It is extremely dangerous because what is happening in the world now reminds me of the 1930s. That's an alarming comparison. Some people would say that's exaggerated when you consider how that ended. I certainly think that this is not exaggerated in worse situation now, because all of this populism and other things, it captured good part of Europe. Now the populism, the rise of the authoritarian tendencies, US is right in the centre of that. So for Europe, is the plan to to wake up?
Putin has done a lot of nuclear Sabre rattling. Yes. Is he serious? Hello and welcome to the forecast.
As Donald Trump and Vladimir Zelensky's latest meeting reportedly descended into another shouting match behind closed doors, the war in Ukraine feels as volatile as ever, and, according to some, more dangers for the world than at any time since the Cold War. Our guest today is Sehi Prachi, professor of Ukrainian history at Harvard University and author of The Nuclear Age. He warns that fear is once again driving nations towards the bomb and that we could soon see
dozens more nuclear armed states. So it's about stumbling into new nuclear era. And what does that mean for global security and indeed for Ukraine's fight to survive? Sahi, good to see you again. It's a pleasure. Let's start with the news, kind of the topical news this Budapest summer, which seems quite an extraordinary idea when it was first mooted last week. Is it going to happen, do you think?
I would say it's 5050, but I would say that probably 90 against Stan that probably it will not produce any breakthrough if it happens because the positions, in particular the position of Russia is still the same. They want to keep whatever they got on the battlefield and they also want Ukraine to surrender additional territories. So I go back in history at, at any sort of peace deal or ceasefire that the norm is that it goes along the existing front
lines. So I I don't think that this is, this is the position that really suggests that we are going to witness the end of hostilities anytime soon. But if Putin says no to the Budapest summit, which is 1 hell of a gift, is he being a bit greedy here? Because it's in Budapest, hosted by Viktor Orban, who is the closest thing that Putin has to a real friend in the European Union. It's a kick in the teeth for the European Union. Trump will be there.
Zelensky, as far as he knows, is not going to show up. We know that in the last meeting between Zelensky and Trump, Trump more or less represented Vladimir Putin at the table. Well, they had President Trump and and Putin had meeting in Alaska. So having meeting doesn't mean solving the issue. Solving the problem so. But it's a diplomacy. It looks good for Putin, doesn't it? Or the summit in red. Carpets. The the the red carpet in Alaska. Yes, exactly that.
That looked exceptionally good for Putin. It means that he is back on the international arena. He can go to the United States and not be arrested. And now going to Budapest means that he can go to Europe as well. So, yeah, it would be absolutely being whatever the, the the outcome of the Budapest summit would be. So we don't know. We don't have the date yet. They haven't agreed on that.
And what we see now from the Russian side, the the statements come in that the the only condition on which Russia is prepared to stop fighting, it's when Russia gets more territory. And it's not just more territory, it's urban conglomerate and, and, and towns and cities in highly industrialized on bus area, which is apart from value, apart from people. It's also the the position that is very difficult to to take. It's not, it's not a field.
So yeah, it would be a strategic, strategic defeat of major proportions for Ukraine, for the West and for the for the future of Europe, for. Sure. So just to be clear, say what you're saying is that the things that Putin can't get on the battlefield where the front lines have been frozen for quite a long time? More or less he. Thinks he can get from Trump as a concession. That is the, the, the, the, that is certainly the plan that that is certainly the, the position.
And it's more than just negotiation position from which he starts. That's what he says again and again that he wants to get. So. So the new battlefield in this war is actually inside Trump's head. Certainly, certainly that's what is happening. The the the battle is for the position of the United States, for the position of the US president. And as we know that Frontline is moving back and forth quite often, so.
Hard to keep up. One, one day it's the Russia winning, another day it's Ukraine backed by the European leaders, which are a very important, very important participants in that battle, not just in the battle on the on the in, on Ukraine frontline, but also American frontline. So after last Friday's meeting in the Oval Office between Trump and Zelensky, things seem to be relatively positive. He didn't get his Tomahawk missiles.
