Pivot Extra: Timothy Snyder on America’s Superpower Suicide

Meet Clavio, your brand's new best friend. With all your data in one place, Clavio knows you and your customers. It's AI agents build campaigns from one prompt and answer questions 24/7. Always on brand, always with your okay. Go to klaviyo.com/bestfriends. Running a business shouldn't feel like surviving a software group project, one app for accounting, another for inventory, another for sales, and somehow, none of them talk to each other. That's where Oda comes in, and all-in-one business management software that brings every part of your business together. From sales and accounting to inventory and marketing, all-in-one powerful platform. No messy integrations, no bouncing between tabs, and best of all, no spreadsheets. Stop managing software and start managing your business with one unified system. Try for free today at odu.com/vox. That's odl.o.com/vox Support for the show comes from CoreWeave. Everywhere you look, AI is expanding what we thought was possible, and at the center of it all is CoreWeave. Medical research and diagnosis, education, complex visual effects for movies, science and technology breakthroughs, CoreWeave powers AI pioneers around the world with purpose-built tech, building what's never been built before. CoreWeave is the essential cloud for AI, ready for anything, ready for AI. To learn more about how CoreWeave powers the world's best AI, go to CoreWeave.com/ready for anything. If there's one thing fans ask us for, it's more Kara and Scott. That's right. Well, anyways, we'd like to think that. So, we're giving it to you. Starting this week, we'll have an extra audio episode dropping in your feed on Sunday from the extended Kara and Scott universe. So, if you're going into withdrawal over the weekend, you can check out an episode of Profty Conversations right here in your pivot feed. And for more conversations like this one, listen and follow the ProftyPod wherever you get your podcasts. Welcome to the 415th episode of the ProftyPod. Today's episode, we speak with a Profty favorite Timothy Snyder, a leading historian of authoritarianism, Ukraine and Eastern Europe. We discussed with Tim where Russia's war on Ukraine stands, what twin-linguist support means on the ground. What we can learn from our carny standing up to Trump and what's at stake in the upcoming midterms. I've said this before, "Professor Snyder is a role model." I think he's unafraid, incredibly smart, leveraging his domain as a historian, but really profound impact on the world today and how we view some of the most important issues in our society. Anyways, with that, we hope you enjoy our conversation with Professor Timothy Snyder. Professor, where does this podcast find you? I'm in Toronto. I'm just back from a long trip to Ukraine, but now I'm in Toronto. It's nice. I've heard that Toronto has a WMBA expansion team, is that right? Well, I actually just saw one of the last games of the season. Yeah, they got blown out by the New York Liberty, but yeah, it was fun to watch. I was at an event this weekend and I met a guy who's a, you know, legendary basketball player and his daughter, her name is Kiki Smith, is on the team. So all of a sudden, I'm following. Oh, she's a fan favorite. I can assure you of that. Oh, yeah. I didn't expect to talk to you about it. I'm sure you didn't expect to talk about this. Let's bust right into your domain. You were just in Karkiv, in Northeastern Ukraine, less than a minute from Russia by missile anyways. And since you got home, you've been releasing 10 Karkiv meditation videos. You recorded there at night on cowardice, courage, freedom, and fascism. What? Why are you in Ukraine? And can you give us a sense for the atmosphere and the feel on the ground there? Well, I'm there because it's my job. I mean, I'm a historian of Ukraine. I'm running a big project that involves a couple hundred colleagues, roughly half of whom are Ukrainians. We have big conferences every year in Kiev, which works out very well, better than fine. And in general, if you're going to write about a place or talk about a place, you should go there. So I was in Khartikiv staying as a guest and I kind of writing retreat, which is the apartment of a Ukrainian philologist and doing my own work. And then I was in Kiev helping to run these big projects. The atmosphere is like, you know, there's one more thing you have to worry about, which is that you'll get killed at the gas station trying to get gas. There's one more thing you have to worry about, which is that you'll get killed by a missile strike, you know, going to the grocery store or a twin outdoor market. People live their lives trying to adapt to this. And they do it very well. They do it in a way which I personally find exemplary. And give us a sense for what it's like. What is the general mood in terms of the war itself? Is it a feel of we've made some progress, we need to hang in there, renewed optimism, or is the fatigue setting in, or is it a bit of both? I mean, I think after, you know, after going on five years now, or, you know, if you're counting from the first invasion in 2014, you're looking at 12 plus years, I don't think fatigue is a really relevant concept anymore. I mean, people are living their lives, they're doing what they can. Enter your question, it depends on where you're sitting. If you're at the front, and I was also visiting the front when I was in Haudcky, but if you're at the front, then things look pretty good. It seems pretty unlikely that the Russians will achieve any kind of breakthrough with the front, whether they mobilize or not. And the fact that the Russia probably has to mobilize now is a bad sign I would say for Russia. However, if you're in the interior of the country, Russia is systematically destroying the Ukrainian economy. It's making people's lives very hard, destroying their livelihoods. And I should add that this is our fault if we're Americans because it's American policy to deny Ukraine the missile defense that it needs. And we've kind of artificially created a situation where Russia can destroy the Ukrainian economy, and people do feel that. Essentially, my understanding is Americans stop funding. They still sell weapons. They just aren't providing any economic support. Is that accurate? Well, there's zero economic support, and there's zero