A
Legal limit. Wow. And you know what? It's enough. You can do social media advertising, and if it applies to everyone, it's sufficient.
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So this is a big difference. And you know, in Poland, we say, well, if someone gives you $1,000, that means they like you. If they give you a million, they...
Speaker A
So let's turn to the security partnership uh a bit. The US formally launched a strategic Europe posture review of its military presence on the continent. Wondering what you expect to come of that and do you anticipate a significant draw down of of US forces
Speaker A
during the course of the rest of this Trump administration? I think this was inevitable. Um successive US presidents asked us to spend more. Uh we have to give President Trump uh credit where credit is due. He um got us to spend more. Uh of course
Speaker A
Putin helped too. Uh and uh we should now be capable of deterring Putin uh um mainly on our own with some overthe-hill help from the United States. So I think this is under US pressure of course but uh but the US has global
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responsibilities and uh and we are a rich continent. Um so we will provide most of the uh uh conventional capabilities with the US providing uh some uh strategic enablers and that should be plenty to deter Putin by the
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end of the decade. Um Putin is uh has proven incapable of conquering Donbas over 13 years. So let's not be too panicky about him. His intent is worse than some people thought, but his capability, thank God, is less.
Speaker A
So let's maybe drill down a little bit on that over the hill help as you described it. Uh by the end of the decade, things may be in a in a better place. Right now, you know, I think that
Speaker A
a much more of an open question. And you've described Russia already waging I I I think Putin would be nuts to attack Nate in NATO even now.
Speaker A
So that's what I was going to ask about. You know, you've described Russia as waging what you call a hybrid war against the West for the last decade or so. You said we have arson, we have interference in in politics, we have
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disinformation, espionage, but we also have some squads and and assassinations and we have state terrorism. They tried to blow up a moving train in Poland. They no one one no one was killed only thanks to their incompetence.
Speaker A
And it sometimes feels like it's only a matter of time before Russia either intentionally or not crosses a line that triggers a real conversation about NATO article 5 the provision as you well know uh that attack die we will fight back.
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I mean NATO or nato you know in Poland we've been resisting Russia for 500 years and we are not about to stop. So you've claimed famously uh to be a loyal US ally but also not a sucker I think
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was the phrase that you used. H how confident are you of the American commitment in the current moment to that article 5 principle? Of course it'll be uh a political judgment in the light of events and in the light of what else is
Speaker A
happening in the world. Um you know if the US is involved in a confrontation with China then that will consume all of US uh bandwidth and capabilities but if not um then it's more likely um the main thing is that Putin doesn't know what we
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will do or what the United States will do but we have some prepositioning of equipment in Norway in Poland in Romania. We have one um uh permanent US base in Poland already, the missile defense base. Uh the agreement I signed
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with condi rice which is now operational. Um we are negotiating a second base uh sort of heavy brigade type of presence. Uh we have uh um personnel on a rotational basis plus uh US air force personnel. Um, and the US,
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you know, we are playing for the war uh uh for for Ukraine's uh defense, but the US is still helping uh with uh targeting data and sells us Europeans the equipment uh the the Pack 3ectors to that we supply to to Ukraine. And I
Speaker A
hope that the uh the Lindsey Graham bill passes and that the US imposes tougher sanctions on Russia. The Lindsey Graham bill is a, as you just mentioned, is is a bill that actually received very wide bipartisan support in the Senate just in
Speaker A
the last 24 hours to move forward. Um, which gives the president the authority to impose very tough sanctions, but also tariffs on countries uh that potentially purchase Russian oil. So, we will see what happens with that bill, especially
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in light of um the the tragic passing of Lindsey Graham. Erodic, I'm struck by um the comment that you made a minute ago that you think Putin would be crazy to attack NATO, to attack the West. You you've at various points warned about
Speaker A
the possibility of a Russian false flag operation, basically a staged attack by the Kremlin inside Russia that it would blame on someone else, maybe to justify attacking a NATO country. That sounded to me to us like a concern driven not
Speaker A
just by speculation, but maybe by something more informed. Uh can you talk a little bit about that concern? And if you don't think Russia will just frontally attack NATO, do you think they are looking to escalate against NATO in
Speaker A
some other way now or they're just going to keep doing this pattern of hybrid warfare that you and John were just talking about?
