Kind: captions
Language: en
we've got to have strategic empathy
about Putin as well we've got to
understand how the guy thinks and why he
thinks like he does
you know he he has got his own context
in his own frame and his own rationale
and he is rational he is a rational
actor in his own context we've got to
understand that we've got to understand
that he would take offense at something
and he would take action over something
it doesn't mean to say that you know we
are necessary to blame by taking actions
but we are to blame and we don't
understand the consequences of things
that we do and act accordingly or you
know take preventative action or
recognize that something might happen as
a result of something what is the
probability that Russia attacks Ukraine
with the tactical nuclear weapon
the following is a conversation with
Fiona Hill a presidential advisor and
foreign policy expert specializing in
Russia she has served the bush Obama and
Trump administrations including being a
top advisor on Russia to Donald Trump
she has made it to the White House from
humble beginnings in the north of
England a story she tells in her book
there's nothing for you here
this is the Lex Friedman podcast to
support it please check out our sponsors
in the description and now dear friends
here's Fiona Hill
you came from Humble beginning in a coal
mining town in Northeast England so what
were some formative moments in your
young life that made you the woman you
are today
I was born in 1965 and it was the period
where the whole coal sector in Britain
was in Decline already
and you know basically my father by the
time I came along had lost his job
multiple times every coal mine he worked
in was closing down he was looking
constantly further work and he had no
qualifications because at age 14 he'd
gone down the mines his father had gone
down the mines at 13 his great
grandfather you know around the same
kind of age I mean you had a lot of
people you know at different points
going down coal mines at 12 13 you know
14 they didn't get educated beyond that
period because the expectation was pay
you're going to go down the mine like
everybody else in your family
although they didn't really have any
other qualifications
to you know basically find another job
Beyond something in manual labor so I
worked in a steel works that didn't work
out a brickworks that closed down and
then he went to work in the local
hospital part of the National Health
Service in the United Kingdom as a
porter an orderly supposedly somebody's
just pushing people around there was no
opportunity to retrain so the big issue
in my family was education you've got to
have one you know you've got to have
some qualifications the world is
changing it's changing really quickly
and for you to kind of keep up with it
you're going to have to
get educated and find a way out of this
I'm very early on my father had
basically said to me there's nothing for
you here
you're going to have to if you want to
get ahead and he didn't have any kind of
idea that as a girl I wouldn't I mean
actually in many respects I think I've
benefited from being a girl rather than
a boy there was no expectation that I
would go into industry uh there was you
know some kind of idea that maybe I you
know if I got qualifications I could be
a nurse my mother was a midwife and so
she'd at age 16 left school and gone to
train as a nurse and then as a midwife I
had other relatives who'd gone to teach
you know in local schools and so there
was an idea that you know women could
get educated and there was a kind of a
range of things that you could do but
the expectation then was
go out there do something with your life
but also a sense that you'd probably
have to leave so all of that was
circling around me particularly in my
teenage years as I mean I was trying to
find my way through life and looking
forward
first of all what does that even look
like uh getting educated given the
context of that place you don't know
there's a whole world of mystery out
there so how do you figure out what to
actually do out there what was there
moments formative moments either
challenging or just inspiring where you
wondered about what you want to be
where you want to go yeah I don't want
me to a number of things I mean I think
like a lot of kids you know you you talk
to people and particularly from Blue
Collar background you said what did you
want to do boys might say I wanted to be
a fireman you know or you got you know
kind of I at one point is a little girl
I wanted to be a nurse and I had little
nurses uniform like my mother I didn't
really know what that meant but you know
I used to go around pretending to be a
nurse I even had a little magazine
called nurse Nancy and I used to read
this and you know kind of that was one
of the formative ideas we also it was a
rural area semi-rural area and you know
I'd be out in the the fields all the
time and I'd watch Farmers you know with
their animals and I'd see vets coming
along and you know watching people deal
with a livestock and there was a kind of
a famous story at the time about a vet
called James Harriet um it became here
in the United States as well and was a
lot of TV mini series he'd written a
book and he was the vet for my uh one of
my uh great aunt's dogs and people were
always talking about him and I thought
oh I could be a vet and then one day I
saw one of the local vets with his hand
up the back side of a cow in a field and
he got his hands stuck and the cow was
kicking him and I thought yeah maybe
maybe not actually no I don't think I
wanted to be a vet so I cycle through
all of these things about okay I could
get an education but the whole sense was
you had to apply your education it
wasn't an education for Education sick
it was an education to do something and
when I was about 14 or 15 my local
Member of Parliament came to the school
and it was one of these you know pep
talks for kids in these you know
deprived areas he had been quite
prominent in local education and now he
was a member of parliament he himself
had come from a really hard Scrabble
background and had risen up through
education had even gone to Oxford and
done philosophy politics and economics
and he basically told my class even
though it was highly unlikely any of us
were really going to get ahead and go to
Elite institutions look you can get an
education you don't have to be held back
by your circumstances but if you do get
an education it's a privilege and you
need to do something with it
so then I'm thinking
well what could I do okay an education
is a qualifications to do something most
people around me I didn't I knew didn't
have careers I mean my dad didn't really
have a career he had jobs my mom you
