The Russia Challenge, With Liana Fix and Thomas Graham (Election 2024, Episode 1)

LINDSAY:
Welcome to The President's Inbox. I'm Jim Lindsay, the Mary and David Boies distinguished senior fellow in U.S. foreign policy at the Council on Foreign Relations. Today's episode is the first in a special 2024 U.S. election series here on The President's Inbox. Whatever the outcome of the election on November 5th, the United States will have a new president come next January 20th. Whether that president is Kamala Harris or Donald Trump, they will face a difficult and dangerous world. Over the next seven weeks until election day, I will be sitting down with experts to unpack some of the most pressing challenges in the next president's foreign policy inbox. This week's topic is the Russia challenge.

With me to discuss the future of U.S. policy toward Russia, including U.S. support for Ukraine are Liana Fix and Thomas Graham. Liana is a fellow for Europe at the Council. Her research focuses on European security, transatlantic relations, and Russia. Along with Michael Kimmage, she's the author of the popular "Ukraine Scenarios" series at Foreign Affairs magazine. She recently wrote a piece for Survival Magazine titled "NATO in Ukraine: The Peril of Indecision." Thomas is a distinguished fellow here at the Council. He was a foreign service officer for fourteen years. He was director for Russian affairs on the staff of the National Security Council under President George W. Bush from 2002 to 2004, and assistant to President Bush and senior director for Russia on the national security staff from 2004 to 2007. Tom is the author of Getting Russia Right, which was published last September. Liana and Tom, thank you for joining me on The President's Inbox.

FIX:
Thank you for the invite, Jim.

GRAHAM:
Great to be here.

LINDSAY:
Let me begin Liana and Tom by asking a basic question, are either of you advising either the Harris campaign or the Trump campaign?

FIX:
I am not for my part.

GRAHAM:
And neither am I.

LINDSAY:
Okay, so let's begin our substantive discussion then. I want to get to the question of the general U.S.-Russian relationship, which I think it is safe to say is in terrible shape. But I want to begin with the specific question of Ukraine, which is one of, but by no means the only issue in dispute between Washington and Moscow. And I'd like to begin, if we may, with the question that was posed to former President Trump at his debate with Vice President Kamala Harris last week, namely, is it in the U.S. national interest to see Ukraine win its war with Russia? Liana, if we may, I'd like to start with you.

FIX:
From my perspective, it's an easy question. Yes, it is in the U.S. interest for Ukraine to win this war. The much more difficult and complex question is what exactly does winning mean? And that has been a question which has kept think tankers, experts, but also officials, U.S. officials and European officials occupied. What is it that is enough for Ukraine to claim victory? Is it that Ukraine's statehood is secured, that it remains an independent, sovereign country? Is it that Ukraine regains a certain percentage of its territory, its full territory, or the 2014 lines after the annexation of Crimea? Is it that Ukraine is economically viable? Those are all very different criterias how to define victory. So far, we don't really have a game plan from Western allies how victory for Ukraine should look like in the next years.

LINDSAY:
Let me put you on the spot, Liana, even though you said that's a difficult question to answer, how would you answer it?

FIX:
My answer would be two parts. A victory for Ukraine would be an end to the fighting, but also combined with a Ukrainian NATO membership that gives Ukraine the guarantee that Russia will not just attack after a pause, a cease-fire or any kind of political settlement again. That's from my perspective, a clear victory for Ukraine, even if it does not regain all the territory that is occupied by Russia today.

LINDSAY:
Tom, I want to ask you the same initial question I asked Liana, is it in the United States national interest for Ukraine to win?

GRAHAM:
And I would give a response that's very much along the lines of what Liana has just said. Yes, it's in our interest that Ukraine win. The question is how are we going to define win? And Liana went through a number of the various ways we can think about victory in this context. My definition of a win for Ukraine and a win for, I think, the West and the United States in particular somewhat different from Liana's, but I think along the same lines. I would articulate it this way. I would define victory as the emergence of a strong, prosperous, free, and independent Ukraine that's anchored in the Euro-Atlantic community.

