← Christiane Amanpour Presents: The Ex Files
Christiane Amanpour Presents: The Ex Files
Negotiating with a dictator: What will end Putin's war in Ukraine?
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- [00:03]
Christiane Amanpour
This is a global Player Original podcast.
- [00:06]
Jamie Rubin
What is his greatest strength and what is his greatest weakness? And I will he asks James of you. I think he's brilliant and he's a brilliant analyst and he's been there through all these and he's willing to think outside the box. I think his greatest weakness is he interrupts me a lot. Which is true. Which is true. So, you know, I'm gonna interrupt you this time.
- [00:32]
Donald Trump
Nothing's going to happen until Putin and I get together, okay? And obviously he wasn't going to go. He was going to go, but he thought I was going to go. He wasn't going if I wasn't there. And I don't believe anything's going to happen, whether you like it or not, until he and I get together. But we're going to have to get it solved because too many people are dying.
- [00:49]
Jamie Rubin
Right? So that was President Trump over the weekend on his Air Force One and talking about these much vaunted potential peace talks in Turkey, which went absolutely nowhere. And that was Trump's conclusion. And, and apparently he is talking to Putin right now, this week.
- [01:07]
Christiane Amanpour
I think the bottom line is it's not up to Trump, it's not up to Zelensky, it's not up to Europe, it's not up to American forces, American Democrats or Republicans. We're going to find out whether Putin wants to stop the war. And so far he doesn't.
- [01:21]
Jamie Rubin
We're going to talk about this. Does, does he? And as you say, so far he hasn't shown any, any indication of moving his positions at all towards some kind of negotiating position. And we're going to ask also, would Biden have made any difference had he still been in office? And of course, that is fraud giving the diagnosis that came down this weekend. And also this new book that talks about his mental acuity. We'll discuss all of that when we get started. Welcome. This is Christiane Amanpour presents the X Files with Jamie Rubin. And I'm Christiane.
- [01:57]
Christiane Amanpour
And I'm Jamie Rubin, two time State Department official most recently for President Biden.
- [02:02]
Jamie Rubin
And I'm a longtime correspondent and anchor for CNN. Spent upwards of 30 years in the field and also with a show interviewing world leaders and trying to hold them to account. We also happen to be a married couple who are now a divorced couple, hence the X Files. And we thought that if we could talk and try to address this chaos that's in the world right now from our different perspectives, journalism at the coal face, diplomacy at the coalface. Well, maybe leaders could try as well and come up with some solutions. But let's get going. Look, we want to ask a couple of things in this episode. What will it take to convince Putin to end the war in Ukraine? That's what Trump wants. Does he have the, you know, the tools to get that done? But I think we have to start with this Shakespearean tragedy that is unfolding around President Biden, who obviously made his first first term, well, his only term, about the soul of the nation battling for the soul of America, but also to protect and defend democracy. And that was shown through his defense and protection of Ukraine. And now he's got a cancer diagnosis. There's a book out which is really casting aspersions on not just his mental acuity, but also on whether there was a cover up in the White House.
- [03:26]
Christiane Amanpour
Well, I've known Joe Biden a long, long time. He was the first politician I ever worked for. I started working for him in 1988. And when I first started working for him, it was interrupted by his brain aneurysm where he nearly died. They had to basically remove his part of his head, fix the aneurysm, his skull, put it back on, and he was out of commission for, I think it was like nine, 10 months. That follows on the tragedies in the Biden family that have been discussed of extensively with the car accident of his wife and kids and then now diagnosed with cancer, apparently treatable. But whether how long is still an open question. Look, in my two years, two and a half years working at the State Department, I worked through Tony Blinken. And yeah, by the time I saw him then, which was, you know, 27 years since I met him, he was a different person. He was slower. He was older. The question of whether that affected his presidency and the politics of it, we can get into.
