Leshchenko said that the perception by some in the West that the war is “unwinnable” is inaccurate when viewed through a historical lens. “We are in 1941. We don't know what the result will be in the end. But we have to fight because if you don’t fight, the result will be horrible.”

Ustinova added, "Poland, or another country, will be next, and it may be a NATO country. And then the Americans would need to put boots on the ground and fight a European war again and lose thousands of your people.”

Russia has created a false narrative about Ukrainian corruption, she said. “What Ukraine was ten years ago and what Ukraine is now are two different countries. We have created very efficient new anti-corruption institutions, like our National Anti-Corruption Bureau, that are supported and highly admired by our international partners, including the United States. We have more than 600 cases in court against former state officials or existent state officials.”

‘Our fight for freedom’

Matviichuk said delays in U.S. military aid are a major concern in Ukraine. “In this difficult situation, we have no other choice. Our people in Ukraine will continue our fight for freedom and democracy because if we stop fighting, there will be no more Ukrainians.”

Leshchenko said he had recently been in the Donetsk region, where he visited two Ukrainian brigades. He urged the continuation of American military assistance as the lack of support was affecting their troops.

“The general mood is quite uncertain,” he said. “The soldiers are really disappointed with the lack of ammunition for vehicles and artillery, which they need to attack Russian positions. Unfortunately, they cannot do so now — this lack of ammunition is crucial.” But he added, “We will keep fighting.”

Ustinova said the world has grown too comfortable in believing that Ukraine would prevail without ongoing support. 

“A year ago, when I was speaking on this same panel, I was very enthusiastic because we were planning the counteroffensive. We had been successful in getting some territories back, and I think the world was really clapping and standing behind Ukrainians for winning the war within the last year. It is very sad for me to say now from Kyiv that everything has changed,” she said.

Russia was the only country that ramped up its ammunition and weapons production over the past couple of years, she added. “Last year, they tripled the production of their ballistic and ultrasonic missiles.” 

Noting that Russia has kidnapped more than 20,000 Ukrainian children, Ustinova said, “This is not just a Ukrainian conflict. This is a much bigger deal we are looking at right now. We have Iran. We have North Korea. We have Russia standing on one side, and we have the Western world and democracy standing on the other side. I’m so sorry to say, but the first group is so far more efficient than the second one.”

She explained, “It’s much easier for autocracies and those regimes to be united and take the decisions to ramp up their production lines than for the Western democracies who have to debate and negotiate.”

Technology race, Ukrainian efficiencies

Honcharuk said the war has crystalized Ukraine’s focus on military efficiency. Last year, his teams completed about 2,000 combat missions and destroyed over 700 units of enemy military equipment. This year, they are planning for 20,000 combat missions.

“I believe Ukraine is already a trendsetter,” he said. “The technology race is very fast when you have a war. Day by day, you are trying to compete with the enemy, and Ukraine is forced to maintain this very high pace to survive. There is only one country that currently has the same high pace, and it may be even higher — that is Russia.”

He said that Russia already understands that Ukraine will not give up “I believe now Russia is trying to find other weak spots on democratic camp … It’s very sad if they are right. The whole free world is in a very dangerous situation because Russia learned their lessons very fast, and they are much more dangerous than they were a year or two ago.”

Yet Honcharuk described the Ukrainian army as the best army in the world to fight against Russia. “We understand both systems, NATO systems and post-Soviet systems, at the same time, and we can destroy and damage Russian forces with very few resources.”

Ustinova noted the grim irony of Russia chairing the United Nations Security Council. “The United Nations was invented to prevent the wars in the world. Russia is the number one terrorist in the world, and they are the chair of the Security Council of the United Nations?! Everybody pretends this to be okay?!”

‘A hard war’

Stoner said that the Russian invasion has wrought significant damage on Ukraine as a country. “The World Bank estimated last year that it would cost over $411 billion for Ukrainian reconstruction, and I’m sure that number has increased rather dramatically in the last six or so months.”

In closing, McFaul told the panelists, “A lot of your friends are here in the audience. We miss you. We want you to come back. We want to celebrate victory. But we’re also worried about you. This is a hard war, and you are all very involved in everything in your own ways. I cannot believe you’re being so generous with your time with us as late as it is there.”

Stoner added, “This is not just a Ukrainian fight, it is. It is a fight for everyone, and thank you all for everything that you’re doing.”

You can view a recording of the panel and discussion below and read more about the event in the Stanford Daily.

Follow the link for a full transcript of "Global Threats: What's at Stake and What We Can Do About It."

Reform the Electoral College |  Didi Kuo

One of the major problems people feel right now in American politics is that their voices aren’t heard. We live in what my colleague Francis Fukuyama calls a "vetocracy," meaning there are a lot of veto points in our system.