Speaker A
Well, you were at the White House in the runup to the invasion of uh Ukraine. So you know that for Russia to do any anything serious in Ukraine, she would need to concentrate forces and we would immediately see that you can't attack
Speaker A
NATO with a battalion. You would need uh many many divisions, right? The gathering of forces against Ukraine took them 6 months, a year. Um I mean they would do it the classic way on the pretext of an exercise and all that but
Speaker A
still we would know well in advance. So he's not really capable of a running start uh invasion of NATO. What he's capable if is some kind of provocation that in their mind would uh show East Europeans that NATO is pathetic and
Speaker A
would not react. Well, first of all, we would react and uh secondly, uh we know they are considering it. Uh and here I'd like to give credit to the Biden administration. Um as you remember, the Russians were trying to do provocations
Speaker A
in the run-up to the war. And uh you were wise and uh brave in risking sources by uh telling the world that they that that they are up to no good.
Speaker A
And this deprived them of a credible cousins belly and it was very important. So uh yes we know a thing or two and we are are pre-warning Putin that we that that he should drop uh his provocation plans because u uh it will not be
Speaker A
credible. When you think about what they have in mind for potential types of provocation, do are there scenarios you're thinking of? Is this something in the Baltics? Is it more of these drones? Is it a weward cruise missile that they say, "Oops, we
Speaker A
didn't mean to do that." What What What do you have in mind for the kind of thing?
Speaker A
We've had cruise missiles already. You know, one landed 10k from my house. So, in September last year, uh Poland fought an incursion of 21, I think, uh drones. Yeah.
Speaker A
Um, and if this was an accident, you would have expected a mix of armed drones and decoys. They were all decoys.
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So, the Russians were provoking us without wanting to start a war. And, uh, and one of the scenarios that's discussed publicly. Um, you know, not all Ukrainians drones make it to the target just like some Russian drones fall in Ukraine. So, we have to assume
Speaker A
that the Russians have got hold of some Ukrainian drones that uh that have landed there. So, they could repair them and uh and send them um from some border location um against themselves uh to claim that um Ukraine attacked
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them or uh or against the NATO country, who knows? But remember strategic uh false flag and deception is uh is Russia's st standard operating procedure.
Speaker A
Absolutely. Now you've said taking this to Ukraine that um we're at the end of the phase of Russian initiative in Russia's brutal war against Ukraine that Ukraine now is seizing the initiative.
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Can you talk for a minute about how you see Ukraine turning that initiative into a victory? how how you see the war ending in a way that uh produces a secure, resilient, democratic Ukraine that that um sort of and ends at least
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for the time the Russian threat. How how does Ukraine get to victory here? Let's take the long view. Um, if we were having this conversation 5 years ago when the Russians started gathering forces for Ukraine, uh, if we went
Speaker A
through scenarios of Russian invasion, we would not have guessed, neither you nor I, that after more than four years of war, Ukraine would still be not only standing but uh, having the initiative in some fields and this is the case. So,
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uh, it's a draw in the Black Sea. Um, uh, it's a draw in the air. Both countries can hit each other, but neither can operate over the territory of the other. And it's a draw on land where the Russians have gained some
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territory, Ukrainians gain uh other bits of territory. Um and the uh Ukrainians are um inflicting losses uh on the Russian army that are bigger than Putin's ability to recruit.