- [04:26]
Jamie Rubin
Let me say something there because, you know, I have this incredible story around the Iranian American hostages who were wrongfully held in Iran basically as pawns. One of them was my friend is my friend Siomach Namazi. And he had been held by the time he was released for almost eight years. And he had been left behind under various deals, prisoner swap deals under the Obama administration, under the first Trump administration. And now he was desperate. And now they're about three or even five of them there. Long story short, I was trying to do everything I could to get their story out. I sent, I gave a letter to Jill Biden in which I wrote to her asking her to please, you know, inveigh and weigh in with her husband. The President on these poor pawns, Americans who are being held and withering away in the. In the Iranian gulag at Aven. This was when she was in London for King Charles's coronation. So it was May, two years ago, and I asked if I could give her the letter, and her people said yes. So I gave her the letter, and then I didn't hear anything back. Didn't hear anything back. Several months later, Jamie, these Americans were released. It took a little bit of while and a bit of negotiating and money was paid because of the money that was owed the Iranian regime, but they came out, and in my opinion, I don't know why. You may have an idea as to why the president's people potentially weren't getting him this story and putting it in front of him. But when he saw it, action was taken, and they're out.
- [06:02]
Christiane Amanpour
No question. When President Biden was operating for those four years, a lot of Americans were released who were unfairly held around the world. I think that Tony Blinken used to carry a little card in his pocket with the names of all these people. And I watched him check off the list. And, you know, dozens and dozens of Americans from all over. The biggest one, obviously, was with Putin, the prisoner exchange. Someday we may even talk about that. There's some great stories about that. Prisoner releases was something Biden cared about. It was very personal for him, and I'm glad he was able to help. Look, he knew us well. I remember when our son Darius was born, and his. I think it was. He called me up. He was then a senator, and he said, would I ask you on behalf of his wife to give a talk at the University of Delaware? And so I told you about it. And she then spoke to you. And we traveled up to Delaware with Darius. It was his first trip, and we spent the day with the Bidens. That was probably 2000, 2000, spring of 2000. And you got to see him up close in his family situation. You know, he was the first politician I was ever, you know, close to and knew me. I knew his kids. I knew he knew you. He met Darius when Darius was about this big. And later on, he actually asked me to come work for him in. In 2002.
- [07:28]
Jamie Rubin
I remember that. In this. No, not in this house. In the previous house. And he called you and asked you to be chief of staff, right?
- [07:37]
Christiane Amanpour
Yes.
- [07:37]
Jamie Rubin
For when he was chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee.
- [07:40]
Christiane Amanpour
And I said no.
- [07:41]
Jamie Rubin
Caused us to go into an implosion, a family implosion. Oh, my God. Back to the United States Small child, what this, that. And I was the foreign correspondent, chief foreign correspondent all over the world. And you said no. Sometimes I wonder, you know, I mean, I'm slightly tongue in cheek, but maybe not, you know. You know, if you. Had you taken that route, would you have been Secretary of State?
- [08:01]
Christiane Amanpour
But I didn't take the job. And the reason I didn't take the job were multiple. But one of them was we had just left government. I had just eliminated that, you know, sort of 24 hour, seven days a week job. We had a little son. He was 2 years old. And it was. Frankly, I don't know whether you'd agree, but it was the glorious time of our marriage those first several years. And I didn't. It took a lot to make me even think about moving back to Washington, but I ended up saying no. Look, I know there are a lot of Democrats and a lot of journalists who are spending a lot of time saying, what if this? What if that was there cover up? Should we have known? I don't think it was a secret that Biden was aging and that he was slower. And many people saw him. I've talked to Tony Blinken about this as recently as yesterday. Tony told me very flatly, when it came to making decisions about war and peace, about diplomacy, about China, about Putin, about the threat of nuclear use of nuclear weapons in Ukraine, he never saw any indication that Biden's acuity was affected. Was his communicative skills, his performative skills affected? Yeah, but his performances were something I still think we'd be better off having in the White House. The real issue was whether he should run again. And that's what everybody has made a big deal out of. And let's remember, in the end, he didn't run again and he didn't put himself forward.
- [09:28]
Jamie Rubin
He was forced out, and he shouldn't have run again. And he did say he'd be a transitional president. And again, I say it's Shakespearean, you know, it's King Lear. Is the elderly, you know, aging, maybe dying leader who.