You know, Trump wasn't particularly friendly towards Zelensky. But then we heard afterwards that behind closed doors, the meeting was almost as ugly as the public. You know, disaster back in February. Well, that, that means that there probably in the future will be more ups and downs in, in, that's in, in those relationships. It also indicates that Zelensky was not intimidated.
And from what we can tell from the previous story of relationship between the two leaders, the, the, the, the quarrel today doesn't mean that there can be some sort of understanding tomorrow and, and vice versa. So that, that that's a roller coaster. And I was in September in Ukraine for two weeks. People there take this really hard. So the, the at stake is, of course, the survival of the country, their personal survival. And this news, they don't, they don't help it.
It goes back and forth, back and forth. The hopes are going up. And then, then suddenly, suddenly there is a major, major disappointment. But even but in the back and forth, and, you know, one day Trump says that Ukraine could win all this territory back and then the next day says they should suck it up and deal with
their losses. Do you think that Trump fundamentally understands what Putin wants, which is for Ukraine to stop existing as an independent nation state, and what the Ukrainians insist on, which is their survival as an independent nation state? From the public pronouncements, I don't think that there is. I don't see that there is an understanding that. Trump doesn't get it. Or his advisors, if they get that they, they, they, they keep
it as, as, as a deepest secret. So it's, it's not, it's not certainly in the public, it's not in the pronouncements. And it's very much the whole thing is about the territory. And, and, and at stake is of course not, not, not just territory or any territory. It's it's the survival of Ukraine. How do you think future historians will interpret victory in this war?
Looking at the region and its tough neighborhood in which Ukraine is, Ukraine now goes through the process of really establishing its independence in face of the resurgent empire. And this is the story, this is the situation in which Poland and and Romania and other East and Central European countries were before that. None of them really stayed in the borders in which it was born or emerged after World war. The border shift, the border shift in the region.
Yeah, the border shift in the region. But what is important, important is sovereignty, the survival and sovereignty. So that's. The sense of nationhood. You know, the Poles have a very strong sense of Polish nation, despite the fact that their border ceased to exist in the 19th century. Exactly, exactly. So that's that's assurance of survival and that assurance also of success, political but also
economic. Look at at Polish, Polish economy today, how again the the the entire country was shifted after the World War 2, acquiring some territories, losing others. So my position was that the victory for Ukraine is survival, survival as a sovereign state. If that doesn't happen, then it is not a victory. But it hopes to survive as a sovereign state inside secure borders, even if they've shifted somewhere. Exactly, security. Security is the core is is is is extremely important.
So think of adding that it. It's always puzzled me that Europe, an economy 10 times the size of Russia's, you know, a fragmented but very healthy arms industry and A, and a very particular cause which most European member states seem to buy into, that this is European and Western values at stake here, that they've not stood up to Vladimir Putin, you know, in a most robust way, especially when they say this is existential not just for Ukraine but also for us, right.
What, in essence do you think is going on there? Well, certainly the EU has a difficulty of really translating and transforming its economic power into first political will to defend itself, to defend values, to defend the the, the type of the of the economy, to defend the level of prosperity. And the reason for that is that Europe really didn't function as 1 Organism almost ever. And after 1945, it relied really on the United States to provide protection.
And what is happening now, it's a very, very difficult and challenging process for for Europe, finding enough unity, finding enough ways of how, how to survive together. Because on their own European countries can survive E European countries who were under or most of them who were under the Russian control, under the Soviet control before that understand that the Finland countries, countries in northern Europe understand that. But talking to Germany, it's
already becomes difficult. France and and Spain again, they are on board. But for them it's, it's it's more a theoretical threat than than a real one. Ukraine, by heroically, really fighting back, buys time for Europe to put it's act together because in the new world you're really now, you can't be sure that the United States will show up when it matters and Europe has to find a way to protect
what it got. So this is, at the end of the day, this really is as far as you're concerned about the survival of Europe. It is, it is because we already see that Putin goes there and bribes individual leaders and countries and Slovakia and, and Hungary already are playing, it doesn't look like on European team on, on, on many issues. And it can take 1 country one after another.