In a lot of other democratic institutional configurations, you have rule by the majority. But in the United States, we have an institutional configuration that allows a very small group — for example, 15 people in the House of Representatives — to hold up government in various ways. We see this in dramatic examples on the national level, but it also trickles down to the local level where you see it in issues like permitting hold-ups.

Reforming the Electoral College would be a very direct way of changing that vetocracy. The United States is one of the only advanced democracies that has this indirect system of elections. If all the votes counted equally and all the presidential candidates had to treat all of us the same and respond to us equally in all 50 states, it would do a lot to show the power of the popular vote and realign us more closely to the principle of majoritarianism that we should seek in our institutions.

Allow Taiwan to License Weapons Production |  Larry Diamond

My recommendation is deterrence, deterrence, deterrence. It is not inevitable that the People's Republic of China is going to launch an all-out military assault on Taiwan. But if the United States does not do more to make that a costly decision, the likelihood it will happen are exponentially higher.

Deterrence works. The United States deterred the Soviet Union from moving against West Berlin and much of Europe for decades. But it only works if you have a superior force.

To that end, the United States needs to pre-position more military force in the region. There's now a $12 billion backlog of weapons that Taiwan has ordered and paid for but hasn't received yet. That’s because the American defense production system is completely broken. This is the same reason why we can’t get weapons to Ukraine at the pace we need there.

This issue could be fixed, at least in part, if we licensed the production of some of these weapon systems directly to Taiwan. Their ability to build plants and produce these systems is much more agile than our own, and so licensing the rights to production would dramatically increase the deterrence factor against China, in addition to deepening our cooperation with allies throughout the region.

Pursue Climate Mitigation AND Adaptation |  Marshall Burke

There are three things we can do in response to climate change: we can mitigate, we can adapt, or we can suffer. We’re off to a good start, but we have decades of long slog ahead of us to get that right. And it's not just us; even if we do a good job, we depend on other countries to also do a good job. The Biden administration has already been engaged on some of that front, but there’s more work to do there.

And even with our best efforts, we are not going to be able to move as fast as we want or mitigate our greenhouse gas emissions as quickly as we need to avoid climate change. So, we're going to have to live with some climate change, which means adaptation. And if we can't adapt, then we're going to suffer. 

The key point is that we are very poorly adapted to today's climate, much less the climate we're going to have 30 or 50 years from now. The West Coast and California are prime examples of this. There have been monumental wildfire seasons there the last few years, and there are significant negative health impacts from smoke exposure. I see it in my own home, even as someone who studies this and should know better and do more to reduce those risks.

The point is, we're really poorly adapted to the current climate, and things are going to get a lot worse. We need to focus on mitigation; it’s still really important and we need to get it done. But at the same time, we need to figure out how to adapt and live with the changing climate that we're going to experience.

Weapons for Ukraine, Sanctions on Russia |  Michael McFaul

When I was in Kyiv this September, I had a chance to meet with President Zelenskyy, and he pointed out an absolutely crazy reality. Companies in the United States and Europe are still making tens of thousands of dollars in profits from selling various technologies that ultimately end up in Russia. It’s getting in through places like Hong Kong and Kazakhstan and Belarus and Georgia, and it allows Russia to keep waging its horrific war.

At the same time, the United States is spending millions of dollars to arm Ukraine with systems to shoot down the Russian rockets that were built using the components they got from the West. That’s completely illogical, bad policy. I know it’s hard to control technology, but we have to find a better way than what we’re doing right now. If you're an American taxpayer, that is your money being wasted.

That means more and better weapons for Ukraine, faster. And that means more and better sanctions on Russia, faster. That is the way to speed the end of this war.

Be Confident in America |  Amichai Magen

Just a few short years ago, we were all talking about the decline of the United States. I think that is far from inevitable. People speak about the 20th century as the “American Century.” The 21st century can also be the American Century. It's in our hands.

Be bullish on America. Be confident in America. Rediscover the spirit of America for adaptation and innovation and entrepreneurship. We need to wake up from the break we’ve taken from history in the post-Cold War era and rally once again in our spirit, our research, and our intellect.

We need to find new solution structures to the great challenges of our era: environmental challenges, AI, biotechnological challenges, nuclear challenges. And we can do it. China is on the verge of demographic decline and economic decline. Russia is a very dangerous international actor, but it is not a global superpower. We must reinvent the institutions and the alliances that we need for the 21st century in order to make sure that we continue a journey towards greater peace and prosperity for all of mankind.

The entire discussion, including the audience Q&A, is available to watch on FSI's YouTube channel. To stay up to date on our content, be sure to like, subscribe, and turn on notifications.