- [09:42]
Christiane Amanpour
It's hard to give up power. Nobody's good at it. Look around the world. None of these leaders can give up power. It's very hard.
- [09:48]
Jamie Rubin
It's very, very difficult. Of course, America is a democracy and you have to give up power if you voted out.
- [09:52]
Christiane Amanpour
Right. But voluntarily giving up power is very, very. And he was being asked to do what nobody'd done before was, say, one term. George Washington, two. Ronald Reagan, two. FDR did four, and then they changed the rules, but he was being Asked to give up power. And the whole system is designed to keep, you know, what is effectively like a Roman emperor, the aides, the eunuchs, the people around him to keep that power in place. It's very hard to give it up.
- [10:17]
Jamie Rubin
Aides and eunuchs. Do you got any names?
- [10:20]
Christiane Amanpour
I'm not going to put a name to a eunuch, but I have some in mind.
- [10:25]
Jamie Rubin
So I have a bit of a beef with the whole American political journalism. I mean, can we just please admit that the beltway journalists, I'm sorry, have got almost every election wrong in the last, ever since Trump 2016 for sure, and all the midterms and everything else. But what I thought was really important, that none of us really focused enough on was throughout the last year of Biden, there was this, there's this thing, how do you have faith in the direction of the country? And that was completely off the charts. Bad. People didn't have faith in the way the country was going, what direction it was going. And another thing, you know, the, the lawyer, the special counsel, I guess he was called, was he Ben?
- [11:10]
Christiane Amanpour
That's a different one. Maybe not some other Roman Ben Hur, but. Mr.
- [11:15]
Jamie Rubin
Her. Robert Her? No, no. Mr. Her. Robert Her. So he interviewed him about documents and he came out afterward and he said Biden would likely present himself to a jury as a sympathetic, well meaning elderly man with a poor memory. And that, you know, they describe as like literally the first independent, truthful description of President Biden by a third party. Of course, he was, you know, pilloried by the Democrats. But I remember Mark Thompson, the head of cnn, saying to me in the corridor, we need to get that transcript. Not just the transcript, we need to get the tape or whatever, the recording. And I wonder if we had been able to have it in February of 2024, which is when this interview happened, would the whole dynamic have changed when he came to Normandy and gave a good speech at Pointe du Hoc? I mean, it was a good speech. We all heard it. It wasn't Reagan, but it was a good speech. Pelosi, Nancy Pelosi, you know who, former speaker of the House. She told me then and in con that she felt better about the election. And so this is June of last year, better about the election chances. She saw the White House has a plan. She asked about, you know, rhetorically, and who can elect that man, she said about Donald Trump. But then a couple of years later, sorry, a couple of months later, she came on my program and she said, you know, the bottom line was going to be turnout. And she said that she had a lot of friends and Democratic activists and the usual suspects who told her that their kids weren't going to turn out, they were going to sit out the election. Not that they were necessarily going to vote for Trump, but they were going to sit out the election. So that turnout issue ended up being a big, big issue. But as you say, you can't predict, you know, you can't go back and redo the past.
- [13:03]
Christiane Amanpour
Look, the bottom line though, Christiane, is that, is that we don't know whether the country, the direction of the country was such that they wanted to throw the current occupants party out of power.
- [13:13]
Jamie Rubin
And in the next part of our conversation, I think we're going to ask whether Biden enough in his time in power, given his, you know, willingness to stand up for, you know, Ukraine and democracy, but whether he did enough to put Ukraine over the line, so to speak, in a way that would bring Putin seriously to the table. Because even now with Trump in power, Putin is playing silly buggers with the whole idea of, of, of, of negotiations.
- [13:51]
Christiane Amanpour
All of you know that this week we, we had a real chance to take important steps toward ending this war. If only Putin had not been afraid to come to Turkey.
- [14:03]
Jamie Rubin
Well, Zelenskyy's got it right again because that's exactly what happened. Low level delegation obviously sent on purpose by Putin. And the demands were unacceptable. I mean, they're the old demands about how we're not going to go for a cease unless, unless Kiev pulls out even of territories that Russia hasn't even conquered yet. So these are the same maximalist demands. And now, now, Jamie, they're talking, Europe certainly is talking about potentially showing Putin which way is up by putting secondary or at least expanding the pain of the sanctions.
