The escalation between India and Pakistan over the terrorist attack in Pahalgam, Kashmir is revealing important insights into India's evolving defense posture and military capabilities. Arzan Tarapore joins Michael McFaul to discuss what happened between April 22 and May 10, what the clash says about the security landscape of the Indo-Pacific region, and why it matters in global politics.

Arzan Tarapore is a research scholar at the Center in International Security and Cooperation at the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies at Stanford University. His work focuses on Indian military strategy and regional security issues in the Indo-Pacific. Prior to his scholarly career, he served for 13 years in the Australian Defence Department in various analytic, management, and liaison positions, including operational deployments and a diplomatic posting to the Australian Embassy in Washington, D.C.

Watch the video version of their conversation above, or listen to the audio below, on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, and other major podcast platforms. 

TRANSCRIPT:

McFaul: You're listening to World Class from the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies at Stanford University. I'm your host, Michael McFaul, the director of FSI.

Today I'm talking to Arzan Tarapore, a research scholar at the Center on International Security and Cooperation, which is part of the Freeman Spogli Institute here at Stanford. His work focuses on India's military strategy and regional security issues in the Indo-Pacific, which is why he is the perfect person to talk with us today about the escalation earlier this year between India and Pakistan in the Kashmir region. And India's evolving military strategy more generally, as it relates to players like the United States, China, and Russia.

Arzan, welcome to World Class.

Tarapore: Thanks very much, Mike. It's good to be on.

McFaul: So, I want to start with a chat group I was on several weeks ago with a bunch of former U.S. government officials. And at one point, somebody interjected, “We are about to see the biggest military war in the world since Russia invaded Ukraine.”

And I have to tell you, I was taken aback. I don't follow issues between Pakistan and India as closely as I should, and I look forward to learning more about that now that my book is done and I have more time.

But that really startled me. Take us back to that moment. Help us understand what occurred that made people so alarmist, and then why that didn't turn out to be the case.

Tarapore: Yeah, okay, that's a very big question. Let me see if I can hit all the high spots. Look, the trigger for that comment, probably, was a terrorist attack that happened in India at a place called Pahalgam on the 22nd of April. And it was an attack that was conducted, as far as we can judge, by a Pakistan-based terrorist group that attacked innocent civilians.

And in particular, it was designed, it seems, to be as inflammatory, as provocative as possible, right? Because the terrorists were at a tourist spot, and they rounded up people and got those people to identify themselves — whether they were Hindu or Muslim — and they executed the Hindu men.

McFaul: Wow. Oh my God.

Tarapore: So it was designed to be as communal and as provocative as possible. And in that sense, it worked because the Indian government almost immediately was assumed to be poised to retaliate.

And this is interesting. This is notable, because about as recently as a decade ago, it was always an open question whether India would retaliate militarily against these types of terrorist attacks. And the situation has changed so much in the past decade that this time around it was almost assumed from the get-go that India would retaliate. And indeed they did retaliate.

McFaul: And they did.

Tarapore: And they did. And probably the reason that that member of your group chat said what they said is because India and Pakistan have, for decades, been poised with their militaries pointed at each other. These are very large militaries, very capable militaries. And nuclear armed militaries.

McFaul: Yes. Let's not leave out that small fact.

Tarapore: Exactly, right? Which is always overriding concern in Washington. So, it was President Clinton who, back in the 90s, called South Asia the most dangerous place in the world. He identified India Pakistan as the sort of scenario that if any scenario in the world was going to lead to a nuclear exchange, since the 90s there's been a strong case to be made that it would be India Pakistan. And that's always colored American thinking whenever there's a crisis between India and Pakistan and this time around was no different.

McFaul: And tell us how it played out, and how it ended.

Tarapore: So, the inevitable—that is, an Indian military attack—happened on the night of 6-7 May. So, in the very early hours of the 7th of May, local time. At about 1 a.m., India launched standoff attacks, meaning attacks launched by aircraft that did not cross into Pakistani airspace.

So the Indian aircraft stayed on the Indian side of the border and launched long-range munitions plus probably some loitering munitions, so sort of what some people call suicide drones. So, drones that are designed to go to the target and destroy the target and themselves.

S,o India launched these standoff attacks against nine terrorist targets, terrorist sites.

McFaul: And they were terrorist sites, right?

Tarapore: Yes. So there's a line of Pakistani information operations that suggests that civilians were killed. That may or may not be true. But certainly the Indian position is that they were terrorist targets and that the Indian claim is that the strike was designed to minimize civilian casualties as far as possible. Hence they attacked, for example, at 1 a.m., right, when places were probably not occupied.

McFaul: Got it.

Tarapore: So, a bunch of these sites were sort of in the countryside. And we know that because they showed the full motion video of the sites being destroyed by the missiles and they are just for some of them were just a building in the middle of the countryside or a couple of others that were terrorist headquarter complexes in the middle of cities and these are big sort of campuses that include living quarters and operation centers and mosques all on the same campus. And a couple of those sites were struck as well.

But again, at 1am and in a very targeted fashion to minimize civilian casualties. And by and large, they did a pretty good job of minimizing civilian casualties.

McFaul: So they could have done more and they chose this kind of response, right?

Tarapore: Exactly. And not only that, but they also in the subsequent press briefings, they were very clear in saying, “Listen, our quarrel is with the terrorists. We do not intend to start a war with Pakistan. We will respond if Pakistan responds to us. But we very deliberately have not struck Pakistan military targets or targets of the Pakistan state. We've only struck terrorists. And so as far as we are concerned, we have done what we needed to do. Now it's up to Pakistan to stand down and not retaliate.”

Of course, there was no chance of that happening. Pakistan did retaliate. And so then we entered a period of about three or three and a half days of tit for tat attacks between India and Pakistan. Again, all of them largely targeting each other's particular military sites; everything from sort of air defence sites to air bases on each side.

McFaul: On each side, right?

Tarapore: On each side.

McFaul: And did planes cross the line, or was it was the same kind of thing that you just described?

Tarapore: Planes never crossed the line, as far as we know. So, even though there were claims that some aircraft were shot down on the Indian side, and the Indian military leadership has subsequently conceded that, admitted that.

McFaul: So there were? That has been confirmed? I didn’t know that.

Tarapore: They have confirmed that they suffered some losses. They have not confirmed how many or what type. But it seems to be somewhere in the order of two to five Indian aircraft were shot down.

A bunch of Pakistani air bases were struck by Indian Air Force strikes. And this time around, unlike in the last crisis in 2019, the Indians were very assiduous in releasing battle damage assessment—photography and video—to prove they did actually hit these targets.

And through this whole process of about three and half days of tit for tat strikes, where the Indians scored a few big strikes against the Pakistan military and the Pakistan military did not really score any big hits against the Indian military. There were a few rounds that went astray and did sort of hit civilian targets, but by all accounts unintentionally. Through this all, the two militaries tried to keep things relatively proportionate. Neither one took big steps. They did not cross big thresholds to escalate.

But then on the last day, there were some concerns that Pakistan was in fact preparing for a bigger escalation. That's when the U.S., which had hitherto sort of tried to stay hands off, that's when the U.S. started making some phone calls to both capitals.

And then as probably prompted by that, prodded by U.S. pressure, Pakistan made a phone call to India—the Director General of Military Operations made a phone call to his opposite number in India—suggesting a ceasefire, which India agreed to. And that was the end.

So it was about a three and a half day stoush, little conflict, mostly run by missiles and loitering munitions. So no one crossed into the other country’s territory. It was a very sort of modern conflict in that sense.

McFaul: So, I want to get back to the Americans in a minute, but before that: what did you learn about Pakistani military capabilities and Indian military capabilities as a result of this?

Tarapore: So it was pretty interesting. It was very interesting, actually. Because for decades, basically throughout the 21st century, we have been worried about the prospect of a conventional war between India and Pakistan as a result of a terrorist attack.

And the mental model that we've always had is a large, combined arms, ground-centric invasion by India against Pakistan, right? Basically a war.

And for years, India has been trying to find options short of that in a way that would not prompt a Pakistan nuclear escalation. And it seems, after a couple of crises, that India has found a way to hit back at Pakistan militarily using these standoff capabilities that are relatively new in the Indian arsenal.

So, India has recently acquired a lot of these capabilities that have given it the strategic option to hit Pakistan without starting a war, So, when you ask, what did we learn about their capabilities, we learned that India has the capability to conduct these standoff attacks. And interestingly, from my point of view, the real star for the Indian military was air defense.

Whereas India managed to score a few good hits against the Pakistan Air Force and the terrorist infrastructure on day one, the really interesting thing was that despite Pakistan launching a bunch of mostly drone attacks against India, they did not score any significant hits. And this was a result of a layered air defense system that India has built up, which I was surprised by. The effectiveness was surprising.

McFaul: And where do their missile defenses come from? Are they Russian? Are they mixed?

Tarapore: I'm glad you asked Mike. They come from all over. A lot of it is indigenous.

McFaul: Indigenous! Okay, I didn't know that.

Tarapore: Some of it is indigenous, the shorter range. There's a surface-to-air missile called Akash, which is an indigenous system. There are some old legacy guns that the army operates that prove very effective.

But the really interesting thing that think that you would find in particular interesting is that the most sophisticated—which is to say, the most recently acquired and longest range system that provides the biggest bubble—was the S-400, which India acquired from Russia, much to the chagrin of the United States.

McFaul: Yes, the United States. It was a huge fight, right?

Tarapore: Yup! The U.S. threatened CAATSA sanctions against India for it.

McFaul: Tell everybody what CAATSA sanctions are. It’s a specific category of sanctions passed in the Trump administration, wasn’t it?

Tarapore: Yep, which is designed to deter countries from acquiring Russian equipment. So, the Indian deal to acquire S-400s was happening contemporaneously and the U.S. was always on the horns of a dilemma whether they should enforce CAATSA sanctions against India or issue a waiver.

As far as I recall, the U.S. decided to not make a decision. They never imposed the CAATSA sanctions, but nor did they issue an indefinite waiver. So it was always something that years ago was sort of hanging over the head of the relationship that the U.S. did not go through with sanctioning India. And the Indians now, after Op Sindoor, after this clash, now feel vindicated that in fact they acquired S-400s and you know what? They they proved to be extremely effective in protecting India.

McFaul: Super interesting. So they were right. I remember when we were trying to prevent the Russians from selling the S-400s to the Iranians during our negotiations over the Iran nuclear deal long ago. On paper, this was a significant capability. It sounds like in reality it is as well.

Tarapore: It absolutely is.

McFaul: Let's talk about the geopolitics. Let's just talk about the reaction. Walk us through U.S., China, Russia. How did they react to this conflict? And what are your takeaways in terms of the geopolitics of a very complicated set of bilateral relationships, especially with India, it seems to me, but with Pakistan as well.

How did the great powers react? And what do we learn about great power competition from this conflict?

