The US sets up Ukraine negotiations without Ukraine, its vice president tells Germans to vote for the AfD: DW speaks with retired US General Ben Hodges about the foreign policy approach of the new Trump administration.
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00:00The U.S. is negotiating with Russia about Ukraine without having Ukrainians involved.
00:06J.D. Vance, the vice president, tells Germans to vote for a far-right party.
00:12And Donald Trump is cutting thousands of jobs, even in the DoD.
00:17A lot to talk about with Ben Hodges, a retired general whom I'm reaching now in Germany.
00:23Ben, good to see you.
00:25I always like your program.
00:27Thank you very much.
00:28Ben, how do you think history books will write about what we have seen in the last couple of
00:33days?
00:34Well, I think people are going to try and understand why has the United States taken
00:42such a, after 80 years, such a, seems like such a sudden change in our broad strategic
00:53approach to Europe.
00:56What was the real reason for that?
00:58It's not clear to me, certainly.
01:02Do you have any explanation?
01:04I mean, we met at the security conference just a couple of days ago after J.D. Vance
01:09spoke.
01:10You talked to many, of course, members of the security world from Germany, from the
01:15United States.
01:16Maybe we start with your American colleagues.
01:18How did they react and what's their explanation?
01:21I think there's, of course, there is no simple answer to this.
01:25And I'm going to try.
01:27I'm trying to understand so that I can explain what I think I heard.
01:33As you know, every administration comes in with different objectives, perhaps, or different
01:40approaches to the big issues.
01:45So this administration certainly is a significant departure from the previous administration.
01:53But it's still new.
01:55I mean, early days, I don't know that they have yet gotten themselves organized on who
02:02does what.
02:04The vice president, I don't think, is going to be a foreign policy guy.
02:08So it seemed, so the speech that he delivered was a shocking presentation.
02:15But I think it was intended to be that, to really, as the Lithuanian president called
02:24it, a taser to Europe.
02:28So I think that was intentional.
02:30But it certainly was a different type message than maybe, certainly what I was expecting
02:34standing there in the Bayerischer Hof.
02:38We were all expecting to get pounded, to hear the vice president pound our European allies
02:44about defense spending.
02:48The administration, I guess, let me say it like this.
02:52I think the president has three broad priorities now regarding Europe.
02:58Number one, stop the fighting.
03:00And he's been consistent about this.
03:03Whatever one might think about the president, he has a long record of opposing endless wars
03:08and war in general.
03:09So I think he is sincere in this.
03:12His second priority, I think, is to make sure that once the war in Ukraine has been stopped,
03:22that things are in place so that there is no resumption.
03:26Again, I think in terms of broad goals, nobody would argue against that.
03:34The issue will be in the details, what does that mean?
03:36And then this third priority is what everybody refers to as burden sharing.
03:42Every president has argued for this.
03:46But this president, I think, is going to take steps to cause nations to do it in ways that
03:54have never been seen before.
03:56I mean, these three points you're talking about, I think many people could agree on
04:00that.
04:00But the big question, of course, lies in the detail.
04:02And isn't it a really, how shall I say that?
04:06Well, as I say, a kind of a scary sign that Russia met with the U.S. without Ukraine,
04:13without President Zelensky to talk about Ukraine.
04:17So this is another thing that I have been trying to figure out.
04:20And, you know, the last 10 days have been a barrage of different messages and new messages.
04:27And it's not a traditional diplomatic approach.
04:32You know, Radek Sikorski, the Polish foreign minister, compared it to the military doctrine
04:38of reconnaissance by fire versus the traditional sort of diplomatic approach.
04:46I think the resolution of this war, of Russia's war against Ukraine, first of all, it's going
04:54to be a very long process.
04:55This is, it was not going to be 24 hours.
04:58It's not going to be 100 days.
04:59I think we're talking about many months.
05:03And I think I see three sort of phases.
05:10Yeah, phase one, we're in it now.
05:14This is the preparation phase.
05:16These are not negotiations.
05:18What happened in Riyadh, those are not negotiations about the end of the war.
05:23These are talks about how to get to negotiations.
05:27So the day that Secretary Rubio headed to Riyadh, the State Department made an announcement
05:35that these are not negotiations.