- [14:39]
Christiane Amanpour
Well, look, this is classic Putin. He is trying to avoid being blamed for not stopping the war and he's worked that very well. Trump has given him every benefit of the doubt, every opportunity to make the right decision. I mean, Zelensky's clearly poking him there by saying he's afraid to come, which he obviously isn't afraid of it. He doesn't want to be put in a position in front of Trump and Zelensky to say no, he'd prefer to keep the war going. And it's clear to me I could be proven wrong in the next few days and happy to be proven wrong. Putin wants to continue this war for some time. His pain threshold has not been reached. He's not ready to make concessions. Our strategy had always been Based on the idea that making Putin understand that for the next several years he's going to face a determined Ukraine military supported by the west, with sanctions on Russia. And at some point, the pain threshold and the tolerance threshold, that's what wars are about. When people are just tired and they're ready to give up. Putin is not ready to give up. And the Ukrainian people aren't going to give up if Putin continues, remember, attacking Ukraine. This war is about military conflict on Ukraine's soil. They're just defending their homes. They'll be happy to stop, but they need the aggressor to stop. And that's what's becoming clear.
- [16:05]
Jamie Rubin
Yeah. Now, the news of this week is that European leaders had a conversation with President Trump ahead of his conversation with President Putin. And we're going to wait to see how that, how that turned out. But there's a little bit of good news for Ukraine. I know it might sound really, you know, small, but it's not. It's big. And that is Romania's election. The president of Romania now, and not the sort of Romanian Maga who the US Was supporting, would have been an.
- [16:34]
Christiane Amanpour
Additional country, making it difficult for Ukraine's military and economic assistance.
- [16:39]
Jamie Rubin
Indeed, indeed, indeed. And Putin was hoping this guy Simeon would win. And he was like a, you know, a typical Orban guy. And the interesting thing is I had the former foreign minister of Ukraine on. I was talking to him this, this past week and he was pretty depressed. And he said, what's going to happen to us is strategic encirclement. In other words, he said, we're going to have Hungary's Orban. They don't like us. They don't want to give us, you know, weapons. We're going to have this new, you know, Putin acolyte in Romania. They might cut off, you know, weapons to us. Then we have Poland, who the government likes us. But the president has been very, very right wing. And now there's a, you know, there's a runoff and it's still looking at.
- [17:23]
Christiane Amanpour
Looking close, looking close.
- [17:25]
Jamie Rubin
But this is good stuff.
- [17:26]
Christiane Amanpour
All of this is about what the essential question in the war is. It's about the willingness to confront to evil for how long? How much pain will the west tolerate? How much money will they spend to support Ukraine? I believe the invasion of Ukraine is the defining moment of my time in government and in foreign affairs. It's the most important thing that's happened certainly since 9 11. For an American to have the large power try to gobble up its neighbor.
- [17:58]
Jamie Rubin
I can repeat that. Because you say it all the time, I love it. Thou shalt not invade thy neighbor.
- [18:03]
Christiane Amanpour
I think it. But it tells you how central this issue is. Is. And so now what's happening is Trump is seeing that Zelensky's prepared to have a ceasefire. Zelensky's prepared to go to Istanbul. Zelenskyy's prepared to be open to all sorts of mineral deals, to flexible solution that will protect his country. He just wants the invasion of his country to stop. And until Putin makes changes.
- [18:26]
Jamie Rubin
No, first. No, hang on just one. One second. That was theater. And frankly, I certainly didn't expect, you know, Putin to show up.
- [18:33]
Christiane Amanpour
Sure.
- [18:33]
Jamie Rubin
But what I want to know is, because this is the important next step, Trump says nothing is going to happen until I meet with Putin. So how is that going to go? I was there when he met with Kim Jong Un and actually nothing happened after that either. So what is going to happen, do you think? What leverage does Trump have right now? And how should he play his cards? And he's talking to the Europeans now. He's not just doing it, you know, just from the US Perspective.