know thought of her nursing as a career
though and it genuinely was and she was
out there trying to help women uh
survive childbirth my mother had these
horrific stories you know basically over
the dining room table I wish he'd stop
she'd leave out her nursing books and
I'd tell you if everyone had had my mum
as a as a mother there'd be no there'd
be no reproduction on the planet it was
just this Grim horrific stories of
breached births and fistulas and all
kinds of Horrors that my sister and I
would just go oh my God you know what
please stop
so I thought well you know I don't
necessarily want to go in that um in
that direction but it was the timing
that really cinched things for me
I was very lucky that the region that I
grew up County Durham despite the
massive Decline de-industrialization and
the complete collapse of uh the local
government system around me still
maintained money for education and they
also paid for exchanges and we had
exchange programs with cities in Germany
and France also in Russia in Costa Rama
near Yaris level for example no textile
Town similar you know down in its kind
of region but you know quite historic in
the Russian context in fact the original
uh birthplace of the Romanov Dynasty and
customer just as County Durham and it
was quite a distinguished historic area
in the in the British context and so it
was an idea that I could go on exchanges
I could learn languages I studied German
I studied French
and then in 1983
there was the warsker
basically provoked by the Euro methyl
crisis so the station of new categories
of strategic nuclear weapons and
intermediate nuclear weapons in Western
Europe and in Eastern Europe during the
height of the Cold War and the zero
Missile Crisis over ss-20 and Pershing
missiles went on from 1977 so when I was
about 11 or 12 you know all the way
through into the later part of the 1980s
and in 1983 we came extraordinarily
close
to a nuclear conflict it was very much
another rerun of the Cuban Missile
Crisis of 1962 so 20 years on same kind
of thing the Soviets misread although I
didn't know this at the time I know a
lot of this you know after the fact but
the tension was palpable but what
happened was the Soviets misread the
intentions of a series of exercises uh
operation Able Archer that the United
States was conducting and actually
thought that the United States might be
preparing for a first nuclear strike and
that then set up a whole set of literal
chain reactions in the Soviet Union
eventually it was recognized that you
know all of this was really based on
misperceptions and of course you know
that later led to negotiations between
Gorbachev and Reagan for the
intermediate nuclear forces the INF
treaty but in 1983 that tension was just
acute and for as a teenager we were
basically being prepped the whole time
for
um the inevitability of nukaramageddon
there were TV series films in the United
States and the UK threads the day after
we had all these public service
announcements telling us to seek
Sanctuary or cover and the inevitability
of a nuclear blast and you know my house
was so small they said look for a room
without a window there were no rooms
without Windows my dad put on these
really thick curtains over the window
you know and said if there was a nuclear
flash you know we'd have to you know get
down on the floor not look up but the
curtains would help and we were like
this is ridiculous dad and we would all
try to see if we could squeeze in the uh
space under the stairs a cupboard Under
the Stairs like Harry Potter I was all
just you know totally nuts or go or you
had to throw yourself in a ditch if you
were outside
and I thought well this this isn't going
to work and one of my great uncles who
had fought in World War II said well
look you're good at languages Fiona why
didn't you go and study Russian try to
figure it out figure out why the
Russians are trying to blow us up
because you know during the go talk to
them they're exactly during World War II
yeah the United Kingdom the United
States and the Soviet Union had all been
wartime allies and my uncle Charlie
thought well there's something gone
wrong here maybe you can figure it out
and as you said you'd go talk to them so
I thought okay I'll study Russian so
that's really how this came about I
thought well it's applying education
I'll just do my very best to understand
everything I possibly can about the
Russian language and the Soviet Union
and I'll see what I can do and I thought
well maybe I could become a translator
so I had visions of myself sitting
around you know listening to things in a
big headset and in a basically
translating perhaps at some you know
future Arms Control Summit
so how did the journey
continue with learning Russian
I mean this early dream of being a
translator and thinking how can I
actually uh help understand or maybe
help even deeper way with this conflict
that threatens the existence of the
human species
um how did it actually continue
well I mean I read everything I also
actually possibly could about you know
nuclear weapons and nuclear war and you
know it started to try to teach myself
you know Russian a little bit it was a
losing context of nuclear war it was
very much in the context of nuclear this
particular point but also in historical
context because I knew that the United
States and the United Kingdom and the
Soviet Union had been more time allies
in World War II so try to understand all
of that and also
um you know I like many other people I
read you know Russian literature in
Translation I'd read War and Peace and
you know I'd love the book actually I
mean particularly the you know the story
parts of it I wasn't one really at that
at that time when I was a teenager I
thought Tolstoy went on a bit you know
in terms of his theories of the great
man and of history and you know kind of
social change though now I appreciate it
more but when I was about 14 I was like
this man needed an editor you know could
you have just gone on with the story
from an amazing story what an incredible
you know kind of book this is I still
think he needs another book I think his
wife tried didn't you but um he got
quite upset with her and then I kind of
thought to myself well how do I how do I
study Russian because there were very
few schools in my uh region you know
given the impoverishment of the region
where you could study Russian so I would
have to take Russian from scratch
and this is where things get really
quite interesting
because there were opportunities to
study
um Russian at universities but I would
need to have first of all an intensive
Russian language course in the summer
and I didn't have the money for that
and the period is around the miners
strike in the United Kingdom in 1984.