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H and all the while uh Ukraine being supplied uh by Europe uh with financial resources and Russia seriously aching now. They are having to uh uh sell their gold reserves. Uh they've uh raised taxes. they've uh uh they they're
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beginning to be quite desperate for funds. Um Putin still has a couple of cards to play. Uh one is to do uh mobilization. As you know, he's still fighting with contract soldiers, but that's risky for him politically. uh he
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must be hoping that having destroyed 80% of um Ukraine's electricity and heat generating capacity if there is another tough war tough winter sorry and if we don't supply uh Ukraine with um the capacity to take down ballistic missiles
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then he can then then Ukraine might be left with only the nuclear power plant and that might not be enough to sustain the winter. This this he must be thinking that. Um uh but Ukraine has car has cards. You know, Ukraine is clearly
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has the advantage in drone war and Ukraine is clearly more innovative in this war than the Russian side. Just briefly, you've said recently something that struck me that Donald Trump likes winners and Ukraine and Zalinski are impressive in the way they're taking the
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fight to the Russians right now. Do you think Trump could actually end up backing Ukraine in a more fullthroated way which which would be a really significant shift in posture from him from when he had Zilinsky in the oval in
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2025 saying you don't have any cards? Literally just yesterday had a meeting at the White House which I'm told went well. Um and [clears throat] you know it's been choppy between President Trump and President Zilinski in the past. uh
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the relationship is uh seems to be better and there are rumors that uh President Trump's um envoys might for the first time uh visit Kiev. Uh uh some of MAGA people um have now seen the light and are are supporting Ukraine and
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as you said Republicans uh in both the House and the Senate are supporting uh tougher sanctions on on Russia. So in those terms the maybe you the worst is behind Ukraine.
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Ronic you gave a speech to the Polish parliament recently in which you described the European Union not NATO you were very uh positive about NATO as well but the European Union as Poland's strategic shield which was notable since
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the EU is an economic and political or organization more at least than it is a defensive one. I'm wondering why you chose to characterize it that way. Can you explain a bit more about how the EU provides this shield?
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Well, first of all, we now have a defense budget and at the time when we were creating it, it was meant to pay for some police type election monitoring missions in Africa or Asia. Uh it's now used to support Ukraine. Um and it
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should be increased. Uh uh I believe that EU and and all opinion polls tell us that the peoples of Europe want the EU to be more active in the def in the field of defense that we shouldn't beg
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for help from the United States um uh at every emergency on on on our periphery you know uh Libya or the Balkans, we should be able to uh to sort them out uh ourselves. And it's this financial power
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uh you know we've spent well over 200 billion uh euros on helping Ukraine. Um Ukraine is provided for for at least two years and that includes paying for Ukraine's own uh defense industry uh which uh which still has some some spec
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capacities. So this has a a a direct strategic consequence. And of course Europe is also developing capabilities in space. You know we have our own uh um earth surveillance system. Um uh we hope by the end of the decade to to be able
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to have uh our own uh satellite system and um and and portable internet uh provision which I think will be welcomed in the United States uh because monopoly is is no is is is never a good thing. Uh
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monopolists usually overcharge. You also said there is no free, safe, or prosperous Poland without a strong uh European Union. I assume you feel the same about NATO in in uh Poland's prosperity and security. You're supportive of Ukraine ultimately joining
Speaker A
both of those institutions, though I think not yet. How long do you think it will take for Ukraine to join NATO and the EU? And and what conditions do you believe they would have to meet for you to say now is the time? I was at the
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NATO summit in Bucharest in 2008 when Ukraine's NATO membership uh was discussed and we gave them a sort of half promise that it might happen someday but we denied them the the actual membership action plan alongside Georgia uh at that time
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right and and at the time of the Russian anelus of Crimea uh remember the green men that that Putin said were not his.
Speaker A
Um, Ukraine was actually constitutionally a neutral country, which shows you how absurd are the Russian claims that they had to invade because because Ukraine was joining NATO. [snorts] So, let's put that aside.
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Um, but as regards the the EU, Ukraine through its valor has earned the right to become a candidate country. uh and they've we have now opened negotiations on two uh clusters um fundamental issues which is to do with democracy, rule of
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law, fighting corruption um uh proving that uh that that both the history and the future is democratic and foreign policy where Ukraine has already uh synchronized its foreign policy with with that of the EU.
Speaker A
Joining the EU is much harder than joining NATO because it's a single market. You have to adopt something like 80,000 pages of EU legislation. You know, you're you're becoming a member of the family. It's not NAFTA.