Tarapore: So as you would know, as listeners would know, China is Pakistan's primary patron, great power patron. It provides Pakistan the bulk of its military capability. And in fact, this India-Pakistan clash was seen by some in some quarters as a test of Chinese military capability . . .

McFaul: Yes.

Tarapore: . . .  because the Pakistanis operate so much Chinese equipment.

Well, I think it's not a very good test of Chinese capability for many reasons. One, because the equipment itself that Pakistan operates is lower grade export variants of what China’s is. It's not integrated into a system in Pakistan in the same way as it is in China. And it's not used with the same what we would call “multi-domain doctrine” as the Chinese use.

So it's not a very good test of the Chinese equipment.

McFaul: Okay, well that's an important point, a very important point. They don't have the best stuff.

Tarapore: Yeah, that's right. They don't have the best stuff and they don't use it “properly,” quote unquote, in the same way that the Chinese do.

So, from the Indian point of view, this is a country, India, that has always been concerned about what they call the collusive two front threat: Pakistan and China ganging up on India, where if there was a crisis or a conflict with one, then India was always concerned that the other rival would opportunistically take advantage of it and open a second front.

I've always been skeptical of that. And I think what this conflict showed was what India considers to be no longer a two front dilemma, but one reinforced front. Because in this view, Pakistan was essentially, if not an appendage of China, it was nevertheless underwritten by China.

It may, according to some accounts, have benefited from real-time Chinese support during the conflict. For example, intelligence support, electronic warfare support by China, perhaps even Chinese personnel helping to advise Pakistan on how to use its weapons and how to plan and operate them. We don't know if that's true, but that's a possibility.

McFaul: Speculation, interesting That's a big step.

Tarapore: It is a big step. And so if you ask about China's approach to this, then clearly China is not neutral in this, right? China is underwriting Pakistan in this. But openly, diplomatically, it's not going to take a position and it's not going to take advantage of this sort of conflict to cause trouble on the India-China border. It's not that sort of exploitation.

Similarly, as with the U..S, there were Russian comments throughout this conflict that either proponents of an India-Russia relationship or critics of an India-Russia relationship could use instrumentally.

Some people, sometimes some Russian officials said something about India and Pakistan sort of creating this sense of equivalence that in fact they're not on our side, that they're being ambivalent. Others would say that no, in fact, Russia was more solidly behind us than any other country was.

And the same occurred with the U.S. There were U.S. officials who commented that either India is a victim of terrorism and that Pakistan is a perpetrator of terrorism, which pleased Indians, or that this conflict is none of our business, that it's something for India to handle, which they could live with.

Or, when President Trump started talking about India and Pakistan having been at war for a thousand years or whatever he said . . .

McFaul: Thousand years, he said. Yes.

Tarapore: . . . Indians rolled their eyes and were frustrated because for decades Indian officials have been trying to get Americans to internalize this idea that India is an important partner of the U.S. and that this hyphenation between India and Pakistan is an outdated idea that no longer applies.

And now here we have a President of the United States, again talking about India and Pakistan in the same breath, talking about having mediated between them, talking about having coerced both sides using the cudgel of trade deals, and promising to get the two sides to sit down and talk about Kashmir.

All of these things to anyone who doesn't follow South Asia, prima facie sound reasonable. To anyone who follows South Asia, these are all red lines and big alarm bells, especially in India, because they go against decades of American policy.

And so it was a sense of, in the extreme, a sense of betrayal. Or at a minimum, was a sense of rolling your eyes at a president who has not been well briefed.

McFaul: Who doesn't know the details. So what do you think? Was it was he just winging it, or was this really a policy change that was scripted?

Tarapore: No. So the interesting thing is, I mean, if you look at what the United States, quote unquote, deep state did—that is, the State Department, the U.S. State Department and the Secretary of State Marco Rubio—their comments were very consistent with U.S. policy over the last couple of decades. The concern is strategic stability, that these are two nuclear armed countries, we don't want conflict escalating carelessly, and that India is in fact a victim of terrorism and that, you know, there's no role for the United States to mediate a Kashmir issue.

There was none of that sort of sense, right? The State Department and the Secretary of State played a very straight bat and were consistent. It was President Trump who spoke extemporaneously about a conflict he seems to be not well-versed in, which has raised heckles.

But also, on the one hand, we can say that this is just a president speaking extemporaneously. On the other hand, he is the commander in chief of the United States.

McFaul: Exactly, yeah, right, exactly.

Tarapore: So you can't quite ignore what he says.

McFaul: Right. And just two seconds on the Russians. You gave us a little bit of it, but did they seem pleased? Obviously, they seem pleased with how their S-400s performed. Is this another – because obviously Modi has a pretty special relationship with Putin, I would say, compared to other leaders of democracies. Is this seen as a sign of closer relations between India and Russia, or is that too far?

Tarapore: I think that's going too far. I think the broader trend of India trying to wean itself off Russia remains, but it may have been set back a little bit by this. And what I mean by that is, for example, even if you take just the S-400s themselves, India bought five regiments of them and only has taken delivery of three of them.

COVID interrupted the deal, right? COVID interrupted the deliveries and then the Ukraine war interrupted the deliveries.

McFaul: Okay, I didn't know that.

Tarapore: And so the Indians are still waiting to take delivery of two regiments. And now, again, as we've said, this conflict seems to have vindicated the Indian decision to acquire S-400s. And that in fact, you know, there may be niche military capabilities that the Russians can offer India that proved to be operationally useful. So this relationship is far from a relic, right? This relationship is very much a live relationship that yields dividends for India.

McFaul: Great point. And tragically, the Russians have learned a lot about how to use drones in Ukraine. I just talking to some officials who work on European security, and they are way far ahead of where we expected them to be in terms of that. That could be an exportable technology in the future for other countries, for sure.

Tarapore: Absolutely.

McFaul: So to close out: give us your sense of what's next. What do you think happens here? Is this just a one-off or are you worried about other escalatory events?

Tarapore: An India-Pakistan crisis is never a one-off.

McFaul: That's a good point! I shouldn't laugh, but it's been there for a long long time.

Tarapore: It's been there for a long, long time. So, the sub-conventional campaign of terrorism based in Pakistan against India will continue. And as I said at the outset, what used to be hard to think of and then became a question of uncertainty has now become a certainty that India will retaliate.

Modi, after this conflict, gave a speech where he basically pledged that any future attack against India will be met with retaliation, Indian military retaliation. So it is now a matter of policy that India will retaliate against Pakistan.

McFaul: Before go on: we have not—the United States and obviously not China—we do not have enough influence vis-a-vis Pakistan to shut those terrorist camps down, right?

Tarapore: No way. This is foundational to the Pakistan army, foundational to the most powerful political actors in Pakistan.

McFaul: Got it.

Tarapore: And I think what this latest conflict shows is that India also recognizes that it is futile to try and dissuade the Pakistani military-jihadi complex from attacking India.

That used to be what they tried to do: to dissuade them, to deter them. What we've seen in 2025 is India recognizing it cannot dissuade Pakistan. It must instead impose costs upon these terrorists, and now the Pakistan army as well, so that it just makes it harder for them to attack India, so that attacks become less frequent and less provocative.

That seems to be where India is leaning. It is expecting future attacks from Pakistan And it's correct. And it will retaliate next time. That is a highly probable eventuality.

The question for me is, okay, so we now expect this sort of conflict to recur. The question is, what does it mean for India's overall defense posture, including what lessons does India learn for deterring conflict with China on the land border. And what does it mean for India's ability to project power into the Indian Ocean region? This is a country that faces challenges, security challenges on all sides.

And every time one of these fronts becomes active and it seizes the attention of decision makers in Delhi, the concern is that India will react to it and it will over learn the lessons of the last crisis and it will come at the expense of other priorities elsewhere.

So that'll be the thing that I watch. To what extent does this cast a shadow over Indian security planning for the months and years ahead?

McFaul: Wow, it sounds super scary. It sounds like Clinton was right, what he said back then. And when you add, as you did, we're talking about two nuclear powers. Obviously, China is a nuclear power.

Tarapore: Three!

McFaul: Three. This is frightening part of the world. That's why we're grateful, Arzan, to have you on World Class! We're grateful to have you at FSI and at Stanford, because we’ve got to be following this issue. So thanks for joining World Class today.

Tarapore: Absolutely my pleasure. Thanks Mike, for bringing some attention to this issue.

McFaul: You've been listening to World Class from the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies at Stanford University. If you like what you're hearing, please leave us a review and be sure to subscribe on Apple, Spotify, or wherever you get your podcasts to stay up to date on what's happening in the world, and why.

Evolving negotiations over the war in Ukraine; uncertainty about the unity of NATO; increased transatlantic mistrust. There is a seeming divide growing between the United States and Europe, and that could have major impacts on future security on both sides of the Atlantic.

James Goldgeier, a scholar of European security, NATO, Russia, and Ukraine and a research affiliate at the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies, joins the institute's director, Michael McFaul, on the World Class podcast to discuss what's happening, and why. 

Watch the video version of their conversation above, or listen to the audio below, on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or other major podcast platforms. 

TRANSCRIPT:

McFaul: You're listening to World Class from the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies at Stanford University. I'm your host, Michael McFaul, the director of FSI. Today I'm joined by Jim Goldgeier, research affiliate both at the Center on Democracy, Development and Rule of Law and the Center on International Security and Cooperation here at FSI.

Jim is also a professor at American University, but most importantly, he's a co-author with Michael McFaul on many things, including a book about U.S. policy towards Russia after the Cold War. He also has written extensively on European security, NATO, Russia, and Ukraine. And given what's going on in the news, Jim, I didn't think there could be a better person to chat about all those things. From when we planned this a couple of weeks ago till today, there's actually been a lot of news. 

So why don't we just start with the latest in terms of the negotiations. And then I want to pull back to this broader picture. Really, by the end of our conversation today, I want to know, is there a future for transatlantic security partnerships and the future of NATO? But let's go micro first and then we'll end with that macro. So tell us what's going on as to the best of you can figure it out in terms of these alleged peace negotiations to try to end the war in Ukraine. Tell us what you think is going on and how well you think it's going.

Goldgeier: Well, first of all, thanks for having me on. It's great to be with you and lots of tough issues to talk about, including this one. And I think it's just worth people remembering that, you know, a real negotiation process would be one in which, especially if the United States was really playing a central role in negotiations, in which the US negotiator was going back and forth between the Russian president and the Ukrainian president and trying to figure out how to really resolve some super tough issues, particularly regarding how Russian occupied territory is going to be treated. Even if Ukraine has to accept that for now it can't control that territory, it shouldn't be asked to have to recognize that territory as Russian. And Russia wants, of course, that that territory be recognized as Russian. So a negotiator would be going back and forth. That's not happening.

