Fiona Hill on what Trump’s Caribbean boat strikes signal to Russia and China

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0:26There's just no sign that Vladimir Putin wants to give up anything short of pretty serious demands. There's been a lot of discussion about peace talks and deals in Ukraine, but Russia's war there could go on for a very long time to come.

0:52It's Thursday, December 4th, and this is Here and Now Anytime. From NPR and WBUR Boston, I'm Chris Bentley. Today on the show, we're taking a deep dive into the war in Ukraine. How even nearly four years after Russia's full-scale invasion, the fighting has failed to give either side the decisive victory. And why even though President Trump promised to end the war within 24 hours of his return to office, it's proven difficult to resolve diplomatically. That's all coming up in about five minutes. But first, let's check in on Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth's rough day in Washington. Hegseth is under fire for his campaign of airstrikes against alleged drug boats in the Caribbean, which has included at least one double-tap bombing to make sure everyone on board was killed.

1:47This week, he denied giving the order for that follow-up strike on two shipwrecked survivors, but said he supported the killings anyway. Over about three months, the Defense Department says the U.S. carried out at least 21 strikes and killed at least 82 people it accused of being drug traffickers, a claim for which it provided no evidence, let alone tried to prosecute legally. But you might remember the Defense Secretary was also at the center of a controversy over his use of the messaging app Signal to share sensitive information ahead of another lethal strike, this one back in March. He accidentally shared sensitive information with the editor-in-chief of The Atlantic in a group chat before it was public.

2:31Now, a Pentagon inspector general's report concludes Hegseth put U.S. operations and troops at risk. Even some of his fellow Republicans have been critical. Here's what Ohio Congressman Mike Turner of the House Armed Services Committee told MS Now when asked if he had confidence in Hegseth's leadership at the Pentagon. I think there are a number of things that have raised concern that Congress is struggling with. And I think the secretary is going to have to answer those questions and address them. And I think the president is going to be struggling with that over the next month. Some members of that House Armed Services Committee that Turner is on were also part of a closed briefing today by Admiral Frank Bradley.

3:11He's the one whom the Defense Department now says ordered the follow-up strike on an alleged drug boat off the coast of Venezuela back in September. Representative Jim Hines is the senior Democrat on the House Intelligence Committee. He was also in that briefing room, and afterwards he told reporters this. The Admiral confirmed that there had not been a kill them all order, and that there was not an order to grant no quarter. Congressman Hines and others are pushing for video of the attack to be released publicly. Politico's Paul McLeary told us the incident is part of a pattern in the administration, giving the military more leeway to use deadly force.

3:52Early on in the Trump administration, the president and Hegseth gave commanders on the ground much more leeway to conduct these types of strikes. We've seen it in the Middle East. We've seen it in Iran, things like that. These are directed by commanders as opposed to the White House, which under the Biden administration, they took more of a hands-on approach to this. The rules are you're not to strike people who are wounded, enemy combatants who are out of the fight, things like that. And so they're massaging the language here a little bit, right? They're saying since these men climbed back aboard the boat, they were still in the fight.

4:25Granted, they're unarmed. There is no fight. They're not combatants. But they're saying they're still in the fight and they're radioing for another boat to come. The boat could rescue them and continue carrying the drugs onward to wherever they were going. So they're saying that they weren't wounded and weren't out of the fight.

4:45You can hear that whole conversation and a lot more about this story right now at hereandnow.org. But we're going to spend the rest of the show on another conflict, the war in Ukraine, starting right after this short break.

5:06Thank you.

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6:16Efforts to end Russia's war in Ukraine are not getting very far. So what would it take to end the war? That's one big question we wanted to ask Fiona Hill of the Brookings Institution. She worked in the first Trump administration as a Russia expert and later became a witness at his first impeachment hearing. Here's her conversation with Scott Tong. You know, American envoys recently went to Russia to craft a peace plan for Ukraine. Then they went to Ukraine, modified the plan, then shuttled back to Russia. No obvious route to peace. Any signs that this war will end soon? No, I'm afraid not. I mean, I wish I could say that that would be the case.

6:59It would take, you know, some kind of major breakthrough. which, you know, is always a possibility. There's always those outside chances that nobody should rule anything out. But there's just no sign that Vladimir Putin at this particular juncture wants to give up anything short of pretty serious demands. It's very hard to imagine Ukraine accepting, notwithstanding the fact that, of course, Ukraine is hurting from this war. Of course it is. And this war has been a colossal cost to Russia too. And President Trump, to give him credit for this, is trying to create some momentum here. But the timeline is his.