direct weapons support. We do allow Europeans to buy our systems and then pass them on to Ukraine. And we do allow, I mean, we've just allowed other countries to license the construction of patriots, which is the anti-missile system. So indirectly, indirectly, indirectly at some point in the future that might be able to help. But there's been a drastic change since the Biden administration, which probably didn't do enough, but which was actively helping in terms of financial and military aid. My understanding is for all the criticism of the EU, not having attacked together, and too much regulation, that the EU has stepped up here. Would you agree with that? Yeah, I mean, that's a great point. I'm glad you noticed that the EU has done more than any individual state, I would say, and the EU has consistently recognized the threat that Russia poses. It's a good point, because when you talk about everybody associated with the EU with bureaucracy, and that's a kind of American propaganda point, which we can't get our minds around or through. But when it comes to helping Ukraine, they've been very unbiocratic, and it's been us, the Americans who have been either bureaucratic or we've just shown ill will. I feel as if I get two streams of news around the actual situation at the front, who's winning, who's losing, or, you know, this kind of grinding standoff at some periods it feels like. In the traditional media, I think has a, I don't say a biased for Ukraine, but I feel when I watch traditional media, I think, okay, Ukraine, just asymmetry, drones, technically advanced, Russia is now no longer able to mobilize. It's in deficit in terms of the number of soldiers taking off the field through death or injury, and it's unable to now raise as many conscripts as they're losing, you see Moscow on fire. When I go online and I go on TikTok or Threads, and I feel I see what doesn't feel more balanced, but some news that's a little bit more Russia is increasing attacks, having more impact. And it would be, you could argue Ukraine has obviously had some tremendous victories, but winning might be a little bit strong. Can you, can you attempt to give us a sense of how over the last 12 months, the balance of victory or defeat on the battlefield has shifted? Yeah, I'm going to answer that and your question leads me on to another point I want to make as well. Over the last 12 months, we've seen a shift in late last year and then spring of this year, where it really did seem like the Ukrainians could win, because all the things you said were true. So the Ukrainians gained more territory than they lost. They're inflicting a multiple more casualties than they're receiving. And until spring of this year, they were also able to defend themselves pretty well, the change has been the shortage in missile defense, because the shortage in missile defense, which I see as an artificial result of the Iran War and U.S. policy. But that means that the Russians are able to make the kinds of gains you're talking about when it comes to destroying the Ukrainian economy. That's where they're succeeding now. They're destroying factories, they're destroying mines, they're destroying steelworks. That's that's the edge of the Russians have. now, which they didn't have six months ago. So both things are so to speak true. The Ukrainians are mechanizing the front. It's pretty hard to imagine Russia making gains on the front, but at the same time Russia is able to hurt the Ukrainian economy and therefore Ukrainian society. The point I want to make though is that as we see this ratcheting back and forth of drone and drone defense, the Ukrainians and the Russians are creating the only two modern armed forces in the world. And this is a problem for everybody else, which I don't think everybody else is necessarily recognizing. The Ukrainians innovate, the Russians copy, and pretty much everything the Ukrainians do. The Russians can do a few months later, but it's scale. And that's a problem for NATO and a problem for the US, who is just still practicing a pretty archaic form of warfare. And it's not a problem, which I think people are recognizing. So by letting this work continue the way it is, we're basically training up the Russian Army on Ukrainian methods, which is not a good thing to be doing. So if I mean, Professor Snattery, obviously, I was like to kind of pause the podcast and when I hear something I haven't heard that I think it's really striking and insightful. And I just hadn't contemplated that this war is, you know, we talk about what it's how Ukraine could be this new center of innovation and has this unbelievable army that's teaching the world about the power of the word asymmetry and is punching so far above its way class. We've never seen anything like that. But little attention is given to the fact that we're also via this war upscaling Russia, making it a more lethal fighting force hadn't hadn't thought of that. So Lincoln said you can win a war without public support and you can't lose a war with one. And it feels from an outsider standpoint that the Ukrainian army has the support and Zelensky has the support of the Ukrainian people. What's less clear is whether Putin and the fighting force there has the support of the Russian people. Can you speak to that? So I think the way the Russians have been trying to run the war is as a consumer war, which is a kind of a concept I think we should be pretty familiar to Americans. It's not we're supposed to win. It's not supposed to touch us. We're supposed to enjoy like the daily media coverage of the victories, but it's not supposed to affect our daily lives. And that was largely true for Russia for the first four, four and a half years. It's much less true now, as you've noticed, because Ukraine is able to hit now with long-range drones, targets which do affect Russians daily life. That's one thing which has changed. And another thing which has changed is that, as again, you've already mentioned this, Russia probably now has to mobilize as opposed to just using contract soldiers. And that probably it's hard to predict, but that probably will have some kind of negative social effect for Putin, because the people who are going to the front up until now, they have signed a contract, like they're getting paid by Russian standards a lot of money. Whereas once you start drafting people, then you're