Good evening everyone. My name is elizabeth arliss a member of events task at politics and prose. A couple quick notes before we get started if you havent already, please silence your cell phone. Feel free to keep them on, take pictures, tag us on social media. Just do it silently. We have cspan booktv here tonight and you dont want to be the person whose phone starts ringing on national television. When we get to the q a portion i will pass around a wireless microphone. If you have a question, which we highly encourage, please raise your hand wait for me to get you with a microphone and speak into it that way everyone can hear you and everyone who might be watching on sometime in the future can hear you as well. If you have not yet purchased a copy of the book and you decide after the talk you would like to they are available at the register at front you can buy a copy or two or three or four how many you decide you need hopefully more than one. After the event awill be right over here happy to sign books. Now why we all are here solicited george beebe talk about his new book the russia trap our shadow war with russia gets barrel into nuclear. Former director of nonrussian analysis and the cia and white house advisor for Vice President cheney. Now director of intelligence and National Security at the center for the nationals interest draws on nearly 25 years of experience to one that the u. S. And russia are on collision course. Describing the situation more dangerous than the cold war he shows how factors including new strategic weapons, shifting willpower, unsettled regional conflicts and the advantages of cyber attack over Cyber Defense are heightening the competition between the two countries to the point where small unpredictable events could set off a deadly conflict. Here to talk more about it please help me welcome george beebe. [applause] thank you very much for the introduction and thank you all for coming tonight. I have given a lot of talks over the last few years since leaving government but i think this is the first time ive given a talk with the book, this is my first book i published. Its the first time ive ever given a talk where my wife has been in the audience. So that is a special occasion. Its great to see so many colleagues and friends here tonight. Thank you. I want to start by giving you a little bit of cia insider information. And it has to do with John Mcglocklin, john was a career cia analyst who rose up the ranks at langley and became Deputy Director of Central Intelligence and acting director of Central Intelligence back in the early 2000. One of the interesting things about john, which i mentioned in the book is that whenever you would go up to his office for meetings, he kept on his desk a little placard. The packard red subvert the dominant paradigm. I always thought that this was a funny little saying. A little bit tongueincheek. Because it contrasted so strongly with John Mcglocklin. Who is a very established kind of guy. He wears conservative suits, horn rimmed glasses, conservative suspenders. Youd think this is the last guy who want to submit the dominant paradigm. I think part of the reason he had this on his desk as he enjoyed playing against hite implying he had this kid in subversive side beneath the establishment of an ear. But i think there was actually a serious purpose behind this too. Thats because paradigms are really serious things. Paradigms are the conceptual models that we all used to make sense of things. We do this sometimes consciously, more often unconsciously but we like to think that we believe things when we see them, what psychologists tell us is that actually we tend to see things when we believe them. And paradigms are those things that unconsciously help us decide what we believe, what we expect, they shape how we process facts and information. And they shape what we think we ought to do about those things. One of the reasons why i think john thought these paradigms were so important and why i agree with him on this is that paradigms are often times at the root of intelligence failures. Remember 9 11 in the aftermath of that terrorist attack everybody in washington talked about how cia failed to connect the dots. Those dots are facts they are pieces of information the lines that connect them, thats your paradigm. This is something thats a pattern you see in intelligence failures throughout history. Pearl harbor, pearl harbor was a paradigm failure. We had excellent intelligence on pearl harbor. We were really reading the Japanese Communications codes. We had broken their encryption. But we werent able to grasp that they were going to attack pearl harbor despite excellent intelligence. Why not . Paradigm failure. I want to read to you a little bit on this to talk to you about what we knew going into this. About a week before the attack on pearl harbor the japanese told us they were going to attack. The japanese ambassador in washington delivered a diplomatic note im going to read to you. He said, the japanese people believe that economic measures are in much more effective weapon of war then military measures. That they are being placed under severe pressure by the United States to yield to the american position and that its preferable to fight rather than to yield the pressure. In other words, we are about to attack you. So despite that, we still couldnt grasp this was coming. Dean atchison, then a citizen secretary of state he later became secretary of state wrote about what the problem was. He said everyone in the department and in the government generally misread japanese intentions. This misreading was not about what the Japanese Military government proposed to do in asia, not of the hostility that the embargo would excite