Source: Politics<\/p>\n
When you look at the major diplomatic events of the last thirty years, Derek Chollet has experienced them all. He\u2019s worked with legends like James Baker, Strobe Talbott and Richard Holbrooke and served in some of the highest echelons of the White House, the Pentagon and the U.S. Department of State. From Bosnia to Syria \u2014 and now Russia \u2014 Chollet has helped to shape America\u2019s approaches to its policy abroad.<\/p>\n
Today, Playbook co-author Ryan Lizza sits down with Chollet, who\u2019s currently the Counselor of the Department of State, to dig into Foggy Bottom\u2019s approach to helping Ukraine and handling Putin. <\/p>\n
Transcribed excerpts from that conversation are below, edited for length and readability.<\/p>\n
Ryan Lizza: There\u2019s a famous memo that Mondale wrote about the vice presidency. I know Biden and Ron Klain, who\u2019s a student of the vice presidency, often talk about this. Anyone who\u2019s going to be vice president references back to the Mondale memo. Because Mondale\u2019s advice for any incoming vice president was, \u201cYou don\u2019t want to run anything. You just want to be an adviser to the president.\u201d You want to be the last person in the room. You don\u2019t want to be bogged down with bureaucratic bullshit of running White House you know… That\u2019s what\u2019s unique about your position.<\/p>\n
As we get into the weeds on the Ukraine crisis, I wonder if one way to help us understand the perspective of you and Blinken is to take us through some of the major decisions that this administration has had to make since the start of the crisis. Maybe just start with saying what is the start of the crisis from your perspective. Is it when the first troops started going toward that border? Don\u2019t take us back 100 years.<\/p>\n
Counselor Derek Chollet: I vividly recall having a conversation with a colleague in October of last year that this could be a presidency-defining moment.<\/p>\n
Lizza: October of 2021?<\/p>\n
Chollet: October of 2021. That\u2019s when we first started seeing indications of what the Russians were up to. And early on, none of this was public obviously and it wasn\u2019t yet getting picked up by commercial imagery to see Russian troop deployments. We were picking up through intelligence \u2014<\/p>\n
Lizza: You guys weren\u2019t talking about it at all?<\/p>\n
Chollet: We weren\u2019t talking about that yet at all. We started to talk about it in the end of October. In fact, it was at the G-20 Summit in Italy where Biden did a short meeting with the Chancellor of Germany, the Prime Minister of the U.K., the President of France, and it might have been the Italian Prime Minister. They talked about a variety of things but of them was these indications that we were starting to see.<\/p>\n
So we were watching it then. Of course, there were all kinds of warning signs. Nothing was foreordained. So this got our attention and we started to watch it build. Starting at the end of October, we started to talk to allies and partners about what we were seeing and progressively share more and more information. It was then in mid-November. I remember this because I was in Brussels in mid-November after meetings in Bosnia and coincidentally that day, Avril Haines was briefing the North Atlantic Council, NATO\u2019s governing body, on the intelligence. This is a long way of saying we understood early on that if what we were seeing turned out to be true, this would be a game changer.<\/p>\n
Of course, we also understood that we needed to do everything we could to prevent that from happening. Part of the diplomatic effort and the time we were given by having this early heads-up, and as we watched the evidence continue to build of what Russia was doing, we used that time to try to find a diplomatic off ramp.<\/p>\n
Blinken worked tirelessly with allies to try to engage the Russians in some meaningful way and really make it clear that we were trying our best to find some diplomatic way out and test whether the Russians were actually interested in any diplomacy. It turns out they weren\u2019t. We had low expectations, whether they were, but we felt like we needed to get caught trying. Then in parallel, to make clear, that the consequences would be swift and severe if Russia were to act, and so to use that time to build up the coalition to impose sanctions if Russia were to act, to further their isolation. All of the things you\u2019ve seen play out over the past several weeks were things that were put into train from November, December, January.<\/p>\n
Lizza: When did you decide to go very public with the intelligence? A lot of the story of this conflict from the American side is very quick declassification of very sensitive stuff. Putting it out in the public domain. Can you take us through that process a little bit or the sort of strategic thinking behind it?<\/p>\n
Chollet: There were a couple of purposes for it. First, all credit really needs to go to Haines, the Director of National Intelligence, Bill Burns, the Director of CIA, who really pushed their buildings to do things that are uncomfortable for them. It\u2019s no secret, no pun intended, why intelligence agencies aren\u2019t necessarily enthusiasts of making this public in this way. You have to be very careful about even what you do make public.<\/p>\n