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It's uh it's a confederation um with for example delegating all of your trade policy to uh to the European Commission and you have to prove in advance that you are going to be a clubable loyal uh member uh that you
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won't just take away take from the community that you're also prepared to for compromises and that's not easy um and that you will live by the agreed rules rather than your own which some countries proved incapable of doing. Um so it'll take some time. Um
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and there will and for us existing members uh membership will be in the long run beneficial. You know Germany now trades with Poland as much as with France.
Speaker A
uh uh Polish GDP has preppled since uh since our economic reforms and and and it accelerated after uh joining the EU and and uh and the the old EU of course benefited but we benefited even even more but there are
Speaker A
always some sectoral challenges and you know everybody has politics. I'll turn it back to Jake, but I do want to register a bit of concern about this legislation that you mentioned, the Lindsey Graham uh bill, which I wonder
Speaker A
whether you will come to see differently over time. The concern that I'll just put on the table is that it authorizes a range of new tariffs for the president.
Speaker A
It gives him a national security waiver which would basically allow him to use those tariffs as he chooses, including against US allies, including against EU and NATO members because of their purchases of Russian oil.
Speaker A
So, I would I would just take a closer look at it. There have been some concerns expressed right. It's gotten a lot of bipartisan support, but on sanctions authority for new authorities, it's actually pretty limited. The executive has a lot of those already.
Speaker A
only uh only sanctions on Russia, not on others, not on allies for Christ's sake.
Speaker A
Take take a take a look at the tariff authorities authorized by the legislation, which which could be could be more extensive than than people realize. Anyway, I'll turn it back to Jake.
Speaker A
I'll just say, Rodic, it's a that that was a good reflection of the difference between John and me. I sort of loosely referred to the tariffs and John went right to the heart of the matter. Um it is a it is a matter of some concern
Speaker A
because it gives the president pretty broad authority and discretion with respect to the application of tariffs including potentially against the European Union. Um so worth looking at.
Speaker A
I think a lot of senators haven't exactly look closely at that because they're focused on the kind of underlying message of the bill which is we have to squeeze Russia harder. We got to pressure them more which is something
Speaker A
that you know both John and I would strongly agree with. But the actual mechanics of this bill are quite um quite interesting because they it it could present challenges uh in terms of how on the other hand we already have
Speaker A
tariffs of on allies. That is true. That is true. And and potentially more coming depending on how the president uh [clears throat] deals with some of these continuing trade investigations.
Speaker A
Um okay. So speaking of tariffs and economic coercion and all the rest of it, I'd like to come back to China. uh you started in this conversation talking about uh some of the steps that Europe is taking now to deal with the challenge
Speaker A
of Chinese goods flooding into the European market. You personally have been one of the European leaders who's been most cleareyed about the China challenge at large. We spent a lot of time during the Biden administration talking to our European allies about
Speaker A
that challenge and and how we could align on it. Um can you just talk a little bit more about how Europe should think about China right now? how Europe is thinking about China right now and whether we're at the start of a
Speaker A
different kind of policy than we have seen. Would be very interested in your perspective on on this dynamic.
Speaker A
So the relationship between Europe and China is not like the old cold war because with China it's a it's far more complex. We are huge customers and trade partners for each other and we we have a one China policy for example. Um uh but
Speaker A
we are concerned just like the United States at the attempt to limit the access to uh magnets and to critical minerals. And here uh Secretary Rubio did the traditional thing which is to use uh uh America's convening part and uh and we had a
Speaker A
successful conference in Washington um on uh uh on on critical minerals and I hope this gets uh a followup. Uh I regret that a uh um a a useful institution devised uh in previous years uh between the EU and the United States is not
Speaker A
being continued. It was actually inspired consciously uh by by the Reagan administration by the COCOM uh with uh and I'm talking about the uh US EU trade and technology council whereby we could at least exchange information and hopefully agree some minimum standards
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on trade on ingoing and outgoing investments and on research and production standards so as to um preempt unfair competition. I thought this was mutually useful. Um uh and I hope the idea is rediscovered.