05:37These were a continuation of the phone call between Trump and Putin.
05:42So when you hear that, and then you look at General Kellogg going to Brussels and then
05:47to Kiev, all the European leaders meeting, or many European leaders meeting in Paris,
05:54and all the other things that are happening, these are leaders trying to figure out what
06:02is the path to a ceasefire and then to negotiation.
06:08So that's, this is not going to be clean.
06:10It's going to have a lot of rough edges on it over the next, I think, many, many weeks.
06:17Certainly the Russians, you know, they've intensified their attacks.
06:21They don't show any interest in actually having real negotiations.
06:26They think they're winning right now.
06:29And so, so it's going to take a long time to get to the point where there are, there's
06:35an agreed ceasefire and then negotiations.
06:40And I'll come back to the President in just a second.
06:44The second phase is the actual ceasefire, where, and of course, nobody, nobody believes
06:51that Russia would actually live up to any agreement on a ceasefire unless there is a
06:57force that will compel them to live up to it.
07:01So a lot of what's happening now are discussions about what does this look like, how to do
07:08it.
07:08But once that ceasefire is in place and it looks like it might hold, then you can get
07:14to actual negotiations about the long-term outcomes of sovereignty, security, and probably
07:24some other things not directly related to Ukraine.
07:28So I could be totally wrong, but I see three phases like that.
07:34And again, I think we're talking many, many months before this is sort of concluded.
07:42But until this ceasefire is taking place, you just said it might take many, many months.
07:48That could mean that Russia gains more and more territory.
07:52It could, but actually they're not.
07:56You know, Munich last year, Navalny was killed and the Ukrainian city of Avdivka was finally
08:06captured by the Russians.
08:07And I remember people were like, oh my God, Avdivka.
08:09When you look on the map, Avdivka is almost in Russia.
08:12I mean, it's as far east as you can go in Ukraine.
08:17And now here we are exactly one year later, and the Russians still have not been able
08:22to capture Prokhorovsk, which is only 60 kilometers from Avdivka, even though they've
08:28lost almost 200,000 troops since last year.
08:32So I don't see Russia having the capability in the next few months to knock Ukraine out
08:42of the war.
08:43Now, if after a few months, and I don't know how many months, you know, there's not resupply
08:50of ammunition, for example, to Ukraine, at some point that could start to change.
08:56But right now, I don't have the feeling that the Russians actually can knock Ukraine out.
09:02In fact, the Russians have not been able to eliminate the Ukrainian bridgehead in Kursk
09:09since August, which is incredible.
09:11Ben, why is Trump so fascinated about Putin?
09:15And what does he want from this relationship?
09:18I mean, traditionally, Republicans are really critical with Russia, but that seems to really
09:23be changing not only in the White House, but also in Congress.
09:27What's behind that?
09:28I never in my life would have imagined that this would be the case.
09:32But this is not my parents' Republican Party either.
09:36I mean, the Republican Party has changed significantly.
09:40And in some ways, the Democrats have changed.
09:42Well, the Democrats are more anti-Russia than the Republicans, which is interesting.
09:50And I could not explain why that is.
09:53Now, your question about President Trump and President Putin is a very good one.
09:57And it's something I have been trying to understand.
10:03It's probably a combination of things.
10:05I mean, part of it could be this is, you know, President Trump sees himself as the grand
10:11dealmaker, the negotiator.
10:13And so you start off with a maximalist position here and then you eventually come back to here.
10:22So maybe he's starting there.
10:25I don't know.
10:26Then the second possibility or thing to think about is I think the president, of course,
10:35he wants to be respected.
10:37And I think he could turn very quickly if when he realizes or begins to believe that
10:47the Russians are playing him, that they are never, ever going to give him the deal that
10:54he thinks he wants.
10:55And he has pretty much staked his whole reputation on getting the peace.
11:00And so if the Russians overplay their hand, I can imagine the president turning on them
11:08very quickly.
11:10He has so much more leverage over the Russians now than he did four years ago or eight years
11:16ago.
11:18Economically, the Russians are in trouble in Ukraine.
11:21I mean, there's a lot of things that he could do, either that would crush Russia's economy
11:28or by giving Ukraine everything they wanted.