He he, he, he was very, very influential and tragically continues to be in Germany, for example, and support for either far right or far left, any anti anti system sort of political forces. It's certainly the one of the tools that he hasn't he uses. So yeah, Ukraine, Ukraine is, is fighting not just for European values, which is true. It wants to stay democratic. It wants to to to stay sovereign, but it's also for Europe and interests of Europe.
What is the bigger factor in dividing Europe in its response to Russia? Is it the constant potential of a nuclear threat from Vladimir Putin? Is it the fact that you know your perception of the Russian threat recedes as your geography expands? Is it internal politics? Or all three. Geography matters when it comes to Europe and you see a different reaction to Putin's actions, as I already said, between let's say Poland and, and, and Spain or Portugal.
But geography becomes less important when it comes to nuclear weapons course. And the biggest concern for Putin using nuclear weapons in Ukraine was really registered not in Europe, but in Washington. So the, the, the potential and, and Trump keeps talk, you know, at least till recently about the, whether Zelensky wants to bring the third World War because everyone understands that the third World War can be, can be only nuclear.
So nuclear kind of descends this, this geography and, and geographic, geographic divisions. And what I, what I write about in my book, it's, it's certainly the history of the, of the nuclear age, starting with HG Wells and imagining, imagining the, the nuclear war back in 1913, but it ends with the, with the war in Ukraine. Apart from the threat of the use of nuclear weapons, we have also something that we never saw in history before. That's so-called Atoms For Peace.
Nuclear power plants are turning into weapons for war as Russia takes over Chernobyl first and then the Parisian nuclear plant. And that is a real danger, isn't it, that these become massive dirty bombs in the heart of Europe? Exactly. Dirty bomb. That's that that that's the term.
And I think it's a much more real possibility and threat than the use of nuclear weapons, because use of nuclear weapons, that means breaking the taboo that exists since the times of Hiroshima and Nagasaki and paying a political and economic price because China is is not particularly keen on anyone using nuclear weapons at this point, or India for that matter.
So Putin can lose the only allies or the biggest allies that he has, but so-called accident of the nuclear power plant when it's impossible to prove who, who's who was responsible for what and what happened. That's, that's, that's, that's. It seems to me a much more immediate danger. Let's talk, you write in your brilliant book about also nuclear Saber rattling. Right. Putin has done a lot of nuclear Saber rattling. He mentions the nuclear threat periodically. Yes.
Is he serious? So far, certainly that was the most successful Russian psychological operation of the war because it certainly influenced thinking in Washington during Biden administration. That in in turn, influenced the question of how much Ukraine was getting weapons. What sort of gap? What sort of gap? Don't give them anything too powerful in case you provoke the nuclear bear.
Exactly because the the the the whole game was about at the so-called red lines in the head of Putin, whether they existed or not, where were they? And that there was general agreement at that time that Crimea is one of them. So the idea was give Ukraine enough to to hold the line, but not enough to somehow be able to get into the Crimea. But that's really important, isn't it?
Because if you're never going to give Ukraine more to actually win this war, and if, if, if victory means pushing the Russians back to the original borders and making sure they never cross your front, your borders ever again, then you have to engage with the possibility of a nuclear threat. Because it's possible that that Putin would use.
It you, you, you have and in that sense, and again, that's that's what I'm saying in in trying to argue in my book that we have to relearn certain not just lessons, but also skills of the Cold War because we survived the Cold War because of the existence of thing that Winston Churchill defined as balance of terror. And I write about that as balance of fear, because Russia is not the only nuclear power in
the world. And if only the West is scared of the of the Russian nuclear power and Russia is not scared of the Western one we don't have. You don't have a balance of fear you. Don't have the? Balance. You don't have deterrence. You don't, you don't have deterrence exactly so. And it's, it sounds very kind of reckless, what I am saying, But that's, that's the reality. That's how we survived the Cold War.