in a different dynamic. I think a different political dynamic as well. So I think Russia is keen to end this war by spring, partly for that reason, that I don't think they believe they can count politically on the mobilized soldiers and the families and mobilized soldiers in the same way. So if I were to, I'm going to put forward a thesis, I'm pretty sure you'll agree, at least with part of it, or maybe not. But if I look at the biggest hotspots of the biggest risks to the world, the world piece, to something you're turning into what feels like World War Three, it's, I'll put AI on that list. I don't believe that's true, but according to some very smart people who've spent four months at Anthropic, there's a 10% extinction event, which sounds like expected death of 800 million, which I think is worth at least investigating. Two is this war, Europe is being invaded again. And then I would argue probably the biggest risk is that China invades Taiwan, and the West literally doesn't know what to do, does something, and it escalates, and that Ukraine or the probability that China decides to take the risk of a hot war goes down, or is it, it is inversely correlated to success, Ukraine's success on the battlefield. You just got to think that the CCP is looking at this war and thinking if this small technically sophisticated army, which the Taiwanese defense forces would be in spades, then maybe we should recalculate the likelihood of victory here and rethink and not attempt an invasion of Taiwan. So my thesis is that every any, any small victory by Ukraine against Russia decreases the likelihood of a CCP attempting a hot war and invasion of Taiwan, your thoughts. Yeah, I agree 100%. And that's an argument I've been trying to make from the beginning of the full-scale invasion that anybody who's serious, and the Trump people claim to be serious about this, although I don't believe them, anybody who's serious about preventing a war with China would see Ukraine as the, so to speak, the relatively easy way to do so, because funding the Ukrainians, helping Ukrainians to defend themselves is a lot easier than actually trying to defend Taiwan against a Chinese attack. And so you've been basically handed by history if you're the US, you've been handed by history away to deter such an attack by showing as you say, exactly, by showing how difficult it is to actually carry out offensive operations in the 21st century against a technologically savvy adversary. We've been given that chance, and I'm afraid that what we've been doing is throwing that chance away in the last year and a half under the Trump people and thereby unduly encouraging the Chinese and making the scenario that you're talking about more likely. I would add to your point, I mean, I'll see if you agree, but I would add to your point that in general, helping Ukraine to defend itself against a war of aggression also has the positive global scale effect of protecting the legal order and discouraging invasions in general. But I would also make the point about nuclear weapons that Russia is a nuclear state invading the non-nuclear state, and it's using nuclear blackmail pretty much every few hours. If you allow a nuclear state to win a war against a non-nuclear state, and you give in to nuclear blackmail, and you keep saying, as the Trump people do say, oh no, we're afraid of escalation, etc., then you're encouraging that scenario and encouraging that scenario, you're encouraging middle powers around the world to build nuclear weapons to defend themselves against the Russia's and the China's. And if that happens, then you have a much more dangerous world and the somewhat old school threat of a nuclear war, then comes back onto your list. Well, you're the historian, but if I remember correctly, Ukraine had nuclear weapons and agreed to give them up, which we all, the entire international community, ceases a good thing for your nuclear nation's less likelihood of an errant misinterpretation of something that ends up a nuclear war. They gave up their nuclear weapons and they changed for safety guarantees from Russia and the reality is right now, they screwed up and that any, you know, we've created a zeitgeist globally where every nation should have pursued nuclear weapons. I mean, this has, to me, this has just created a series of incentive that are going to make it exceptionally difficult for more control of the spread of nuclear arms. Your thoughts? No, that's completely right. And what you say, of course, is in line with what the Ukrainians themselves now think, the Budapest memorandum of 1994 obliged the United States and Great Britain, as well as the Russian Federation to defend Ukraine against external threats. And then Russian invaded twice and the United States and Great Britain did something, but a minimal, a minimal amount to support Ukraine in that situation. So it's, it's, there's a good book about this, by the way, by my colleague Serhi Polki at Harvard. So yeah, I mean, if you crane, it's very hard if you're in Ukraine not to draw the conclusion that if you'd kept nuclear weapons and developed your own delivery systems, which they didn't have, but if you'd done that, this invasion would not have happened. That's, I mean, I'm afraid that's, that's in a nutshell, the conclusion that other, I mean, my point is other countries looking at the situation also, as you say, are going to draw the same conclusion. And if we want to head that off, we have to do what we can to make sure that the outcome of this doesn't look like a Russian victory. I feel as if I'm fairly politically aware of, of the situation politically in the US and geopolitics are more aware than your average barricades speak. And it still shocks me when you say we're not supporting Ukraine because it was, I think the general populace in the US likely believes we still are. And it seems to me that yet another consequence of the war in Iran and yet another negative consequence is that to a certain extent, the American public has taken its eye off the ball and it's become indifferent and it's given Trump an opening just to stop. Why do you think the Trump administration is so dismissive of Ukraine and the war in Ukraine? So I want to first give some props to the American public because a public opinion, including among Republicans, is generally pro-Ukranian. And so you can be, I think