- [19:00]
Christiane Amanpour
Well, let me tell you what, what we would have advised a Biden to do in this situation. Remember, we had two and a half years, almost three years of support for Ukraine. We built up Europeans, NATO support, NATO grew, all the NATO countries together confronting Russia. We wanted Putin to face the prospect of many more years of a grinding war in which he won't get much territory and will have this painful sanctions on him. And remember, a million Russian soldiers have been killed or wounded in this war. A million. So until Putin faces.
- [19:39]
Jamie Rubin
That's according to definitely UK intelligence, just so that we're clear.
- [19:42]
Christiane Amanpour
But think about it. If unless Trump is able to persuade Putin that a failure to make peace will bring more pain to him, he's going to continue the war. And I think we're going to find this summit of. But my guess, and I hope I'm wrong, but my guess is it's going to be a lot like the Kim Jong Il thing or Kim Jong Un that you talked about, where they had Kim Jong Un. Thank you. Thank you. I knew I got it slightly wrong. Thank you for that correction, madam. That summit was high in theater. A lot of substance was thrown out, but nothing happened. I don't see any reason to think that Putin is going to fundamentally change his point of view. I think he's hoping to just persuade Trump to keep the pressure on Zelensky and. But the direction of this has all been where Trump is Slowly realizing that his dream of being able to win a Nobel Prize by ending the war in Ukraine is a lot tougher than he thought. And I don't think we're gonna have peace until he, Trump, realizes that he's gotta go all in on Ukraine's side, the victim.
- [20:43]
Jamie Rubin
And just to be clear, it's not because he needs to like the victim or bond with Zelenskyy. It's because it's the right transactional deal to do. Right. To put the pressure, to put his cards as leverage. I mean, he's the President of the United States of America against the invaders, against the Russians.
- [21:03]
Christiane Amanpour
They see the pain. Yep. And so if sanctions. So if sanctions are increased by the Europeans, even if not by the United States, and if we can get over. You know, one of the mysteries of this Trump administration, to me, is he seems to care about American manufacturing. The one industry he doesn't seem to care about is the defense industry. Right now, if he cared about the defense industry, I think we would find him able to leverage European money to buy American weapons. And that would put pressure on Ukraine. I'm sorry, on Russia to compromise on Ukraine and be good for the American defense industry and would help us deal with the fact that Russia and China have these huge militaries. Remember, the biggest military buildup in the world going on right now is in China with nuclear forces, strategic missiles, ships, all of that. That's beyond the Russian threat. So our defense industry should be getting a lot of attention from Trump. And for some reason, it's the one industry he doesn't seem to care about.
- [22:05]
Jamie Rubin
Except in a weird way, there seems to be a lot of cuts. But Europe to buy American weapons to give to Ukraine? Is that what you're saying?
- [22:13]
Christiane Amanpour
That's my. That's what. If I were really transactional, if I were working for Trump right now, that's what I'd tell them. Look, you have the Europeans willing to do things they weren't will willing to do before. They're willing to spend money they weren't willing to spend. They're talking about 3%, 4% of GDP. They're talking about spending hundreds of billions of dollars on European arms. Well, why don't you tell them that we're prepared to give Ukraine the continuation of aid from America, not just intelligence, but the right weapons. But leverage the Europeans to buy those weapons from us and used by Ukraine, be good for our industry, good for the European desire to get America on the side of Ukraine, which is what the Europeans would want. And I bet you could get them to spend half of the money they're planning to spend on European defense, on American weapons, and talk about a good deal for the United States. That's what.
- [23:03]
Jamie Rubin
But it's also a bit of a shame that your administration didn't finish the job. I mean, didn't you guys essentially kick the can down, down the road? You could have done all of this. You could have given more weapons and at a better time when they were requested, instead of. No, no, no, no. Yes. And done a lot more to bring Putin earlier to this state of pain, this, you know, threshold of pain or the balance of pain that you're talking about. Look, the simple answer is, yes, we.
- [23:32]
Christiane Amanpour
Could have done more. Sure, we could have done more. I think, you know, Secretary Blinken, who I worked for, was probably the principal advocate of every single one of the weapon systems you're thinking of, which was the. The tanks or the aircraft or the ATACMS missiles. He was the advocate for them early and. And all of that stuff. I would point out, however, madam, that one of the things the.