There isn't a real negotiation. Also in a real negotiation, both sides would be asked to make concessions. Vladimir Putin isn't being asked to make concessions. And he still has the same maximalist goals he had at the beginning of this war. He wants a Ukraine that's basically a subsidiary to Russia. Even if he doesn't conquer the whole thing, he doesn't want it to be independent and sovereign. He doesn't want it to be Western oriented. He wants it under his thumb.

McFaul: Right.

Goldgeier: He wants a new government, a government that he would control. And it would really be incumbent on the United States to explain to him why that's not going to happen. But so far, he hasn't been asked to make concessions, and he also wants Ukraine not to have any military capability to defend itself in the future.

McFaul: So lots of things I want to pull on there if we have time. What do you think the Trump strategy is? Why is he not being asked to make any concessions?

Goldgeier: I think the basic problem comes down to the fact that it just appears that Donald Trump views Ukraine as a nuisance. And he views President Zelensky as a real nuisance. We saw that in the Oval Office meeting. Zelensky's like, you know, we need some security guarantees, otherwise how can we agree to anything? And you know, to Trump, this is all just a nuisance. He wants it to go away. He wants to be able to have a quick victory. I achieved a ceasefire.

Goldgeier: I said I would, I did, and then he can move on to something else. He doesn't care whether Ukraine has peace or not. He doesn't care whether Ukraine's government survives or not. And he has this weird affinity for Putin. We've seen it since 2017 and before. He admires the guy. He wants to hang out with the guy. He wants to do deals with the guy.

McFaul: Right.

Goldgeier: He clearly doesn't want to press him. And so that's not a good recipe for a solution to what is a very serious situation that Russia created.

McFaul: That doesn't sound like a good strategy to me either, I agree. But help Americans understand why it matters. Maybe there are other people that think, well, why do we care about Ukraine? Maybe it is a nuisance, right? What are the bigger interests for America at stake in this negotiation?

Goldgeier: Well, I think we do have to go back to what this country has decided to believe in and support since the end of the Second World War. I mean, we fought a second world war. We fought a war against countries that had used their militaries to go into neighboring countries, take territory that wasn't theirs, and created conflict. That was a big war, a world war.

McFaul: Yeah.

Goldgeier: And we decided at the end of that that we were going to try to create a system internationally that would either prevent those things from happening or impose real costs on countries that try to break that order. And we did that, for example, in 1991 when we went to war against Iraq, which had invaded Kuwait in 1990, and George H.W. Bush put together an international coalition to push the Iraqis out of Kuwait.

And that was something we stood for. We saw it as in our security. And I would argue it is in our security to live in that kind of world. Who wants to live in a world where countries can just go in and take territory from their neighbors, because you don't know whether they're going to keep going. And we have an interest in security and stability in Europe. So when Putin invaded, we supported the government of Ukraine, along with our European allies and other allies as well.

South Korea, for example, which has played a big role in supporting the Ukrainians. And I would say, you know, this is one of the things that's, I would use the word problematic, but it's so far beyond that, about the Trump administration is his own discussion about taking the territory of Greenland, which he said in front of a joint session of Congress, we're gonna take one way or the other. Well, you know.

That's the same thing. You're threatening to use military force to take something that doesn't belong to you. In that case, it belongs to an ally, I mean, a NATO ally. So it's even worse. So, you know, is that the world Americans want to live in? Where powers use military force that way and create the kind of conflicts that led us into a world war previously that was pretty significant for the United States. I don't think Americans want to go through that again.

McFaul: Great explanation. We should study that history so we don't have to repeat it, right? Tell us a little bit about how this is playing in European capitals, these negotiations, right? It was striking to me, for instance, when there was the first meeting with the Russians, Lavrov and Ushakov in Saudi Arabia, and on our side of the table, Secretary Rubio was there, National Security Waltz was there.

But at the other end of the table, there were no Ukrainians, of course. To your point, there's no shuttle diplomacy nor is there direct negotiations. But there were two Saudi officials sitting there. There weren't two Europeans sitting there. How is this playing out as the Europeans observe what is going on, but also are now starting to take actions on their own towards what they might do separately and apart from us vis-à-vis Ukraine?

Goldgeier: It's tough for the Europeans because they are dependent on the United States for their security. They're going to be trying to get out of that situation as best they can because they now, and we can get into that, see that the United States is now an unreliable ally for them. So that puts them in a very different situation than they've been in since the end of the Second World War.

McFaul: Right.

Goldgeier: They don't really have a choice but to stay engaged and to support Ukraine because Putin's Russia remains a threat to them. As long as Vladimir Putin keeps talking about territory that's not his as being subject to potential Russian aggression, they have to worry about what his ambitions might be. They don't really know. They know he has these grand visions of himself as a world historical figure in Russia like Catherine the Great and Peter the Great. And so he's a threat to them. They would love to be able to do this as they had been doing prior to January 20th. They would love to be supporting Ukraine militarily and trying to help it achieve peace that enables Ukraine to remain a sovereign and independent country.

But if they can't do it with the United States, they're going to do everything they can to do it themselves. And so they're going to stand, they're going to help send Ukraine what they can and potentially put troops in Ukraine, although that's a very complicated issue. But they want Ukraine to know that Europe is there for it. And I think they now recognize that they can't count on the United States on this or really much anything else. And so they have to adjust accordingly.

McFaul: And are you impressed by what they're doing collectively or does it seem kind of slow and difficult because you don't have NATO doing this all together? Is the glass half empty or half full, I guess is what I'm asking.

Goldgeier: I think it's half full because I think we just have to accept that they don't have the same capabilities that the United States does. I mean, it's just a fact. They know it. Now they're very aware of it. For example, intelligence capabilities. I mean, this is something the United States has been able to provide to Ukraine. They just don't have the same intelligence capabilities, and that would take them a long time to develop.

They have some defense production capabilities and they're trying to ramp that up as quickly as possible and they're trying to provide what they can. It's not enough, but I am impressed with the urgency that they do feel and the ways in which they're thinking, okay, we can't count on the US anymore. How are we going to take care of our own security in Europe as Europeans? And in that regard, how can we best support Ukraine so that we can stop Putin there so that he doesn't get tempted to do it elsewhere.

McFaul: Let's open the aperture a little bit wider, just talk more generally about transatlantic relations, not just Ukraine. It seems like there's been some pretty big shocks to this relationship. I'm thinking first and foremost about the speech that Vice President Vance gave at the Munich Security Conference, where he lectured all the Europeans about how badly they're doing with their practice of democracy. There's then been the tariffs, of course, and there's been hints that we might be pulling our troops back. You can update us as to whether that's real or not, but give us your update on transatlantic relations in the first hundred days of the Trump administration.

Goldgeier: So JD Vance, his speech in Europe at the Munich Security Conference, also his efforts on behalf of the far right AFD party in Germany interfering in the German elections to support an extremist party, was definitely a wake up call for the Europeans. I think even more than what we're seeing with respect to Ukraine, this was a sign that the United States is not an ally anymore. Donald Trump treats the European Union as an adversary. He talks about how it was created to screw over the United States. By the way, the United States was strongly supportive of building a more united Europe. That was true for post-war presidents who thought it would be great for Europe to be more united as a partner with the United States.

McFaul: And that turned out to be true, right? I mean, that was a pretty good investment. 

Goldgeier: It was true. It's been true. Great trading partners, great military partners. They're great partners. And now we're telling them, you know what, we don't see you as a partner anymore.

McFaul: Right.

Goldgeier: First Trump term, the Europeans sort of tried to just tell themselves they would just get through those four years, hoping things didn't go hugely terribly and that they could get through it. And they did.

And I think a lot of them with Trump winning this second time in 2024 thought initially, okay, maybe we could just get through these four years again. And I think now they're recognizing that this is just a different situation, the kinds of people that Trump had around him as advisors, as national security advisors, as secretaries of defense, they don't have that, you know, what were termed adults in the room in the first Trump administration. He's unleashed. He clearly hates Europe. I mean, I just think this is just a longstanding belief he has that they've taken advantage of the US. He's treating them as an adversary. 

The tariff situation is, I think, the most serious because it's basically telling the Europeans, we're going to make it harder for you to trade with the US. And what that's going to do is cause the Europeans, as they're currently doing, to look elsewhere. I mean, this is the general problem for US foreign policy right now is, you know, nobody likes a bully. He is a bully. But other countries have to pursue their interests. So if they can't do that in concert with the United States, they're going to figure out other ways to do it. 

The trade agreement that was the Trans-Pacific Partnership that Trump walked away from in his first term, well, the other countries in that TPP reformed it as a different entity. And Europe now is interested in figuring out how to get in. Europe's interested in figuring out with Australia how to form a free trade agreement.

Goldgeier: They're actively looking elsewhere… 

McFaul: Without us involved, right? 

Goldgeier: …without us, because they can't count on us and they don't know. You know, he put 25 % tariffs on steel and aluminum. He's got 10 % tariffs worldwide. There's a possibility he's going to go up to 20% with Europe. They don't know. He's unreliable, he's unpredictable, and they have got to start making other calculations. And so they're going to do that.

McFaul: That's sobering. And on the military side too, tell us a little bit about what you see happening within NATO and other conversations of European security architecture outside of or next to NATO.

Goldgeier: I think the two really big issues for us to watch and think about, one is Europe's own defense production. In the world we've lived in, Europe could buy military equipment from the United States. You want F-16s, you want F-35s, you can buy from the US. Europeans now are thinking, all right, we don't want to do that anymore. American defense companies are going to lose through this because the Europeans don't want to put themselves into that dependence situation anymore. So they are developing their own systems. And while that will take time, these are rich economies. They've got technological capabilities. A lot of it's going to be whether or not countries can work together in terms of developing new fighter aircraft, which they've already started doing and they're starting to...

McFaul: The Europeans have?

Goldgeier: The Europeans are doing this. They're finding markets in the Middle East, for example. I think this is going to be bad for the United States. And I would think Lockheed Martin and Boeing and others are going to the Trump administration and saying, this isn't going to be good for us. So that's one thing to watch, just that defense production. And then the other, as you were just mentioning, is institutionally, how does Europe do this?

McFaul: Yeah.

Goldgeier: You know, NATO has existed all this time since 1949 with the United States as its undisputed leader. The United States has been the major power in Europe. There's always been an American who's been the supreme allied commander in Europe, the SACUR. This is the military official who oversees the military operations for NATO and that person has always been an American. With the Trump administration, there's been grumblings about maybe not wanting to do that anymore. 

We don't know whether Trump really would fully withdraw from NATO or whether the United States would just have less of a presence and I think the real question and I don't know the answer to it is, can NATO function without that US leadership? Can the other countries of NATO, there are 32 countries in NATO, can they work together within that organization that's been set up without the United States having much of a presence? I mean, we haven't been in that situation before, so we just don't know.

I mean, the European Union isn't really set up to do what NATO does. So I think it's still a hugely open question. And I believe we will see lots of sessions at think tanks in America and in Europe on the future of European security and re-imagining European security and trying to understand this. It's just uncharted waters.