Impacts on Russia, Ukraine, and Beyond

Michael McFaul

The implications of the 72-hour mutiny will last much longer and extend much further beyond Rostov and Moscow, says FSI Director and former U.S. ambassador to Russia Michael McFaul.

Speaking with Madeline Brand of KRCW, McFaul outlined the difficult situation Putin now finds himself in.

“This whole series of events has made Putin look a lot weaker than he looked three or four days ago. The very fact that the Wagner group exists is a sign of weakness. Putin needs them because he couldn’t rely on his armed forces.”

Elaborating further on Putin’s dilemma, McFaul says:

“As those mercenaries were getting closer to Moscow, Putin went on TV and sounded very macho, calling Prigozhin’s men traitors and promising to crush them, but then four hours later, he capitulates and starts to negotiate. And now he’s given another speech where it sounds like he’s pleading with these mercenaries to lay down their weapons and join the Russian forces. That clearly shows he hasn’t resolved this Wagner crisis yet.”

McFaul predicts that Putin’s remaining partners are also taking note of his fumbled reaction to the rebellion.

“​​If you’re Xi Jinping watching this, the big bet you made on Putin as a partner in opposing the West is looking really problematic right now.”

What Chinese officials fear most, McFaul explained to MSNBC’s Jonathn Capehart, is instability and dissolution, both internally and amongst their neighbors. Historically, the collapse of the Soviet Union was a catastrophic event for Chinese Communist Party officials, and a lesson the current leadership is loath to repeat.

McFaul asserts that, “The longer Putin’s war in Ukraine goes, the more probable it becomes that Russia becomes more unstable. The longer this war goes on, the more likely it is we could see something like this play out over and over again. So I would hope that Xi Jinping understands that putting pressure on Putin to end the war in Ukraine is the best way to prevent chaos on China's borders.”

There are also important lessons the United States and its allies need to consider when evaluating the kind of support they are willing to give Ukraine as the war wears on.

“Putin capitulated very fast, and I think that says a lot about how he’s going to fight in Ukraine and whether he needs an ‘off ramp’ like we’ve been saying. We’ve heard all of these arguments that if he’s backed into a corner he’ll never negotiate. Well, this weekend Putin was in a corner, and he didn't double down. He didn't escalate. He negotiated,” McFaul observes.

Continuing this thought on his Substack, McFaul emphasized that, “The lesson for the war in Ukraine is clear. Putin is more likely to negotiate and end his war if he is losing on the battlefield, not when there is a stalemate. Those who have argued that Ukraine must not attack Crimea for fear of triggering escalation must now reevaluate that hypothesis. The sooner Putin fears he is losing the war, the faster he will negotiate.”

Or, as McFaul writes in Journal on Democracy, “Anything that weakens Putin is good for Ukraine. It is as simple as that.”  

Fallout on Nuclear Security and Norms

Rose Gottemoeller

Throughout the full-scale invasion of Ukraine, there have been concerns about nuclear sabre rattling by Putin and Kremlin-backed propagandists. Writing in the Financial Times, Rose Gottemoeller, the Steven C. Házy Lecturer at CISAC and former Deputy Secretary of NATO offered this insight:

“The fixation with nuclear apocalypse seems to be the symptom of a wider anxiety that the west is bent on Russian dismemberment because of its aspirations in Ukraine. The Kremlin argues that it only wanted to resume its ancestral right to a Slavic heartland, but that the U.S. and NATO are seeking as punishment Russia’s full and complete destruction as a nation state.”

Gottemoeller has been quick to condemn Putin’s casual threats of nuclear use and clear in her recommendations to the U.S. administration and its allies to find constructive ways to keep nuclear arms talks open despite the war in Ukraine and setbacks like Russia’s suspension of its participation in the New START Treaty.

The Wagner takeover of Rostov-on-Don adds a new layer to the security concerns surrounding Russia’s nuclear posture. Looking at the evolution of Putin’s nuclear rhetoric over the last 18 months, Gottemoeller writes:

“Putin embraced nuclear weapons to keep the United States and its NATO allies off his back and out of his way as he pursued his adventure in Ukraine. It did not work out that way. The United States and NATO were not ready to fight inside Ukraine, but they were willing to do everything else to support Kyiv’s cause — economic, political, security and military assistance to ensure Russia’s defeat. Nuclear weapons failed Putin as a guarantee against external meddling.”

Turning to the events of the last week, Gottemoeller continues:

“We learned on June 24 that they are no help to him internally, either. He could not brandish nuclear weapons in the face of the Wagner Group uprising . . . Nuclear weapons are not the authoritarian’s silver bullet when his power is strained to the breaking point — far from it. In fact, they represent a consummate threat to national and global security if they should fall into the wrong hands in the course of domestic unrest.”

