Hosted by Christina Ruffini and Sir Richard Dearlove
Guest
Episode Summary
In this episode of One Decision In Brief, hosts Christina Ruffini and Sir Richard Dearlove, former head of Britain's MI6, break down President Donald Trump's proposed 28-point peace plan for Ukraine. The plan includes Ukraine ceding territory to Russia and never becoming a NATO member state. Ruffini and Dearlove discuss what this plan means not only for Ukrainian security, but also European and American security, and how Europe is pushing back on the plan. Plus, the hosts examine Trump’s warm reception of Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman and what this could signify for the future of the U.S.'s relationship with the Middle East
Episode produced by Situation Room Studios. Original music composed and produced by Leo Sidran.
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Transcript
INTRODUCTION
Raffini: Hello, and welcome to One Decision in Brief. I'm Christina Raffini, joined today by my cohost, Richard Dearlove.
TRUMP'S UKRAINE PEACE PLAN
Raffini: I think today we wanna talk about something we've talked about before, but seems to be in a bit of a new place, and that's this possible peace plan for Ukraine. We discussed it a little bit last week. President Trump proposes a 28-point peace plan that, among other things, would force Kyiv to give up territory in the East, cap the size of its military, and agree to never join NATO, according to a draft that was obtained by some outlets including Axios. But it seems like some form of this is moving forward. We have Rubio saying a lot of progress was made. Zelensky is engaging with it. We've got the Europeans trying to come up with an alternative. What is your take as to why Zelensky is saying he will even entertain some of this? Has he just figured out that if he doesn't say yes, he won't get in the room, and then he won't have any say, so we might as well start with yes and go from there?
Dearlove: Well, I think your latter explanation maybe is the correct one. Start from yes and go from there, because he doesn't want to look as though he's being uncooperative. I think he's depending on the Europeans to, as it were, change some of the fundamentals. I mean, let's face it, seen from a European perspective, the 28 points are shocking and unacceptable in terms of not just Ukraine's security but European security. And I've always been, you know, trying to give Trump some of the benefit of the doubt. I think this latest initiative for most of us is just a bridge too far. It's awful. So, I think the fundamental is Ukraine not giving up territory that the Russians haven't occupied. Well, not giving up any territory, but obviously a truce is gonna, as it were, stabilize the line of conflict, and they're going to not surrender permanently. They're just gonna recognize it as a line of truce and retain their claim to the land. But this latest proposal, I think, is is is impossible for Europe, so they must be working very hard with Rubio. And, for example, limiting the Ukrainian army to six hundred thousand or whatever the figure was. Why on earth should a sovereign state determine the size of its army due to its main enemy's wishes? It's extraordinary. So there are all sorts of things which are fundamentally not acceptable, and I think that where we're gonna end up is where we ended up after Alaska. It's gonna be quite clear to Trump that the Europeans won't accept an agreement like this. Putin won't accept it. It'll be back to the battlefield.
Raffini: As Will Ferrell pretending to be George Bush on Saturday Night Live would say, the strategery here. I don't understand the strategery of this, or lack thereof, because to me, the big thing that they could do is look. I mean, again, we know I was on the border with Ukraine the day the war started and spent more than a month interviewing women, children, refugees. I have, you know, very strong feelings about this conflict. At some point, talking to even Ukrainians who are here in the US, they want it to end. They wanna be able to go home and see their family. I have a friend whose family is in Mariupol. You know, they've kind of given up and they know that that's just gonna be kind of Russian territory and they just wanna, he wants to be able to go home. If they would say freeze the lines where they are, no official recognition of that as Russian territory, but, you know, kinda concede, you know, this DMZ plan that was in the works for a while essentially controlled by the French and the UK, and then tell Ukraine they can join NATO, that to me is an even split. Right? Ukraine has lost and fought and died for this war. They didn't start it. It's been absolutely horrendous, but at least then they would feel like they did get something that was in their national interest and would continue to be in their national interest for the next decade. Right? That to me seems like that's a workable solution. I know a year ago, two years ago, Zelensky was saying we're gonna fight for every square inch of territory. He's even backed off from that. I think that's just not realistic at this point. Saying that out loud at the start of the administration was already a bit of a choice. It seems like we've now blown past that in the American administration's stance on how to negotiate this, but I don't understand why you would give away those other things before even getting in the room with Moscow. I don't understand what that gets you unless, you know, allegedly, this was drafted by Witkoff, Kushner, Jared Kushner, the president's son-in-law, and Marco Rubio. First of all, none of them are Russia experts, and I don't think the Kremlin could have come up with a better plan if they just handed it to them themselves. They couldn't.
Dearlove: I think, Christina, you're right in terms of what might be the basis for some sort of — I wouldn't call it an agreement, I would call it an end to the conflict because there will still be massive disagreement, and you would have a line of truce pretty much where the line is now. But what you have to remember, I think, is that Russia is hurting really badly. If you take Pokrovsk, it has lost more men fighting to get Pokrovsk for eighteen months than the whole size of the British military. The casualties are above 130,000, and this is just to gain one city, which, okay, has a strategic importance. And I think you're absolutely right. I think both sides are hurting badly. Both sides want an end to the conflict. And maybe they're prepared to draw a line of truce, sit on either side of it. There will be no de jure concession of territory by the Ukrainians, but the Russians will keep what they occupy, and we'll take it from there. But I think you are also right to an extent, which is maybe at some future point Ukraine joins NATO, but at the moment, of course, there's massive opposition amongst NATO members to that happening, so it's not an immediate threat. The thing that worries me is that the Trump administration seems to believe the Russian propaganda that they're winning, and the Russian propaganda in the media and all of that is that they're winning. They're not winning this battle at all. They lost this war a long time ago. This isn't what was meant to happen four years after the conflict, the major conflict, started.