- [23:58]
Jamie Rubin
Madam is coming, one of the deadly Madam we.
- [24:01]
Christiane Amanpour
That we could have given earlier were cluster munitions. And you were against that. You and I had a phone call in which you were against cluster.
- [24:10]
Jamie Rubin
Yes, because it's a desperate measure, because the other stuff wasn't sent. It's a desperate measure.
- [24:16]
Christiane Amanpour
I think you're wrong. I think defending territory and your home allows you to make a decision. What is the right weapon system? The Swedes, the Finns, the Norwegians, they use it in South Korea. We use it because it's the best way to prevent someone from attacking your territory. The Ukrainians can make a judgment over whether the remaining weapons are a risk to their civilian population, which was what the issue was. They're not illegal. It's just that some countries have decided to ban them. Cluster munitions, meaning basically mines that attack personnel. And there's a fear that if they don't explode during the conflict, after the war, they're a threat to civilians. So there's been campaigning around the world to prevent landmines with cluster munitions from being used. But that would be an example of something we could have done earlier that people that you have to admit, including yourself, were against. But I would agree with you that I wished we had given more weapons early. But President Biden has calculations that I can't appreciate. You know, we talk about this really easily, but it's truth. Putin was threatening to use nuclear weapons, and that is a very realist.
- [25:25]
Jamie Rubin
He was dangling, but it was dangling.
- [25:27]
Christiane Amanpour
And we overcame these threats and maybe we didn't do it quick enough. But I think Biden's theory, and I worked for him in the 80s and I know him, was, was that we need to keep NATO together, that as we proceed down the path of giving more and more weaponry, we have to do it as an alliance, all of us together.
- [25:44]
Jamie Rubin
Well, for record, I was for Patriots and all other anti missile systems. I was for a no fly zone. I was for long range missiles, I was for tanks, I was for all that stuff to support no fly zone.
- [25:57]
Christiane Amanpour
So you want American weapons fighting?
- [26:00]
Jamie Rubin
I just think there should, there should be, there's, there's all sorts of ways to do a no fly zone. America did it in Iraq, America's done it elsewhere.
- [26:08]
Christiane Amanpour
Right. We weren't facing the Russians.
- [26:10]
Jamie Rubin
You don't know whether they would have been so bold as to use their planes. You don't know.
- [26:15]
Christiane Amanpour
But it's a real problem. Military would. You know what the US military would tell you about a no fly zone? They would say in order to put a no fly zone in place, you have to bomb the Russian anti aircraft systems. That would threaten our planes or else. I know, but that was so we would have to attack the Russian anti aircraft systems before we put in place a no fly zone. Biden wasn't prepared to do that. That would put the United States at war with the Russians and I think that would have been a mistake and it wasn't necessary to defend Ukraine. We'll continue, we'll continue to disagree agreeably about that.
- [26:49]
Jamie Rubin
So in the final part of our conversation, we're going to talk about Putin, more about Putin and how do we get here with Putin. And Jamie, you can talk about how you and Madeleine Albright were the first Americans to meet Putin when he, when he rose to power. And we can talk about whether there were any missed opportunities to stop these war mongering instincts.
- [27:14]
Christiane Amanpour
Foreign.
- [27:19]
Jamie Rubin
Welcome back. Christiana Manpour presents the X Files. And there is Jamie Rubin also with me. So you know, we could say how did Putin become such a monster? But we also have to say that half the world is on his side. The global south believes Putin's whole narrative about, you know, fighting off imperialism and you know, that whole thing, they don't believe in the Ukrainian victim. So we need to accept that he's not the global bogeyman. Tell us first, Jamie, because it's so instructive the character of this KGB official.