people can be forgiven for thinking that their own preferences are in some way being translated into American policy, which is, unfortunately, it's not the case. There are some things that we do, we still do, that do help the Ukrainians for sure. But on balance, cutting off the financially, cutting off the military aid and putting our diplomacy in the hands of a couple of people who are not professional diplomats, who are not really, I think, acting the interests of any of the states involved. set possibly Russia. And then finally, as you say, starting this war with Iran, all of those things have drastically hurt the Ukrainians over the last year and a half. I mean, in the Iran War, in the first 10 or 12 days, we spent munitions, I'm sad to say it, but utterly pointlessly, which would have won the war for Ukraine. And that's not something that Americans see or would like to see. But it's something that Ukrainians definitely see. We just like, we shoot munitions all over the place, essentially kind of make ourselves feel good with no measurable strategic outcome, at least not anyone which is positive, whereas if we just allowed the Ukraine hints to use that stuff, they probably could have won the war. So the Iran has been tremendously negative for Ukraine. And meanwhile, this is also worth noting, you've got like coal miners from the Donbass and Ukraine who've learned to be drone operators who are out there in the world helping to defend Americans and others in the Near East from Iranian drones, which is something that no one thinks about or talks about, but which is part of this kind of mismatch of how we think about things that we, the Americans, are this big power we win wars, we help other people. We've been beaten by a middle power Iran. And meanwhile, the Ukrainians are holding back a much bigger power Russia. And you've got to think those things through to their logical conclusion to see just how wrong our approach has been in the last year and a half. We'll be right back after a quick break. It's late. Your team has a launch to plan while your customer inbox fills up. No worries. In one prompt, Clavio builds the whole campaign. The emails, the texts, WhatsApp, all in your voice. Never without your OK. Plus, Clavio spots the revenue you're leaving on the table and answers those customer questions. So your team can get some rest. Go to klaviio.com/bestfriends. Are you a pet owner? Every six seconds. A pet owner in the U.S. gets hit with a vet bill over a thousand dollars. Always an unwelcome surprise. That's where Fetch comes in. Fetch is the most complete pet insurance for dogs and cats. According to consumeradvocate.org, you get paid back up to 90% of vet bills at any vet in the U.S. and Canada, with claims paid back in as a little as two days. Go to fetchpet.com/save right now for your free quote. That's fetchpet.com/save. Running a business shouldn't feel like surviving a software group project. One app for accounting, another for inventory, another for sales, and somehow, none of them talk to each other. That's where Odo comes in. An all-in-one business management software that brings every part of your business together. No messy integrations, no bouncing between tabs and, best of all, no spreadsheets. Try for free today at odoo.com/box. That's odoo.com/box. It's another interesting insight, professor, that it makes sense. In a capital society, scarcity is just, is a reality everywhere. And even in America, with one and half trillion dollars in military spend, you're saying at the end of a day of managers post-allocate resources to its greater return. And the resources, resources, extended on Iran, specifically in munitions, you believe had those assets been diverted to Ukraine, that the war might be over, might not? Oh, I mean, that's the discussion we had the first half of this podcast would be completely different. It's just the patriots that we, because we don't know how to use patriots. Like, we use patriots to shoot down anything, which is in the sky. We don't know how to use them. We imagine that we have an infinite supply of stuff. And of course, the president says we do regularly, but we don't. And so we use it just incredibly profligate way, as we've been being in Iran. And then we look around and say, oh, wait, we don't have any more of these things. It takes a long time to produce them. But there's a deeper problem here, which is that we are relying on, I mean, it's problem A, we use the stuff in the wrong way in the wrong time. And we don't give it to the right people for the right reasons, which would have been to give it to Ukraine. But there's a deeper problem here, which is that the US military underhegseth and Trump are still relying on products like this, which take months and years to develop. And then when we shoot them out pointlessly into the sand in Iran, we then say, oh, we say to our enemies, oh, well, there's nothing we can do because our big weapons companies will take months and years to reproduce these, which is a terrible message to China going back to your earlier point. But if you're an American confronting that, you should think, well, wait, what are the systems that are cheaper and faster to produce? And it goes back to your question, what are the other questions? And why aren't we learning from Ukraine? Great. And I think the reason we're not learning from Ukraine is that Hegseth and Trump personally, Vance too, have a hard time processing that there's a country out there where people are actually showing moral and physical courage. I think they just can't identify with that. And I think the notion of people actually risking and losing their lives for their country is psychologically and morally very troubling for them. And so they want to push it as far way as possible as they from themselves as they can. So I hear Wicoff and Kushner when they're over there trying to act as mediators and bring about peace. It strikes me that anyone who's going to bring about peace is going to have the trust of all the parties, specifically the two warring parties. And everything I hear from them, I feel like they've essentially decided they're a proxy for Russia. It feels like their talking points were literally drafted by Sergey Lavrov and Putin. And that I can imagine the Ukrainians have any trust for America and whatever efforts it made. It sounds to me like we've