McFaul: Right. Say a little bit, again, in the same question I had about Ukraine. So why should Americans care, right? Europeans haven't been spending much on defense, as you alluded to. I think we agree they probably should have been doing more. And maybe had we started that conversation earlier, we wouldn't be here. I'm not convinced of that, but some people make that argument. 

There's a more extreme argument that you hear from Trump administration officials and Trump himself is like, let the Europeans take care of Europe. We got to take care of Asia. Putin, that's their problem. What's the downside of the breakdown or weakening of NATO from America's national interests?

Goldgeier: I'd say two things to that. One is just that… Of course, Europeans have been spending more and of course they should have been spending even more. And I do think Joe Biden was wrong. The first thing he said when he came back in was, to the Europeans, America is back. Which basically led many of them to think, okay, phew, we don't actually have to do a lot more. When we should have taken those four years to really put this on a better path because I think the United States should have less of a presence in Europe. 

They are rich countries. We don't have to do everything for them as we have in the past. They know, they should know that by now, but we should do it in partnership with them. We could still be partners with them, even if we're doing less.

McFaul: And why is that important from your perspective in terms of America's national interests? That partnership versus just go at it alone. We'll be in charge of North America. They'll be in charge of Europe. What's wrong with that kind of thinking?

Goldgeier: You never know when you're going to need your friends. So I think it's good to have friends. I mean, one of things that's been an advantage for the United States in the world compared to countries like Russia and China is we have lots of friends. We have allies. They're there for us. When we asked them to join us in Afghanistan, they were there. They came. A lot of them lost lives, had troops that were killed.

And the other thing is, actions in one part of the world have implications in others. There's a reason in the last three summits that the countries, the so-called Indo-Pacific Four, Japan, South Korea, Australia, and New Zealand, the heads of state and government from those four have come to the NATO summits the last three years and presumably are coming to the one this summer. They see these linkages. They see the importance of Ukraine. South Korea has been providing artillery to Ukraine because they don't want Putin to succeed in Ukraine because they don't want to see the signal that will send to Xi Jinping regarding Taiwan and regarding potential Chinese aggression more broadly in the Western Pacific. 

So, countries are definitely watching. And I just think from a U.S. perspective — and I do think most Americans understand this — it is good to have friends. We have good, strong friends who've been with us and we can explain why they're gonna need to do more and I think the Europeans have gotten the message and are gonna try to do more, but it should be with us and not against us. Why do we need them as an adversary? We already have other adversaries. 

McFaul: Yeah. We have serious adversaries. 

Goldgeier: We don't need to make our best friends adversaries.

McFaul: And wasn't it Churchill who said, or I'm paraphrasing the word, the only thing worse than going to war is going to war alone? I think he's said something along those lines. 

Goldgeier: Right. Yeah.

McFaul: So Jim, last question. Tell us about the future. Speculate a little bit about, is this the end or, and just maybe focus on NATO, because we don't have time to talk about all the institutions, or if they survive and muddle along for the next four years, is there a possibility of renewal of these transatlantic security relationships, a renewal of the NATO alliance?

Goldgeier: Well, I hope we could renew a transatlantic partnership between the United States and Europe. The problem is the Europeans now know that the United States is not reliable. We had Trump one, we had Joe Biden, we had Trump two. They can't keep bouncing back and forth. If we have another president like Joe Biden after Donald Trump, who wants to rebuild things with Europe, they still have to be thinking, okay, we don't know what's gonna happen four years later. Is J.D. Vance going to come and start yelling at us, talking about how pathetic we are as he did in the signal chat? I mean, in my view, NATO as a collective defense organization that at its core has the United States there to help defend the member states. I don't believe the Europeans can count on the United States in the future to defend them.

And I think that given that that is the core of NATO, I think NATO as we've known it is finished. What NATO can be, the different thing it can be, more European organization, less US, we don't know how that's gonna play out. But as an organization where the United States was fundamentally there and saying, we are with you in collective defense, I think they know Donald Trump's not going to defend any country in Europe. And they don't know whether a future president would or wouldn't. And so I think they have to adjust accordingly.

McFaul: Well, we can't end on that sobering note. Give us one piece of hope for the future of transatlantic relations, US-European relations, long term, even if you have to go way into the future.

Goldgeier: Well, I think long term Americans and Europeans will still want to, I mean, as peoples, I think the peoples will still want to be partners with each other. So it's just getting the governments back to reflect what the populations would like to see.

McFaul: Okay, we can’t end on that horrible end note that the feature is over. I think the thing you had is really true. I think that our societies are connected and we have shared values. We're part of a democratic world and you and I travel to Europe all the time and they want that connection. I think that's a thing that the Trump world sometimes wants us to convince the world that nobody wants America. That's definitely not my feeling when I travel. And in Asia too, by the way. I would say they want an American presence. So that gives us something to chew on and work on in the future. 

Jim, thanks for being on World Class. Great to have you. 

Goldgeier: Thanks for having me.

McFaul: You've been listening to World Class from the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies at Stanford University. If you like what you're hearing, please leave us a review and be sure to subscribe on Apple, Spotify, or wherever you get your podcasts to stay up to date on what's happening in the world, and why.

Three years after Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine and the joint declaration of a "friendship without limits" by Vladimir Putin and Xi Jinping, the two leaders reaffirmed their partnership during a phone call, pledging continued coordination on foreign policy, security, and trade. Meanwhile, President Donald Trump’s controversial Oval Office meeting with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky and his administration's vitriolic foreign policy rhetoric have raised concerns that Washington may no longer be the reliable partner it once was. Moreover, amid ongoing U.S.-imposed tariffs, India is bracing for the fallout from Trump’s trade war, despite Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s February visit to the White House, which did not yield the concessions and Trump support New Delhi had hoped for.

The 2025 Oksenberg Symposium, titled China’s Strategic Relationships, brought together experts to discuss these evolving strategic relationships between China, the United States, Russia, and India, and to consider their perspectives and strategic adjustments in response to shifting internal and external political, economic, and social dynamics. The discussion, moderated by APARC’s China Program Director Jean Oi, featured panelists Da Wei of Tsinghua University, Alex Gabuev of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, Sumit Ganguly of the Huntington Program on Strengthening U.S.-India Relations at the Hoover Institution, and FSI Director Michael McFaul.

This convening followed Chatham House rules to encourage candor, so the following summary does not attribute comments to individual panelists.

A Partnership Without Limits

The panelists first focused on the increasingly complex relationships between Russia, China, and the United States. On the one hand, a growing China-Russia alignment across military, economic, and political domains has been well documented. On the other hand, Russia’s increasing dependence on China — especially after the war in Ukraine — has raised questions about the asymmetry of their partnership.

Even so, the relationship between the two nations remains strong, partly due to their shared distrust of the West. Although China has been cautious about fully endorsing Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, it has refrained from condemning the war, understanding the risks of destabilizing Russia or fostering a Western-aligned regime.

The View from New Delhi

India’s relationships with the United States and China are marked by a delicate balancing act. The U.S.-India partnership has strengthened over the years, driven by shared concerns about China’s growing assertiveness. Still, despite bipartisan support for this relationship, India’s historical experiences, particularly during the Cold War, have left a lingering distrust toward U.S. intentions. That wariness is now increasing under the uncertainties of the Trump administration.

India's relationship with China is complicated by military and economic disparities and by China’s strategic partnerships in South Asia, particularly with Pakistan. India's policy remains cautious, aiming to maintain a non-aligned stance while strengthening defense and trade ties with the United States and managing tensions with China, especially over border disputes.

Beijing’s Patience

U.S.-China relations took center stage at this year’s symposium. China’s rise as a global power has posed a complex challenge for U.S. foreign policy. Under the first Trump administration, China was portrayed as a revisionist power with expansionist ambitions. Trump’s rhetoric framed China as a strategic adversary, drawing comparisons to the Soviet Union under Stalin. This characterization contributed to the perception of a new Cold War and an accelerated decoupling of the two economies. In the second administration, tariffs and a looming trade war define the relationship.

From China’s perspective, the past decade has seen an overemphasis on its relationship with the United States., which at times strained its ties with Russia and India. China’s growing partnership with Russia, motivated by shared concerns over Western policies, has been key in countering perceived threats, particularly NATO’s expansion. However, China has remained cautious about fully endorsing Russia’s actions, such as the invasion of Ukraine, while acknowledging the risks of a collapsing Russian regime.

China’s relations with India have been challenged by border issues, as well as India’s shift away from non-alignment and its growing ties with the United States. These changes have complicated China’s strategic calculations in South Asia, though recent stabilization in Sino-Indian relations shows potential for improvement.

Challenges for Global Stability

The panelists noted that the increasing competition between the four countries is reshaping the international order, creating a more multipolar world where countries are single-handedly pursuing their national interests. This fragmentation of global power poses challenges for international cooperation but also provides China with opportunities to pursue more flexible diplomatic strategies, potentially easing tensions with Russia and India.

The U.S. response to these changes, particularly under Trump, was heavily scrutinized. In both Trump's first and second terms, the administration’s foreign policy marked a radical departure from past practices, blending radical isolationism, unilateralism, and realism. Panelists noted that the erosion of democratic ideals in U.S. foreign policy contrasts with its role in the Cold War era as a champion of democracy and human rights, particularly in opposition to Soviet authoritarianism. This shift has been especially evident in its approach to Taiwan, where there has been limited emphasis on supporting its democratic values amid growing pressure from China.

This new isolationist stance, driven largely by domestic concerns and a belief that the United States has been exploited in global trade, has led to a strategic pivot away from multilateralism. During Trump’s first term, the administration withdrew from key international agreements such as the Paris Climate Accords, the Iran nuclear deal, and the World Health Organization, favoring "America First" policies over collective global action. The continued shift toward isolationism and unilateralism marks a radical departure from previous administrations' commitment to liberal internationalism.

A Rough Road Ahead

Panelists expressed concern that this dramatic shift could leave Washington isolated, undermining its ability to address global challenges like climate change, international security, and the rise of authoritarian regimes. The erosion of key alliances could also diminish U.S. influence, making it harder to counter the growing power of China and Russia.

One panelist observed that while Trump initially framed China as a strategic adversary, his second term saw more conciliatory rhetoric, though his policies — especially the trade war — could ultimately harm U.S. interests. This approach could erode U.S. global influence by weakening international alliances and multilateral institutions that have long underpinned U.S. power. The panelists agreed that Trump’s foreign policy would fundamentally reshape U.S. relationships with key global players.

The symposium underscored the complexity of balancing strategic interests in a rapidly changing world, where traditional alliances are being tested and new dynamics continually emerge. The challenge for China, the United States., Russia, and India is to navigate these relationships in ways that secure their national interests while contributing to broader global stability.