but of the incredibly high risk that they would assume to accomplish their ends. No one in washington realized that the regime regarded the conquest of asia not as an accomplishment of an ambition but as the survival of the regime. Paradigm problem. With that as an introduction, what i want to do with you tonight is to take John Mcglocklins plucker to heart and subvert the dominant paradigm that we have today in the United States about russia. What is that paradigm . I sure handed this paradigm by calling the world war ii problem. World war ii problem is when you have an ambitious aggressive state that pushes as far and as fast as it can and keep going until it meets determined resistance. The classic example of this is nazi germany. Adolf hitler. And the one thing that you dont do when you deal with an aggressive ambitious state like this is what . Appease it. We learned this lesson very well munich is a dirty word in our american diplomatic lexicon. Probably the worst thing you can accuse someone of as a statesman in the United States as being an appeaser. What weve got today is a situation where the dominant paradigm in russia is we have an aggressive ambitious state that we cant appease. If you have any doubts about this, go on to google and type in pollutant and hitler, see what you get. One thing you will get is a flooded images pictures of hooton with hitler hairdos and mustaches, superimposed, you will see beds accusing russia of being a modernday nazi germany. You will see beds and editorials that are cautioning about going soft on russia. The thing that we are most concerned about with russia right now is we wont be tough enough, that we are going to go wobbly as former british Prime MinisterMargaret Thatcher used to say. Why is that a problem . Because the russians will interpret that softness that lack of resolve as an invitation to be even more aggressive. If we dont stand up to aggression in ukraine and georgia in the cyber sphere we will only invite even more aggression, the problem will compound it will get worse. If you want peace with russia, prepare for war, as the romans used to say. Thats our dominant paradigm. Not everybody in washington buys into this. There is another school of thought that says, no, hooton is not hitler, russian is not nazi germany that really obscures the picture more than whats actually going on here. This school of thought you would call defensive russia. There are a few prominent proponents of this, steve cohen professor meredith at new york university, very prominent advocate of the school of thought, john near shiner university of chicago is another one. Their argument is that russia is actually reacting to natos eastward expansion that steady encroachment by what they perceive as a hostile u. S. Led military alliance creeping ever closer to russias border moving from the warsaw pact into actual former soviet republics and that the combination of this, which the russians perceived as a serious threat to their National Security and a long history of u. S. Meddling you might say in russias own internal politics is provoking a defensive reaction. According to this school of thought, the real danger here is not that we will appease russia its that we will threaten an already very threatened state. What happens when you threaten someone thats already threatened . You might call this the cornered rat syndrome. What happens when a rat is cornered . Anyone thats ever been in that situation knows it gets very ugly. That rat perceives hes got a choice. I fight or die. The choice is fairly simple. According to the defense of Russia School of thought, the worst thing you can do is exactly what the offense of russia paradigm says we ought not do. They are saying we have got to accommodate. We have got to recognize what some legitimate security concerns the russians have and find a way of accommodating those in ways that dont undermine our own interest. These are really opposite schools of thought. The offense of paradigm and the defense of paradigm. They are diagnosis of the problem is diametrically opposed in their prescriptions are fundamentally incompatible. So where do i come down on this . What is this book about . The thesis of the book is that each of these contending schools of thought the dominant paradigm of offense of russia and that much less Popular Defense of Russia School of thought each of them have aspects of their diagnosis, which are accurate. They are telling part of the story accurately but not all of it. What i argue in this book is what we are facing here is not a world war ii problem, its a world war i problem. So what caused world war i . It was not an aggressive ambitious state that was trying to seize territory and push as far and as fast as it could. It was not a defensive state that felt it was cornered. It was a systems problem. A whole bunch of factors combined entangled alliances, new technologies, the railroad that had profound impact on how you mobilize for war and prepare to defend your interest. Misperceptions. Crumbling empires that were worried about threats from within. All of these things mixed together and there were feedback loops that occurred within us. In these feedback loops turned what were relatively minor developments, in the particular case this was the assassination of the archduke ferdinand and it spun this through these reinforcing effects into the european wide war that none of the participants expected and none of them wanted. So what im arguing in the book is that we need to understand the threat from russia and its a real threat, this is a genuinely dangerous situation, not as an offense of russia that we need to deter, not as a defense of russia that we need to accommodate, but as a complex