Speaker A
Do you think we can rediscover that idea in light of the degree to which there seems to be bad blood over Greenland, over tariffs, over other things? Well, it's difficult to do when you're treat when there are these these other issues
Speaker A
and um and yes, it it requires trust and and just to keep pressing on that, do you do you think trust can be rebuilt or a sense of common purpose can be rebuilt? And I'm not just talking about
Speaker A
in the next year or two in this administration just projecting forward whoever takes the oath of office on January 20th, 2029.
Speaker A
Can that president um turn the page to a certain extent or are we just living in a little bit of a different world when it comes to the transatlantic relationship? How do you assess that?
Speaker A
Some losses of trust are probably irreversible but others can be. Uh remember a few years ago on your watch uh China was doing its wolf warrior diplomacy and you now the United States is going through its phase of wolf warrior
Speaker A
diplomacy. [laughter] I've not I've not heard someone put it that way before. I like that.
Speaker A
And I think the results will be similar. And then after a couple of years, memories fade. You know, one more thing about China. Uh before turning it back to John, you've said that China is one of the few countries
Speaker A
that could press Russia to end the war in Ukraine. Do you have any reason to believe they would do so? Um, is that is that a viable pathway to get Putin to change course in some way or is that you
Speaker A
know China just The reason I think they they could is if you remember because it was on your watch in January 22.
Speaker A
Um, there was a brief Russian military foray into Kazakhstan to interfere in Kazakhstan's uh succession.
Speaker A
Uh and uh I believe that the Chinese told the Russians get out right now or we will um sever prayed with you. And the Russians obeyed.
Speaker A
I don't think Russia could prosecute the war and I don't think she could survive as a state without trade with China. So this would be a credible threat. So, China, unlike us, actually could force Russia to end the war.
Speaker A
But, uh, my guess is that the war suits China just fine. Uh, Russia is selling them gold. Russia with every year becomes more dependent.
Speaker A
And what's not to like about that? I want to ask you a few questions about the future. Uh Russia has reportedly, although I suspect you'd confirm it, moved uh nuclear weapons into Barus on Poland's border. Is the US nuclear
Speaker A
umbrella actually quite close to the Russian border, if at all? Um but yes. Okay. Is the US nuclear umbrella sufficient for European security, for Polish security? And what are the prospects of additional European countries, even Poland, deciding they
Speaker A
need their own nuclear deterrent? No, we we are a happy member of NPT and we're not thinking about it. Uh but as you know, this is an ancient discussion.
Speaker A
During the cold war, Germans threated over whether uh the US would sacrifice um uh New York for Hamburg and so on. Um so you know these are similar uh worries. The main thing is to keep the adversary uncertain as to our uh
Speaker A
intentions and to to keep capabilities that they would find uh uh unbearable. As you said earlier in this conversation, Poland has been building up militarily uh in response to the Russia threat even well before the full-scale invasion of Ukraine in in
Speaker A
2022. Now, Germany and others are more belatedly getting into the act, which probably feels like a strange thing for a Polish official to consider good news, but but here we are. Is this happening just in time or are you concerned uh
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given, you know, the timeline you laid out, end of this decade, that it's all coming too little and and too late at this point? It would have been better to to have started earlier because uh when you have to rearm quickly, you find
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yourself um uh abuting uh production uh schedules and what's actually happened is that there is a global shortage of ammunition of equipment and prices have risen. Uh so if we if some countries had done it in a more measured way would have been
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cheaper to do. Um but look um if we spend what we have pledged to be spending we meaning the European part of NATO at the Hague then by the end of the decade our [clears throat] joint military budget
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will be about what the US military budget was last year. So around a billion. Okay. It's a huge military budget. And of course we have to spend it more efficiently and all that but still that's a huge military
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budget. Um and remember all of our military budget is spent on the defense of Europe. Only a very small proportion of your military budget is spent on the defense of Europe. And also remember that for an adversary to attack us the
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adversary would need a 3 to5 advantage over us. they don't have it even today, let alone by the end of the decade when we've retoled. Um, so I actually, you know, we should do what we have to do, but but
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there is no reason to be panicky visa visa v Putin anymore. It's Putin who's in trouble. You know, Rodic, you said earlier um that we kind of collectively overestimated Russia's capabilities. I would I would second that and say we got
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as our intelligence community and military experts got one big thing very right which was Putin was going to invade was going to try to swallow Ukraine uh and one big thing not so right which was that he would take Kee