now the miners of County Durham that
very interestingly had exchanges and
ties with the miners of donbass going
back to the 1920s
and as I studied Russian history I
discovered there was lots of contacts
between you know Bolshevik Soviet Union
the early period after the Russian
Revolution but even before that during
the Imperial period in Russia between
the northern England and the Russian
Empire and the old industrial areas
basically big industrial areas like the
northeast of England and places like Don
bass were built up at the same time
Often by the same sets of industrialists
and danetsk in the donbass region used
to be called husicka because it was
established by a Welsh industrialist who
brought in miners from Wales to help you
know kind of develop the coal mines
there and also the the steel works and
others that you know were gearing about
all the time and so I got very
fascinated in all these linkages and you
know famous writers from the early parts
of the Soviet Union like give Guinea
zamyasin worked in the shipyards in
Newcastle upon Tyne and there was just
this whole set of connections
and in 1984
when the miners strike took place the
miners of donbass along with other
miners from famous coal regions like
Duro Valley for example in Germany or
mine is in Poland
sent money in solidarity to the miners
of County Durham and they've been these
exchanges as I said going back and forth
since the 1920s formal exchanges between
miners you know the region the miners
unions
and I um heard again from the same uh
great uncle who told me to study Russian
that there were actually scholarships of
the children of miners it could be
former miners as well for their
education and I should go along to the
miners Hall Players called Red Hills
where the the minders of country Durham
had actually pulled all of their
resources and built up their own
Parliament and their own you know kind
of players that they could talk among
themselves to figure out how to enhance
the welfare and well-being of their
communities and they'd put money aside
for education for minors there was all
kinds of lecture series from the miners
and all kinds of other activities
supporting soccer teams and artistic
circles and writing circles for example
people like George Orwell you know were
involved in some of these writers
circles in other parts of Britain and
Mining communities for example and so uh
they told me I could you know go along
and basically apply for a grant to go to
study Russian so I show up and it was
the easiest you know application I've
ever come across that just asked me to
my dad came along with me they asked me
to verify you know that my dad had been
a minor and they looked up his
employment record on little cards you
know kind of a little a little tray
somewhere and then they asked me how
much I needed you know to uh basically
pay for the travel and some of the basic
expenses for the um
the study and they wrote me a check
and so thanks to the miners of donbath
and this money that was deposited with
the miners of County Durham with the
Durham miners Association I got the
money to study Russian for the first
time uh before I embarked on my studies
at University as you're speaking now
it's reminding me that there's a
different way to look both at history
and a geography in the different places
is
um
you know this is an industrial region
that's right and it echoes in the
experience of living there
is more captured not by Moscow or Kiev
but by at least historically but by just
being a mining town and Industry that's
right in the place itself yeah yeah I
mean there are places in the United
States and Appalachia and West Virginia
and in Pennsylvania like the Lehigh
Valley that have the same sense of place
on the northeast of England you know was
the Cradle of the Industrial Revolution
it was the Industrial version of the
silica of Silicon Valley which has its
own
I would say Contours and frames and when
you come to those industrial areas your
previous identities get submerged in
that larger framework I've always looked
at the world through that lens of being
you know someone from the working class
the blue collar communities from a very
specific place with lots of historical
and economic connotations
and it's also a Melting Pot which is the
problems that the donbass has
experienced uh over you know the last 30
years that people came from all over the
place to work that of course it was a a
population that one might say is
indigenous you know might have gone back
centuries there but they would have been
you know in the smaller rural farming
communities just like it was the same in
the northeast of England
and people in the case of the northeast
of England came from Wales they came
from further in the south of England the
Midlands they came from Scotland they
came from Ireland
um I have all of that Heritage in my own
personal background
and you've got a different identity
unless when somebody else tries to
impose a den an identity like on you
from the outside that things go awry and
I think that that's kind of what we've
really seen in the case of Don bass it's
a place it's a part in many respects
historically and in terms of its
Evolution and development over time and
you know particularly in the case of you
know Russia uh the Russians have tried
to say well look you know because most
people speak Russia there as the lingua
Franca I mean in the northeast of
England because everyone spoke English
but lots of people were Irish speakers
you know garlic Irish speakers or you
know some of them might have um
certainly been Welsh speakers there was
lots of Welsh miners who spoke Welsh as
their first language who came there you
know but they but they created a an
identity it's the same in Belfast in
Ulster you know the northern province of
um of the you know the whole of the
Irish Island another part of Ireland
that is still part of the United Kingdom
that was also a heavily industrialized
area
um High manufacturing Mass manufacturing
shipbuilding for example people came
from all over there too which is why
