Pivot Extra: Timothy Snyder on America’s Superpower Suicide
Pivot
Scott Galloway interviews historian Timothy Snyder about the evolving Russia-Ukraine war, the strategic consequences of shifting US support under the Trump administration, and the broader implications for
Key takeaways
- Timothy Snyder notes that while Ukrainian forces are mechanizing the front lines effectively, Russia is systematically destroying Ukraine's economy due to US-denied missile defense systems.
- The Trump administration's diversion of munitions during the Iran conflict wasted assets that could have decisively aided Ukraine, highlighting a profligate and misaligned military strategy.
Main topics
- Russia-Ukraine War Dynamics
- US Foreign Policy & Military Aid
Notable quotes
"We've been given that chance. And I'm afraid that what we've been doing is throwing that chance away in the last year and a half under the Trump people..."
Conclusion
The episode underscores a critical juncture for American democracy and global order, urging
Transcript preview
Speaker 1 (0:00) Hey, guys, Cassidy Hubberth here. This week on And Mom, beloved reporter and beauty queen Allie LaForce opens up about IVF and an incurable genetic disorder, the stress and shame of miscarriage, and the one thing that would have helped her with her transition into motherhood. Check out the latest episode of And Mom wherever you Speaker 4 (0:19) get Speaker 1 (0:20) your podcasts. Speaker 3 (0:21) If there's one thing fans ask us for, it's more Cara and Scott. Is that true? Well, anyways, we'd like to think that. So we're giving it to you. Starting this week, we'll have an extra audio episode dropping in your feed on Sunday from the Extended Kara and Scott Universe. So if you're going into withdrawal over the weekend, you can check out an episode of PropG Conversations right here in your Pivot feed. And for more conversations like this one, listen and follow the PropG pod wherever you get your podcasts. Speaker 3 (0:53) Welcome to the 415th episode of the PropGee Pod. Today's episode, we speak with a PropGee favorite, Timothy Snyder, a leading historian of authoritarianism, Ukraine, and Eastern Europe. We discuss with Tim where Russia's war on Ukraine stands, what dwindling U.S. support means on the ground, what we can learn from Mark Carney standing up to Trump, and what's at stake in the upcoming midterms. I've said this before, Professor Snyder is a role model. I think he's unafraid, incredibly smart, leveraging his domain as a historian to have a really profound impact on the world today and how we view some of the most important issues in our society. Anyways, with that, we hope you enjoy our conversation with Professor Timothy Snyder. Speaker 3 (1:41) Professor, where does this podcast find Speaker 4 (1:42) you? I'm in Toronto. I'm just back from a long trip to Ukraine, but now I'm in Toronto. Oh, that's nice. I heard that Toronto has a WNBA expansion team. Is that right? Well, I actually just saw one of the last games of the season. Yeah, they got blown out by the New York Liberty. But yeah, it was fun to watch. I Speaker 3 (2:02) was at an event this weekend and I met a guy who's a... you know, legendary basketball player. And his daughter, her name is Kiki Smith, is on the team. So all of a sudden I'm following. Speaker 4 (2:15) Oh, she's Speaker 3 (2:15) a Speaker 4 (2:16) fan favorite. I can assure you of that. Speaker 3 (2:18) Oh, yeah. Didn't expect to talk to you about it. I'm sure you didn't expect to talk about this. Let's bust right into more your domain. You were just in Kharkiv in northeastern Ukraine, less than a minute from Russia. By missile, anyways. And since you got home, you've been releasing 10 Kharkiv meditation videos you recorded there at night on cowardice, courage, freedom, and fascism. Why are you in Ukraine? And can you give us a sense for the atmosphere and the feel on the ground there? Speaker 4 (2:50) Well, I'm there because it's my job. I mean, I'm a historian of Ukraine. I'm running a big project that involves a couple hundred colleagues, roughly half of whom are Ukrainians. We have big conferences every year in Kyiv, which works out very well, better than fine. And in general, if you're going to write about a place or talk about a place, you should go there. So I was in Kharkiv staying as a guest in a kind of writing retreat, which is the apartment of a Ukrainian philologist, and doing my own work. And then I was in Kyiv helping to run these big projects. The atmosphere is like... You know, there's one more thing you have to worry about, which is that you'll get killed at the gas station trying to get gas. There's one more thing you have to worry about, which is that you'll get killed by a missile strike, you know, going to the grocery store or to an outdoor market. People live their lives trying to adapt to this, and they do it very well. They do it in a way which I personally find exemplary. And give us a sense for what it's like. Speaker 4 (3:50) What is the general mood Speaker 3 (3:52) in terms of the war itself? Is it a feel of we've made some progress, need to hang in there, renewed optimism, or is the fatigue setting in, or is it a bit of both? Speaker 4 (4:03) I mean, I think after going on five years now, or if you're counting from the first invasion in 2014, You're looking at 12 plus years. I don't think fatigue is a really relevant concept anymore. I mean, people are living their lives and they're doing what they can. And to your question, it depends on where you're sitting. If you're at the front, and I was also visiting the front when I was in Kharkiv, but if you're at the front, then things look pretty good. It seems pretty unlikely that the Russians will achieve any kind of breakthrough at the front. whether they mobilize or not. And the fact that Russia probably has to mobilize now is a bad sign, I would say, for Russia. However, if you're in the interior of the country, Russia is systematically destroying the Ukrainian economy. It's making people's lives very hard, destroying their livelihoods. And I should add that this is our fault if we're Americans, because it's American policy to deny Ukraine the missile defense that it needs. And we've kind of artificially created a situation where Russia can destroy the Ukrainian economy. And people do feel that. So essentially, Speaker 3 (5:10) my understanding is Americans stop funding. They still sell weapons. They