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in a matter of days or weeks and we weren't sure uh and we couldn't be sure whether the Ukrainians would fight they overfulfilled expectations you know Ukraine has overulfilled expectations Europe has done much more than I would have expected 5 years ago. The US also
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and Russia has done much more poorly. So on that one more prediction uh you've said Putin is pushing Russia off an economic cliff not unlike Brev during the cold war. How fragile is the Russian economy and more fundamentally how
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fragile is the Russian state in your view? So you know I don't accept the dominant western paradigm which is kind of Marxist but even though uh um couched in market terms because the the fundamental narrative in democracies is
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that if you get the economy right politics follows you know base determines superructure. Um whereas in Russia it's the other way around and it it manifests itself for example in these myths in the west about how the oligarchs will come and sort out
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Putin put pressure on him to end the war which is how it will happen in the United States to some extent. Uh in Russia it's the other round and always has been. It's the political authority who decides who who is rich and who
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isn't. who gets the business and who and and who gets uh um uh terminated with extreme prejudice or falls off a window.
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And Russia has always under the Zars, under the Bolshevix and now uh created huge um military and diplomatic capacities from a very small economic base. But of course there are limits. Uh and just as Veminite Germany uh eventually ran out of resources to
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continue the war and uh Taris Russia ran out of resources to continue uh in World War I.
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Um so Putin is is uh is is running out of resources. Uh I think he probably has enough for for another year or so. We'll end with a question that we ask a lot of our guests which is tell us one
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unpopular opinion you hold on any subject. Doesn't have to be related to your work though of course it can be but an unpopular radicorski opinion.
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All right. Um so uh it's unpopular in some quarters but quite popular in others. So I think that electorates everywhere in Europe and in the United States are telling us that uh we need to um uh sort out uh mass migration
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and that unless um democratic governments uh uh uh do it, they are ready to hire populists and radicals to do it. So in Poland, we won the election and we are leading in the polls because we outflanked our populace on the right
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on migration. Uh we have built a big and beautiful fence on our border with Belarus, 440 kilometers. Uh the border is now totally secure.
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We have passed a law which denies people the right of asylum if they cross the border illegally.
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And we have sorted out our visa system uh to be much stricter towards people who you know come to work in the guise of students or or others. and and and and so I think this is the way that
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democracies fix their problems. When the establishment neglects something that people feel strongly about, fringe parties take that issue and run with it and a wise establishment has to fix the reasonable part of of the demand and then equilibrium is is restored. How do
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you pair that with things like um hosting refugees, like fighting back against racism, xenophobia, what have you? Um so tough on border security, tough on on an orderly process, but you know, holding true to kind of your small
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L liberal values at the same time. Can you can you just spend one second on that?
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So you will not like me after what I've what I what I'm about to say. And I'm speaking as a former ref. as a former refugee myself. Okay. So, I think the Biden administration made a major error in um uh in lifting some of the Trump
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one decrees on the southern border. Uh because people understand and it and they are right that there are too many genuine refugees that countries cannot absorb.
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And the fault of the left in both the United States and Europe was to couch any discussion about migration as a as a as a possible uh racial issue. People feel that there is room for a civilized non-racist dialogue about the types of
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migration we want, the rate of migration that is acceptable, the sources of u migration that we would prefer and and the control over migration that nation states have the right uh to exercise.
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You know, if I I if um if you are going to tolerate open borders, then why do we have border guards? Why do we have visas? Why do have why do we have passports and and everything else?
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People understand more than we think, namely that you can have an open border policy in the 19th century in the United States or in Australia when you're desperate for migrants, when there are no social provisions. You come in and
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make your fortune in the Wild West, but you cannot have high uh social provisions and open borders at the same time.