when Ireland uh got its independence in
the United Kingdom
Ulster Belfast and that whole region you
know kind of clung on because it was
again that Melting Pot it was kind of
intertwined with the larger industrial
economy and had a very different
identity and so that you know for me
growing up in such a specific place with
such a
special in many respects Heritage gave
me a different perspective on things
when I first went to the Soviet Union in
1987 to study there I actually went to a
translators Institute what was then
called The Morris serez which is now the
Institute of foreign languages
um I was immediately struck by how
similar everything was to the north of
England
because it was just like one big book in
class culture that sort of broken out
onto the national stage everything in
northern England was nationalized
we had British steel British coal
British Rail British shipbuilding
because after World War II the private
sector had been devastated and the state
had to step in and of course the Soviet
Union is one great big giant
nationalized economy when I get there
and it's just the people's attitudes and
outlooks are the same people didn't work
for themselves they always worked for
somebody else and it had a quite a a
distortion on the way that people looked
at the world do you still speak Russian
I do yeah
it would be a big mystery for everybody
and you have an advantage on me because
your native language as well for people
wondering the the English speakers in
the audience you're really missing a lot
from the few sentences we said there
um yeah it's it's a fascinating language
that stretches actually geographically
across a very large part of this world
so there you are in 1987 an exchange
student in the Soviet Union what was
that world like well that was was
absolutely fascinating in that period
because it's the period
That's just around the time of the peak
of perestroika and mikhil Gorbachev's uh
role as president
um while he wasn't quite present at that
point it's all Secretary General of the
Communist part of the Soviet Union
trying to transform the whole place
so I arrived there in September of 1987.
just as Gorbachev and Reagan sign the
INF treaty just within you know kind of
weeks of them about to sign that which
really ends that whole period that had
shaped my entire teenage years of the
end of the euromissile crisis by finally
having agreement on you know basically
the reduction and constraints on
intermediate nuclear forces
and also at this point Gorbachev is
opening the Soviet Union up so we got
all kinds of opportunities to travel in
ways that we wouldn't have done before
um not just you know in Moscow which is
where I was studying its translates into
people to the Caucasus to Central Asia I
went all the way to uh habarovsk in the
the Russian Far East all the way around
you know kind of Moscow and there was at
this point it was also the uh Krish
which has become very important now this
is the anniversary the thousandth
anniversary of the christianization of
um of Russia which of course has become
a massive Obsession of Vladimir Putin's
but you know 988 because I was there 87
to 88 and at this point the Russian
Orthodox Church is undergoing a Revival
from being repressed during the Soviet
period you suddenly have the church
stepping out as a non-governmental
organization and engaging in discussions
with people about the future of religion
uh so that
um was you know something that I wasn't
expecting to to witness
also I mean being in Moscow this is the
cultural capital of a vast Empire at
this point I'd never lived in a major
city before it's the first big city I
lived in I'd never been to the Opera you
know I I the first time I got an opera
it's at the ball joy and I'd never seen
a ballet I mean I was not exactly
steeped in high classical culture when
you're kind of growing up in a in a
mining region you know there's very
limited opportunities for this kind of
thing I've been in an abuse Orchestra
and a used choir my parents signed me up
property everything you know they
possibly could education wise but it
wasn't exactly any exposure to this so
you know I was kind of a standard by the
sort of wealth of the cultural
experience that one could have in Moscow
but the main thing was I was really
struck by how the Soviet Union was on
its last legs because this was Moscow
you know I got this image about what it
would look like I was quite to be honest
terrified at first about what I would
see there if you know the big nuclear
superpower and as soon as I got there it
was just this like as if a huge weight
that I'd been carrying around for years
in my teenage years just disappeared
because it's just ordinary people in
ordinary players not doing great this is
the period
of you know what they call deficit you
know so the period of deficits but
there's no food in the shops there was
you know very little in terms of
Commodities because the
um supply and demand parts of the
economic equation were out of whack
because there's a total Central planning
you know you'd go into you know a shop
that was supposed to sell boots and
there'd be just one pile of boots all in
the same size in the same color I
actually looked out because once I was
in this um Hungarian boot shop that was
right next to where my hall of residence
was and I was looking for new pair of
boots and every single pair of boots in
the shop were my size
and they're all women's boots they're
not men's boots at all you know because
if it's been a nervous supply of boots
and that size production but you could
really kind of see here that there was
something wrong and you know in the
north of England everything was closed
down the shops were shuttered because
there was no demand because everybody
lost their jobs it was massive
employment you know when I went off to
University in 1984 90 youth unemployment
in the UK meaning that when kids left
school they didn't have something else
to go on to unless they got to
University or vocational training or an
apprenticeship and most people were
still looking you know kind of months