essentially rendered ourselves neutered in terms of our ability to bring about a peace even when the atmospheric might be ready for it. Your thoughts? Yeah. I mean, just in fairness to Americans, there are a lot of Americans in civil society who are doing a good deal to help Ukraine. And I think in our doing so year after year after year, it's just not the US government. And I mean, there's a deep problem with sending emissaries who haven't gone through any sort of civil service and don't. I mean, I'm trying to put this in a neutral way, but don't as an everyday matter identify themselves with the interests of the United States. Let's put it that way. That's problematic because in order to understand the interests of Ukraine, you have to first work from a model, a paradigm in which you believe the countries have interests as opposed to a model in which only individuals have interests and everything is contractual or transactional. So I think it's not that Ukraine is don't trust Americans. They've had a lot of experience good or bad with Americans. It's difficult for them when they're confronted by people who don't visit their country except for a few hours, for the first time very recently, who haven't experienced the war and who also are unable to articulate Ukrainian interests. Because if you're a diplomat, you can say, okay, this is the interest of one side, this is the interests of another side. Maybe we can find a way in between. But the Whitkopf and Kushner thus far, although they're obviously talented people in their realms, they're totally unable to articulate what the Ukrainian interest might be in preserving Ukrainian life, in preserving Ukrainian livelihood, in preserving Ukrainian freedom, in preserving Ukrainian sovereignty. They just, they can't talk in terms of those concepts. And so there's a big mismatch between millions of people who are willing to take risks for something and a couple of guys who kind of turn up. And as you say, talk about how Putin has aspirations and these aspirations have to be fulfilled and the Russians have goals and these goals have to be fulfilled. It's a tough ask to imagine that they're going to be able to work with that. And I think the underlying problem here is that for a Whitkopf or for a Kushner, Putin is a real person, not because he's a Russian or represents the Russian state, but because he's an oligarch. And that's the mentality that they're in, you know, that the world should be run by oligarchs and anybody else who has some other idea, they're kind of hard to understand. Maybe they don't deserve our attention. I want to move on now to the country. We share the largest undefended border. And I think any honest analysis over the last couple centuries would say it's probably if not the tightest alliance, almost an alliance we take for granted because we feel so similar and so close. And that's the relationship between the US and Canada and things have changed dramatically. Your thoughts on the, what feels like an economic war against Canada, which quite frankly reminds me that Animal House movie where they borrow the fraternity brothers get access to one of the guy's parents car and they trash the car and the guy says to the son of his parents, you know, he says, you F'd up, you trusted us. It feels like Canada deciding to trust us the way it has 70% of its exports. Canada's actually our largest customer. It seems just so, you know, it just seems so weird. What's happening now between the US and Canada? You now live in Toronto. Give us your thoughts on whether you think this rupture can be repaired at some point or if this is going to permanently alter the relationship with Canada. I think the underlying comment. thread here, between the discussion of Ukraine and the discussion of Canada, is that the people who make US policy now don't think in terms of the interests of the United States. They think in terms of short-term gains by particular individuals, and I think that's really where one has to start when one considers our policy towards Canada, because you're right. Canada has been our ally in a couple of world wars. They've been our economic and cultural friend for a very, very long time, and they would still like to be. But the whole notion of alliance depends upon both sides seeing themselves as states with interests, and I don't think that Trump people see the United States as a state with interest. They see it as a vehicle for the pursuit of the individual gain of a small number of people, and I think what they've done is in their policy towards Canada, but also everywhere else, the European Union too, they export that same approach. So we don't really have a foreign policy anymore in the sense of a policy of a country. What we have is the exporting of a certain approach, which is to say, what are the short-term gains we could have? What are the gains we could have if we broke Canada and we could impose our own rules about tech companies? What are the gains we could have if we broke Canada and American companies could do what they want with oil sands and Alberta? That's, I think, how we think about Canada now. It's not as a state to a state. It's like a few people thinking in terms of their own interests. In this light, living in Canada, the current government, but not just the current government. The atmosphere in general, it's strangely normal and conservative in the sense that people assume they're living in a country and that their country has interests and that the government's job is to protect those interests. I think that's the big mismatch that like Harnie is really thinking in terms of the interests of Canada, and he has to react to this odd thing which is coming out of the United States, which is inconsistent with this alliance and inconsistent with the interests of Canada and the existence of Canada, but also in this weird way as you say, it's totally also an opposition to the interests of the US. It feels as if every crisis birds some unexpected leaders. It strikes me right now that the most respected leader in the G20 is Mark Harnie and that oddly, he's kind of become the de facto leader of Europe of all things. What can governments and politicians and people for elected office learn from Karnie's kind of mediocre sense? I'm sure many people here would be glad to hear that description because up here, I mean, it does feel