I had a comprehensive, wide-ranging, and fascinating with Alex Vindman on Substack Live Thursday evening (the night before the Oval Office catastrophe, about which more later) to talk about his essential new book, The Folly of Realism: How the West Deceived Itself about Russia and Betrayed Ukraine.
Given everything that’s going on, I found this conversation extremely helpful in getting my bearings about one of the most consequential issues the United States, and the world, is currently facing. I hope you enjoyed it as much as I did.
MARY
Alex, it is so wonderful to see you. I'm going to get to the official introduction, but everybody, his reputation precedes itself. This is Alex. Seriously, I'm thrilled to have you here. Alex just published his second book, The Folly of Realism. I should probably mention that it just came out Tuesday, and I'm telling you, it's brilliant. It's prescient and it is in a way, in ways that are tragic, quite timely. Alex, of course, is a retired US Army Lieutenant Colonel who is the director for Eastern Europe, the caucus and Russia on the White House's National Security Council. And very famously, and with some personal costs, spoke truth to power when very few people were standing up and doing that. Currently, Alex is a senior fellow for the Foreign Policy Institute at Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies, Pritzker Military Fellow at the Law Fair Institute, executive board member for the Renewed Democracy Initiative, a senior advisor for Vote Vets, and again, the bestselling author of his memoir here Write Matters. One of the best phrases I've heard in modern history and the new book, the Fall of Realism, which should certainly be number one on the New York Times bestseller list for a long time now. How did you find time to write a book doing all of
ALEX
That? So first of all, thanks for doing this. It looks like you've got some nice weather back there. Are you still out in the west?
MARY
I am indeed. Only for two more days, but it's kind of perfect.
ALEX
Gotcha. So, you're going to miss that Ben Stiller, Gary Kasparov, and Max Rose party book party.
MARY
I am. I'm very sad about that, especially since that would've been a good thing to fly back considering flying now is taking your life in your hands. But you need to post pictures because that sounds incredible.
ALEX
it's going to be a good time. I'm looking forward to it.
I'm really glad to be on and having this wide-ranging conversation about the book. The title, The Folly of Realism is a little bit opaque. That's like some IR term. But the subtitle is really descriptive: How the West Deceived Itself about Russia and Betrayed Ukraine. We see that in front of our eyes on the news these past few weeks already. That's not going to change. You'd think that in the second Trump administration may learn some lessons from the past, from its first four years, but nope, they’re going to double down, triple down on the worst mistakes of the past 30 years.
But the US has bent over backwards to accommodate Russia on a repeated basis, hoping through accommodation that Russia would somehow turn out to be a friend, be less aggressive. Instead, it became more aggressive over the course of time, and in so doing repeatedly betrayed the folks that were our potential closer allies like Ukraine. It's something we're going to see tomorrow, frankly, on TV, President Zelensky in meeting with Donald Trump.
MARY
I want to start with something you just said. First of all, the subtitle has such explanatory power, especially for those of us who are not nearly as well-versed in these matters. For many of us, our default position is, “Well, of course Democrats are going to be better about these things.” But I think we've had plenty of experience in other ways that that is not always the case. And sometimes Democrats, even if they maybe take an ostensibly opposite stance, are either following the Republicans’ playbook or just not doing the right thing even from their own starting point.
In the introduction to your book, you write, “On the geopolitical tailwinds of a Democratic victory in the 2024 elections, Ukraine would be in the best position to begin a negotiation process and wind down Europe's largest war since World War II.” Oh, well that didn't happen. But I think what will shock people who read your book is the extent to which both Republican and Democratic administrations, again, despite their ostensibly opposite approaches to Ukraine and Russia since 1991--the realism so-called on the part of the former, and the pseudo-idealism of, in the case of the latter, both still enabled the rise of Russia and the sidelining of Ukraine.
If you could, I would love for you to talk a bit about the false assumptions that many in the West have made, and not just here, but in Europe as well, that basically made what's happening now inevitable while exacting a terrible price for Ukraine and the world order and the dangerous situation we're now facing. And while you're doing that as well, because I find this fascinating, could you also talk about the concept of neo-idealism in this context and Benjamin Tallis's working definition of that, and also his advocacy for that concept and how that's operative here?