just aren't providing any economic support. Is that accurate? Well, Speaker 4 (5:17) there's zero economic support and there's zero direct. weapon support. We do allow Europeans to buy our systems and then pass them on to Ukraine. And we do allow, I mean, we've just allowed other countries to license the construction of Patriots, which is the anti-missile system. So indirectly, indirectly, indirectly, at some point in the future, that might be able to help. But there's been a drastic change since the Biden administration, which probably didn't do enough, but which was doing, which was actively helping in terms of financial and military aid. My understanding Speaker 3 (5:55) is for all the criticism of the EU not having its act together and too much regulation, that the EU has stepped up here. Would you agree with that? Speaker 4 (6:03) Yeah. I mean, that's a great point. I'm glad you noticed that the EU has done more than any individual state. I would say, and the EU has consistently recognized the threat that Russia poses. It's a good point because like when you talk about bureaucracy, like everybody associates the EU with bureaucracy, and that's a kind of sort of American propaganda point, which we can't get our minds around or through. But when it comes to helping Ukraine, they've been very unbureaucratic, and it's been us, the Americans, who have been either bureaucratic or we've just shown kind of ill will. Speaker 3 (6:38) It feels as if I get two streams of news around the actual situation at the front, who's winning, who's losing, or, you know, this kind of grinding standoff at some, you know, in some periods, it feels like. And the traditional media, I think, has a, I don't want to say a bias for Ukraine, but I feel when I watch traditional media, I think, okay, Ukraine, just asymmetry, drones, technically advanced. Russia is now no longer able to mobilize. It's in deficit in terms of the number of soldiers taken off the field through death or injury, and it's unable to now raise as many conscripts as they're losing. You see Moscow on fire. And then I go online and I go on TikTok or threads, and I feel I see what doesn't feel more balanced, but some news that's a little bit more Russia is increasing attacks, having more impact, and it would be... You could argue Ukraine has obviously had some tremendous victories, but winning might be a little bit strong. Can you attempt to give us a sense of how, over the last 12 months, the balance of victory or defeat on the battlefield has shifted? Speaker 4 (7:52) Yeah, I'm going to answer that. And your question leads me on to another point I want to make as well. Over the last 12 months, we've seen a shift in late last year and then spring of this year where it really did seem like the Ukrainians could win because all the things you said were true. So the Ukrainians gain more territory than they lost. They're inflicting multiple more casualties than they're receiving. And until spring of this year, they were also able to defend themselves pretty well. The change has been the shortage in missile defense, because the shortage in missile defense, which I see as an artificial result of the Iran war and U.S. policy, but that means that the Russians are able to make the kinds of gains you're talking about when it comes to destroying the Ukrainian economy. That's where they're succeeding now. They're destroying factories, they're destroying mines, they're destroying steelworks. That's the edge that the Russians have now, which they didn't have six months ago. So both things are, so to speak, true. The Ukrainians are mechanizing the front. It's pretty hard to imagine Russia making gains on the front. But at the same time, Russia is able to hurt the Ukrainian economy and therefore Ukrainian society. The point I want to make, though, is that... As we see this ratcheting back and forth of drone and drone defense, the Ukrainians and the Russians are creating the only two modern armed forces in the world. And this is a problem for everybody else, which I don't think everybody else is necessarily recognizing. The Ukrainians innovate, the Russians copy, and pretty much everything the Ukrainians do, the Russians can do a few months later, but at scale. And that's a problem for NATO and a problem for the U.S., which is still practicing a pretty archaic form of warfare. And it's not a problem which I think people are recognizing. So by letting this war continue the way it is, we're basically training up the Russian army on Ukrainian methods, which is not a good thing to be doing. Speaker 3 (9:50) It's so funny. I mean, Professor Snyder, obviously you're... Speaker 3 (9:56) I always like to kind of pause the podcast when I hear something I haven't heard that I think is really striking and insightful. And I just hadn't contemplated that this war is, you know, we talk about how Ukraine could be this new center of innovation and has this unbelievable army that's teaching the world about the power of the word asymmetry and is punching so far above its weight class. We've never seen anything like that. But little. attention is given to the fact that we're also, via this war, upskilling Russia, making it a more lethal fighting force. Hadn't thought of that. So Lincoln said you can't win a war without public support and you can't lose a war with one. And it feels, from an outsider standpoint, that the Ukrainian army has the support and Zelensky has the support of the Ukrainian people. What's less clear is whether Putin and the fighting force there has the support of Speaker 4 (10:50) the Russian people. Can you speak to that? So I think the way the Russians have been trying to run the war is as a consumer war, which is a kind of a concept I think which should be pretty familiar to Americans. It's not we're supposed to win. It's not supposed to touch us. We're supposed to enjoy like the daily media coverage of the victories, but it's not supposed to affect our daily lives. And that was largely true for Russia for the first four, four and a half years. It's much less true now, as you've noticed, because Ukraine is able to hit. now with long-range drones, targets which do affect Russians' daily life. That's one thing which has changed. Another thing which has changed is that, and again, you've already mentioned this, Russia probably now has to mobilize as opposed to just using contract soldiers. And that probably, it's hard to predict,