TRANSCRIPT:

McFaul: You’re listening to World Class from the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies at Stanford University. We bring you in-depth expertise on international affairs from Stanford's campus straight to you. I'm your host, Michael McFaul, the director of the Freeman Spogli Institute.

Today I'm joined by Oriana Skylar Mastro, a Center Fellow here at FSI, an active member of the United States Air Force Reserve, in fact, a recently promoted officer of the Air Force Reserve, and Deputy Director of Reserve Global China Strategy at the Pentagon. Oriana combines all that expertise in her latest book called Upstart, How China Became a Great Power.

I strongly advise you to buy this book. I don't care if you read it, but I want you to buy it now. In all seriousness, I've read lots of books on China in recent years. This is one of the best. It's one-stop shopping for all you need to know about China. It examines China's climb to great power status through a careful mix of strategic emulation, exploitation, and entrepreneurship on the international stage.

So Oriana, let's get right to it. Let's talk about Upstart. So, Upstart sounds like a Silicon Valley topic. Tell us about the title and tell us why you decided to write this book.

Mastro: Maybe I'll start with why I decided to write the book because it leads into the title. In my academic work and in my policy work, looking at how China was building power, the conventional wisdom was the same. Academics called it something a little fancier, but it was basically mirror imaging. There were a lot of arguments being made.

McFaul: What was the academic words? I'm curious.

Mastro: Oh, Kenneth Waltz, like, “emulation,” diffusion” . . .

McFaul: Got it, got it, got it, okay.

Mastro: Kenneth Waltz argued that success breeds the same type of competitive tendencies. Meaning, if you want to be a great power, if you're China in the 1990s, the way to do it is to act like the United States.

McFaul: Right.

Mastro: You go into the policy world and you see the same exact things. Constant arguments about, Is China going to build overseas bases? Is China going to, you know, have a military the same as ours? that were all basically predicated on the understanding that they wanted to mirror image the United States.

McFaul: Right.

Mastro: As a China specialist, I'm a political scientist, I'm also doing this policy work, but I'm also a China specialist. And I speak Chinese, I spend a lot of time in China. And on the surface, it just didn't really make any sense. Like, why would China do exactly what we do? How would that make them competitive?

McFaul: Right.

Mastro: And it really was an introduction in my life to literature on competition from business and management. Partially being in Silicon Valley inspired that, and partially it's because the rise and fall of great powers is very rare, but the introduction and destruction of companies is actually very frequent.

McFaul: Good point.

Mastro: So I discovered this whole other literature on, how are you competitive in trade and in commerce? And a lot of the arguments about competitive advantage, about being entrepreneurial, innovative, trying to find a different way of doing things, really resonated with how I saw China. And so that's what sparked the original idea. It takes writing a whole book to try to convince people that there is very strong evidence and a logical argument for why we have to look at this situation differently than past historic cases of rising powers.

McFaul: Dig into it a little bit. Give us some examples, especially about military power, which is your strong suit. And then if we have time, we'll talk about economic power. So, give us some examples of the “upstart strategy.”

Mastro: So the upstart strategy has three components: emulation, entrepreneurship, and exploitation. Now the first one is based on the conventional wisdom, right?

China does emulate some aspects of U.S. power, but the book tries to evaluate the conditions under which they do so. When are we most likely to see them take the old strategies, whatever the United States is doing, and apply it in the exact same area? That's my definition of emulation.

McFaul: Okay.

Mastro: And they tend to do this when it's reassuring to the United States. So think of examples like engaging in free trade, joining international institutions. In the military realm, they started to participate in humanitarian aid and disaster relief campaigns. They started to participate in peacekeeping operations, right? They're the number one contributor to PKOs on the Security Council of the United Nations.

And so they did decide to do certain things that they thought, Listen, this will help us build power — mediation diplomacy is a great example, helping to mediate between different countries when they're engaged in conflicts —it helps us build power and it makes us look good and it makes the United States calmer about our rise. Because one of the main reasons why you don't want to act exactly like the United States, is that actually could seem very threatening, right?

If you're trying to build the exact power the United States has, it would be very easy for people in the United States to say, Hey, wait a minute, what's going on here?

McFaul: Right.

Mastro: Right? And the example I give, if China built overseas bases, like our network of 120 bases, we would have seen that a lot differently than what they ended up doing, which was the Belt and Road Initiative, like economic policies. So those are in the emulation category.

For military power, most of them are about reassurance. And then there's a few times where they have such a competitive advantage and this area of power is so important that even though there's a downside in terms of how the U.S. will perceive it, they go for it anyway.

So, an example in the military realm is building what we call C4ISR network, or Command Control Computers Communication Intelligence Surveillance Reconnaissance, which in the most simple way...

McFaul: That's what — ISR, you just spelled out the acronym, right?

Mastro: Yeah, right.

McFaul: Thank you.

Mastro: So in the most simple sense, it's building a space architecture.

McFaul: Right.

Mastro: Having their own navigation systems, having their own precision timing, you know. So, they realized that was really important for the nature of warfare. They needed it. The United States might not like it, but it was just so necessary. And because their engineers are cheaper, because they're actually really advanced in certain missile technologies, they knew they would have an advantage there.

McFaul: Right.

Mastro: So that's emulation. Exploitation is when they use the U.S. strategy, but in an area where the United States isn't competing. There's disincentives to do it directly. And this largely could be because of competitive advantages. So one area is like arms sales, Chinese arms sales around the world. China really only sells arms to countries that cannot buy them from the United States. Either because they're under some sort of human rights arms embargo, they’re poor countries that are not strategically relevant enough to be gifted arms by the United States, so the Bangladeshes of the world get a lot of their military equipment from China.

McFaul: Because they're too poor? I did not know that.

Mastro: Yeah, well, Chinese stuff is a lot cheaper. Now, there's some countries who are poor that still have U.S. stuff, but that's because we've decided, like . . .

McFaul: They're important.

Mastro: They're important for strategic reasons, so we have gifts and loans and things. And then there's certain technologies that because of treaty obligations, the United States wasn't exporting. And this is how China got sort of a stronghold in the market on unmanned systems, for example. On the diplomatic side, elite visits, right? A Chinese leader like Xi Jinping makes as many overseas visits as a U.S. president, but they go to fundamentally different places, right?

McFaul: Right.

Mastro: The U.S. president is mainly going to the UK, Germany, Japan, Australia. Chinese president is visiting Africa.

McFaul: A lot.

Mastro: A lot! So Xi Jinping has visited three times more countries than President Obama did, and President Obama visited more African countries than any previous U.S. president. He also goes to the poorest countries in the world, the 70% of the poorest African countries Xi Jinping has been to, that no U.S. president has ever been to. So it's kind of filling in those gaps.

And then the military realm, for those of you out there with military background, the example that's just perfect for this is something we refer to as A2/AD, or the Anti-Access/Area Denial strategy.

What is that? Very simply put, China deliberately evaluated the types of things the United States needs to project power, and then they developed specific capabilities to target those. So things like the aircraft carrier. So China developed a missile designed to hit and sink an aircraft carrier, right? Or a need to refuel because our bases are far away, you know, or blinding satellites because we need satellites more because we don't have the home-court advantage.

McFaul: Right.

Mastro: So in the military realm, this exploitation strategy is very strong.

And the last category, entrepreneurship, is when they do something completely different. And this, I would say, is the most controversial aspect of the book. I briefed it to a lot of military audiences. Just on Friday I got a note that a four-star wanted my address to send me a letter about the book. And I'm like, Is this– I don't know if it's going to be like I loved your book or it's gonna be like I hate everything you say about the following chapters, because it is a Navy admiral.

So I imagine that they're sensitive about, one, my argument that China is not seeking an overseas basing network despite all the concerns over the past 20 years that they're, you know, they're on the cusp and they're going to build when they're going to build one. One of the reasons China sometimes does things differently from the United States is that they think U.S. strategy is stupid. So, one of the parts of the argument is trying to look at how China might change in the future. And it's important, the rationale.

McFaul: Right.

Mastro: So the book looks at thousands of Chinese . . .

McFaul: Startups are not always startups, right? They get old, and…

Mastro: . . . They evolve. This book relies on thousands of Chinese sources to also evaluate the rationale of why they chose certain strategies. So you could imagine if they chose a strategy because they were weaker or didn't have an advantage, as they get more powerful, they might start emulating.

But this is an aspect when they're like, you know, the war in Afghanistan cost the equivalent of ten Belt and Road Initiatives. Why would we be engaged in sort of foreign military intervention, which tends to go hand in hand with these overseas basing networks, when we can achieve our goals better with economic and political means of power? And that's outside of Asia. China does clearly want to dominate Asia militarily, but they don't need bases for that because they have China.

So, that's one of those arguments that says this is not for lack of ambition. Of course, they will have certain military roles in some places. We'll probably see some more intelligence gathering, you know, sensors being put places, but not offensive combat operations.

And the second very controversial one is about China's nuclear forces. And I had a follow-up piece in The Economist last month by invitation to talk about China's nuclear arsenal. China has, basically, since 1964, every aspect of their approach to nuclear weapons has been different than the United States: posture, doctrine, readiness, delivery systems, number of nuclear weapons, structure of the organization for nuclear weapons.

I mean, besides the initial decision to build them for the sake of nuclear deterrence, nothing has been the same. And part of that, again, is about inefficiency arguments, that China never understood why the United States needs thousands and thousands and thousands of them. And from a competitive point of view, up until the mid 2000s, the United States spent more on its nuclear weapons than China spent on its whole military.

McFaul: Wow.

Mastro: So, one of the reasons they've been able to get this conventional power that people like me write very openly about being concerned of, right? I'm not as concerned about their nuclear weapons. But, I'm absolutely concerned about the tipping of conventional power in China's favor. They've been able to do that by not overspending on nuclear weapons.

McFaul: Right.

Mastro: So there's a lot of debate right now because they're increasing their numbers. They used to just have like 200 and 320. There's a debate right now about whether or not they're going to push up to 1,000 or 1,500 in the next 10 years. But even so, I sort of argue that there's other reasons for that, dealing with advancements in technology and changes in U.S. doctrine that has made them concerned that their deterrent has weakened.

McFaul: Their nuclear deterrent has weakened.

Mastro: Their nuclear deterrent has weakened. And so they still have the same sort of minimal deterrent posture that they've had before. So that hasn't changed. But those are kind of the two most controversial entrepreneurial areas that I discuss in the book on the military side.

McFaul: So, if you had the chance to . . . in fact, I learned this term from military folks when I worked in the government: the BLUF, right? “Bottom line up front”. Really great phrase for all people having to do briefings.

But if you got, say, 45 seconds with President Trump, and he asked you, Lieutenant Colonel - can I call you that now?

Mastro: Yeah, sure. Yeah.

McFaul: Lieutenant Colonel Mastro. He probably wouldn't call you Dr. Mastro, but Lieutenant Colonel Mastro.

Mastro: He'd probably be like, “Hey lady!”  But, yeah. Yeah.