systems problem that can get out of hand and do that in ways you dont expect and that are difficult to anticipate. In other words, small events right now could produce giant problems. When i say that . Let me describe to you all the complex factors that are interacting right now in this relationship. Im going to break it down for analytic purposes. One of the problems we have right now is a structural geopolitical problem. What happened in europe after the end of the cold war was there was a lot of uncertainty about what the new European Security arrangement was going to look like after the warsaw pact collapse the soviet union ended. Nato was there with no peer rival. No competitor. A lot of the states in this new band of former warsaw pact states were left untethered. New Security Problems arose that we had to deal with instability in the balkans, old historical grievances. Separatism and the question became, how we handle these things . And in part by default and in part by design nato became the primary institution that was addressing these problems. A lot of the states that were facing this new situation looked at nato and said that looks attractive. Why . The folks in that club are all pretty rich. Pretty secure pretty prosperous and we remember some of the old problems we had with the folks running things in moscow and that security blanket over there looks pretty appealing. So what happened essentially was that vacuum an immediate postcold war period got filled by nato and as it did, russias insecurities became exacerbated. And we gradually and in part by design in part by just the logic of events that nobody really planned wound up in a situation where we have a new security arrangement in europe and one of europes largest powers is not a part of it. Russia is on the outside of the test looking in incentivized to do what . At this point nato membership is not possible for russia. Im not sure it ever really was very realistic but certainly at this point its off the table as a possibility. With a lot of incentive to actually undermine the Nato Alliance and the European Union more broadly. Thats a fundamentally unstable situation and unresolved. Thats factor number one. Factor number two the United States and russia over the past 25 years have gradually each come to the belief that the other side not just as a competitor but actually wants to destroy it. In russia they came to this conclusion a long time ago. Probably 15 years ago. And a lot of things led the russians to the belief that the United States was trying to encircle russia with hostile puppet regimes, expand the Nato Alliance up to their borders and ultimately foment regime change outside moscow and break the country apart. We think thats crazy. We look at this and say, there goes the russians again. They are paranoid. In fact, what we talk about russia and its perceptions, you hear that word paranoia a lot. Its almost like russia and paranoia go together. What happened in the United States particularly over the past two years, we have come to the conclusion that the russians are trying to destroy us. Not by surrounding us with hostile military bases or puppet regimes, not by attacking us with nuclear weapons, that would be suicidal, that would be crazy. But by using Information Warfare and cyber tools to subvert us from within. To divide and conquer us. To cause us to lose faith in who we are. To lose faith in democratic procedures and processes. In the legitimacy of elections and what happens when you destroy a country from within end everything comes crumbling down. He didnt hear about this kind of three or four years ago. It really is something that came upon us rather suddenly back in 2016 as a reaction to what happened with russia interference in the elections and our own bewilderment as to what was happening in our country domestically. When states believe that their existence are under threat, you are in a do or die kind of situation. They tend to play for keeps. The undertake risks that they wouldnt ordinarily undertake. What did japan do . Private pearl harbor when it thought its existence was at stake by this crippling embargo that the United States had placed japan under, it thought it had a choice. I undertake a high risk war against a country with twice my population and nine times my industrial outfit output, which i will probably lose, or i certainly face destruction so they are going to do the highrisk thing because this they know how that turns out and its not good. So the problem with these perceptions of existential threat is that they prime both sides to undertake some pretty high risks. Third thing thats going on, new technology. During the cold war abthat was Nuclear Technology it took us a wise to figure out how to deal with that. During the 1950s realized there are these powerful new weapons that can do very scary things. Defenders can complicate the task for the office. It can make things more to come. We are Getting Better at detecting intrusions that we used to be. Attribution is something we are improving at. But stopping these intrusions before the attack, very very hard to do. What does that do . That sense of vulnerability has an impact on both sides. They know they are vulnerable and they know they cant stop the other side. Do they do . They are incentivized actually to play offense. Why . Because the best way to figure out what the other side is doing to you is to go into their system and use that to gather information about their operations directed at you. Its a classic intelligence, counterintelligence problem. But theres a twist on this. In Cyber Technology understanding the intentions of the other stride if im a systems administrator and i detect there is somebody in my system that