- [27:55]
Christiane Amanpour
Yeah, I was lucky enough, I think it was 2000 or 1999. I can't remember which Madeleine Albright was sent as Secretary of State to meet this new figure who had replaced Yeltsin, who was in the hospital and was expected to. To replace Yeltsin as the leader of Russia. I think he was called acting President or something like that. When we went on the trip, she visited Yeltsin, the hospital, and then we go into the Putin meeting. And I have to say, two things about that meeting strike me as really revealing all these years later. The first was his brutality. So when he went through the list of issues, he was talking about Chechnya and the war they were fighting against Chechnya. And I remember he said, we're going to destroy those Chechen rebels down to units as small as a dozen. That means they were gonna track down and kill every single rebel, no matter how small the number of people were in their. In their field. I mean, that's a brutal thought to imagine. But the weird part of the meeting was how manipulative he was, how he was trying to sort of manipulate Madeleine by sneaking the press in without telling us. And then instead of. Of critiquing our policy as would be expected, he said, oh, he's very worried that Mrs. Albright is going to be very tough on him and is going to press him very hard on the Chechnya issue. And he knows she's a really tough lady. And then as soon as the cameras left the room, he had this sort of weird smile on his face. I did that as a favor for you, Mrs. Albright. I know you like to look tough. That's a. I went in hundreds of meetings with foreign leaders. I never had that experience where the opposite number was using the press in such a manipulative way to try to get at what they thought was some weakness or unusual quality of the interlocutor, that she liked to look tough. And he was saying, you know, he doesn't care if you look tough here. He'll give you that. But I know what you need, and that's why I gave it to you.
- [29:52]
Jamie Rubin
It's weird. And also here saying that I'm tougher than you are, and I'm going to. I'm going to, you know, maybe speak nicely and act in a different way. Remember what the famous story with Angela Merkel when he knew that she hated dogs? She was afraid she'd been bitten. And he didn't bring some little pooch in. He brings this gigantic, you know, big dog. I don't know whether there's a Rottweiler. She tells a great story about how she knew what he was doing, and she was damned if she was gonna flinch. So she really gathered all the strength that she possibly had. Kind of looked straight ahead, didn't look at the dog, didn't look at Putin. And finally the dog was ushered out. But she brazened him out.
- [30:34]
Christiane Amanpour
You mentioned murder, Merkel, but let's think about that. She did brazen him out. But Merkel was responsible for the essential policy that brought us to where we are today. The German government believed for dozens of years that they could bring Russia into the west through economic engagement and through buying their gas, buying their oil, buying their energy. And it was Merkel who was the leader of that policy, who really believed that somehow everything would be fine if we just integrated our economies. And it took her a long. She still and admitted that her decisions fed into Putin's decision to invade Ukraine. And look, there's a lot of moments we could go back on and try to figure out what we could have done differently. One of them was the famous red line in Syria where President Obama threatened to use force. Then he didn't use force in Syria.
- [31:26]
Jamie Rubin
And what happened when Syria used chemical weapons.
- [31:28]
Christiane Amanpour
Correct. And what happened is the Russians went in and defended Assad. And that was the beginning of Putin realizing he could roll over the West. And then a few years, he invaded Ukraine the first time by taking Crimea and starting a war in the East. And then a few years later, he intervened in our election in 2016. And very little pain.
- [31:49]
Jamie Rubin
I did a documentary in 2007, 2008, called Czar Putin and I'd gone to Russia.
- [31:55]
Christiane Amanpour
Just the name is controversial.
- [31:57]
Jamie Rubin
I know we did it on purpose because that's what we were discovering. Putin, of course, did not give us an interview. He's never given an interview to a real journalist. Well, now I'm not going to say.
- [32:07]
Christiane Amanpour
Real journalist, but somebody who's well compared to Tucker Carlson.
- [32:10]
Jamie Rubin
Well, okay. But anyway, his moves then were incredibly prescient. You know, he was rehabilitating Stalin in history books and in and in classes. There was this Putin youth that was being set up. It was like old school nationalism. We could just see it unfolding right, right in front of our eyes. You know, now people are saying that he's moving more and more towards a really closed dictatorship. But then, you know, he was. Because right that year, his so called electoral terms were up. You know, it'd been, you know, two terms of four years. And what did he do? He came up with this idea to swap jobs with his acolyte who was then the Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev. Yeah, and then they did that kind of stuff, that kind of, you know, swap scenes.