out of leaving school and so shops were
closing because people didn't have any
money you know I had 50 male
unemployment in some of the towns as
there's still works closed down and the
the wagon works for the railways for
example in my area but in Moscow people
in theory did have money but there was
just there was nothing to buy the also
the place was falling apart literally I
saw massive sinkholes open up in the
street balconies fall off buildings you
know one accident after another
and then there was you know this real
kind of sense even though the vibrancy
and excitement and hope of the Gorbachev
period a real sense of the the Soviet
Union had lost its way and of course it
was only a year or so after I left from
that Exchange program and I'd already
started with my degree program in Soviet
studies at talford that the Soviet Union
basically unraveled and it really did
unravel it wasn't like it collapsed it
was basically that there were so many
debates that garbage offered sparked off
about how to reform the country how to
put it on a different path that you know
no one was in agreement and it was
basically all these fights and uh deep
debates and disputes among the elites of
the center as well as you know basically
a loss of faith in the system in the
periphery and among the general
population that in fact pulled it apart
and of course in 1991
you get um
Boris Yeltsin as the head of the Russian
Federation then a constituent part of
the Soviet Union together with the
presidents of Ukraine and Belarus all of
these being individual
parts of the Soviet Union getting
together and agreeing and essentially
ending it and gorbachevino so basically
I'm there at the the peak of this whole
kind of period of experimentation and
thinking about the future and within a
couple of years it's all kind of gone
and it's on a different track entirely
well I wonder if we re-ran the 20th
century a thousand times if how many
times the Soviet Union will collapse
yeah I wonder about that too and I also
wondered about what would have happened
if it didn't collapse and Gorbachev had
found a different direction
I mean you know we see a very divisive
time now in American history the United
States of America has very different
cultures very different uh beliefs
ideologies within those States but those
are that's that's kind of the strength
of America's there's these little
Laboratories of ideas until though that
they don't keep together I mean I've had
colleagues who have described what's
happening in the west right now was a
kind of soft secession with States you
know going off in their own Direction
well you know these kinds of conceptions
that we have now are divisions between
red and blue States because of the
fracturing of our politics
and I'd always thought that that
wouldn't be possible in somewhere like
the United States or um you know many
other countries as well because it
wasn't that ethnic
um uh Dimension but in fact many of our
the way that people talk about politics
has given it that kind of appearance in
many respects because look I mean we
know from the Soviet Union and the
Soviet period and from where you're from
you know originally in Ukraine that
language is not the man to signify of
identity and that identity can take all
kinds of of other forms that's really
interesting I mean but
there has to be a deep grievance of some
kind if you took a poll in any other
states in the United States I think a
very small minority people would want to
actually succeed uh even in Texas where
I spend a lot of my time yeah
I I just I think that there is a common
kind of pride of nation
you know there's a a lot of people
complain about government and about how
the country's going the way people
complain about the weather when it's
raining they say oh this stupid weather
it's raining again but really what they
mean is
we're in the smoke together there's a
together there that I I also feel that
when I go around because I mean I've
spent a lot of time since I've
um my book my book last October and this
last year going around I find I find the
same feeling but you know when I
traveled around the Soviet Union
back in the late 1980s I didn't get any
kind of sense that people wanted to see
the end of the Soviet Union either it
was an elite project
there's a a really good book called
Collapse by vladislav zubuck who is a
professor
um at um London School of Economics at
LLC and zubock is pretty much my age and
he's from you know the former Soviet
Union is Russian and I mean he describes
it very quite aptly about how it was
kind of the elites you know that
basically decided to pull the Soviet
Union apart and there was a risk of that
you know here as well when you get
parties on politics and people
forgetting you know they're Americans
and they are all in this together like a
lot of the population thing but they
think that their own you know narrower
parties aren't ideological precepts you
know camp for more and in the Civic case
of course was also a power play
you know in a way that actually can't
quite play out in the United States
because it was the equivalent of
Governors in many respects who got
together three of them you know in the
case of
um the heads of Russia Ukraine and
Belarus who then you know got rid of you
know the basically their Central
um the central figure of Michael
Gorbachev it would be a little difficult
to do that the dynamic is not the same
but it does worry me of having seen all
of that close up
in the late 1980s and the early 90s and
I was I spent you know a lot of time in
the uh in Russia uh as well as in
Ukraine and caucus and Central Asia and
you know other places after the collapse
of the Soviet Union but that you you
kind of see the same Elite divisions
here in the United States pulling
in you know in different uh in different
directions and straining you know the
overall body politic and the way that
National politics gets imposed on local
politics and where's that it certainly
wasn't when I first came to the US in
1989 I didn't honestly in 1989 when I