shouldnt be there what i know is that he is there but what i dont know is why, whats his purpose . Because he can go into my system to collect data, to collect information, but while he is in there he can corrupt the information. He can destroy that information. And he can sabotage my system. He can go into my network into my computers and plug in malware code that causes everything to break down or to do things that it shouldnt do. When you do that in trickle systems, Water Treatment plants, Power Generation systems, wall street trading systems, what happens when those break down . Really bad things. Imagine if you cant get anybody out of your abimagine if he cant get any money out of your atm, imagine your cell phone doesnt work, your electric power doesnt work, imagine this going on for weeks and what you think happens . Very bad things. This is a real vulnerability. And there is not much we can do to prevent this so what do we do . We have to go into the other side systems. We have to figure out what they are trying to do we have to figure out their capabilities and we also think we have to take hostages. Because the best means of making sure that they dont detonate the cyber bomb that is sitting in our Nuclear Power plant, by the way i dont know that it is, i dont want to scare anyone of that, but the best way of ensuring that doesnt go off is knowing we have malware in their system that we can detonate too. It becomes a mutually assured destruction kind of situation just like the Nuclear Balance during the cold war but theres a twist. Its a spiraling hostage situation because these things go bad if left over time. The vulnerability they were exploiting gets patched. The bombs get discovered and diffused over time so youve got to continually do this to make sure youve got the situation in hand so its not a stable mutually assured balance like we had during the cold war. Its an unstable escalatory spiral situation. I dont want to scare you too much but its even worse than that because Something Else fundamental has changed since the cold war, during the cold war we had conventional weaponry over here that was essentially its own world separate from the world of nuclear weapons. Nuclear weapons had their own command and control systems and dedicated satellites that managed all this. Early Warning Systems that would detect incoming Strategic Missile systems fired over the hole up in the north. So we knew what to look for we knew where it was coming we knew how to prepare to retaliate against all of this in the world of conventional weaponry was entirely separate. Thats no longer the case today. These two worlds of nuclear and conventional weaponry are intermixed in ways that are actually unprecedented and i think ways that most people outside of a select expert set in washington dont understand. So the cruise missiles but the United States frequently uses in various regional crisis situations in the world, the iranians do something bad, we threatened the tomahawk them with cruise missiles launched from naval vessels, etc. , etc. , what controls those systems . Satellites. What else do the same satellites control . Nuclear systems. There is intermeshing of those things which is new. Another thing that happened the satellite systems during the cold war and very very high orbits those orbits were so high that they were essentially untouchable. They were in vulnerable nobody could reach them with groundbased antisatellite weaponry. And they were certainly not spacebased antisatellite weapons that could threaten them either. We knew that those satellites were secure. We didnt have to worry about them. Thats not true now. The satellites that are detecting these watches and controlling these weapons are vulnerable. They are not only vulnerable antisatellite weapons kinetic weapons they are vulnerable to cyber penetration. And we probably cant defend them. What that means, in crisis situations our ability to detect threats and the confidence that we would have that when the president says, launch, that those what weapon systems will launch is gone like this compared to the cold war. That is a very unstable situation when it comes to crisis today. So these factors are reinforcing one another to make for very unstable situation. A couple other things playing here too, because we think the russians shouldnt be appeased because we are dominant paradigm says to us that this is an aggressive ambitious state it will push us as hard as it can as fast as it can until it meets resistance and we decided that that means we shouldnt talk to them. Right . Dont engage, engagement diplomatically is a reward for bad behavior. How do we handle the crisis if all these things come together who do we talk to . Right now the dominant paradigm in washington says we shouldnt be talking to anyone. That also is a factor that makes the situation very risky and minimal awful you one final one thats triggers. Syria, ukraine, iran, north korea, in all of these cases whats going on the United States and russia find themselves on the opposite sides of the pond acomplex with each side engaged directly or indirectly in proxy warfare. Many cases we have americans and russians with boots on the ground engaged directly or indirectly in fighting. The potential for one of these triggers actually setting something off and winding up with the world war i style chain of cascading development is actually quite great. What i do in the book is laid out this problem. I call it the premortem why do i call it premortem . Premortem is an examination of failure that hasnt yet happened. Why would you do it premortem . You do it premortem because you are fundamentally optimistic and youre probably shaking your head saying nothing ive heard here today