ALEX
Starting back with the introduction, I wrote this for my doctoral dissertation at Johns Hopkins, which I finished in December of 2022, so a while ago. And that was all wonky IR theory methodologies. I had to get the degree I had please the committee.
MARY
Always
ALEX
Yeah. The thing is, and I wanted to do this study for myself, but there was an opportunity to try to explain it to the American public that's still very interested in this topic, even though neither the Democrats nor the Republicans have really made the case as to why we need to do better with regards to Russia, why we need to do better with regards to Ukraine. I thought that I could rewrite this into a general reader's book, something completely, easily digestible to the public. I understand it's a quick read. I'm a harsh critic of my own work, but from other folks, it's a digestible way to explain how we got here; and how we did get here is that really since 1991, since Ukraine's first foray into independence, we've had a Russia-first approach. Both parties have sided with Russia. When there was a decision to be made about how to engage with the region, and maybe to a certain extent that was even understandable in the early 1990s, when George HW Bush was looking at the collapse of the Soviet Union.
He was reading the notes of his staff and Secretary Gates, who was back then the Deputy National Security Advisor, he commissioned this group called the Ungroup to take a look at would happen if the Soviet Union fell apart. That work started in 1989 at the collapse of the Berlin Wall, and looked farfetched. But as he came closer, these policymakers, notable names like Bob Gates, Condoleezza Rice, they settled on the worst-case scenario, the catastrophic scenario of nuclear proliferation, loose nukes, and everything they did colored their approach. So, they absolutely sided with Russian first, the Soviet Union, to be fair, we actually tried to bolster in certain ways the Soviet Union so he could keep control of these weapons and prevent these 15 republics that emerged out of the collapse of the Soviet Union from going off and doing their own things and potentially getting into wars.
We learned the lessons of Yugoslavia and all these different ethnic struggles. So, we doubled down on that relationship and to the point where George HW Bush gave this famous chicken Kiev speech in which he told Ukraine that it doesn't need to race towards independence, it doesn't need to race towards its own sovereign nationhood, something that the Ukrainians, by the way, were struggling for hundreds of years, to carve out their own identity and briefly enjoyed it at the end of World War I, then the Soviet Union took over. And we were saying, no, slow down. That mentality about nuclear weapons really ran through the first several years of the relationship into the Clinton administration. We started with the focus of how do we get Ukraine, with its third largest nuclear arsenal--4,000 nuclear weapons--to give him up. And we started with this very harsh coercive approach carrying forward from the George HW Bush administration. But Clinton, with his team with some foresight did a relook, and they were like, well, the Ukrainians are not going to just give up their nuclear weapons. We need to be a little more thoughtful. And we came up with an approach where we tried to engage with Ukraine and tried to entice them as well as put some pressure on them. And that approach still highly favored the Russian side of the equation because guess who was receiving those nuclear weapons and launch platforms? It was the Russians that were supposed to dispose of them and they didn't get rid of all of them. Some of those bombers are being used against Ukraine today. And then in the nineties, as the relationship evolved, we kind of started to lose interest in Ukraine after they gave up their nuclear weapons, and should have been a little bit more skeptical about Russia because it had taken all sorts of different steps backwards, including the Chechen war against its own population. Then you jump forward to the 2000s, Russia starts to entice us with Putin saying he's going to help us root out transnational terrorism, terrorism after we were attacked on September 11th.
Then you go to the Orange Revolution where the Ukrainians are trying to chart a distinctly western approach, and the Russians are mucking around in their elections. We don't do enough for the Ukrainians after they elect a pro-democratic leader because we don't want to piss off Russia and we still think we can get some help from them. You can jump forward to 2008 when they Russia attacks a neighbor Georgia. We don't do enough to condemn them or support places like Ukraine, which is in the crosshairs. Instead, we do a reset. This is now the Obama administration. So again, both sides make mistakes. Bush looks into Putin's eyes and sees his soul. President Obama wants to do a reset. And then when the war starts in 2014, Russia's nuclear saber rattling warns us off. We no longer have any kind of misplaced hopes about being friends with them, but we still arrest our ability to support Ukraine consistently throughout this whole period. And each one of these decisions was made around what I refer to as hopes and fears: hopes that we could accomplish more with Russia, fears that if we condemn Russia, hold them to account or support potential allies like Ukraine that we would devolve into something worse. And guess what? We got to worse.