- [32:56]
Christiane Amanpour
But remember, this guy has it, has it in his DNA. One of the weirdest fun facts that I discovered reading a history book of Stalin was that ready for this? Vladimir Lenin, the founder of Russia, was the most important Russian by, you know, was considered a godlike figure during the revolution. He lived by himself and he had two people who took care of him all day long, a woman and a man. The man was the cook and sort of housekeeper of some kind or gardening or whatever. That was Vladimir Putin's grandfather. Imagine that. So Vladimir Putin grew up with stories about Vladimir Lenin and the power of the so called czar of Russia, the leader of Russia, even though it wasn't called a czar. And so I think that idea of a Russian ruler of total dominance is something that he's understood since he was a little boy. So this guy has a lot of weird history and there's a lot of people who've made mistakes. George W. Bush looked into his soul, he said, and he trusted him. Obama, you know, big decision was to tell Putin to cut it out. As if Putin was going to listen to him. We all collectively failed as a West to realize the danger from Putin a lot earlier.
- [34:11]
Jamie Rubin
Putin, you remember, famously said the collapse of the Soviet Union was one of the greatest geopolitical tragedies of the, or the greatest geopolitical tragedy of the 20th century. But just this week, he has shown exactly who he is. And it's a cautionary tale to those people who are in occupied territories in Ukraine. In about 2008, in the waning days of the George W. Bush administration, he invaded neighboring Georgia and he took bits of Ossetia and this and that. And for years these bits remained the most benighted, the least developed, the most poor parts of Georgia. Because you think the Russians were going to do something nice for this occupied territory? No, they didn't. And only now, you know, close to 20 years later, has he offered them the ability to, if they want, apply for Russian citizenship. So that's the tale, you know, for anybody who says that the Ukrainians should accept, you know, Russian, Russian occupation. They know they don't want it.
- [35:12]
Christiane Amanpour
Remember, the collective failure to me is demonstrated by this incredible anecdote I remember from the Obama years that someone who was involved told me the story after the war in 2014, the only thing they were prepared to send was humanitarian aid to Ukraine. At the last minute, the Obama White House calls over in a panic that we're going to use a military transport plane to send these humanitarian goods and that might give the Russians the wrong impression. And so the plane is canceled. This poor schmo has to hire a German freight company to send American meals ready to eat all the way to Ukraine because Obama's White House was afraid to send the signal that using a military transport plane would, would, would send. Look, we'll find out soon, but I think without Putin understanding that he faces a long term war with the west supporting Ukraine and increasing sanctions, I don't think he's going to change his position and the war will continue.
- [36:14]
Jamie Rubin
Agreed. On that note, we're out of here. You've. You scored a lot of points with a lot of Democrats. You're going to be very, very unpopular.
- [36:21]
Christiane Amanpour
Lucidity and truth has to be told.
- [36:29]
Jamie Rubin
Okay, James P. Reuben, my ex. Goodbye. I think you may have to say something. You can't just wave on a podcast.
- [36:40]
Christiane Amanpour
Goodbye.
- [36:42]
Jamie Rubin
Thanks for listening to this episode. And don't forget, our next episode will be out next week on Tuesday. In the meantime, on Thursday. Thursday, you can find our bonus episode where we're answering your questions. And if you have any questions for us, don't forget, you can always send them to us on social media or@amanpur pod or email amanpourpodlobal.com.
- [37:05]
Christiane Amanpour
All right. Hair acceptable. I know what I didn't do. I didn't put on my powder.
- [37:10]
Jamie Rubin
Oh, God. See, he's turning around. He's doing it sort of like. Like the blushing bride.
- [37:16]
Christiane Amanpour
Exactly. Right. What? I am a blushing bride.
- [37:19]
Jamie Rubin
Where exactly are you?
- [37:21]
Christiane Amanpour
I'm in Long island and I can't remember the wife of Tony Soprano's name.
- [37:26]
Jamie Rubin
Okay, but the act, it's Carmela.
- [37:29]
Christiane Amanpour
Carmela's kitchen.
- [37:30]
Jamie Rubin
Even I know and I've never been there.
- [37:35]
Christiane Amanpour
This is a global Player original podcast.