sounds very optimistic. [laughter] but the reason why im going to all this is because i believe that this is a manageable problem. Its not manageable unless we recognize what kind of problem we got. If we think we have a world war ii problem, and we tackle it like that, you actually make the world war i problem worse. But if you recognize that we have complex systems problem he realized first and foremost, and got to be careful here. This could turn into something i dont expect and dont want. How do i handle that end and once youve done that now you are talking about how do i handle this . How do we put rules of the road in place mechanisms to contain these dangers . Thats possible. Im an optimistic person when it comes to our ability to handle this. Im pessimistic when it comes to how do we change the paradigms humic because right now we are stuck in something that i think is an inaccurate portrayal of the situation we are facing. But lots with the book is about, thats what i hope it can make some progress in doing and getting people to do what John Mcglocklin splattered urged which was lets look at this dominant paradigm lets think about what other possible ways of understanding whats going on there are and then lets think about how we deal with these dangers in pragmatic ways. Im hoping the book will have some really small impact in effect in that today. Thank you. [applause] any questions . Thank you very much for the talk, incredibly interesting. Thank you. How do you think russians involving relationship with china factors in to this paradigm and the potential for the paradigm shift from their side . Talk a little bit about that in the book. One of the implications of the growing hostility in the u. S. Russian relationship is russia has been incentivized to accelerate the warming trend in its relationship with china. I think thats a significant problem for the United States. I personally think that the growth of chinese power in the world is the most significant geopolitical challenge that United States faces. And it will be our biggest problem for at least the next halfcentury. And its very much not in our interest to encourage the growth of russian and chinese cooperation. It complicates the problem for us. So i believe that not only do we need to manage the Security Threat that the hostility with russia poses for us right now but from a geostrategic point of view it makes a lot of sense for us not to incentivize that kind of cooperation between moscow and beijing. Where in the systems or the paradigms with Something Like venezuela or other sort of not near abroad kind of meddling fit in . If we try to establish rules of the road, what do we do when they are violated . Right. I think what the russians had been doing in venezuela economically but more militarily is the strongest counter argument to the defense of Russia School of thought. The ones who say the russians are just defending themselves they want us to bud out of their affairs. Thats only part of the story. The russians also have offense of ambitions they want to be a great power. In fact, its sort of complicated but for various historical and cultural regions i think the russians believe it unless they are a great power, they wont survive intact. Its sort of a strange mix of offense of and defense of motivation. But what great powers do . First of all, they dominate their neighbors. In the russians think that all great powers do this, we do it, china does it, russia thinks it should do it too. They also think that the great powers basically should sit on sort of a metaphorical global board of directors. They are the ones sitting around that table who decide what the rules are so the russians think they should have a role in deciding what the rules are stop and right now they think they dont so they dont like that. They also believe that the great powers get to decide when you make exceptions to the rule. They look at the United States and say, hey, you make the rules, we did get input, thats not okay and you also get to decide when you dont have to play by those rules. When you can bomb iraq without going to the Un Security Council asking for a resolution authorizing it for example. Thats not okay. When we do it its wrong but when you do it its okay . They are not at all in agreement with that. They want a situation where they get to make the rules and they also get to decide when there are exceptions. Venezuela already doing that . I think they are doing that in part because they are saying to us we are a great power. You get to intervene in our neck of the woods, we get to do it to you too. How do you like that . If you dont like it, then when we sit down and talk about how we are going to work this out . What are the rules of the road for this kind of activity . Because if you are saying, we cant do this in venezuela then whats wrong with us say you cant do it in ukraine . This is a conversation we dont want to have. When you ask where the russians doing things like meddling in u. S. Politics, meddling in our sphere of influence as we regard this western hemisphere. Part of the reason is, kind of a can you hear me now message coming from them. We dont like you interfering in russian politics how did you like it when we interfered with your politics and if you didnt then what we sit down and talk about the rules that are going to apply here. My personal belief is, what weve interpreted it as x essential threat desire to destroy american democracy to subvert swiss within, i think its actually an instrumental tool meant to force us to have some conversations and reach agreements that we dont want to reach or have. Is there a friendly relationship between russia and iran . Also, considering how annette yahoo seems to