first came here I didn't know anybody's
political affiliation I mean I rarely
knew their religious affiliation and and
you know obviously race was a was a
major phenomenon here that was a shock
to me when I when I first came but many
of the kind of the class Regional
Geographic you know kind of political
Dimensions that I've seen in other
places I didn't see them at play in the
same way then as I do now
and you take a lot of Pride to this day
of being nonpartisan
that said
so you served uh
for the George W bush Barack Obama and
Donald Trump Administrations
uh always specializing
in uh Eurasia and Russia
you were the top presidential advisor to
president
former president Donald Trump on Russia
and Europe and famously testified in his
first impeachment trial in uh 2019
saying
I take great pride in the fact that I'm
nonpartisan foreign policy expert so
given that context what does nonpartisan
mean to you
well it means being very careful about
not putting any kind of ideological lens
on anything you know that I'm analyzing
and looking at or saying about foreign
policy for one thing but also not taking
you know kind of one stance of one party
over another either to be honest I've
I've always found American politics
somewhat confounding because both the
Democratic and the Republican Party are
pretty big tents some of their
coalitions you know in Europe it's
actually kind of in some respects easier
to navigate the parameters of political
parties because you you know have quite
clear platforms
um you know there's also a longer
history in many respects obviously I
mean there's a long history here in the
United States as a development of the
parties you know going back to the late
18th century but in the United Kingdom
you know for example in the 20th century
the development of the mass parties you
know it's quite easy to get a handle on
you know at one point in the UK for
example the parties were real genuine
Mass parties with people who are
properly members and took part in
regular meetings and Paid Dues and you
know it was easy to kind of see what
they stood for and the same in Europe
you know when you look at France and in
Germany and Western Germany of course
Italy and elsewhere here in the United
States it's kind of pretty amorphous you
know the fact that you could kind of
register you know randomly it seems to
be a democratic Republican I trumped it
at one point is Democrat next thing is
Republican and then you kind of usurp a
party apparatus but you don't have to be
you're not vetted in any way you're not
kind of you know but they don't check
you out to see if you have ideological
coherence you know you could have
someone like Bernie Sanders on the other
side on the left you know basically
calling himself a socialist and you know
running for the the Democratic uh
presidential nomination so you know kind
of in many respects parties in the
United States are much more loose
movements and I think you can you know
it's almost like a kind of an A La Carte
menu of different things and that people
can pick upon pick out and it's more
over time as I've noticed
um become more like a kind of an
affiliation even with a sporting team I
mean I get very shocked by the way that
people say well I couldn't do this
because you know that's my side and I
couldn't do anything and I couldn't
support someone for the other side I
mean I have a a relative in my extended
family here who
um is a
um you know died in the more Republican
and on you know family holiday there's a
book on their table said 100 reasons for
voting for a Democrat and I said hey are
you um thinking of Shifting party
affiliation then I opened the book and
it's blank it was pretty funny I had to
laugh I thought well there you go then
there's just there's no way that you
know people can pull themselves out of
these frames so for me it's very
important to have that independence of
thought I think you can be politically
engaged on the issues but you know
basically without taking you know a
stance that's defined by some
ideological ideology or some sense of
kind of parties on affiliation
I think I tweeted about this maybe not
eloquently in the statement if I
remember correctly was something like
if you honestly can't find a good thing
that Donald Trump did or a good thing
that Joe Biden did
you're not
uh you're not thinking about ideas
you just picked the tribe I mean it was
more eloquent than that but it was it
was um is basically this is a really
good test to see are you actually
thinking about like how to solve
problems versus like your dread team or
blue team like a sporting team can you
find a good idea of Donald Trump's that
you like
if you're somebody who's against Donald
Trump and like acknowledge it to
yourself probably oh that's a good idea
I'm glad he said that or he's even
asking the right kinds of questions
which he often often actually I mean
obviously put them in a way that most of
us wouldn't have done but there was
often kind of questions about why is
this happening why are we doing this and
you know we have to challenge ourselves
all the time so yeah actually why are we
doing that and then you have to and
really inspect it and say whether it's
actually worth continuing that way or
they should be doing something
differently now he had a more kind of
destructive quality to those kinds of
questions you know about maybe it's the
real estate developer in him that's you
know taking a big wrecking ball to all
of these kinds of you know sacred
edifices and things like that but often
if you really paid attention he was
asking a valid set of questions about
why do we continue to do things like
this now we didn't often have answers
about what he was going to do in
response but those questions still had
to be asked and we shouldn't be just
rejecting them you know out of turn
and you know the the another strength
the thing that people often that
criticize Donald Trump will say is the
weakness is his uh lack of Civility
can be a strength because I I feel like
sometimes bureaucracy functions on
excessive civility
like uh actually I've seen this it's not