We try to do the appeasing, and we still got to worse. So, this neo idealism is really kind of rebalancing the scales, trying to get us to learn the lessons of the past and take this relationship that has been so highly transactional, looking at what's immediately in front of us with regards to dangles for things that we could get or risks in front of us and think about long term. And if we start to think about long-term, some of this work that Ben Tallis, my friend and researcher has been doing, he came to this term neo-idealism. I've been working on this idea of the centrality of value to democracy's interests for a while, this idea of values primacy. Why? Because if we start to focus on those types of things, if we start to think about what really matters to us, it's our friendships with our reliable partners, it's with democracies.
It's because they are our most important security partners. They’re our most important economic partners, the Europeans. And if we start thinking about the long-term and not what's immediately in front of us, then we may not buckle so much to Russian sable rattling. We may succumb to nuclear extortion. We'll hold our ground and be able to focus on the things that really matter. So, I guess this is why this book is formatted as a case study around where we failed and then a prescription of what we could be doing better really to balance us away from the mistakes we've done in the past. It shouldn't be considered too ideological either. There's a high degree of pragmatism in this wild swing to accommodating Russia to something that really stakes out our own ground more firmly.
MARY
We see this with this strategic use of soft power. It can be incredibly effective and it does redound to our own self-interest, to be partners with people who are really doing most of the heavy lifting. I think one of the things that's just so mystifying is embodied in the epigraph for your introduction which is a quote by Brzezinski, whose first name I cannot pronounce, even though I've tried.
ALEX
Mika Brzezinski's father.
MARY
Exactly. I can pronounce her name, but that's easy. Anyway, the quote is, “It cannot be stressed enough that without Ukraine, Russia ceases to be an empire, but with Ukraine, suborned, and then subordinated, Russia automatically becomes an empire.” Now that seems like the best strategy all along would've been to box Russia in, weaken it, and play hardball. But here we are. I want to get to this in a little bit. As you said, you have a case study that has critiques and prescriptions, but I want to focus on the transactional, because you said earlier that the second, I call it the Trump regime now because let's call it what it is. either hasn’t learned the lessons or they have no interest in learning the lessons. I think that it's fair to say that Donald has his agenda and nobody's going to stop him, but the Biden administration also doesn't seem to have learned much, either from the first Trump administration or everything that preceded it. I kind of remain horrified actually, that knowing what was coming, the Biden administration didn't do everything in its power to end this thing immediately.
ALEX
I actually had these conversations with his senior folks.
I would say that Trump does have an agenda. He has a deep proclivity for authoritarians and an animus, for some strange reason, for our friends, the people that want to embrace us, he has an issue with. He has an animus towards Ukraine in particular because he holds them responsible for his embarrassing first impeachment where I exposed his corruption and testified in front of Congress. But he does have an interest, and this is what's shocking about the way he's going about this with the accommodation. It doesn't make sense. If he wants to be the peacemaker, if he wants to get himself the Nobel Peace Prize, then he probably should learn some of the lessons of how you deal with Russia to get that Nobel Peace Prize to get that win. And it's not through this constant accommodation. It's maybe a little bit of hardball. Now, he does hardball effectively with smaller states and with our friends, but he can't seem to muster the courage or the whatever it is to do that with the places where it actually could make a difference if he puts the pressure on Russia. Now, Russia is somewhat brittle, its economy is flagging, they cannot gain the ground. They need to make the wins on the battlefield, and Ukraine can be bolstered to better defend itself and maybe score some wins on the battlefield. That's how you get Russia to compromise. That's how you get Russia to the negotiating table. And he's working against himself.
MARY
Can you speculate about that? I have theories, but I'm more interested in hearing what you have to say because you, as well as, or better than most, know just how unsurprising it is that Donald is driven by greed and transactionalism and viciousness and ignorance. What is in your view driving his inability to do the one thing that could actually get him some actual admiration, which is something I don't think he's ever had before in his life?