be cozy with putin, how does hooton play up with iran . Very good question. I will use this as an opportunity to make a comment on the dominant paradigms on the belief that russia is driven by ideological motives. Theres a strong belief the United States right now that russia hates democracy. I think this is a misperception of whats actually driving them i think the russians actually dont care about democracy one way or another. They dont regard a lot of the states that we think are democratic like ukraine or georgia. As actual democracies. And they have very good relations with a number of states in the world that are democratic. In the Worlds Largest democracy, japan, and israel. Who has met more often with putin than any other leader . Netanyahu. Whos walking sidebyside with putin at the last victory day parade on red square . They dont regard them as irrational for the theocratic apocalyptic actors the way Many Americans tend to see them. I think they see them as a regime that does rational predictable things to advance its own security interests in the region. The russians dont want iranians to do bad things with Muslim Muslim populations with russia itself they want to keep the ship in a relatively stable they dont want to see actual conflict between israel and iran. Because that complicates their ability to have good relations with both israel and iran, which is what they want. If you look at russias overall posture in the middle east, right now today they are playing a role that the United States played 35 years ago. Back in the 1980s the gospel was the United States was the only country that could talk to all sides in the arabisraeli dispute. We were able to play a role of honest broker. Today not so much. The United States is tilted rather significantly toward one side and a lot of these regional disputes and russia is the outside power that can talk to the kurds and the turks. The israelis and the iranians the saudis and gutter and iran. And its actually a position theyve achieved with quite a bit of diplomatic skill, i would have to say. They dont want to see this go away so conflicts that really flare up interfere with that. I dont think they want to see that happen. They are trying to manage this as deathly as they can. Thank you. Beyond the sort of the systems problems and the systems complications he talked about, how much do you ascribe to the fact that the world is changing . The geopolitical balance of the world is changing and you get the situation where rising china, russia that would like to rise, the United States thats no longer as dominant as it was in that can be inherently destabilizing. Thats another one of those factors thats playing into the systems problem. The geopolitical order is in a transition right now at the end of the cold war it was clearly a unipolar world. There were no peer or near peer relationships, competitors, that the United States had to contend with. Our system of government, our economic system, was unrivaled, there was nobody that was a rival in those things. Nobody even approached our military power. We were quite confident. The real question that we had was, how can we spread our system . Throughout the world. And create this liberal hegemonic system that would make everybody friendly and one big happy family. Thats no longer the case obviously. Our relative power is declined. Clearly china has risen a lot farther and a lot faster than a lot of people anticipated many years ago. The relationship between china and russia has advanced in ways that people do not expect, even 10 years ago. And weve lost our confidence internally. And part of that function of the broader structural changes in the relative power imbalances but part of it is a function of whats going on inside the United States itself. Its taken us to some degree by surprise and its compounded the changes in the international order. I think its frankly affected our perceptions of russia. To some degree our loss of confidence domestically has been projected onto our images of what russia is doing. All of these things are reinforcing each other and it makes for something that is very difficult to handle. I am wondering about your diagnosis because it seems to me that many of the same outcomes could also be explained by the authoritarian kleptocratic acting to keep power explanation. The free press abroad reports on corruption in russia. Helping to establish authoritarian regimes abroad that crackdown on their free press. We have similar effects to a genuine distaste for democracy or fear that there is encirclement to color revolutions and nato creeping on the borders. Have you split the difference and make your diagnosis . . I think my reaction to that is, yes. This is one of the things that makes this a difficult problem. Very seldom when you deal with these sorts of paradigm issues these models do you have diagnostic evidence, dispositive evidence. Its only consists with one explanation. Most of the time the fact that you got in front of you can be connected in different ways simultaneously. Part of the problem here is you can explain these things in different ways. What im advocating is not that this is the only way you explain it in these other things are not possible. What im saying is reasonable people can disagree on this and the stakes are so high that we better think hard about this. Do actual life events show the explanatory power of the paradigm . I would offer you one example of this i think should cause people to say abthats georgia 2008. The dominant paradigm says russia expansive power ambitious wants to push out as far as it can. It invaded georgia 2008. How did that happen . The United States government knew that tensions between russia and georgia were