just it's bureaucracy in all forms like
um
in tech companies as they grow
everybody kind of you know you're
getting pretty good salary everyone's is
everyone's comfortable and there's a
meeting and you discuss
how to move stuff forward and like you
don't want to be the in the room
that says what this is why are we doing
this this way this is
um on this could be unethical this is
hurting the world this is totally a dumb
idea like I mean I could give specific
examples that I have on my mind
currently that are technical but the
point is oftentimes the person that's
needed in that room is an yeah
that's why Steve Jobs worked so Elon
Musk works you have to roll in that's
what first principles thinking looks
like the one bit when it doesn't work is
when they start name calling you know
kind of inciting violence against you
know the people that we disagree with so
that was kind of a problem because I
mean often one you know I when I was in
the administration I had all of Europe
in my portfolio as well as Russia and
there were many times when you know we
were dealing with our European
colleagues where he was asking some
pretty valid questions about well why
should we do this if you're doing that
you know for example the the Nordstrom 2
pipeline the United States has been
opposed to Europe's Reliance on gas and
oil exports from uh Russia you know the
Soviet Union since the 70s and 80s and
Trump kept pushing this out idea about
so why are we you know spending so much
money on NATO and NATO defense and we're
all talking about this if y'all then you
know basically paying billions you know
to Russia for gas isn't this you know
contradictory and of course it was but
it was the way that he did it and I
actually uh you know one instance had a
discussion with a European Defense uh
Minister who basically said to me look
he's saying exactly the same things as
people said before him including you
know Former Defense secretary Gates it's
just the way he says it you know so they
took offense and then as a result of
that they wouldn't take action because
they took offense at what he said so it
was a kind of then a way of could you
find some other means of
you know massaging this communication to
kind of make it effective which we would
always try to focus on because it's it's
a kind of the it was the the delivery
yeah but but the actual message was was
often spot on or in those kinds of
issues I mean he was actually
highlighting you know these ridiculous
discrepancies between what people said
and what they actually did
it's the the delivery the Charisma in
the room too I'm also understanding the
power of that of a leader it's not just
about what you do at a podium
but in in a room with advisors how you
talk about stuff how you convince other
leaders yeah you don't do it through
gratuities insults and excitement to
violence that's one of the things you
just say you don't get anywhere on that
well I mean it's possible
tough measures and maximum pressure
often though it does work right because
there were you know often times where
you know that kind of Relentless you
know nagging about something are
constantly raising it actually did have
results where it hadn't previously right
so there's you know the maximum pressure
if it you know kind of kept on it in the
right way and you know often when we
were you know coming in behind on
pushing on issues you know related to
Nato or you know other
things in this same sphere it would
actually have an effect
it just doesn't get talked about because
it gets overshadowed by you know all of
the other kind of stuff around this and
um the way that you know he interacted
with people and uh treated people
what was uh the heart the key insights
to your testimony and that impeachment
look I think there is a straight line
between that whole series of episodes
and the current war in Ukraine
because Vladimir Putin and the people
around him in the Kremlin
concluded that the US did not care one
little bit about Ukraine and it was just
a game
the trumpet was personal game he was
basically trying to get
Vladimir zielinsky to do him a personal
favor related to his desire to stay on
in um in power
in the 2020 election
and generally they just thought that we
were using Ukraine as some kind of proxy
or some kind of instrument within our
own domestic Politics as that's what it
looked like
and I think that he knows the result of
that
Putin you know took
the idea where that he could you know do
whatever he wanted we were constantly
being asked even prior to this by people
around
uh Putin like you know Nikolai Patricia
of the head of the national you know
security uh Council equivalent in Russia
we met with frequently what's Ukraine to
you we don't get it you know why do you
even care so they thought that we
weren't serious that we weren't serious
about Ukraine's territorial integrity
and its independence or or it is the
National Security player and Putin also
thought that he could just manipulate
the political space in the United States
actually could because what was he was
doing was seeding uh all this dissent
and uh fueling you know already uh in a
debate inside of uh U.S politics the
kinds of you know things that we see
just kind of coming out now this kind of
idea that Ukraine was a burden that
Ukraine was you know basically just
trying to extract things uh from the
United States the Ukraine had somehow
played inside of U.S politics Trump was
convinced that the ukrainians had done
something against him that they had
intervened in the elections and that was
kind of you know a combination of people
around him trying to find excuses to you
know kind of what had happened in the
election to kind of divert attention
away from Russia's interference in 2016
and the Russians themselves poisoning
the world uh against Ukraine so you had
a kind of a Confluence of circumstances
there and what I was trying to get
across
in that uh testimony was the National
Security imperative of basically getting
our act together here and separating out
what was going on in our domestic