ALEX
He might get some admiration for this deal, although they turned this $500-billion extortion to the policymakers who got in there and said, “Okay, how do we rationalize this approach? And now we have this small deal” It doesn't get us towards peace, but it's some investment in Ukraine, maybe a hook to keep the U.S. engaged because the U.S. needs rare earths and the Ukrainians need investment. It's always a good format where you have values, which we discussed what the values are for Ukraine, but also interests that keep us engaged with our allies and partners. Look, I'm not going to go so far as what Nikolai Petru, the former director of the FSB/KGB guy said, which is that the KG B or the FSB and Russia helped get Trump elected and therefore now he's obliged to respond and service their needs. I think that's probably protrusive of this, you just throwing grenades and trying to sow discord and stuff like that because really what they want is to drive us apart and make us weaker. But you do have to start to wonder, is there something more? Is there something that we're missing? It's like a Manchurian candidate moment when you're looking at the UN and you see that the U.S. so sharply about-face with regards to our support for Ukraine and our support to our allies when it doesn't advance Trump's own agenda, which is bringing an end to the war and getting his Nobel Peace prize.
What is this guy thinking? And I don't have an answer to that one. There are theories, folks who have researched this, credible folks who talk about a trip that Donald Trump took to Ukraine in 1987. This was at the invite of the Soviet ambassador accompanied by 2 KGB officers. Yeah, somebody referred to Krasnov as his code name. I don't know, it's too conspiratorial for me. But at the same time, his political activism, his political awakening occurs just two weeks later.
When he starts to denounce NATO not paying its fair share and that we're carrying NATO. There's something odd about some of these things. Again, I think there are just a lot of character flaws and he likes to snub. If somebody says the sky's blue, he'll say the sky's gray, and then try to ram it down people's throats like he's doing with the January 6th insurrection or with the loss in 2020, he will attempt to rewrite history. I don't know what a good literary metaphor is, but he will fight those battles and sometimes win. I mean, he managed to win. It was a shallow victory, but he managed to get enough folks across the line to win this 2024 election, and he does this consistently where he tries to force his view of the world. So, I think that's a lot of these different factors in play, play. I just hope it's not the worst-case scenario that people seem to think that he's owned by the Russians.
MARY
Well, honestly, sometimes it's hard not to think that. I mean part of it is characterological. He has an authoritarian personality. He was raised by a patriarchal authoritarian sociopath, and I'm not using those words loosely. I'm using them very specifically and diagnostically. So he's in thrall in some ways to that kind of power, partially because he craves it for himself and knows that he, even with all the power he has now, will never have that kind of power for various reasons. I'm not sanguine about where this is all heading, but I'm very eager to know or for you to share with people given what we see happening right now. Given the fact that the Republican party has entirely abdicated all responsibility here, the so-called party of Reagan and the evil empire, is lock, stock and barrel down with whatever Donald decides to do vis-a-vis Russia, Ukraine, and Vladimir Putin. It is a little hard to hang on to some hope that there may be a pivot here. And of course there is, as you say, so much we don't know. But what is your prescription or what potentially positive outcomes do you foresee?
ALEX
One of the things I've been struggling with for a Foreign Affairs article, in which I tried to rationalize this idea of turning America first to actually advance US interests. Putting America first, and that thus far illustrating that as if I was on the National Security Council. Again, writing a persuasive paper saying, if you want to put America first, then learn the lessons of the past. And as I started to write it, we got so far away from putting America first, that now it's basically empty words. We're making all the same mistakes of the past. I think that there is still an effort and there is still infighting going on within the Republican Party. To be clear, I think there are plenty of Republicans in the Senate and the House who support Ukraine that still have those Reagan Republican roots. The problem is they don't necessarily have the fortitude to fight for them.
And certainly on the domestic agenda, they're willing to bend over backwards. They'll vote to cut Medicaid, Medicare, Social Security, a trillion dollars taken away from the safety net for the American public. But on the farm policy front, you could still see some of these fights going on, and we haven't seen a scenario in which they've been compelled to support the president on his pro-Russia policy. I think there's a chance that they break with him on that inside his own administration. Folks that just came out of Congress, we're talking about Marco Rubio as senator who was on the Intel committee. We're talking about Mike Walsh, who was on various national security committees as the National Security Advisor. These guys will never ever criticize [Donald] publicly. Mike Walsh remembers what happened to HR McMaster when HR McMaster seemingly stepped out of line at the last Munich security conference and was fired just days later.