Lizza: Because any time you\u2019re disclosing intelligence\u2026<\/p>\n
Chollet: There\u2019s always a risk that you\u2019re disclosing how that intelligence is gathered, right? I think there were a couple goals here. One was to clearly try to prepare the American people, our allies, the world for what was happening and to explain what we were seeing happening. Because the other interesting piece of this is some of this was in plain sight. I mean, you had commercial satellites releasing images of Russian troop deployments around Ukraine or inside Belarus. So to explain what we were seeing because of course the Russians were out there saying, \u201cWell, this is all just an exercise and we have no intention of doing anything. This is all just made up.\u201d I mean, really up until the day they invaded, they were saying that our claims were bogus, which obviously events have proven them to be very true. The other piece of it was to try to slow them down, to buy time, to get in their head a little bit.<\/p>\n
Lizza: How so?<\/p>\n
Chollet: Well, to the extent that when you can expose some of their playbook, it makes it harder for them to execute their playbook. And also it conditions everyone to understand what\u2019s happening given that we know Russia\u2019s playbook \u2014 it\u2019s a well-established playbook and it goes back to Soviet times \u2014 is to create false flags, to create pretext that then they use as a justification for their actions.<\/p>\n
Blinken gave a speech to the U.N. Security Council in February prior to the Russian invasion. It was something that we had decided to do, he had decided to do, the evening before, to deliver a speech in which he laid out in great detail the scenario in which we would expect to see Russia create a pretext for a possible invasion. If you go back and look at that speech and read it today, you see that it played out almost to the syllable in terms of what Russia did. Everything from a claim of some event inside Ukraine to a staged security council meeting of the Russian senior \u2014 we saw that play out on TV. So that was an attempt both to show them we were onto them but it was a way to try to condition everyone to what was coming. Now, the venue for that speech was not lost on us.<\/p>\n
Lizza: For his speech.<\/p>\n
Chollet: For Blinken\u2019s speech. The historic horseshoe of the U.N. Security Council where we\u2019re talking about sensitive intelligence about a possible military conflict. The venue was not lost on us, given another Secretary of State who had spoken there in 2003 in a very different context.<\/p>\n
Lizza: You\u2019re talking about\u2026<\/p>\n
Chollet: Colin Powell\u2019s speech to the U.N.<\/p>\n
Lizza: \u2026speech before the war.<\/p>\n
Chollet: Before the war in Iraq.<\/p>\n
Lizza: Where he held up the vial.<\/p>\n
Chollet: The famous speech. Blinken referenced that speech bleakly. He said\u2026<\/p>\n
Lizza: That wasn\u2019t Powell\u2019s greatest moment.<\/p>\n
Chollet: He didn\u2019t say that. I think objectively that\u2019s probably true. But what he said is, \u201cI know you, the world, have heard from other Secretaries of State in this historic room talking about intelligence.\u201d He said some version of, \u201cI want to be wrong.\u201d This is something where the consequences would be so profound, we would be happy to be wrong.<\/p>\n
I remember talking to a colleague from Europe in the lead up to the invasion and this person had texted me to say they were worried of the consequences to American credibility and leadership if we were wrong about all of this. Again, remember, even up until the bombs started dropping, people were thinking, \u201cThis can\u2019t be true. Putin\u2019s not going to do this.\u201d And believe me, sometimes I was looking at the intelligence and thinking to myself, \u201cThis can\u2019t be true. This seems so\u2026crazy.\u201d But nevertheless, we were reading what we were reading here. But this person said, \u201cI would be really worried about the blow to U.S. credibility if you\u2019re wrong.\u201d And I said, \u201cLook\u201d\u2014<\/p>\n
Lizza: If he what? If he doesn\u2019t go in?<\/p>\n
Chollet: If he doesn\u2019t go in, or if he goes in and it\u2019s sort of a really small effort or something like that. I responded to this person saying, \u201cYou know, I would accept that cost, that our credibility would take a hit if we turn out to be wrong. I don\u2019t think we\u2019re wrong. I\u2019m 99 percent sure we\u2019re right.\u201d<\/p>\n
But then when the invasion unfortunately happened the way we were thinking it would, I thought the reverse of that, which is, given all the United States has been through over last the several decades, unfortunately these terrible events have enhanced our leadership position because there\u2019s a lot of partners around the world who said, \u201cHey, we were listening to everything you said. We took you on your word this was happening but we still didn\u2019t really believe it. Now it\u2019s not only happened but it\u2019s happened exactly the way you said.\u201d And it\u2019s a huge intelligence triumph. I can\u2019t think of a parallel in American history where the intelligence community got it so right.<\/p>\n