Raffini: No. Proportionally, it should have been a slam dunk, which is what they thought it was going to be. The fact that we're still having this discussion given the disproportionate size of their military is very significant. The Europeans are kinda pushing back. They're basically going through the draft and trying to tweak and change things so it's slightly less egregious. And they're kind of doing a little bit what you talked about. The counter proposal is that on Ukraine joining NATO, they're not ruling it out. They're not ruling it in. They said it depends on consensus of the NATO members. That to me is such an easy point to make. It's such an easy gimme to give Ukraine because, to the point that you just made, NATO has to vote on new members. That's not gonna happen. You know, Orban's not gonna agree. Turkey's not gonna agree. At the moment, the US isn't going to agree. But just giving them the, you know, the namesake, the saving face measure of allowing that to be part of the discussion. I don't see how anyone loses on that because it's not really gonna happen for the foreseeable future. And that to me could be something that could be a little bit more palatable to the Ukrainians.
Dearlove: Yeah. But what's crucial for Ukraine and actually crucial for the Europeans is some sort of security guarantee in which the US is a participant, because there is, you know, the possibility that Russia will just do it again, and they won't sort of stand back and accept the agreement once they've had time to rebuild, you know, the massive losses that they've suffered during this conflict. And I think what you have to bear in mind, the casualty rate for Russia now is probably over a million, which is just unbelievable. So they have deep resources, and Ukraine is pressed. It's running out of manpower because, of course, it doesn't have the same depth either geographically or in terms of the size of its population. So, I mean, maybe the preconditions for some sort of agreement do exist. And to that extent, I think that Trump, in terms of his determination to end the conflict, is in the right place. Where he's in the wrong place is a complete misunderstanding of European security and, by extension, American security. That's where I think everybody parts company with him, and you talk to any security expert, any in Europe or in the United States, they'll say that Trump's wrong on this, and I think that's what I find so worrying. And I think, in a way, Rubio probably understands that and is struggling to sort of rescue the deal and give the Europeans some reassurance on their security. And I think the phrase that Zelensky used was, you know, Ukrainian dignity.
THE TRUMP–MBS SUMMIT
Raffini: Speaking of American security, before I let you go, I also wanna chat about — we had this remarkable summit with MBS. Mohammed bin Salman, the Saudi crown prince, getting the full red carpet treatment at the White House, you know, dinner, horse parade. What were your initial impressions of those videos as they were coming out of the White House?
Dearlove: Yeah. Well, it's been pretty clear that the Trump, bin Salman relationship lies at the center of both of their views of the future of the Middle East, and there's nothing particularly surprising about that. The Khashoggi killing is very problematic, very problematic, but in a way, if you take a pragmatic view of the strategic interests of nations, whether it's the United States or Saudi Arabia, are you really going to build that relationship around one dreadful violation and one dreadful — well, I say one murder, one killing. It's a real moral problem. So I wasn't surprised at all because I think the Abraham Accords, which is really what Trump is harking back to, lies at the center of his strategy for rebuilding the Middle East, and he sees Saudi Arabia as a key player, which in a way is probably the logic which any US president eventually is gonna follow. The difficulty, of course, is that Iran is still out there on its own as the sheer counter power, and I think what bin Salman and Trump are betting on is that the Iranian regime is date stamped. It's probably going down at some point. And of course, there's no succession plan to the Supreme Leader, so when he dies, or maybe sooner, there's going to be a crisis in Iran. The ideal outcome for everybody would be a working relationship between the West, the United States in particular, and Iran as well. And I think that's what's in the back of their minds. But the question at the moment is, why treat Saudi Arabia so favorably? Well, at the moment, Saudi Arabia is one of the few countries flush with oil wealth, and there is a last hurrah for fossil fuel wealth in the Middle East, which is going to run for several years, and they've got massive financial weight and financial investment funds, which are going to favor any economy that they treat as a special partner. And I think, you know, Trump's — this is the Trump deal, is it not? And it fits the facts. Who's gonna rebuild Gaza? The only country that's got the money to rebuild Gaza in all probability is Saudi Arabia, so I can see that coming down the track. And, of course, the Saudis want rid of Hamas as much as anybody else does. I've been speaking publicly about the revival of nation state politics, and I'm afraid nation state politics do overrule eventually, if you're being very cynical and practical, the horrible murder and dismemberment of Khashoggi. Bearing in mind that Khashoggi wasn't just a journalist, he was also a Muslim Brother, which, of course, is anathema to the Saudi regime.
Raffini: I think we're gonna leave the in brief there for this week. Please leave us a comment or a like. Send us your questions, any feedback you have. And, of course, check out onedecision.com for a whole load of other content as well as our YouTube page. I'm Christina Raffini, of course. Thank you for listening.