That is a multi-year project. It goes well beyond simply ending the hostilities on the ground in Ukraine at this point but to questions about the reconstruction of Ukraine, the reparation of its socioeconomic conditions, its political conditions, and its integration into the Euro-Atlantic community on the economic side and also on the security side. I do not believe that NATO membership is an essential element of this. In fact, I believe that a NATO membership is far, far into the future, if ever, for Ukraine. But nevertheless, I think there are other ways, building security ties between Ukraine, NATO countries that will provide a powerful deterrent against any future Russia against Ukraine.

LINDSAY:
Tell me, Tom, why you don't see NATO membership for Ukraine as an immediate goal?

GRAHAM:
Well, most obviously because Ukraine is at war with Russia at this point, and membership under those conditions would lead to Article 5 in the immediate future. And I see no country in the alliance that is prepared to go to war with Russia at the moment. But the broader point I would make is that as the president of the United States has made clear on repeated occasions, the United States is not prepared to go to war with Russia to defend Ukraine in current circumstances. My sense is that even after the cessation of hostilities, that there still be an overwhelming threat posed by Russia to Ukraine, given the way Ukraine figures in the Russian political imagination and the pretensions and ambitions that Russia has had to control Ukrainian territory that go back decades. So, the question that I've asked Europeans, I've asked officials in the administration, other experts, is at what point is the United States prepared to go to war with Russia against Ukraine? And the answer I usually get is that people haven't thought that through.

Second point is it's almost certain that among the thirty-two now allies and NATO, that at least one or two is going to object. And I don't see getting consensus there. I think politically, it's almost impossible to imagine getting a two-thirds, a majority in the U.S. Senate, to admit Ukraine. So, I think the appropriate approach is to think about how we provide the guarantees to Ukraine outside of NATO to get Ukraine focused on that as well. And to remove this thought that at some point there's NATO and we argue and bicker over what the conditions are and so forth to taking the practical steps that we can that are politically feasible, that we have the resources to provide the best defense for Ukraine now and well into the future.

LINDSAY:
Liana, I want to give you a chance to tell me why you'd place Ukraine membership in NATO at the top of your list for thinking about whether Ukraine has won this war.

FIX:
My conclusion stems from disillusionment about the alternatives. We had a long discussion about what alternative security commitments or security guarantees for Ukraine can be provided, and none of those is convincing. What we have today, bilateral memorandum of understandings with Ukraine, a perpetuation of weapon deliveries, which is great in itself, but it is not a long-term reliable solution. It is vulnerable to domestic changes in Ukraine supporters' countries. So, we need something which is more structural, more stable. And in the past, NATO membership has been the one instrument that has been able to stabilize Central and Eastern Europe. I fully agree with Tom that NATO membership at a time when the fighting is going on is not imaginable. Article 5 should not and never be invoked in a NATO-Russia war. But in the medium term future, we should not just voluntarily take NATO membership for Ukraine, or at least a clear timeline for NATO membership, off the table as an instrument which is part of the solution and not part of the problem in this war.

And perhaps as a last point, there's a truism that has been established in Washington, but also some European capitals that we cannot offer Ukraine NATO membership for once the fighting has ended because Putin will then never end the war. I'm not sure that I'm convinced by this truism because it might well be that Putin just does not want to end the war anyway. And that from his perspective, Ukraine's NATO membership, even if the West promises that Ukraine will not become a NATO member anytime soon, he will just not believe it because he is convinced that this is where the West wants to drag Ukraine into, this is what he has made clear ahead of the beginning of this war in December. So, I think that's why NATO membership should be part of talk, should be part of negotiation. It should be the stable guarantee that NATO members can provide Ukraine in the long term and provide first a timeline and conditions for that.

LINDSAY:
Tom, I want to pick up on a point that was implicit if not explicit in what Liana just said, and that is the issue of Russia's interest in ending the war. Former President Trump has said repeatedly that he would be able to bring the war to an end even before he was inaugurated for a second term, leaving aside the propriety of a president-elect trying to conduct negotiations. As you look at where we currently stand in the fighting between Ukraine and Russia, Tom, what do you see as the prospects of being able to negotiate a cease-fire or a truce, let alone a more sustainable long-term peace?