7:34It's Trump's. It's not necessarily the course of the war. There's no catastrophic defeat that is facing Ukraine right now, although there are pretty considerable setbacks. And again, there's nothing to indicate that the pressure has got significantly high for Vladimir Putin that he'd be contemplating pushing for a peace deal at this point. Well, as you've mentioned, the obviousness is this is a war between Russia and Ukraine. This is happening in Europe. So the question is, how much does it matter what the Americans do? Well, it matters a lot, unfortunately. I was talking to a senior European official just yesterday and said, you know, Europe is dangerously addicted to American military support.

8:15And that's kind of part of the problem that we've been facing. And a lot of this has to be laid at the foot of the Europeans, I'm afraid, that, you know, for the last 30 plus years, 35, 36 years since the end of the Cold War, you know 1989 they've cashed in on the peace dividend and assumed that the world around them was pretty benign that the security environment they could just rely on u.s military guarantees that the u.s would always be there i mean i think the u.s is still there for europe in terms of the nuclear guarantee i haven't really heard anything to suggest that trump is trying to take that away but we've been hearing right since trump won and you know frankly from his predecessors including including Barack Obama, that Europe needs to do more for its own security and that the U.S.

8:57will, you know, eventually pick up and not perhaps leave entirely Europe, but, you know, a good chance. And that's, you know, where it matters a great deal what the United States does, because there's too much dependence on the United States. Well, speaking of U.S. support for Ukraine, here's a piece of sound from Secretary of State Marco Rubio. He spoke this week to Fox News. Some of these people have this notion that our Our policy should be just continue to fund Ukraine in unlimited amounts for as long as the war takes. That's not realistic. That's not reality. That's not reality, according to Rubio.

9:30If the U.S. really pulls back significantly on support for Ukraine, what would that mean? Well, it'd be very difficult. And it would mean that the Europeans really will have to pull out all the stops to step up. I mean, there is action being taken, but the question is whether it's going to be fast enough to do that. after the rather disastrous meeting with Volodymyr Zelensky in the Oval Office, there was a pullback of intelligence sharing as well as a stoppage of weapons supplies to Ukraine, and it hurt. But I think there's also an overmastimation of the importance of U.S. intelligence sharing and, to some degree, some of the other assistance that the U.S.

10:07has been providing from patriots to other missile systems. And the fact that these are the silver bullets or the most effective ways of having Ukraine hold its own on the battlefield. I think the real secret for Ukraine now is to work very closely with European allies. And Secretary Rubio is just making that really clear that they better move fast on this and to basically devise its own systems. It's already been doing that, to be frank. But this is significant, obviously. You have also talked, Fiona Hill, recently about Ukraine, its military's innovation, the Ukrainians' resolve in this war. What should Americans know about that?

10:48We have not talked too much about military innovation in Ukraine, at least in the U.S. No, we haven't. And we haven't also accepted the fact that Ukraine's actually right now got the largest and most capable military in Europe. But Ukraine was also something of a significant military power before the invasion. It was one of the reasons that Russia wanted to seize control of Ukraine. Ukraine, remember, you know, 30 plus years ago when it's part of the former Soviet Union, was one of the military arsenals, one of the major manufacturing sites for the Soviet military. And what you see now is Ukrainians really picking up the pace of innovation on the battlefield of drones.

11:25I mean, yes, the Russians are learning from that as well and doing the same, but they're doing it from the top down. Ukraine is really significant on the grassroots level on the battlefield. The Ukrainians have managed to take out a third of Russia's Black Sea fleet using autonomous weapon systems, adapting the equivalent of drones in the air for the sea as well. And the Ukrainians will say themselves that patriots, the kind of weapon systems that they were asking for before from the United States, are no longer as relevant on the battlefield of tanks. Some of these debates that we had before, that's no longer the way that the battlefield is playing out.

12:05We're going to take a short break now, and when we return, the rest of Scott Tong's conversation with Fiona Hill. Stick around.

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12:57On the Russia side, Russia is losing about 7 ,000 soldiers a week. That's according to Marco Rubio, the Secretary of State. How can Putin keep sending so many people to the front lines, people willing to go? Well, there's two elements to that. First of all, it's not just people who are killed. It's also grievously wounded. So, you know, some people do get put back into action again. But Russia is doing something quite remarkable. It's actually using an almost entirely mercenary force in the sense that most of these are contract soldiers. So it's paying for people to go, which is why people continue to go.