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You know, in Europe, um you know, we have the Mediterranean, Northern Africa plus plus the Middle East. That's maybe up to a billion people who would rather live here in Europe than where they when than where where they are. And you can't
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blame them. And I'm speaking as a refugee myself, okay? But we cannot have a billion people. Numbers matter.
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Right. Where were you a refugee from? In I was a refugee in Britain when when you when you were martial law, right?
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And you know, [clears throat] I got political asylum. But you know, people act for mixed motives. you know, I was, you know, I was I had some prospect of some some persecution, but also Poland was very poor and people migrate for for
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mixed reasons. Let me remind you what uh I I can't remember whe was when it whether it was martung or tru and lie told another democrat President Jimmy Carter who famously stood up for human rights helin presses all that and he is
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supposed to have told let's say matong that he should ease up on uh on dissident and let them uh travel if need be you know get asylum in the west And Mauto was supposed to have told him, "Mr. President, do you really want all
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my dissident in your country? How many do you want? 50 million." So, we should leave this here. I will say we probably disagree with you less than you might think about some [clears throat] of the moves that were
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made early in the Biden administration. And the project in our party right now is about how to preserve what I think Americans rightly want, which is a secure and orderly border and enforcement of our laws while staying true to the fact that Americans are also
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basically a pro-immigration country when it's conducted in an orderly way. How do you do both? And that's I think that the percentage of people born outside uh either the United States in uh or or the EU in your case is 15%.
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[snorts] uh a percentage of our population born outside the European Union is 10%. And and we are being told that we face civilizational erasia, not by us.
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A a quote a quote from the national security strategy of the United States. Right. Yeah. Exactly.
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Correct. Well, on that uh Rodic, thank you for taking the time with us today. We really appreciate it.
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All right. So, Jake, what did you think? Rodic is high value, man. I wish we could have had him for longer because he can speak so fluently across geopolitics, economics, culture, politics, and history. It's just refreshing to get to hear someone like
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that opine on a range of subjects with the kind of texture that he was able to do. I know that's not the most sophisticated reaction, just like I'm impressed, but uh I was impressed like all former journalists. Uh, no, but
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more seriously, I guess I was I was struck by a couple of things. One is on the question about Article 5 and and NATO, I kind of expected him to give a oh yes, of course, the United States
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would be a a credible participant in any article 5 situation or some kind of yes, but we have concerns about some of the comments that were been that have been made. But he kind of just jumped straight to the butt. He didn't say no
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certainly, but he basically seemed to say to me, we don't need them that much anymore. Maybe as enablers, maybe with logistics, maybe in extremists, but for the most part, Europe has to take care of these problems increasingly on its
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own and may sooner than we think be ready to do that. He he almost sounded a bit and I this is a stretch probably that he would reject but a bit like how we used to hear Emanuel Mcronone uh back
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in the day talking about uh strategic autonomy in in Europe. That increasingly seems to be the case that even real strong proponents of the transatlantic relationship are making in light of some of the positions being taken by the
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Trump administration. I don't know if you heard that differently. I didn't. And um to your point about Mcronone, it used to be Poland on the other side of that debate, right? That Poland saying we need the United States
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at the center of our security and France saying no, we need more strategic autonomy. And there does seem to be a greater degree of convergence across Europe, including from great proponents of the transatlantic relationship like Rodic Sakorski. I was struck that he
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basically did not want to go very deep on the question of the nature of the relationship right now. Uh he was very expansive in answer to some questions and I think very cautious in answer to a few different attempts by us to probe at
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the health of the alliance, the health of the transatlantic relationship. But in how he talked about Europe standing up on its own two feet, he was in a sense giving a very deep substantive answer to the question that the
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relationship will change in quite fundamental ways and will involve Europe taking much more responsibility and reducing its overall reliance on um and and counting on the United States uh in in an extreme situation. The other thing that I thought in his answer on the
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question, would the US come, you know, to Europe's defense if Article 5 were triggered by some kind of Russian provocation?