McFaul: Congratulations on being Lieutenant Colonel, by the way. That's a fantastic achievement. But if he just asked, What's the balance of military power between the United States and China today? How could you answer that in 45 to 60 seconds?

Mastro: I would say that we're outgunned in Asia. We have the advantage everywhere else. We're deterring China from a large-scale protracted war.

But the problem is in conflicts close to China, in particular over Taiwan, the United States is outgunned. And we need to put more bombers, submarines, and land-based missiles closer into China, which means we have to be nicer to countries in the region because they have to agree to let us put that stuff there. And we have to reform the defense industrial complex so that we can innovate in those areas, in particular land-based anti-ship ballistic missiles, and be able to produce them in mass in a cost-effective way.

McFaul: Fantastic answer. You know how to do this. I can tell.

Mastro: You usually get more than 45 seconds, but sometimes they get right to it.

McFaul: You hit it, I saw it. Now we have a little more time to dig into that. Because that was a very profound thing you just said. Take us through the pieces that you think are inadequate. And then let's talk about whether the Trump administration will begin to realize those solutions. But first, just articulate the threat posture that — you had three big buckets there — maybe more, but I heard three. Tell us a little more in detail about what is alarming about that balance of power in Asia to you?

Mastro: So, if you can humor me, right before I do that, I just want to really hammer home a point that I said in that answer, that I feel is clouding some of the debates among policy experts and academics, okay?

McFaul: Please.

Mastro: Which is, we are adequately deterring China from engaging in a large-scale war with the United States. So people are always like, China doesn't want to fight a war with the United States and all of our allies and partners. And, the economic costs will be huge. And it's like, yes, but that is not what people in the defense department are worried about. We're not worried that tomorrow China attacks the United States and we're fighting World War III.

McFaul: Right.

Mastro: What we're worried about is that there are certain aspects of contingencies like Taiwan that they can move and gain, in this case, control over Taiwan before the U.S. military can come in mass. Okay? And the coming in mass is just a more diplomatic way of saying, Before we can really start blowing things up. So, let me just start with that because what people say . . .

McFaul: That's very important. I'm glad you did that. Yeah.

Mastro: It's very important because it's not the case that I think, like, China's like, gunning for whatever. Or, I do a lot of media interviews when I'm walking my kids to and from school and once my four year old was like, “Does the United States lose all the wars that we fight?” after they hear me on the phone, I'm like, “Mom did not say that!”

What I'm saying is that there's this particular scenario, and if China initiates conflict, they're going to initiate it when it's most favorable to them.

So the problem is, the United States, we have forces close to Taiwan, right? In Japan, for example. But there are so few of them that if we actually mobilized them after the immediate attack on Taiwan, for example, they're not survivable. Which, again, is the military diplomatic speech of saying everyone is going to die.

And if that were credible, if China thought we were going to do that, then they're in the major war with the United States, right? They’ve just killed thousands of Americans. So, that doesn't become appealing. But the logic is, most U.S. presidents are not going to send in those forces — in this case, it's mainly air power — when they're all going to die. And then we also lose in this sort of exchange about 70% of our most advanced aircraft? Which means then, now we're transitioning to that major war with China. It's like, we're not in a great position.

McFaul: Right.

Mastro: So we have stuff there, but we don't have enough. The question is like, what does enough mean? Very simply, you gotta keep the ships that are carrying the people across the strait from landing on Taiwan. And so, I'm kind of a broken record on this with the military when people are always like, “Well I'm contributing to deterrence. You know, I'm doing this dance, I'm doing this messaging.” Or even certain weapon systems like, well, you know, “I got this tank . . .”

I'm like, if it does not sink ships, I do not care. Right? Because then you're in this realm of cost in which people say they're trying to deny China the objective of Taiwan, but really it's like, well, I could sink a ship or two. And I'm like, well, when you got thousands of them, you know, one or two is not going to do it.

McFaul: Right.

Mastro: So the thing I laid out, basically, are designed to sink a lot of ships quickly. Submarines, the United States has the advantage undersea still. There's an apocryphal story that I talk about in my book that when they devised that strategy to target the key platforms of the United States in the 1990s, the Navy, for some odd reason, was changing their patrolling schedule. So the submarines just weren't patrolling them.

And so when China was like, we got to get the aircraft carriers, we got to get the satellites. We got to hit the fixed bases where the aircraft are taking off. They just didn't think of the submarines, you know? So that's the story. I don't know how true it is, but that's the apocryphal story.

So we have, full reign with submarines. The problem is we just don't have a lot of them.

McFaul: Right.

Mastro: And then the munitions they carry, they can only sink a few ships. And then we have no capability to replenish them in the region. So they have to go all the way back to Guam or Hawaii. So I talk about tenders, submarine tenders, a lot of military personnel being like, I need that stuff and I need it in the Philippines and Japan. Like, that's where we need it.

McFaul: Right.

Mastro: And then the bombers are very controversial because those are an offensive capability that are designed to penetrate into China and bomb mainland targets. Mike, we're just throwing it out there. That's what they do.

McFaul: That’s what they do.

Mastro: That's important because the biggest threat are all the missiles that China is going to be shooting at us.

McFaul: Right.

Mastro: Missile defense on the back end is hard, like missiles coming towards you. It's a lot easier if you just took out the launcher where it's coming from.

And so that's really what that is about. Like, okay, if we're going to stop all these missiles from being shot at Taiwan, from being shot at our carriers, from being shot at our bases that we need to operate, we're going to have to get in there, we're going to have to take care of it, and that's where the strategic bombers come from.

And then the last component was the land-based anti-ship ballistic missiles.

McFaul: Right.

Mastro: Missiles are a lot cheaper than everything else. Because they're land-based, they tend to be more powerful, more precise. There is a deterrent against China, just a little bit more, because they have to attack the country where the missiles are based.

McFaul: Right. Good point.

Mastro: That's an additional thing that imposes caution on them. So yeah, those are the things that I would want more than anything else. And I really believe that if we put those things in place and so China couldn't do this quickly, the two-and-a-half to three weeks that they might consider, that they'll never do it.

And then this problem will just persist forever, but at least we won't fight a hot war over it. So that's why I really focus on some of those issues and focus on just understanding that China sees a lot of things differently than we do. So, that's what really the book… the heart of the book is about convincing people to keep an open mind about how they're understanding and interpreting Chinese actions so that we can be more entrepreneurial ourselves about how to deal with great power competition.

McFaul: That's a great point. Your recommendations are crystal clear. Who is listening in the Trump administration? And I mean that as our last question.

Don't talk about the specifics, but at the end of the Trump administration, as you know better than I, they focused pretty heavily on diagnosing the China threat. And they put out all sorts of speeches. And Secretary Pompeo did this big long paper about the threat.

It's a little curious to me, and it's only a few weeks, of course, so let's give them time, but it's a little curious to me how we're focused on a lot of other things besides what you just described so far.

Is that unfair or is it too early? And what do you expect in the coming weeks and months in terms of the Trump administration doing some of the things that you just outlined?

Mastro: Well, I think the fact that it's been quiet, I'm very hopeful.

McFaul: Mmm. Explain that, that's good!

Mastro: Because generally speaking, you want the experts to have the space to do the things they need to do. And I see a lot of those policies being driven by some of the domestic political stuff. Like we know tariffs is not going to help anyone get their jobs back, but the people who voted for President Trump believe that.

And so when you say, Who is listening? I mean, this is one of the main reasons that 15 years ago I enlisted in the military, when I was doing my PhD at Princeton, is because people explained to me the pathways that academics could be influential.

And I thought, Okay, so I could write an op-ed and hope someone read it and hope they did this. Or I could go into government, which is a great pathway, but as a woman who, I knew I wanted to have children, the in and out of government thing could be disruptive to the move, and I didn't want to wait 10 to 15 years before I got to do anything interesting.

McFaul: Right.

Mastro: So, for me, there are people listening. I feel like I do have the ear of some pretty important people. And then, as someone who works in the system, I make changes directly.

So I get to see, here's the national defense strategy. It's done. Here's our war plan. It's done. Here's our force posture, our force modernization. I get to physically just go in there and change it and then hope no one notices and changes it back.

But that's how I tend to focus on my influence. And as long as the Trump administration, the more they stay out of that space, the easier it will be, I think, for us to devise good effective strategies.

So if you have that top level of support, and respect for the expertise of the people in the building, which I think we've seen some signs that maybe that's going to be a problem, you know, we'll give them the benefit of the doubt. They respect their military advisors and that expertise. Then we can really make some advancements.

My biggest concern is that we're going to upset a lot of other countries in the region. And Biden made a lot of improvements in our force posture by getting countries to agree to certain things, in particular, Japan and the Philippines and Australia and some second island, you know, Pacific Islands, that if that's reversed, it's going to make it harder for us to deter China.

So I just hope that . . . the way I articulate it to people who have some of those more isolationist views, or unilateralist views, is like, this isn't about your love for this other country or even about multilateralism or legitimacy. If you want the United States to be powerful and that you want to do whatever you want, you need to have these countries willing to host you.

Hopefully they won't disrupt those relationships too much. But on the other hand, they're not as worried about provoking China, which a lot of my recommendations, like with the bombers or something, previous administrations might be like, Oh, I don't know, that might be a little touchy.

McFaul: Right.

Mastro: But maybe with the Trump administration, they're like, yeah, get in there, what you need to get in there. So there could be some pros and there could be some cons, but I think it takes this type of academic research is important because then we can really stand from a position of knowledge and authority and confidence, when you're making arguments that are controversial that people might push back on, that, at least I believe they better inform policy.

So, I stick to them even when people try to push back in more emotional ways about stuff. I think that is really the role of the academic practitioner, and I hope this book serves that purpose.

McFaul: Well, that's one of the most optimistic things I've heard in the first weeks of the Trump administration. As long as they're not talking about the issue, that's a good sign, not a bad sign.

And we can't see what you write for the Pentagon and inside the Pentagon and who you brief, but we can read your book, and everybody should. It's called Upstart: How China Became a Great Power. Thanks for talking with us about some of the ideas here. And I encourage everybody to go out and get this book.

Mastro: Thank you, Mike.

McFaul: Thanks for being here.

You’ve been listening to World Class from the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies at Stanford University. If you like what you’re hearing, please leave us a review. And be sure to subscribe on Apple, Spotify, or wherever you get your podcasts, to stay up to date on what’s happening in the world and why.

TRANSCRIPT:

McFaul: You’re listening to World Class from the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies at Stanford University. We bring you in-depth expertise on international affairs from Stanford's campus straight to you.

February 24th marks the third anniversary of Russia's full-scale invasion of Ukraine. It's a horrific, tragic day. There's a lot of uncertainty right now in Ukraine and among its friends and allies about what the future is going to bring.