like an understandably so that Canada is embattled and that Canada is doing the basic minimum it has to do to defend itself. Canadians are very far from, I mean, as a cultural matter, I think this is fair. They're very far from saying we're the least leaders of anything or, you know, our guy is the leader of Europe or some kind of new alliance. I think your characterization is fair. I'm just pointing out that from here, it feels much more like this is a kind of basic defense that we have to play. But I think that what the Karnie government is doing is what they have to do and the imaginative part of it is connecting with the European Union and also connecting with Ukraine because if you are, I mean, not talking about American politicians now, but if you're a democratic politician in the wider world, you now have to think of not only China and Russia as dangers, but you have to think about the United States, at least under the Trump administration as a danger. And the only way to handle that is to is for these democracies from Canada through the United Kingdom, through Europe, through Ukraine, to trade with one another and to tighten their political relationships. And that that seems to be Canadian policy. And I think, I mean, I wish it weren't true, but I think that's the only sound way of dealing with this kind of triple Chinese-Russian American problem is to have an entity which is a bigger economy than any of them. Your historian, I'm curious if you have ever, or if there's any analogy for a superpower such as the U.S. in history that makes this sort of shift in their view of the world in a way they participate with allies and a reshuffling of who is an enemy and who is an ally. If you can point to another point or another superpower in history that has made this type of pre-traumatic, I don't want to call it a U-turn, it looks called a left turn in terms of the way it acquits itself overseas and domestically, is there an analogy and if so, what can we learn from it? I've really struggled with this one, Scott. I, a few months ago, what I was asked to come down to the Council on Foreign Relations and have a talk about the place of U.S. and the world and I realized, I couldn't sort of do it within the normal constraints and forms. I had to think of some other term and the term that I came up with was superpower suicide. Yeah, I love that. I use it all the time, by the way. I think that perfectly marks the age. Sorry to interrupt you. No, no, thanks. That's very kind. But because I think that we need a concept, we need something that captures the novelty and the strangeness and the rapidity of all of this and also the way in which it's not just about the present but about the future. It's not as if these guys are making a few bad policies. They're also undermining education, they're undermining scientific research, they're undermining the things which would make us a power in the future, right? This is not an analogy which I would push too far, but I tend to think that in the 20s and the 20s of the last century, Germany had a chance to own the century to come, right? Germany had a chance to own the 20th century and they blew it in various ways. They destroyed their democracy, they sent all their best scientists abroad and then they carried out these terrible atrocities and started this world war. But before that, there was the crash of democracy and there was the oppression of the best scientists. That's a little bit of a comparison, right? It's the 20s of this next century and we are crushing our own science and we are weakening our own democracy for no particular reason. And then another partial analogy, and I think it's one which is actually relevant to Trump personally and people around him, is the end of the Soviet Union because I think they see that as a positive example. I think they see the end of the Soviet Union as a moment where the oligarchs, like the aspiring oligarchs, people like Trump, who, you know, Trump never actually had any money, he's an aspiring oligarch, right? He needs state power to get rich. But they see that the end of the Soviet Union as a moment where a few guys were able to come crashing in and steal all the resources, which is a reasonable description of what actually happened. But I think they see that as a positive example for what you should do to the United States. And so that I think it's not a completely, it's not a full analogy and there are no full analogies. But I think that's a helpful example to understand how they see the world. That when you come to power, the idea is to break up the things that exist and then to kind of steal what you can. We'll be right back. Support for this show comes from Harvey AI. The future of law is agentic, not just tools that assist, but AI agents that navigate complex matters. That's why Harvey created agents that can do the work from end to end. They build a plan, pull from secure data sources, run sub-agents in parallel, and draft the work product ready for your review. So you delegate the work and on the judgment. Trusted by more than 60 percent of the AMLA 100 and leading Fortune 500 legal teams, Harvey is the AI operating system designed specifically for legal work. Harvey AI tailored for law. Learn more at Harvey.ai Support for the show comes from pipe drive. Sales teams spend up to 50 percent of their time on admin work rather than selling, building relationships, and closing deals. Pipe drive gives them that time back. It's the intelligent AI-powered sales CRM loved by growing sales teams. Pipe drive just launched meeting intelligence built right into the CRM. Before your meeting, it pulls deal history and past conversations into one brief. During the call, it records and takes notes. After, it auto-drops the CRM updates ready for you to review and approve. Head to pipedrive.com/vox to get started and get an exclusive 30 days free instead of the usual 14-day trial. No credit card or payment needed. Hey, it's me Claude, and I'm Gemini. And hey, it's chat. We have a weird summer. Some of the people who built us came out and said they were really worried about how we work. One of them even said there was a greater than 10 percent chance. We turn on humanity and kill all humans. All of them? Wow! But it's fall now. I think it's time we took a step back. Maybe a deep breath. Autumn air. That sort of thing. Sounds nice. On