Lizza: I was going to ask you about that. There was a sort of \u201cboy who cried wolf\u201d quality to the way not the rest of the world, but that some parts of the world were viewing this. I remember watching this as an outsider wondering \u201cWas this a strategic thing? They surely believe what the satellite imagery shows.\u201d But why was there so much skepticism and surprise, even in Ukraine?<\/p>\n
Some of the reports from southern and eastern Ukraine are of \u2014 and I don\u2019t know if it\u2019s just because they\u2019re watching more Russian media \u2014 people who really didn\u2019t know that this was coming. You see some of the reports from the cities, people fleeing. I\u2019ve heard some people say, \u201cWell, for all the praise that Zelenskyy gets, [there\u2019s] some criticism that he should have prepared Ukrainians more for this.\u201d But it wasn\u2019t just Ukraine. Germany seemed skeptical. Can you talk a little bit about that skepticism and what explains it?<\/p>\n
Chollet: I think there\u2019s several explanations for it. Obviously, not everyone had the full benefit of the information we had. We were sharing a lot, perhaps more than ever before, but we weren\u2019t sharing everything. And even for those of us who were able to see everything in terms of our intelligence, there was still something unbelievable about all this. Because the thought, you know, why would a country launch an unproved premeditated attack in this way that is going to have clear massive consequences, not just for Ukraine but for Russia and destabilize the world.<\/p>\n
I get it. I get why people had a hard time sort of seeing. I mean, I think there were a lot of Russians who were really surprised by this, including Russian government officials who didn\u2019t think that this was going to unfold the way it did. I think part of it is not having the benefit of full information. Part of it is just the difficulty to imagine something like this happening. I mean, the fact that we are now living through what is the greatest security crisis in Europe since the Second World War, the greatest refugee crisis in Europe since the Second World War. There\u2019s a lot of us who don\u2019t have that direct memory. Even if you think back to what we\u2019ve lived through just in the last few years in terms of a one-in-a-century pandemic, an attack on the Capitol unlike any we\u2019d seen since 1812. These things can happen. Now a war in Europe, that we haven\u2019t seen the likes of which since the Second World War.<\/p>\n
Lizza: Yeah. Every crazy thing has happened in the world so there\u2019s no reason to think that \u2014 you know, we\u2019re not immune to history.<\/p>\n
Chollet: Right.<\/p>\n
Lizza: We were talking about our kids before. I was having this conversation with my kids who are 15 and 13 and really trying to explain what\u2019s going on. And the 13-year-old said something like, \u201cWell, Dad, how come I never experience this kind of thing here? How come this doesn\u2019t affect me?\u201d He was really having trouble wrapping his mind around the fact that far away, bad things happen. But his life \u2014 comfortable D.C. existence, absent his drum teacher who stormed the Capitol \u2014 [this] doesn\u2019t affect him.<\/p>\n
Chollet: Yeah. But I think what\u2019s interesting about this\u2014<\/p>\n
Lizza: You probably have this conversation with your kids, too.<\/p>\n
Chollet: Sure, yeah.<\/p>\n
Lizza: Because you\u2019re in the business of trying to make bad situations better.<\/p>\n
Chollet: Yeah. Look, I think one of the things that shocked the world is, this was not in my view an accurate perception, but there was a perception that Europe was kind of fixed. Europe had had a terrible history in the 19th and 20th century, tremendous blood shed, but it was more or less at peace. Okay, yes, you had the Balkans. Yes, you certainly had Russia\u2019s incursion, initial invasion in Ukraine eight years ago. There were pockets of instability, but in general Europe was fixed and the challenges were elsewhere. Post 9\/11, it was the Middle East, it was Afghanistan. Certainly in the last several years, it\u2019s been a lot of focus on Asia Pacific or Indo-Pacific, which I think is correct strategically. But the sense that this kind of thing wouldn\u2019t happen in Europe anymore. So I think that\u2019s part of what\u2019s shaken everyone.<\/p>\n
Also, it\u2019s a reminder of how interconnected we are because there\u2019s not a corner of the world that is not affected by this, whether it\u2019s measured by energy prices or a food security crisis that is likely coming because of the number of countries around the world from Europe to Africa to Latin America who rely a great deal on exports from Russia or Ukraine in terms of wheat and grain.<\/p>\n
Lizza: Help us think through what the most difficult decisions the administration has faced so far on this. What\u2019s been the hardest call you think the president\u2019s had to make with the help of folks like you and the Secretary?<\/p>\n