11:32So that's why I think we're in this preparation phase where a lot of things are going to be
11:40moving around.
11:43But then, of course, the third possibility is that I am absolutely, totally wrong.
11:48And he really does embrace Putin and he really does dislike Zelensky and everything we're
11:58hearing now is the real position.
12:02I hope that's not true, but it certainly could be.
12:05Some people say we are like in the beginning of a new world order.
12:09There is Russia, there's China, there's the United States, and they kind of start to accept
12:14each other's in their areas and their territories and also accepting that the bigger countries
12:20eat the smaller countries.
12:21What I'm saying is like, it's OK for Russia to occupy or to take Ukraine.
12:26Taiwan can be taken by China and Trump can take Greenland.
12:31Do you see that possibility?
12:33Well, certainly I have heard a lot of people speculate that that was kind of what's happening
12:38and it does have that feeling.
12:42I hope that's not the case.
12:44I think what the United States has done over the last 80 years and from which we have benefited
12:51for 80 years is this respect for sovereignty of nations and a network of allies that we
12:58could always count on, even if there was friction between countries at times.
13:08One of the big differences, of course, between the United States and China and Russia is
13:14that those are actual dictators.
13:17I mean, there's no such thing as a free and fair election in China or Russia.
13:21Nobody really believes that.
13:25In the United States, of course, we have not perfect, but we do have elections.
13:32We have midterm elections coming up here in about 20 months.
13:39So I spoke with several members of Congress, Republican members of Congress at the Munich
13:44Security Conference.
13:46They are very aware of midterm elections, as you would expect, and the impact that that
13:53will have and that if things that the administration is doing now, that could have real
14:01problems, create problems for them in the midterms.
14:04So I think we should all remember that we are only into the fifth week now of this
14:13administration.
14:14It seems like five months, but it's really only the fifth week.
14:19And that I'm trying hard to not get too emotional about it, but to stay calmer and
14:31entrust in the resilience of America's constitutional design that this will eventually
14:40work out.
14:41At the end of the day, he was elected.
14:44And I can't love our democracy only if I like who got elected.
14:53You are, you have been based, you have been working in Germany or living in Germany.
14:58Now we talk with each other.
14:59You are in Frankfurt at the moment.
15:02What can Germany, what can Europe do?
15:04There's probably three things that Germany and other European allies should be doing.
15:11Number one, do what you said you would do, which is when it comes to fulfilling your
15:17obligations for security and contribution to collective security.
15:22You know, I hear it all the time.
15:24Yes, we need to do more.
15:25We need.
15:25So there's nobody arguing against it.
15:28The problem is they're not doing it.
15:30There's not yet the political will to actually do that, at least in some countries in Europe,
15:35including Germany, whereas I was just in Lithuania.
15:39You know, they're not confused.
15:40They're almost at 5% GDP and they plan to go higher next year.
15:46Poland, other East Flank countries, they're there.
15:50So it is possible.
15:52That's the first thing.
15:53The second thing is I think that Germany and other countries should not complain about
16:00being left out of these talks, but instead get involved in these talks, working together
16:10and laying out to the administration and to Russia and to Ukraine.
16:15These are Europe's interests.
16:18We have interests also.
16:20And, you know, the EU still has sanctions on Russia.
16:23So you make it clear those sanctions will remain in place even if the negotiations call
16:31for ending sanctions.
16:33Europe is not bound to that, just like Ukraine is not bound to accept whatever comes out
16:40of the negotiation.
16:43That sounds a little bit more simplistic.
16:44It's obviously going to be much more challenging.
16:46But I'm just thinking Germany is a sovereign nation.
16:50And of course, you have an election coming up here in just a few days.
16:53So I understand it may be some time.
16:56But nonetheless, to me, this would be an important thing in a way for Germany to lead inside
17:04Europe.
17:05And then the third thing I would say is, you know, don't don't lose confidence in your
17:11American friends.
17:12We've been through a lot over the 250 years of our of our history, and we've been through
17:21some really bad times.
17:22And, you know, right now is people are looking at us and wondering what's going on.
17:32I would just say don't give up on us.
17:36Ben Hodges, thank you very much.
17:38Thank you, Ines.
17:39Thank you, Ines.
17:41Sure, I've spoken to them.