There's a lot of pressure right now on President Zelenskyy to negotiate. There’ a lot of concern in Europe over what might happen over the negotiations between the United States and Russia, something that has not happened in three years, and a lot of unanswered questions more generally about America's future leadership in the world and especially in Europe.

And so we could not be luckier than to have Steve Pifer, an affiliate with the Center for International Security and Cooperation and the Europe Center here at FSI to be with us today.

Steve not only is a former ambassador to Ukraine, but has spent three decades of his career in diplomacy working on European issues. And is one of the most prolific commentators. I have to say, Steve, it's hard to keep up with you and all your writing. Most people after they retire from the Foreign Service slow down. It seems like you are speeding up. But maybe that has to do with the events that are happening in Europe that require that.

So thanks for coming on our program today, Steve.

Pifer: Thanks for having me, Mike.

McFaul: So originally we were going to have a conversation to start with takeaways from the Munich Security Conference. But so much has happened since that event, which is literally only six days ago, by the way. The negotiations in Saudi Arabia, the trolling between President Trump and response to President Zelenskyy.

Steve, just start at some kind of basic assessment: where do we stand right now in terms of the alleged peace negotiations that have been started? And I'll let you characterize it in any way you want to. Take stock of where we are at right now.

Pifer: Well, Mike, let me just actually step back first and make a couple of observations.

One is: on February 24, 2022, I would not predict we would be having any kind of conversation like this.

McFaul: Great point.

Pifer: Nobody, virtually, expected the Ukrainians to last militarily. Had you asked me, I thought that the Russians would win the force-on-force fight. And then in 2025, what we would be seeing would be a very bloody insurgency by Ukrainians against Russian occupying forces.

McFaul: Right, right.

Pifer: So I think it's a real testament to the Ukrainian military, Ukrainian resilience, that the Ukrainian military is still very active in the field. Even last year in 2024, I have to say the Russians had the momentum. But in that period, over the entire year, they captured maybe 1,500 square miles of Ukrainian territory. That's less than 1% of Ukraine's land.

And they did that at enormous cost. At some points, they were losing 2,000 troops a day, dead and wounded. The British Ministry of Defense now estimates that more than 800,000 casualties on the Russian side. And I'm not saying that Ukraine is winning, but the idea that Russia is on the verge of a great victory, I think, is overblown.

McFaul: Great point to start with. I'm glad we started with that. And I share your assessment. I remember three years ago, I remember talking to you three years ago and the assessments we all had and here we are three years later and it hasn't happened.

Pifer: Yeah. And again, that's a credit to the Ukrainians.

You know, a lot's happened in the last two weeks. I have to say I am thoroughly disappointed in the efforts by the Trump administration to try to broker a solution and this unseemly rush to try to re-engage Vladimir Putin, which I think is a mistake.

I mean, if you look back, there have been, think, three or four wins for Putin in the last 10 days. One is you had Secretary Hegseth in Europe and then the president saying, “Well, Ukraine can't expect to hold onto its territory and Ukraine get into NATO.”

Now, whether or not that's realistic, why are senior officials and the American president saying that when we're going to try to broker a solution? We've already at the beginning made a big lean towards the Russian position.

Then you have President Trump calls Putin and announces he's going to have not one, but several meetings with Putin, breaking with a policy with the Western leaders for the last three years that you do not engage Putin.

The next day he says, let's bring Russia back into the G7 to make it the G8 again.

McFaul: Oh my goodness, I even forgot about that one!

Pifer: If you had a vote right now, I think Trump would lose six to one on that.

McFaul: But he did offer it, yes.

Pifer: And then Secretary Rubio goes to meet with Lavrov. So that looks like that's four pretty big wins for Russia. And I can't see a single thing that the United States has received in return.

And then I would just add, I mean, this unseemly haste to engage Putin, I think Putin looks at this and says, I'm dealing with somebody — Trump — who is very weak. I'm just going to sit back and wait for more concessions. I think they've gotten off to a very bad start that's going to make it much harder to achieve their goal if their goal is to try to broker a just and durable settlement between Russia and Ukraine.

McFaul: Steve, why do you think this is happening the way it is? Let's talk about Trump and then we'll talk about Putin and Zelenskyy separately, but how do you explain it?

Pifer: Trump going back for 10 years has this inexplicable affinity for Putin. You're very hard pressed in the last 10 years to find examples where Trump has criticized Putin or Putin's actions. That's hard to understand because Putin's committed a lot of actions in the last 10 years which deserve to be criticized.

Someone suggested maybe there's a grand chess strategy here. And the idea is perhaps to throw Ukraine under the bus and back away from Europe to peel or to basically cultivate Putin so you could somehow peel Russia away from China, given the administration's focus on China.

But I think that grossly misunderstands the depth of the relationship between Xi and Putin and how dependent Russia is on China now.

McFaul: Yeah.

Pifer: So if that's the objective, I think it's going to fail. But otherwise, if it's not by design, then it simply is incompetence or, as one Republican senator said — he's a bit more diplomatic saying — “rookie mistakes.”

McFaul: Let's just pull on this thread a little bit because first of all, he's not a rookie. He was president for four years. And second, it seems more by design, right?

It seems like he just wants to make a go at a peace treaty. He doesn't really care about the contours of it. Most certainly doesn't care about Ukraine. And then just walk away or is there a bigger deal that he's trying to get?

So one, as you pointed out, might be this China play. And I completely agree with your assessment; that is going to be a loser. If you're Vladimir Putin, you're going to break up the most important relationship you have in the world to take a gamble on President Trump, who then might not be in power in four years time?

Pifer: Exactly.

McFaul: So that makes no sense to me at all. But what about like, maybe there's some kind of economic deal that somehow Trump thinks getting closer to Putin might be good for the United States?

Pifer: Well, reportedly that when Secretary Rubio was in Saudi on the Russian delegation was this Russian oligarch who talked about, I think he said hundreds of billions of dollars that American businesses had lost by not being in Russia over the past three years.

McFaul: Yeah. By the way, his name is Kirill Dmitriev. I used to know him. Has a degree from Stanford and Harvard, by the way. Very savvy guy who runs their investment fund.

But that's a good point. He did say that, and the fact that he was on the delegation is kind of strange too, isn't it?

Pifer: It's very strange. But his numbers . . . I think he said $380 billion. He's talking about American companies lost the equivalent of 5% of Russia's gross domestic product over the last three years? That's a wildly inflated number. And I think he was also talking about oil and gas concessions.

Well, before the Trump administration gets too excited about oil and gas concessions in Russia, they ought to go back and talk to President George W. Bush and his energy people, because there was all this excitement back in 2002 and 2003 about energy cooperation and huge advantages for American companies, which never panned out.

If it's an economic deal we're talking about, I think we're pursuing some pretty false hopes.

First of all, American industry they don't find the business environment there very attractive and it's not been one of their goals over the last 25 years.

McFaul: So let's pivot to President Zelenskyy next and help us think through his options and his situation right now and what he has done and what he might do moving forward.

Pifer: Yeah, well, think, Zelenskyy, first of all, I mean, he's epitomized that resistance and that resilience of Ukrainians in ways that . . . in fact, I think we had a conversation back in January of 2022 with some other Stanford scholars. And the question was, well, if the Russians invade, what kind of a wartime president would Zelenskyy be?

McFaul: Right.

Pifer: And I think we were uncertain. Well, I think Zelenskyy's proven that he was exactly what Ukraine needed at that very difficult time.

But I think you have seen growing war weariness within Ukraine. Polls now suggest that a majority of Ukrainians want negotiations, although we still have a sizable segment of the population that oppose any territorial concessions.

Zelenskyy seemed to show, I think, a bit of flexibility at the end of 2024, where he said, look, we could be prepared in a negotiation to agree that we would not use military means to recover lost territory. We would pursue diplomatic routes.

Now, he tied it to NATO membership for Ukraine. And I think what he's basically saying, If I'm going to give up, temporarily or perhaps longer, Ukrainian land, I need to have a firm security guarantee for the rest of Ukraine.

What he doesn't want to do is broker a deal with Vladimir Putin now, give Putin three or four years to regenerate his military, and then have another invasion to deal with. He's looking for solid security guarantees to prevent that.

And that, to my mind, is as the Trump administration tries to broker the settlement, any settlement is going to be judged on those two factors. One, how much territory remains under Russian control, even if just temporarily. And then two, what kind of security guarantees does Ukraine receive and how solid are they?

McFaul: Those are tough decisions, right? Because he's not getting much of a signal from the American side, at least so far, of anything substantive on the security guarantees. At least not that I've been able to see.

Pifer: No, And when Secretary Hegseth was in Europe 10 days ago, what he talked about was Europe providing either a peacekeeping force or a security force that would be on the ground in Ukraine. But he said there would be no American contribution to that.

And then he went a step further and he said that force would not deploy as a NATO force; it would be outside of NATO and it would not have the coverage of Article 5.

I worry about that because that seems to be a usually tempting opportunity for Vladimir Putin. So say you have 25 or 30,000 Europeans there not as NATO, but there to basically provide that security guarantee. That'd be an opportunity or tempting opportunity for Putin: Well, what if I hit that force? What if I had a pretext? They got too close to the Russian border or they were cooperating too much with the Ukrainians. They're no longer a neutral force.

It wouldn't have to be a big strike. But you kill a few members of this force and there's no then American response. That's going to be a pretty shattering blow to NATO. And I think Putin would be tempted on that.

So, I worry about what they're thinking in terms of how they do involve the Europeans. And I worry that they haven't thought through just how risky that could be ultimately for the underlying NATO relationship, which I still believe is very much in the American security interest.

McFaul: I'm going to get to NATO in a second, but one more question on Zelensky's position and just say parenthetically, that's a very profound thought. I haven't heard anybody talk about the scary scenario that you just laid out.

But let me come back to that in a minute. One more question about Zelenskyy and their government. As you know, and our listeners probably know, there was a floated document that the United States, the Trump administration, gave to President Zelenskyy, first in Kyiv, and then later it was presented and discussed at some detail at the Munich Security Conference when Vice President Vance and President Zelenskyy met.

And to the best of my understanding — maybe you have seen the document by now, I haven't — but I've talked to officials about it. It's a 50% sharing of the profits of all future critical minerals to be mined in Ukraine. Pretty amazing, outlandish, colonial document. And what's mysterious to me is what the Ukrainians get in return.

Having said all that, it's very clear that President Trump thinks this is an important document to be signed. What should President Zelenskyy do?

Pifer: Well, I think he was correct in not signing the document he was given, which as I understand it, it was basically giving America access to perhaps $500 billion worth of rare earth minerals and other minerals in Ukraine as a payment for what the United States had done for Ukraine in the past.

McFaul: So it was for the past, right? See, this is a very important point. Not future?

Pifer: And Trump has this incredibly inflated idea. He thinks that the United States in the past three years has provided Ukraine $350 billion. It's more like $120 billion, which is, not saying that's not a lot of money. But the bulk of that money was actually spent in the United States buying weapons for either the Ukrainian military or buying modern weapons for the U.S. military to replace things — older weapons — they had pulled out of their stocks to send to Ukraine.