But at the same time, these folks are attempting to rationalize what the president wants with something that could advance us national security interests. And that's why you see these wild swings from Pete Hegseth thinking that he's still a Fox anchor that could say whatever he wants, and saying that Ukraine will have to give up territory and won't end up in NATO, [Donald] that same day supporting him, and then 24 hours later saying, no, everything's still back on the table. We'll deal with these issues when we get to negotiations saying things like, “Well, we don't want Russia to win. We want to be the winners.” But then 24 hours later, changing course again saying that Ukraine's the dictator, Russia's the good guy, then changing course again. He constantly changes his mind about something almost to the point where the story is that the last person that speaks to him last gets their way.
MARY
That's actually true.
ALEX
So, we have these constant regular turns and the proclivity to support Russia and punish Ukraine. These are the factors that happen, but you still have these policy makers that are trying to rationalize an approach, and that's how you end up with starting with some craziness about extorting Ukraine for 500 billion. Tomorrow, Zelensky is coming here and signing what amounts to a pretty good deal for both parties. Does it advance the cause of peace? No, it doesn't do anything. Most of it doesn't take effect until after there's a ceasefire. But in terms of serving both countries' interests, it is not a bad document. It is something that I would've had no problems writing up if I was on the council trying to figure this out.
MARY
That's really fascinating. I mean, not Donald's intransigence, that's par for the course, but I have to say, I've been alarmed about this for a long time because Donald doesn't care about anything except his own bottom line and appeasing people he admires who all happen to be dictators. But he also doesn't know anything. He's a deeply ignorant person and of a lot of what he does is just about asserting himself and throwing his weight around. So, when he called President Zelensky a dictator, I found that alarming. And then he talked about again about stealing all of Ukraine's natural resources and acting like it was some protection racket and he was going to shake them down. Whether or not that was likely, that kind of thing should never be said out loud.
And then he made it sound like it was to pay the United States for services already rendered, which is not how alliances work. So, I'm very glad to hear that this has gone in a different direction. But as you say, it doesn't do anything to advance the peace. And then the question becomes, what about everything else? I'm curious because, again, your book is so incredibly prescient, if you're surprised by the rapidity with which the Trump regime is not just abandoning our ally, or at least it seems like in many ways it is now, but the rapidity and glee with which he seems to be upending the post-World War II world order.
ALEX
So, it's interesting. I would say this. If I had to provide one recommendation going forward for the next four years, I would more and more ignore what he says and instead look to what actually happens. What he says sounds outrageous and ridiculous, but what gets translated oftentimes, at least in the foreign policy space thus far early days, is not likely to play out in the same way. I mean, we're seeing these excesses, for instance, from DOGE. They're breaking a lot of stuff. They're catching a lot of folks off guard. USAID--it was a disaster. Frankly, these are amongst the best people that you could imagine. These are the bleeding-heart liberals. These are the folks that really want to do good. They want to help people. They want to spread kindness. They want to embrace folks.
These are the nicest folks that were just completely caught off guard with USAID being eradicated, but people are catching on. You now have a situation in which the courts are stepping in and staying some of the most abusive stuff. There's backpedaling, there are excesses, like when they basically froze all the federal funds. And yes, tons of damage is being done. The most vulnerable people are the ones that are going to suffer disproportionately, but I don't think it's going to be an absolute total disaster because we still have good people in government. They're not the decision makers at the highest level—that’s been weaponized. We still have state and local governments that are going to provide services for the people. They're just going to be under pressure to do so. So, I think it's really what we shouldn't expect the absolute worst. It's going to be painful and it sucks to watch how many people are going to suffer, and we'll see how things go with Republicans pushing back on certain corners. It's hard to fathom now, because he got his whole cabinet, all his cabinet picks, even the crazy folks are on there, not just the completely unqualified. There are lots of unqualified folks, but there are crazy folks in there, too now.