politics from what was happening in our
national security and foreign policy I
mean I think we contributed
in that whole mess around the
impeachment but just the whole parallel
policies around Ukraine to the war that
we now have
confronting signaling the value we place
in peace and stability in that part of
the world or the reverse by saying we
don't care yeah we seem to not care it
was just
but I mean the the U.S role in that war
is very complicated one that's one one
that's one of the variables
um just on that testimony
did it
in part break your heart that you had to
testify
essentially against the president of the
United States
or is that not how you saw it
I don't think I would describe it in
that way I think what I was was deeply
disappointed by what I saw happening
in the American political space I didn't
expect it
look I was a starry-eyed immigrant
I came to the United States with all of
these expectations of what the place
would be I'd already been disabused of
you know some of the
um let's just say Rosie uh perspectives
are held in the United States I'd been
shocked by uh the depths of
racial
problems it doesn't even sum up the
problems we have in the United States I
mean I I couldn't get my head around it
when I first came I mean I'd read about
you know slavery in American history but
I hadn't fully fathomed you know really
the kind of the way that was ripping
apart the United States I mean I had to
read Alex's you know to talk Phil and
he'd commented on this and it obviously
hadn't you know kind of changed to the
expect the way that one would have
expect all this time you know from the
18th you know Century onwards so that
was kind of one thing that you know that
I realized the Civil Rights uh movement
and all of these you know acts of
expansion of suffrage and everything
else were imperfect at best you know and
I was born in 65 the same same time as
the Civil Rights Act it was heck of a
long way still to go so I wasn't let's
just say you know as
Starry Eyed about everything as I'd been
before but I really saw an incredible
competence and professionalism in you
know the US government it was gonna and
the election system and the Integrity of
it and I mean I really saw that I saw
that the the United States was the gold
standard for you know kind of some of
its you know institutions and I worked
in the National Intelligence Council and
I'd seen the way that the United States
had tried to address the problems that
it had um at first and it was just whole
botched uh analysis of Iraq and this
terrible strategic blunder of
um honestly a crime in my view of
invading Iraq and but the way that
people were trying to to deal with that
in the aftermath I mean I went into the
National Intelligence Council and the
dni the director the officer Director of
National Intelligence when they were
coming to terms with what had gone wrong
in the whole analysis about Iraq in 2003
you know in the whole work of people
trying to pull together after 9 11 and
to learn all of the lessons from all of
this and I saw you know just really
genuine striving and deliberation about
what had gone wrong what lesson could we
learn from this and then suddenly I
found myself in this I couldn't
redescribe another word it's totally
crazy locking glass thinking of you know
Alice in Wonderland Alice Through the
Looking Glass version
of American politics
I mean I'd seen everything starting to
unravel over a kind of a period of time
before I'd been asked to be in the
administration but I did not expect it
to be that bad I honestly didn't
I mean I had been warned you know by
people that this was you know kind of
really a very serious term that the
United States had taken but I really
thought that National Security would
still be uppermost in people's minds and
it was when a lot of the people that I
work with but what I found you know if
you want to use that in a term of
heartbreaking was the way in which all
of these principles
but I uh really bought into and tried to
uphold in the United States uh
government and then the things that we
were trying to do with me and my
colleagues was just being thrown out the
window
and that you know I would have to step
up
in defense of them and in defense of my
colleagues who were being lambasted and
you know criticized and given death
threats were actually standing up and
doing their own jobs in particular on
the topic of Ukraine uh not just on
Ukraine but a national security overall
so I mean I'd gone through this whole
period even before we got to that point
I'm seeing non-partisan government
officials being attacked from all sides
left and right and but especially the
right and being basically accused of
being partisan hacks in a deep State yes
coup plotters you know you name it
they're um
patriotism being questioned as well I
know a lot of people I work with in
government like myself naturalized
Americans a lot of them are immigrants
many were refugees and many people had
fought and and was uh on behalf of the
United States and Iraq and Afghanistan
being blown up and you know they put
their lives on the line they'd put their
family lives on the line you know
because they believed in America and
they were just they were reflections of
Americans from all kinds of works of
works of life is what really made you
know that cliche of America great it
wasn't you know whatever it was it was
being you know banded around in these
crude crass political terms it was just
the strength of an incredible set of
people who've come together from all
kinds of places and decided that they're
going to make a go of it and that
they're going to you know try to work
towards the whole bit of idea of the
Preamble of the Constitution towards a
more perfect union and I you know I saw
people doing that every single day
despite all of the things that they
could criticize about the United States
still believing in what they were doing
and believing in the promise of the
country which is what I felt like and
then here we were people would just
treating it like a game and they were
treating peo