But how did we end up in a point where the Russians are not afraid of the nuclear threat from the West, whether it's the United States or indeed France and and Britain? Well, because on some point we really believed in the idea that history came to an end. Maybe not in Fukuyama's understanding of the victory of liberal democracy, but the end of the big wars, the brutal force and other things. And new generations came, politicians, new electorate showed up, and so on and so forth.
So we, we assumed that that eternal peace actually arrived. And now we know with the war in Ukraine, which is the largest war in Europe since 45, potentially the largest war in the world, that that was a moment that was a peace, peace period that unfortunately as as everything in the world, good and bad comes to an end. It came to an end. But you're what you're arguing in your book is that the reason why we had the peace is because there was this balance of fear.
The very existence of nuclear weapons was so unimaginable as a military tool on the battlefield that we had this balance of fear. And if we had no global war, plenty of regional wars, no global wars for almost 8 decades. Yes, yes, I'm not. I'm not the first one to argue that, of course, certainly, but, but, but certainly I'm I my own research demonstrates that I don't have any other explanation for why we have this the longest, probably the peace in the modern history.
I mean global peace. Of course there are original wars. So have we become flabby in the West, in Europe? Have we become complacent because we didn't think that those global wars could ever happen again? We got used to nuclear deterrence. Yes, yes. And anyone who was talking about, let's say investing in the defences was considered to be a war monger and and and so
on and so forth. So people, people focused on different things and but again, the, the, the, the peace benefit of the fall of the Berlin Wall came to an end. So we have we have to learn the lessons of the Cold War because for for generations historians of the Cold War were asking question how did it happen that the grand airlines of World War 2 deteriorated in this horrible thing called.
Cold War, which is a good question to ask and discuss, but now I think much more important for our own survival is the question, what did we do right during the Cold War that we are still around and have this conversation today and, and go back and try to to distill that and then and then try to use it to implement in this new. And what did we do right? First of all, we got lucky in, in cases like the Cuban Missile
crisis. But the other thing was that again, thinking about the Cuban missile crisis, the position of, of President Kennedy that he, he decided that he, he, he, he can't retreat because what was there was Khrushchev's blackmail by moving those missiles there, you, you, you take a strong stand and you, you indicate that you, you are, you are prepared to respond in kind. That's, that's again, as I say, especially in the new environment created by the last 30 years. That's sounds that as most
irresponsible thing to be said. But, but as a historian, that's, that's how I see the Cold War and that's how I see where was the secret that there was no, no beacon global war between 1945 in 1991 or 1989, depending on how you how you look at the end of the Cold War. So considering the fact that we have an actual and very bloody war happening in Europe right now, considering the fact that I'm sorry, Mr. Putin, we know who the aggressor is and it's. You the the fact.
That we've got Trump in the White House who's not holding a firm line. How dangerous is that for us? Well, it is it is extremely dangerous because we are in the new world on in many ways, the what is happening in the world now reminds me of the 1930s Great Depression, Great Recession, the rise of populism, nationalism, aggression, use of the minorities card and nationality card. So the the the that's. An alarming comparison.
Some people would say that's exaggerated when you consider how that ended, but you would say no. I, I, I, I certainly think that this is not exaggerated. And the, the question is how we can preclude it from going where, where it is going. It, it looks like we know where
it can end. So that, that, that's, that that's, that's an alarm bell that we should take seriously and not dismiss that as so. But but where, where I was heading with all of that, that to a degree, we're in worse situation now than we were back in the 1930s because all of this populism and other things, it captured good part of Europe. But US was saved to a degree by Atlantic Ocean or by, by, by
something else. Now, the populism, the rise of the authoritarian tendencies, US is right in the center of that. And that is really challenge for Europe, but also opportunity for Europe. So it's time, it's time to grow up and it it's time to start thinking and relying on on Europe and European enormous economic, economic potential to find the way how to defend Europe in the situation where there are clear signs that that US tries to retreat on the other, on the other side of the Atlantic.