So, we'll see how some of this plays out. I think that some of our institutions will hold. They're buying us time as he's breaking things. They're buying us time. We're going to see the courts grind down some of the most excessive behavior. We'll see some elections this year that are going to be absolutely critically, I think
MARY
Absolutely
ALEX
Some local elections in states like Wisconsin. I think the Virginia election, it is completely off cycle, but we'll have a governor's election that'll be a bellwether that will show that [Donald’s] policies are deeply unpopular. We'll be 10 months, 11 months into the year with lots of damage being done, more inflation, the economy weakening, prices going up because of tariffs. So, we just need to slow them down and then we'll have accountability start seeping in. I think the House is totally winnable, maybe even the Senate. The Senate is tougher because it's a tougher map, but it's one of those black swan environments in which you could have folks that wouldn't have won otherwise win some really tough elections because of the disaster and resistance to [Donald].
MARY
The generic ballot right now for Democrats is quite good. So, we can't drop the ball. We need to continue to make the case. I wish Democrats were doing it a little bit more loudly and vociferously.
ALEX
Aggressively.
MARY
Yeah, aggressively. But that's something I wanted to ask you about. We understand why Republicans tiptoe around Donald because they don't want to have Elon Musk spend millions of dollars to primary them, because what we're learning about Republicans is literally all they care about is their little bit of power. And for whatever reason, being a congressman or senator matters more to them than American democracy. As you say, some of them are doing so behind the scenes, but nobody's saying it out loud. And honestly, that's kind of what we need. So I get that our European allies need to be careful and tread carefully, but I also do think that there is a time at which people do need to step up and be a little bit more forceful, because otherwise Donald continues to think he can just get away with this stuff with a total impunity simply because nobody is putting up the kind of resistance that will actually show everybody how ill-equipped he is.
He just can't handle criticism. And I think if it's consistent and insistent, then that will demonstrate something, but it still isn't happening. And sometimes I just wonder, what more do you need? What other permission do you need? Because here we are.
ALEX
Starting with the foreign approach. I think the fact is that there's a brilliant kind of parade of foreign leaders coming through, stroking trump's ego, be getting the last word in and keeping him on sides. We saw that play out this week with Macron,
MARY
Absolutely.
ALEX
Zelensky is coming in tomorrow. I think that is just the nature of taking somebody that's relatively easily manipulated.
MARY
Certainly.
ALEX
Putin's been doing that very, very well and consistently. But I think at the same time, it does break a lot of relationships. We're far less predictable to both our allies and our adversaries. Our allies don't think we might be there if they need us. Our adversaries are gleeful about the fact that we're breaking historical relationships and putting doubts into Europeans and other democracies minds. But maybe they're also like, “this is insane.” Wild swings from one side to the other. So, it's potentially throwing them off balance, but at the same time they do, somebody like Putin knows that he could rattle [Donald]
[Donald] is not going to have the fortitude, the courage to respond to that in a courageous manner. I've seen that firsthand on the domestic side. Look, I kind of understand the strategy. I don't agree with it. The public still, the Democrats, left-leaning folks are clamoring for leadership. They want fighters. They want folks to do battle. But there are not enough of those folks in that left-leaning constituency. Why? Because we lost the general election. So, part of the strategy from the Democratic party seems to be some of this pain needs to unfold. The moderates, the independents need to see what kind of damage Trump is doing and let that seep into the psyche, seep into the pocketbooks, into the homes and kitchens of Americans so they understand what they brought onto themselves, either through not participating in elections or voting for [Donald]. That is not the least bit appealing to the folks that want to fight now, they want their leaders to fight for them now, but I can understand from a strategic standpoint why they're doing this. I think the fact is that the next two years are a brawl.
The Dems are opposition. They need a brawl. They need to call out the bs. The American public might not see it that way yet. Trump is still in his honeymoon period, but it's going to come around. There's no question that these tariffs are going to have an effect on working families and the middle class, that cuts to the safety net are going to have an effect. There is no reason why the Democratic party in that case, reading the tea leaves, needs to wait. They could go ahead, come in now and say, “Hey, I got it. You might not see it. I'm going to call out. It's going to get to you.” And there's no need to sit on the sidelines yet, but that's where they are. I think they're going to slowly come around and see that there's a need for leaders to step up and call things the way they need to see. Like Jasmine Crockett came up from a comment. She's not taking any guff right now, calling bullshit when she needs to. That's good. We need folks like that.
