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Eric and Eliot welcome Lt. Col. (ret.) Alexander Vindman, former director for Europe on the National Security Council during the first Trump term and author of The Folly of Realism: How the West Deceived Itself about Russia and Betrayed Ukraine (New York: Public Affairs Press, 2025). They discuss the U.S. government’s prioritization of US-Russia relations over Ukraine policy across multiple Administrations and the tendency towards a transactional relationship with Ukraine as well as the degree of agency and responsibility of Ukrainian officials for this chronic state of affairs. They touch on the Obama Administration’s underwhelming response to the seizure of Crimea and destabilization of Ukraine in 2014 as well as Trump’s vulgar transactionalism and personal grudge against Zelensky as a motivation for the Oval Office meltdown two weeks ago. Eric and Eliot also discuss their respective articles in the Dispatch and the Atlantic on Russia’s habit of violating agreements it has reached and Ukraine’s success in fighting a war of attrition against Russia despite the media’s misreporting of the state of the war. They also discuss the generational damage to American alliances and national security intellectual capital that the second Trump term is creating, Trump hostage envoy Adam Boehler’s direct negotiation with Hamas terrorists, Trump’s mistaken reference to Viktor Orban as the leader of Turkey, and Elon Musk and Marco Rubio’s trashing of Poland’s Foreign Minister on Twitter.
The Folly of Realism: How the West Deceived Itself About Russia and Betrayed Ukraine:
Eric & Frank Miller’s latest on Russian treaty violations:
https://thedispatch.com/article/russia-history-broken-treaties-agreements/
Eliot & Phillips O’Brien’s latest on the rate of attrition in Ukraine:
https://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2025/03/russia-ukraine-war-status/681963/
Eliot on the Trump administration’s reputational damage to the U.S.:
https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2025/03/buzz-saw-pine-forest/681984/
Shield of the Republic is a Bulwark podcast cosponsored by the Miller Center of Public Affairs at the University of Virginia.
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