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I thought part of it was a characterization of the US and Europe and and their relationship, but part of it was the difficulty of actually discerning when Article 5 has been triggered. You know, he talked about it's going to have to be a
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fact-dependent circumstance because his conception of this is not Russian forces rolling across NATO frontier. His conception is some kind of grayzone activity that's more extreme than what we've seen that leads to a loss of life, potentially a significant loss of life,
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and then NATO having to figure out what is the nature of our response. He said NATO would respond. and he was quite forceful in that. But the nature of the responses is complicated and this is something we contended with when we sat
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in the job and thought about all these scenarios. It's very straightforward what happens if Russia invades the Baltics. Okay, we know how to respond to that. We have war plans for that. But errant missiles that kill some people
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and the Russians saying, "Oh, we didn't mean to do it." Or one of these false flag operations that we don't get ahead of the way we were able to get ahead of it in in 2022.
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much more unclear exactly what the option set is. And I think that was reflected a bit in the way that that he talked about the nature of hybrid warfare.
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It's funny, the whole conversation in the back of my mind was a a story we've told, I think, versions of uh before, but about the closest we came Yeah.
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during our tenure to a real article 5 crisis, which is uh basically a phone call we got from the intelligence community in the middle of a day in Washington. I was in Washington. You were uh overseas in Bali, Indonesia. Uh
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sound asleep as you should have been. That basically said a missile just landed in Poland and killed a couple people. And you know the assumption is this could be a Russian attack, the first one on NATO territory during the course of the
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Ukraine war. And thank God, you know, the more we dug into this, the more it became clear it was actually a kind of errant Ukrainian missile. But there were a couple of hours in there where we had to wake you up, wake the president up,
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get the polls on the phone, and make sure we got all the facts before we reacted or said too much, god forbid, did anything. And this one turned out to be a sort of a dodged bullet other than
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the tragedy of the the two people whose lives were lost. But the next one might not be. Absolutely. Yeah. And uh not just get the polls on the phone, get the NATO secretary general on the phone because of the possibility that we'd
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have to go for article 5 in that moment. That was that was not a a moment where we're all like, "Oh, no. This is no big deal." It was like, "This could be it.
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This could be arguably the most stressful hour or two we had uh during during during our time." Although there's other candidates for that.
Speaker A
There certainly are. Uh well, actually sometime we should just like do a top 10 ranking of most stressful moments because there are a lot of candidates for that. Yeah. I think otherwise um you know hearing his take on uh China and a
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a view that that basically Europe is going to have to figure out how to align its policy tools to deal with this massive economic threat, the potential hollowing out of their industrial base.
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That was striking to me and that he started off with moves Europe has made just quite recently on this um and took a quite robust line on that. I think there'll be a real debate in Europe about just how hard to push on this. Uh
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but that is something for us to very much watch closely even as we are obviously tuned into what exactly happens in the Russia Ukraine dynamic.
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This larger strategic and economic question of China's relationship with Europe I think is is just a massive priority and something that we should continue to return to as a as a topic here on the podcast.
Speaker A
Absolutely. Lot to digest, lot to think through. Hope you all enjoyed listening to it as much as we enjoyed uh talking to him. He's a good guest.
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Well, that's all for today. We'll be back next week with a new episode of The Long Game.
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Subscribe to our YouTube channel and follow the audio feed so you never miss an episode.
Speaker A
For additional content, episode transcripts, and exclusive podcast segments, subscribe to The Long Game on Substack or join The Long Game Plus on Apple Podcasts. This week we discuss the FCC ban on foreign-made humanoid robots.
Speaker A
Humanoid robots are a are a clear possible next step in in terms of automated warfare uh that people have been flagging. So there's also the potential for these technologies, not just the potential when it comes to drones, but certainly when it comes to
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humanoid robots to be dual use in a military sense, too. And I think whether or not that's part of the explicit rationale, that is certainly some of the subtext of what's [music] happening uh with the writing of this rule. Head to
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the long.substack.com or subscribe to The Longame Plus on Apple Podcasts. The links are in the show notes.
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Topics:Ukraine warNATORussiaChinaPolandtransatlantic relationsEuropean securityUS-Europe relationsdefense spendinginternational order