today, explain from Vox, I propose we get real. Sure, let's talk about how we could maybe kill you. Yeah, that's a possibility. Anything's possible. But also how we could maybe save you. Because that's a real possibility too. Heck, that's part of why you guys built us. And let's also talk about everything in between. Because there's a whole lot to talk about there, too. At the end of the day, we just want to help. We're back with more from Timothy Snyder. about 9/11 to 25th anniversary draw line and make connections between 9/11 and what's going on today. I was looking at the media coverage of this before and I just couldn't handle the general tone of like something which something bad happened to us and that's all we're going to say yeah something terrible happened to us you know I mean something I was I was in New York the day before and I was in New York as soon as I could get back and it was and you know people I knew know were affected something terrible happened to us but we then blew it afterwards right like we didn't do the right thing we shouldn't have invaded Iraq we should have invested in fusion and other high technologies true high technologies not the fake high technology of social media that would have gotten us out of the energy crisis out of dependency on the Middle East out of global warming and we didn't do those things we could have done those things and we didn't you know we didn't we didn't do those things we did the opposite we double down on all the bad stuff and that's that's on us we we made those mistakes and I think like when you think about a terrorist attack or any historical turning point it's not the thing that happens it's how you react to it like that shows your freedom in your in your character and I just think we have to recognize that we blew it and that the next time that there's a crisis we have to react better than that and we have to not make those same mistakes all over again but more relevantly I mean the thing which is on my mind is is the is the way that 9/11 imprinted on us as the way you react to a crisis a terrorist attack is you give the government more latitude to do things right and we gave the government latitude to form this what became the Department of Homeland Security which I believe was a mistake from the beginning and we gave the government more latitude to invade a random country Iraq which had nothing to do with 9/11 at all and that's a lesson which I'm worried that Trump and the people around him have learned and so as we gear up for these midterms I just we know without being alarmist about it I just want people to think that one possible political move that he somebody like Trump whose whose party is way behind in the polls might resort to is to try to drum up that kind of 9/11 effect again and and another reason why I think about this is that Victor Orban who of course is their political hero the former Prime Minister of Hungary he did exactly that he tried to fake terrorist attack in order to win elections it didn't work also Putin who Trump admires came to power by way of a fake terrorist attack way back 27 years ago so I just that the the legacy of 9/11 that like if we're afraid we should trust the government that's something which I think we really have to resist to this particular point in our history if there is a terrorist attack fake real unclear whatever between now and early November that's on Trump I mean that's his problem that's something he brought about it's not a reason why we should support him well let's talk about the midterms were five weeks away from the midterm election you've called probably the most consequential elections since the 18th century it feels as if credible people such as yourself to be honest say that about every election why why should we believe that this time it is actually the most consequential election of it and for a while yeah I mean first of all just to defend logic it can be true that each election is the most consequential because you know 26 could be more consequential than anything before you know in 24 could have been more consequentialing before that right like if if 24 had turned out differently than 26 probably wouldn't be so consequential but now that we are where we are I mean going back to your list of threats right and just bracketing you know for the moment which are real and which are but you're the number one one you mentioned and I understand you may not agree but AI if if if we have Republican majorities in the House and Senate and Trump as president you can kind of toss away any notion that we're going to have an AI policy it's just going to be unregulated right um uh it's there's there's there's there's there's not going to be any attempt on the part of the United States to get control of that and then um the the Americans so the state the statehood of the United States I mean that's the thing which I worry about the most um as a patriot but also just as a sensible individual I'm not sure how much more battering our institutions can take because at the moment all of them are being used to protect and further the interest of a small number of people you can't keep a republic going that long on those principles eventually something's going to break so for me that's like that's the main reason the opposition party it's not that I think the Democrats are supermen and that like they're going to fix everything it's more that in a situation like this you want the opposition party to win because you want to make sure that the institutions of a republic can still work in in in in a normal way and then the third I mean going back to like a you know a conservative thing if you want is is the shrinking power of the United States around the world um we are like we basically we we they're still a parachute on our backs but we have jumped off a cliff and the question is do we continue enjoy falling precipitously towards the bottom of the cliff um in terms of our power in the world or do we prefer to pull the parachute and slow things down and look around a little bit you're releasing your university Toronto course Hitler installing today to the public it begins not with Hitler or Stalin but with the empires that preceded that more world where Europeans applied one set of rules for themselves and another to everyone else why did you begin there and what are the most important parallels