MARY
Yeah, just so everybody knows, I'm going to swear now. When she was asked by reporters what she has to say to Elon Musk, Representative of Texas, Jasmine Crockett, said, and all she said--and honestly, this is all anybody should say because who cares about what Elon Musk had to say—is, “Fuck off.” What more needs to be said? Because he should be made irrelevant as quickly as possible. But we also know, because I guess he understands that the last person in Donald's ear is the one who has the influence. That's why Elon Musk won't leave Donald's side. So that probably has something to do with it.
ALEX
He’s living in the executive office building adjacent to the White House.
MARY
Yes, it's sweet. It's not sweet. Okay, so Alex, I have one more question for you. We talked about this before we started because this is something that gets lost and it really shouldn't. And I'm talking about the personal toll a lot of this takes. We're seeing it now with people who are just trying to do their jobs and are having their careers ended or everything that they thought they could count on upended because of the recklessness and quite frankly, cruelty of this regime. But in your case, you stood up to the most powerful person in a way that many, most people, practically nobody did. And obviously it was not only the right thing to do, it was the necessary thing to do.
But many people would say, “Well, yeah, but it's not my problem. I'm not going to go there.” You did it anyway. It was crucially important. I think it was pivotal, but the toll it takes didn’t end when you finished saying what you had to say, when you finished speaking truth to power. First of all, you never did. You continue to do it, but if you would just tell people so they understand how much your life changed simply because you did the right thing in a context in which doing the right thing meant going up against the most petty, vindictive person I have ever known in my life. Walk us through that because clearly you've ended up in an amazing place and it's very heartening to see that. But a lot happened along the way.
ALEX
Yeah. Well, first of all, who did that fucker think he is? Trying to pull that bullshit on my watch. There you go. I had a position of awesome responsibility on the National Security Council serving way above my pay grade. I was a lieutenant colonel there. I was paid as a lieutenant colonel, but I was a director for European Affairs. It's a two- or three-star equivalent. And I was responsible for coordinating the policy around for my region, Europe, Eastern Europe. And I was not going to be cowed with some sort of sense of self-preservation from doing my duty that I swore an oath to 22 plus years before to support the constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic. And I felt it as an acute threat to US national security because I sensed the way this was going to embolden Putin and potentially precipitate a larger war.
More importantly, I sensed the danger for the US and the US democracy and free and fair elections that Trump was trying to steal it. Now watch, this is going to come back and bite me in the ass. But that's the way I thought. And I wasn't going to, when I reported it. I did it through official channels with the intention to get the president to realize that he was making a mistake that it was destructive, self-destructive. If the folks I reported to did their jobs, they would've said, “Hey, Mr. President, if somebody finds out about this, you're going to be impeached.” Which is exactly the way I saw it. As soon as I heard that extortion attempt, I saw as if anybody were to learn about this, this were to go public, he was going to get impeached. But they didn't. I tried to warn them, to correct course because either he corrects or has to be corrected.
But it ended up becoming public. The House launched inquiries into it. I was forced to testify and it drew me into the public eye. I was a private person, a military officer; non-partisan, not political. And the consequences were that I was immediately attacked by the partisan right and accused of being, I guess a never Trumper. They didn't know what to make of me, frankly, because I was a military officer. They said I was a never Trumper. Was I a liberal? So, they threw everything including the kitchen sink at me, and they successfully destroyed my military career. They tarnished my reputation, but they also elevated me in a way where the public had a consciousness about who I was. And based on the fact that I guess I didn't embarrass myself in Congress and what I'm talking about on this topic, I tend to be, and in certain corners listened to.
And even when the White House under the last administration invited me back, it's because I was an authority in this space. There are few people that know as much about this topic as me, have studied it or experienced it, served in Ukraine, Moscow, the Pentagon; I wrote the strategy. There's nobody else that did that. And then the White House. So, I'm now able to opine and share my thoughts on things that I think are important. And those are wide-ranging from the geopolitics, great power competition, how we contend with Russia, Ukraine, the things that we could do better, like the centrality of values to interest in Neo-realism and where we went wrong, to democracy, home and abroad, because I've experienced and witnessed the illiberalism in my various roles serving overseas and can offer some sort of comfort or maybe try to model some sort of behavior. And I'm not going to shirk my responsibilities and avoid stumbling and frankly try to model good behavior for my daughter also, who's 14 and far more conscious. If people thought about that simple act of modeling the best behavior for their children, I feel like they wouldn't be making the same mistakes.