And again, we can say, OK, this is this is President Trump. But the reorientation of American foreign policy toward the Pacific started under Obama that those were also hopes and expectations of President Biden. But then of course the war in Ukraine started, so we are witnessing a major shift on the international arena. So for Europe is the time to to wake up and not to dismiss parallels with 1930s as as just
pure exaggeration. So to be clear, you've got in Russia an actual aggressor, you know, against the sovereign European territory. You've got in China a an opportunistic at best, confrontational worst former ally and market that is being decoupled.
You've got in the United States, you know, an Uncle Sam who's become rogue, let's put it this way, unreliable who may not show up. So what you're left with is the survivors club of liberal democracy in the the European Union in in Europe. You put it exceptionally well. Yeah, I, I, I Thank you. I've been thinking about it a lot like you. And so this survivors club is
divided, right? It's possible that some of the most powerful nations in this club are going to be run by far right wingers, the Afd in Germany, Ras Oblomo Nacional in France, who are flirting with authoritarianism themselves. Yes, the, the, the, this is what is happening. And again, the, I think as a historian, what that reminds me
about is 1930s. So what that means is that the frontline, we were talking about the, the frontline in Ukraine, the frontline in the US in, in President Trump's head. So for Europe, the frontline is not only there where Ukrainians are keeping, keeping the Russian forces or where the, the Poles are trying to shoot down the Russian drones or, or the, the intercept the, the, the, the planes are trying to intercept the, the Russian jets in, in Northern Europe.
The frontline is within, within each individual country itself. And that's the frontline between democracy and whatever forces are that presents threat to that democracy. Again, it's, it's, it's, it maybe sounded as, as a exaggeration, but again, what, what you are saying and that that's what certainly I, I, I see when and what I, what I read and, and what, what I feel being in Europe that is that that is the reality. There is more than more than one
frontline. And thank God the one within within European Union is political. Are we sleepwalking in Europe towards catastrophe? I hope not, because at least the, the language that is being used is the right language, including in Germany. The, the pronouncements that are being made in, in support of Ukraine are, are, I think, very real and strong. So the, the task is really to match the, the, the rhetoric and, and, and, and, and, and deeds.
Because again, at this point, US stopped supplying Ukraine with the, the weapons and it's now Europe that is, that is buying those weapons. So that's already the act that demonstrates that at least on certain level, there is serialization How, how dangerous it is. So I hope we are not sleepwalking. But just briefly. I mean, Trump has been much more hostile towards Zelensky than towards Putin in public at
least. He's been much more hostile towards the European Union as a body then he has been even to Zelensky. He's called it a way of fleecing the United States. This isn't helpful for the survival of Europe. Well, it is. Or maybe it is. Exactly it. Depends. Maybe it's concentrating European minds. OK. So is the rhetoric like that because that's a great power rhetoric toward a smaller or medium, medium sized countries?
Well, that's maybe what what Europe needs the the that sort of wake up call not not just coming from Russia, but also from the United. So in if you're going back to the 1930s, we had an emerging Winston Churchill, right? You know, we had, you know, the Charles de Gaulle. We had, you know, FDR in the United States. Who are the Churchills of today? Well, I'm, I'm, I'm looking
around. I, I, I, I, I don't see many of them, but I, I'm sure that the, the, really the situations like that, the, the, the, the times of, of trial, they produce leaders. They produce leaders. So I hope within a year another maybe electoral cycle, we we'll see that. And there is the, there is some hope in Germany now there is some hope in, in other places as
well. So I'm, I'm, I'm, I'm, I'm sure the leaders, if there is a demand for, for, for a particular leader, that leader will show up. I hope we have enough time for that. I hear what you're saying, but you're not going to make me sleep any better. That say, hey Ploy, Professor Ploy, thank you very much indeed. My pleasure. That's it for this episode of The Forecast. Hope you enjoyed it. Sobering stuff. Until next time, goodbye.