accelerated. We have seen this for several years. We knew where this was going. We were concerned there was going to be war. The dominant paradigm says what . You you you stand firm you signal to that aggressor state that you are not going to go soft. So we armed the georgians we undertook to train and equip program we sent us military personnel into georgia they undertook a Significant Program to bolster the georgia military, why . In part to send a signal to the russians that they were going to be in for a fight if they wanted to attack. And then we engaged with moscow and at very senior levels sent to the russians, dont go there. This is out of bounds. Dont even think about it. And what else did we do . We in conjunction with our nato allies announced officially that georgia and ukraine would one day become part of nato. And certainly they are not going to let us down if we get into a problem here. Theyve got our backs. We told the georgians, dont get into a war. Condoleezza rice said to the georgian president , dont attack. Dont fall for the russian trap. What did suckers really here . What he heard was, yes i know. Dont attack the russians that would be bad. But the words were used said one thing, the actions that we took going there meeting with him said Something Else and that Something Else said, you really matter to the United States. So what did he do . He decided that he could use the security umbrella to go recover some of the separate of states and georgia that had long peeled away from the central georgian government so he attacked first, the russians were waiting for him. They knew what might be coming they counter invaded, took over these separatist territories recognize their independence so we wound up in a war that we were trying to deter. Why . I would argue that its because we had the wrong paradigm. We thought that a deterrence model would work, in fact, it produced a cascade of events that we did not anticipate. That proved that the world war i model was the one we were thinking about . No it doesnt. I think it should cause us to step back and say, maybe we need to think harder about this. This is going to be our last question. Thanks for noticing me. How much stock do you think russia still takes in its inroads in the balkans . Mainly its relationship with serbia, the republic of this arab and even expanding outward entrance ministry. I think the russians care a lot about the balkans. Theres a lot of history there obviously, speaking of world war i. Theres a lot of cultural affinity. The Orthodox Church is playing a much more Important Role in Russian Society in russian politics and even in the Russian Military then it did back during the cold war period certainly. All that matters to how russians view the situation the balkans and how they perceive their interest there. They think theyve got a lot at stake. When it comes to transeast rio thats a fascinating subject, for those of you not familiar with it, its a breakaway region of moldova and its nestled in between ukraine, romania, and its essentially been a separate territory as part of what they call frozen conflict since the early postcold war period. One of the things i learned in writing the book, i knew a lot about mold though but entrance may steal but i realized how much of the history of russian perceptions about our policy goals and how much of the breakdown in all of the rules that were once imposed during the cold war and all these arms control agreements and other confidence and security Building Measures are all disappearing. How much of that was tied into moldova of all the places in the world you would think that most americans couldnt find on a map a lot of it was in some way connected there. Moldova is one of these issues where sort of who cares its a landlocked outoftheway place. You would think it would be an area where we would probably be able to find a compromise solution yet it has proved so elusive. I think transministry is one that i would look to if i were to say, is there a place where we might be able to have some traction start to put some rules in the road in place that can manage all that. Its a good candidate to look at. Can we get one more round of applause for george, this is a fascinating conversation. [applause] once again, books are available at the register and he will be right over here happy to sign. Thanks for coming out. Thank you. Tonight Supreme Court justices Ruth Bader Ginsburg and neil gorsuch will reflect on their respective lives and careers. Journalist ben west offer reports on the production of fat and low in china. Democratic senator jeff merkley of oregon will provide his firsthand account of conditions for migrant families on the u. S. Southern border. And psychiatry professor Kelly Harding will explore the link between mental and physical health. Thats all airing tonight starting at 6 45 pm eastern on cspan2 booktv. Check your Program Guide for more information. Next on booktv after words, American University professor ibram kendi argues that america must choose to be antiracist and work toward building more equitable society. He is interviewed by imani perry, author and Princeton University africanamerican studies professor. , after words is a Weekly Program with hosts interviewing top nonfiction authors about their latest work. Ibram, its wonderful to be here with you to talk about this extraordinary book how to be an antiracist. I have so many questions but the first one is why this book now . Of course im just excited to sit down and talk to you about this book the reason is because i feel like what people ask for it. My last book, a history of racist ideas stemming from the beginning, chronicled the antiracist ideas and really showed their collision, their cl