13:31Paying a lot of money? Is this a lot of money to them? It is a lot of money. In the Russian context, it's a lot of money. And no modern military obviously goes in with a forcible conscription to major wars. But no modern military is really kind of paying people what would be a pretty enviable wage if you're in the normal labor force. and the Russians are calculating and Putin and the people around him are calculating that they can do this for another couple of years. Is there a possibility, Fiona Hill, that you and I are speaking on December 4th, two years from now, about this war still going on?

14:05It's entirely possible. As I said, absent some major change. Putin, I would think, has still got the upper hand in terms of not just the battlefield, although they're only making very incremental gains for these horrific losses, But he's got the upper hand right now in the propaganda and information battlefield. So, for example, the election of Trump was a great benefit for Putin because, you know, President Trump, you know, doesn't want to continue this war in Ukraine. He would like to wipe his hands of it. So, you know, so that is a major change that plays to Putin's benefit, of course. But remember, for Ukraine, this is existential.

14:42They're fighting for their right to exist as Ukrainians. And briefly, I want to take us back to a conversation you and I had back in February of 2022 at the WBUR space in Boston. Russia at the time was deploying troops in eastern Ukraine. It was not yet clear what was going to happen. And you and I spoke then. Let's take a listen. What is the argument that, yes, this is an invasion? What's the argument that, no, it's actually not? Well, it's very hard to say that it's not, because in fact, this is the third time around that Russia has invaded Ukraine. So you were suggesting then, yes, this was a Russian invasion happening February of 2022.

15:25Has anything since then about this long and bloody war surprised you, gone differently than you'd imagined? Well, it's certainly gone different from Putin imagined. And, you know, and I think at that particular point, I mean, perhaps we couldn't have imagined that, you know, the Ukrainians would be able to, you know, hold the Russians back to the extent that they have. Admittedly, of course, with support from neighbours and also from the United States, Putin thought this was a special military operation. Yes, it was an invasion, but he thought it was going to be like 1956 when the Red Army went into Hungary or 1968 when they went into Czechoslovakia, you know, for example.

15:57And that is actually the surprising element of this wall that everybody should be taking on board, that Russia, the much vaunted military power, has effectively been held to account by the Ukrainians. Even if they haven't been able to totally turn the tide and push the Russians back, they've been incredibly enduring. They've showed a lot of fortitude. They've showed a lot of bravery. They've showed a lot of persistence here. And one quick question, Fiona Hill. In this hemisphere, the U.S. strikes on assumed drug boats coming from Venezuela, threats to Venezuela, and the argument from this administration that this is about U.S.

16:33national security. What do you make of that? Well, linking it to what we've just been talking about, the Russians see this as the United States and President Trump doing exactly what they're doing in their neighborhood. Ukraine's an issue of national security. It's their realm to do as they will and to address threats. And so, you know, what we're seeing as a result of this decision on the part of the Trump administration is that this actually paves the way for many other countries, not just Russia, you know, to launch similar kinds of actions in their neighborhoods and to describe things in any way they want to.

17:10Kind of giving permission, as it were, for Russia to justify what it's doing, perhaps give China permission if it decides to do something with Taiwan. Yeah. And you'll also see as a result of what's happened there and that recognition by some of the U.S. closest allies, including the U.K., that they're now very reluctant to share intelligence with the United States in the general region. You've got to remember that there are British Virgin Islands there, the Dutch, a whole host of other European countries have equities in the broader Caribbean region. So there's a lot of consternation and concern about this in Europe as well.

17:46Fiona Hill is Russia scholar and senior fellow at the Brookings Institution. She worked in the White House in the first Trump administration, also served under presidents Obama and George W. Bush. Fiona Hill, thank you so much. Nice to talk to you once again. Thanks Scott, always a pleasure

18:07That's our show for today Here and Now Anytime comes from NPR and WBUR Boston Our conversation with Fiona Hill was produced by Jill Ryan Our editor was Michael Scotto Technical direction from Caleb Green Matt Reed and Marcel Damiano Our theme music is by Mike Moschetto, Max Liebman and me, Chris Bentley Our digital producers are Alison Hagen and Grace Griffin and the executive producer of Here and Now is Alan Price Thanks for listening. We'll be back with you tomorrow.