In light of Prigozhin’s mutiny, she urges global leaders to “focus on the problem, stop loose nuclear talk, and put new measures in place to protect, control and account for nuclear weapons and the fissile material that go into them.” 

The Unknown Unknowns of the Settlement

Steven Pifer

Major questions remain about the deal struck between Putin, Prigozhin, and Lukashenko. While Lukashenko has confirmed that the Wagner boss is now in Belarusian territory, it is unclear — and many feel, unlikely — that he will stay there in quiet retirement. 

Weighing in on Twitter, Steven Pifer, an affiliate at the Center for International Cooperation and Security and The Europe Center, and a former U.S. Ambassador to Ukraine, acknowledged, “We likely do not know all carrots and/or sticks that were in play to lead to Prigozhin’s decision to end his mutiny . . . Something does not add up.”

Following up in Politico, Pifer added:

“The ‘settlement’ supposedly brokered by President Alexander Lukashenko of Belarus leaves Putin, who was invisible during the day except for a short morning TV broadcast, as damaged goods. It provided the impression that all was forgiven, likely because the Russian president feared the prospect of Prigozhin’s troops parading in Moscow — even if they lacked the numbers to take control of the capital. It is harder to understand Prigozhin. His demands went unmet, yet he ordered his troops back to garrison, accepted that they might join the Russian army that he detests, and meekly set off for Belarus. There clearly is more behind this ‘settlement’ than we understand.”

A New Reality

In his opening remarks, McFaul asked the panelists to share their mood as they enter the second year of the war. Ustinova said that just prior to the panel event, they’d been informed of an impending Russian attack.

“There is a very high probability that today, Kyiv and other cities will be shelled pretty heavily,” she said, adding that despite the threat, they weren’t going anywhere and that the parliament was still in session.

“That’s the mood of Ukrainians,” she said. “We know we can be hit any day, we can die any day, but this is the reality we have to live in.”

Honcharuk said he’d heard the opinion that authoritarian regimes are better suited for war because they are more mobile and less distracted by politics, thus creating the impression that democracies are indecisive. But, he said, Ukraine’s war effort demonstrates the opposite.

“I feel proud that Ukraine now denied this and showed the power of democracy,” he said.

When an audience member asked how the war has impacted political life in Ukraine, Honcharuk said there are challenges. For example, there are some conflicts between the central and local governments, but they don’t appear to be systemic problems. He said the parliament is still working and all Ukrainian political parties are “more or less united.” He also noted that President Volodymyr Zelenskyy has “huge support” from the Ukrainian people.

Aid and Allies

Since the start of the war, the United States has spent tens of billions of dollars on aid to Ukraine, including artillery, tanks, and rocket launchers. The support has not only helped Ukraine stave off defeat, but enabled their success in many battles against Putin’s army.

In a recent interview with Stanford News, Steven Pifer, a former U.S. ambassador to Ukraine and an affiliate at Stanford’s Center for International Security and Cooperation (CISAC), said that Ukraine’s military had considerable success in the last four months of 2022, pushing Russian forces out of the Kharkiv region and back across the Dnipro River in Kherson.

On Friday, the panelists expressed gratitude for the support of the United States and other western allies in aiding their victories on the battlefield.

“Thank you,” Matviichuk said. “Ukraine and Ukrainians will always remember how American people support us in [these] dramatic times.”

Honcharuk agreed and said he viewed the U.S. as a partner in the war. “I want American people to understand that now we are together – Ukraine on the frontline, you on the back,” he said.

The panelists also urged for continued cooperation from Western allies.

“The prescription for war is three [items],” Leshchenko said. “First is weapons, second is sanctions [on Russia], third is financial support.”
 

Looking Ahead

The group expressed hope that this year Ukraine will see a victorious end to the war. Leshchenko added that he would like to someday see Ukraine join the North American Treaty Organization (NATO) because it could make significant contributions to the alliance.

“I think the Ukrainian army [is] going to be the best army in Europe,” he said. “It would be a privilege for NATO to have the Ukrainian army’s support because it will defend Europe much better than Europe has [been] able to do with its own army.”

Ustinova said a common misunderstanding about the war is that it started last year with Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. But the conflict, she said, dates back to 2014 when Russia annexed the Crimean peninsula, and she explained how Ukrainians define success.

“Our victory is the total liberalization of each kilometer of the captured territories since 2014. Not since 2022,” she said.

She added that what’s most important to understand about the war is that it has broad implications, including for the West.

“We all have to realize, this is not a Ukrainian war,” she said. “If the West loses in Ukraine, it will be a total collapse for the rest of the world.”