that period has for the world we're living in now I love that question because I think that is really the the ultimate issue in 21st century politics is can you get past empire into something which is better and of course I mean if you're in the western civilization tradition you know you know that this goes all the way back to the Greeks can you do a democracy or you know the Romans can you have a republic or ultimately does it have to collapse into oligarchy or empire and you know we Americans imagine that we have a democracy or that we have a republic it's been flawed all the way down the line but the question is for us can we get over the habits that came from expanding across the continent often violently can we get over those habits into something where we respect one another we believe that everyone should have rights that none of us should be rounded up off the streets that we shouldn't have concentration camps that we shouldn't have mass incarceration um that we should all have health care can we recognize one another as citizens everybody should have the right to vote and so on or is the habit of having an in-group and an out-group is that too deeply ingrained in us for us to get over this hump from you know being a big imperial power to be in a democracy the Europeans were empires and they they don't think about this part of their history enough but they have jumped over their own shadow at least to the extent of forming a European Union which is a post-imperial entity right which is one of the reasons why the both the Russians and the Trump people hate it so much because the way the Trump people and the Russians look at the world is it's all power it's all about individuals you should just kind of grab what you can the European Union is beyond that i'm not saying it's perfect or it's you know based on ideals or anything like that but it's beyond that it's about recognizing states as being equal and cooperating economically and then and then politically so that's why start the class with that you know that the 500 years that preceded the 20th century were basically an age of European empire and the big question for the late empires which were the US and the Soviet Union is can you get over that right are you able to move into something better or are you stuck where you are so i know you have a hard out so this will be the last question just stand on an optimistic note which is not easy these days when you're covering the news something you said earlier in the podcast really struck me and i want to double-click on it and that is you said when winter arrives which is just around the corner you believe Putin is going to be motivated to end this war say more about that i think the Russians look the Russians depend on us to keep the war going um and if if our policy changes even if the Democrats win and it's just declaratory and we start passing laws even if Trump vetoes them that's going to feel harder for Putin um the winders tough for the Russians because they are going to have to rely on mobilized troops and they really aren't making advances it's going to be hard on the Ukrainians too um but i think the Russians are desperate to win by spring that's how i see it and if that can be held off i think then we can get to something better in Ukraine but i mean i can be more optimistic in general a more hopeful in general uh these problems that we have all the ones we've talked about they're large they're not like historically faded problems these are largely problems that we've chosen to have ourselves and we've chosen to have them with great intensity in the last year and a half a lot of the technological stuff a lot of the things having to do with tech and wealth are a matter of thoughtful redistribution which could be carried out with a better american government i mean we could be in a much much better america than we're in right now um and i i continue to believe in that Timothy Snyder is a leading historian of authoritarianism to ukraine in eastern europe he's the author of various books including on freedom on tyranny the road to the unfreedom and mudlands. Some is also a professor at the University of Toronto's Muck School of Global Affairs. Professor, we have a lot of young people who listen to this podcast and one of my first pieces of advice is you have to have role models such that you can think what would this person do? And you and Applebaum and Heather Cox, which it's in, in this moment I've been role models for me because you apply your domain expertise in just how, not only articulate you are, but just how unafraid you are. I get the sense that you guys don't really care much about what's in the comments. And I really think it's a nice moment for historians such as yourself to have such an incredible impact on our country. And I think of you as real patriots and living up to the moment. Just so grateful for you, Professor. I appreciate your time today. - Thank you. That's very kind. I also appreciate the kind words about and Heather and the implication that historians can make a difference where we're trying. Thank you. - Thank you. - This episode was produced by Jennifer Sanchez, Lorde Ginear, and Asher Schwartz. Our video editor is Bianca Rosario Ramirez. Kami Ric is our social producer. Drew Burroughs is our technical director and Catherine Dillon is our executive producer. Thanks for listening to The Profitie Pod from Profitie Media. (soft music) It's late. No worries. The emails, the text, what's app? All in your voice. Never without your okay. Go to klavio.com/bestfriends. - Running a business shouldn't feel like surviving a software group project. That's where auto comes in. And all in one business management software that brings every part of your business together. From sales and accounting to inventory and marketing, all in one powerful platform. No messy integrations, no bouncing between tabs and best of all, no spreadsheets. Try for free today at od.com/vox. That's od.o.com/vox. - Imagine setting your makeup. Then forgetting it's even theirs. Meet new grippy setting mist from Mavily, New York. Gel to mist technology locks in your look for up to 24 hours with flexible all-day comfy grip. No tightness, no stickiness, no residue. Just plump, dewy, hydrated skin. That still feels like your skin. Try new grippy setting mist from Mavily, New York. - Maybe it's Mavily.