And I would argue that that's not a gift to Ukraine; that's also in the American national security interest.

McFaul: Very important point.

Pifer: But I think Zelenskyy had expressed a readiness to allow the United States to help develop these minerals, but he wants something in return. And that agreement gave Ukraine, as far as I can tell, nothing in return.

Now, there was a spokesperson for the National Security Council said, “Well, that would be a secure, you know, that kind of economic relationship would be in effect a security guarantee.”

You know, if I'm in Ukraine, I'm not prepared to take that to the bank. And I think what Zelenskyy wants is he's prepared to allow the U.S. access, but he wants some firmer commitment on the part of the United States to Ukraine's security.

And thus far, that's not been on offer. So I think Zelensky was entirely correct in saying no.

McFaul: Just having some security guards, private security guards at these American mining companies is not going to be enough.

Pifer: That's probably not going to . . . the fact that the United States has companies developing those minerals, that's not going to deter Vladimir Putin from another attack on Ukraine.

McFaul: And the paradox of course, is that, you know, having talked to some of these companies around the world in my career: they're not going to do any of this mining unless they feel like their property rights are secured. So they need a security guarantee from the United States, too. It's not just the Ukrainian government and the Ukrainian people. So they've got to figure that out for sure.

Pifer: Exactly. And this is why I think that the administration really hasn't thought through a lot of the ideas that they're putting on the table in this rush to try to get some kind of agreement.

McFaul: Why do you think Trump is in such a hurry?

Pifer: Again, I think it gets back to solving a problem so that he can cultivate Vladimir Putin.

McFaul: That's the end game, right?

Pifer: If I look at this and say it's not incompetence, it's by design, the design is to get back to some kind of relationship with Putin. Trump admires Putin. Trump likes Putin. In some ways Trump would like to be like Putin.

And again, Ukraine is kind of an irritant that he would like to resolve. And that makes me nervous that in our effort to broker a solution, we're not going to give attention to the just positions of the Ukrainian side.

And at the end of the day, he can broker a settlement. But if it's heavily pro-Russian, the Ukrainians at the end of the day can always say, we're sorry, we cannot accept that. We will not accept that.

I think Ukrainians would like the war to end, but they're not prepared to accept a bad peace negotiated largely between the Americans and the Russians.

Zelenskyy has been very clear. He's not prepared to accept a fait accompli that's negotiated bilaterally between Washington and Moscow.

McFaul: And to add to your point: having just spent some time with Ukrainians, including Ukrainian soldiers in Munich, they don't all speak and think the same way.

Even if Zelenskyy wanted to accept a deal that Putin and Trump negotiated, then, you know, sent him an email saying to sign . .  there are other voices there as you know better than anybody, Steve. It's a democratic pluralistic society.

And there's a lot of warriors who have lost a lot of loved ones and a lot of comrades who are not just going to lay down their arms just because of a deal negotiated on the outside, blessed by the president.

I think President Zelenskyy probably understands that, but I'm not sure we in the West understand that. That's, I think, a pretty dangerous situation for Ukraine.

Pifer: And that's why in the sequencing of how you begin to prepare for this brokering, the first visit should have been to Kyiv.

McFaul: Yes.

Pifer: Because you're exactly right, Unlike Putin, Zelenskyy has a domestic constituency. And that may limit his maneuverability and what kind of concessions he can make. We need to have that understanding before we get too far down the road talking to the Russians.

They got the sequencing, I think, completely backwards. It should have been talking to the Ukrainians first, then the Europeans who, again, the American administration hopes will provide a significant force on the ground in Ukraine afterwards.

Then even before talking to Putin, we should have taken steps to build leverage. By virtue of the assistance we've provided to Ukraine over the last three years, we have huge leverage in Kyiv.

If you want to work this brokering right, you need leverage with Moscow. And there things you could have done. You could have tightened sanctions on Russia. As we know from our work in the international sanctions working group, there's a lot that can be done in that area.

Second, we could have gone to the G7 and said, let's take that $300 billion in frozen Russian central bank assets, seize them, and put them in a fund for Ukraine.

He could have even gone and asked the Congress, you know, let's prepare more military assistance for Ukraine. Things that would have confronted Vladimir Putin with the fact that if he does not negotiate . . . and thus far when Putin talks about negotiating, it's always on just his terms, which amount to Ukraine's capitulation.

We've got to move him off of that. I think the way to do that is by confronting Putin with the fact that this war continues, the military, the economic, the political costs for him are only going to increase.

And that they did none of that. They just jumped right into the conversation with the Russians. I think that was a mistake and it decreases the likelihood that this effort to broker a settlement will succeed.

McFaul: Just because you've teased it up, one last question about the American side and then we'll end with the Europeans.

I remember, you know, as we were waiting to see who would be on the new Trump team, I think there were a lot of people that I know — including in Ukraine, by the way — who are pretty excited about the fact that Senator Rubio was chosen to be Secretary of State Rubio. Same with our new National Security Advisor, Mike Waltz.

But I have friends who thought, my goodness, we are so lucky in these two jobs, we have very strong pro-Ukrainian people that understand the autocratic threat, the imperial threat from Putin.

And yet so far, we're not seeing that their voices represented. What's your take on that, Steve? Is it just too early to tell?

Most certainly, you know, they did not do well in their first round to underscore what you already said. When I saw them sitting across the table from Lavrov and Ushakov, people who have been in those jobs for two decades, and they had only been in their jobs for three weeks.

Maybe you could understand they're just getting their feet . . . they're trying to learn how to do this diplomacy. But so I'm struck by the fact that their positions before they joined the administration and now seem different.

Is that going to be the case forevermore or is it too early to tell?

Pifer: No, I've been struck by the same thing and I hope this will not be the continuing position.

I know neither Secretary Rubio nor the National Security Advisor Waltz, but I had the same view that you did. For a Republican president, these are guys who have experience in foreign policy. They've been on the right committees. They know these things. They could be the, quote, “the adults in the room.”

McFaul: Yes.

Pifer: I haven't seen them though, showing that they've been adults or that they've had any impact. And I think Secretary Rubio said a couple of things today that suggested that maybe they're looking back at what's happened over the past 10 days and maybe there's some recognition that this has not been the best way to handle things.

That's why I hope . . . I mean, in this debate of is the Trump administration's approach incompetence or design . . . I hope it's incompetence. Because you can fix incompetence. You can rethink things.

And I hope that they are reassessing and understand that they have mishandled these things. And if they want to succeed . . .

McFaul: And we want them to succeed.

Pifer: I would like to see President Trump broker a just, fair, durable settlement that ends this horrible war, that stops the killing, that brings peace back to that. And he can win his long coveted Nobel Peace Prize.

But everything that they've done, I think, in the last two weeks makes that possibility less and less and less . .

McFaul: Likely. And by the way, footnote to that: there are very few issues where Americans are united. We're a very polarized, split country right now. But a poll that came out this week, the Quinnipiac poll, for those that want to look it up, when Americans were asked, do you trust Putin? 81% said, No. Only 9% said, Yes.

And so President Trump is way ahead of the skis on this one. He is out of touch with the American society. So I think that that's an interesting data point. They have to produce results; they just cannot say, we just want a good relationship with Putin.

But Steve, go ahead and then we're going to get to the Europeans.

Pifer: I just wanted to mention there was one other quick poll that just came out when President Trump just bizarrely said that Russia attacked Ukraine, bizarrely said that Zelenskyy is a dictator, there was a poll I saw that I think was conducted on the 18th or 19th of February. It said 41% of Americans viewed Trump as a dictator, only 22 % of Americans viewed Zelenskyy as a dictator.

McFaul: Wow, I didn't see that one!

Pifer: I think there's a lot to suggest that where Trump is going thus far is very much divorced from where American public opinion is, both on Zelenskyy and on Russia.

McFaul: And Zelenskyy's approval rating actually is significantly higher than President Trump.

Pifer: 57%. And all this nonsense about postponing the elections: Last year in 2024, when they postponed the election, it was widely supported by Ukrainians. Most pro-democracy NGOs supported it. Most of the leaders of the parties in the Ukrainian parliament, with the exception of one, and this included people who would call themselves opponents of Zelenskyy, like Petro Poroshenko, the former president . . . they all agreed the election should be postponed.

And in a poll just conducted in the last couple of weeks, 63% of Ukrainians agree that there should be no elections until after the war is over.

McFaul: Interesting. Thanks for sharing that.

Finally, and I suspect we'll come back to this topic in the coming months, but give me your base reaction to the fissures in the NATO alliance. The vice president gave a pretty provocative speech in Munich.

How worried are you, Steve, that this is the beginning of the end of the alliance? Or is that too premature to think in those terms?

Pifer: You know, there were periodic suggestions during the first term that President Trump wanted to take the United States out of NATO. He actually doesn't have to formally take us out of NATO, but he can do things like reduce the American troop presence in Europe.

He can do things like . . . well, again, Secretary of Defense Hegseth, saying that basically, if you send a European security force into Ukraine, you're on your own. Those will weaken the American commitment to Europe. And they will weaken the confidence that the Europeans have that the United States will be there.

I think NATO has been a big asset for the United States over the past 70 years. I agree with President Trump that Europe has to do more in terms of its own defense spending. But what's interesting now is that in 2014, there was an agreement that by 2044, NATO members would spend 2% of gross domestic product on defense.

And so we went from three countries meeting that standard in 2014 to 23 meeting it last year. The talk now in Europe is they have to do more and they're looking at three to three and a half percent. The Europeans understand that their security situation is very different from what it was 10 years ago, that they have to do more. But that means that they can be stronger partners, stronger allies.

And I fear that if we were to throw NATO under the bus, it's going to mean that America first is going to be America alone. And if we do turn against the Europeans or we end this 76 year long security attache that we've had, do we really think the Europeans would be helpful to us when we're trying to deal with China?

McFaul: Absolutely not.

Pifer: I think at that point, that Europe would be morally preoccupied with Europe and the idea of helping the Americans out against China after we'd abandoned them in Europe . . . I wouldn't expect a lot of European assistance in that regard.

McFaul: That's a great point. Oh, by the way, our NATO allies did go to war with us when we were attacked. The only time Article 5 was invoked. Their soldiers died with us in Afghanistan. And some of our NATO allies went with us into Iraq.

And they never asked us to pay for that. They never asked us to compensate them like we're now doing to other Ukrainians.

And I hope the sounder, more rational people around the president will remind him of those kinds of facts. But Steve, I'm in trouble. I just looked at the clock. We talked much longer than I was supposed to, but that's because there's so much going on in the world.

I think we'll have a lot of news in the coming months, and let's just do this again.

Pifer: Happy to do it. I just hope the news will not be like the news we've seen in the last 10 days.

McFaul: Yeah, me too.

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