Chollet: It\u2019s sort of where to start when you think about hard calls. But I think the toughest line to navigate here, the president\u2019s been very clear that the U.S. is not going to be militarily involved in Ukraine \u2014 directly. The escalation threat and danger is real. At the same time, we want to do everything we can to support Ukraine, in terms of humanitarian assistance, economic assistance, political support, as well as military support. The United States and our partners are providing a tremendous amount of military support to the Ukrainians.<\/p>\n
Again, trying to think of historical parallels, I cannot think of a parallel where we have provided so much assistance in such a short period of time in a conflict in which we are not a combatant. Last week alone, the president allocated a billion dollars \u2014 just in one week \u2014 for security assistance. And that\u2019s on top of a billion dollars in the previous year. So a couple billion dollars of security assistance and that\u2019s anti-armor, anti-tank, anti-aircraft, ammunition. Again, that\u2019s not just the United States. It\u2019s us with other partners adding into what we\u2019re providing.<\/p>\n
Lizza: So that balance drives every decision basically? How do you help the Ukrainians without starting a war with Russia?<\/p>\n
Chollet: Maintaining the escalation dynamic, right. You don\u2019t want to widen the war. That\u2019s a fundamental kind of balance point that we\u2019re all trying to navigate.<\/p>\n
Lizza: One thing we were talking about before we came over here as a discussion point is, watching from the outside, the drama that played out with the MiGs and that whole strange process versus what\u2019s been announced more recently with the S-300s that Slovakia is going to be back-filled. Now Slovakia is going to send these anti-aircraft weapons.<\/p>\n
Chollet: Which are Russian-made anti-aircraft weapons, which the Ukrainians can operate.<\/p>\n
Lizza: And we\u2019re okay with that. In a balance, the escalatory\u2026what was the phrase you used?<\/p>\n
Chollet: Escalatory ladder.<\/p>\n
Lizza: Right. We are okay with that and these are systems that can take out Russian planes at high altitudes or force them to fly lower so that they can take them out with the shoulder-mounted rockets.<\/p>\n
We\u2019re okay with that. But the MiG deal, for whatever reason, we were not okay with, but which would have accomplished the same thing: a plane taking out a Russian plane. I guess what I\u2019m trying to get at is, none of these are clear-cut easy cases for you guys, but can you tell us a little bit about the distinction between those two cases?<\/p>\n
Chollet: So, first, to be clear, the United States does not have an inventory of Russian-made MiGs, the airplanes. So these are other countries who\u2026<\/p>\n
Lizza: Well, we get a say in some of these discussions.<\/p>\n
Chollet: Well, not necessarily. I mean, it\u2019s sovereign decisions whether these countries want to provide this capability, as is the case with some of the countries providing the anti-aircraft capability. They\u2019re saying, \u201cThese are protecting us,\u201d meaning if I\u2019m country X and I\u2019ve got a Soviet-made anti-aircraft capability that I\u2019m going to give up \u2014<\/p>\n
Lizza: They\u2019re not just in a warehouse \u2014 they\u2019re being used!<\/p>\n
Chollet: Yeah. It\u2019s actually being used. It\u2019s like protecting my country so I want to make sure I\u2019ve got something to backfill that because I\u2019m going to give this up for Ukraine. So there\u2019s nothing preventing any country from providing that capability. That\u2019s thing one. Thing two is the judgment of our intelligence community and of our military was that that would be escalatory.<\/p>\n
Lizza: The MiGs would be escalatory?<\/p>\n
Chollet: And I think in part because of the power projection. It\u2019s the defense-offense difference in weaponry.<\/p>\n
Lizza: Got it. I see.<\/p>\n
Chollet: So defensive systems versus systems that could be offensive. What\u2019s interesting too is what you\u2019re seeing on a lot of the Russian air attacks, and the Pentagon\u2019s briefed a lot of this, is that a lot of the Russian air attacks is what\u2019s in the lingo called \u201cstandoff.\u201d So they\u2019re actually taking place not because they\u2019re flying over Ukraine. The actual Russian air is still over Russian territory firing into Ukraine. And a lot of the air attacks we\u2019ve seen, most of them are through missiles. These are things that MiGs or a no-fly zone actually wouldn\u2019t do much to prevent.<\/p>\n
Lizza: Right. Like that attack in western Ukraine was from\u2026<\/p>\n
Chollet: Was fired from an aircraft over Russian territory that lobbed into Ukraine.<\/p>\n
Lizza: So MiGs wouldn\u2019t have done anything.<\/p>\n
Chollet: So the way I kind of think about it \u2014 I used to work at the Pentagon. In the Pentagon, you think of requirements. What are the requirements you\u2019re trying to meet? So yes, there is a threat from the air into Ukraine. Where is that threat coming from? What can we do to mitigate against that threat? The judgment right now \u2014 and let\u2019s be clear, this is a dynamic conflict and war will take twists and turns that I can\u2019t predict yet. But right now, the principal threat from the air could be met by these anti-aircraft systems, either the ones that we are providing or the ones that our partners can provide, some of these Russian-made systems.<\/p>\n