MARY
No. And I'm pretty sure the world would be a better place, that's for sure. I do have one more question, and then, I do want to share some comments with you after that. I believe that what you did during the first administration had a significant impact on the 2020 election. After that, thankfully, Biden won and things with Donald got worse; things with the Republican party got worse. We had a big lie, we had an insurrection, many other things. Yet none of what happened in the lead up to the 2020 election seems to have any impact whatsoever on 2024. And I'm just curious what your theory might be about that, because we need to figure this thing out.
ALEX
I think there were a couple of different factors. I think the kitchen table issues were important. I think the fact that inflation was high, this was actually at the tail end of [Donald’s] mismanagement of COVID and supply shocks caused a spike in inflation and with the administration saying that it was doing all these things, but it wasn't translating to people's pocketbooks. That is a recipe for anti-incumbency. And it's something that we saw play out in many, many relationships, countries around the world.
MARY
Everywhere
ALEX
Reversals--conservative swept away. liberals swept away based on the fact that people's lives were being directly affected. I think frankly, President Biden didn't serve this country well in the following regard. First, let me heap a little bit of praise on him in that he attempted and successfully implemented some policies that really advanced people's interest and made lives a little bit easier. He gets a lot of credit for unifying after [Donald], the democracies of the world to support Ukraine. But when it comes to the election, not recognizing that he wasn't the same man he was in 2020 and staying on really was a huge disservice to our democracy and to Democratic party. And now we're dealing with the consequences. So human beings are a mixed bag. That is one that I would judge them harshly for.
I think going forward, there was an opportunity for an anti-incumbency sweep of the Republican party and Trump in 2026 and 2028, because things are not going to get better. Inflation doesn't look like it's going to go down. It's going to go up because of tariffs. There's not anything that's going to be done to make things easier on people's lives. Safety nets are being snatched away. And I think that's a recipe for a huge reversal to the Republicans and to [Donald]. More importantly, this is going to sound strange, and it's a long ways away, but I'm generally a pretty good analyst of the long distant issues, maybe better on the foreign policy side, but the overreach of the Republicans and the amount of damage they're going to do is actually going to invite maybe a unique opportunity to do things that were seemed impossible under previous administrations because things were too close.
Comprehensive immigration reform, maybe even a bigger move towards universal healthcare. And the centrality of values to interests. We need to course correct from the hyper-transactional in all these mistakes that [Donald] is going to do, certainly. And therefore, I think there's an opportunity, a unique opportunity to refocus on values, long-term aims of the United States on the foreign policy and security side, the way we take care of our people, and really course correct, like a pendulum swinging so far off to the side that it's going to have to start to swing in the other direction. There are unique opportunities. We just need leaders that are capable of understanding, seeing there's going to be unique opportunities, not for small baby steps, but huge course corrections to seize the moment and do really some bold things for the American people going forward.
MARY
That's very heartening because I feel like the pendulum, if we're talking about a right left continuum, has always swung far to the right and it never swings as far to the left. And now we're not talking about that anymore. We're talking about democracy and autocracy into fascism. I agree with you. I want it to swing so far towards the side of democracy, that it gets stuck there. Then we can actually do the profound and necessary and huge work that this country desperately needs to do.
I just want to share with you some comments. The admiration for you, the support for you is just wonderful. Almost everybody here believes rightly that you are an American hero. Again, I think that what you did is not only admirable and extraordinary, but it had a massive impact on what happened in 2020. And I'm so happy that you've landed where you've landed, and that you are continuing to do your extraordinary work. And this was really fun. It was so great to hang out with you.
ALEX
I look forward to doing it again.
MARY
Yeah, absolutely. And, hopefully, I'll be in Florida soon, and you, Rachel, and I can hang out.
Again, Alex’s phenomenal book is The Folly of Realism: How the West Deceived Itself about Russia and Betrayed Ukraine.
ALEX
Thank you for having me on.
MARY
Thanks so much for your time. Take care. And good luck with the book!
You can purchase Alex’s book at any of the links above, or here:
https://www.hachettebookgroup.com/titles/alexander-vindman/the-folly-of-realism/9781541705043/
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