GRAHAM:
Well, it is very difficult to imagine it at this point. Part of what we need to think about is creating the conditions under which serious negotiations could start and conceivably lead to some sort of enduring settlement. In a sense, some of the things that Liana and I have been talking about right now are about creating those conditions. At this point, President Putin sees no reason to relent in what he's doing. He's making progress on the ground militarily. He looks at the West and he sees growing questions about our ability to resource Ukraine over the long term. There are obviously problems inside Ukraine with mobilization and so forth. Russia, while it has serious domestic problems at this point, has appeared to adapt, in Putin's mind, quite well to the Western sanctions and to whatever Ukraine has been able to throw against it on the battlefield. So, he sees no reason to relent in achieving what his goals are in Ukraine, ill-defined as those may be at the moment.

So, I think an essential element to getting towards negotiation is demonstrating that Ukraine and the West, the United States in particular, are in this for the long haul, that we have a plan put in place that will provide or deliver the types of resources, the military equipment, the financial resources that Ukraine needs to continue the fight, that the Ukrainians have a viable plan to mobilize the manpower that they need, and that we have a longer-term vision of how we're going to integrate Ukraine into the Euro-Atlantic community. And in fact, we are putting in place policies now that will lead to that. So, everything to demonstrate that no matter how long Putin persists in whatever he's trying to do in Ukraine, that in fact we are more capable of outlasting him, we are resilient and we are going to push this in a direction that is going to be unfavorable to Russia. That, I think, begins to create the conditions in one can imagine Putin deciding that it's time to sit down and try to cut the best possible deal I can.

LINDSAY:
I want to ask you a variation of the same question. One, do you see any realistic set of circumstances, short of abandoning Ukraine, that would persuade Vladimir Putin to negotiate a lasting truce or a lasting peace? But beyond that is the question that Tom raises about the ability of the United States in its Western partners to send a convincing message that they will stay behind Ukraine for the long term. That seems to be a prerequisite that's very much up in the air. It's not at all clear where former President Trump stands on this issue. He quite notably at the recent debate, refused to say whether he saw a Ukrainian victory as being in the U.S. national interest. But beyond that, the Biden administration has struggled to get reluctant House Republicans to go along with more aid to Ukraine and only succeeded after quite a long delay.

FIX:
I have become more skeptical if showing our resilience and our sustainable support for Ukraine alone will be sufficient to change Vladimir Putin's calculus. I think in theory it makes sense that once he sees the contracts that we have concluded with our defense industries that once he sees the commitments that were made in the memorandums of understandings and so on, he might analytically deduce that the West is in for the long term and there's no sense in trying to outlast the West. But by now, I think that actually as democracies, we are almost structurally not able to send this kind of message because there will always be conflicting signals. As an example, let me just mentioned the recent debate in Berlin where support for Ukraine for the next budgetary circle has been halved out of a fight for survival by the government coalition, which doesn't necessarily mean a foreign policy change, but which of course, sends again a signal towards Moscow that something is wobblier than perhaps in reality it actually is.

I do believe that European countries and the U.S., with the exception of a certain outcome of the elections are more stable than we often assume in their support for Ukraine, but it's just incredibly difficult to communicate that to Vladimir Putin given how complex and challenging democracies are and how they work. So, I think we need something additional. And the question is what is this additional that can convince Vladimir Putin? I think Ukraine has tried to provide this additional part with its Kursk invasion, which of course, was meant to create a buffer zone, to divert Russian forces from Eastern Ukraine, but was also meant to have a shock effect in Russia and perhaps to persuade Russian minds that something is going wrong.

That was a small incursion, but perhaps we have to think more along these lines—what can be shock effects that can create the impression in Vladimir Putin's minds that this is too much of a stake and it would be to his advantage to negotiate rather than to continue this war or to escalate? And I think that's perhaps something that European allies and the United States have to think about in more detail together with Ukraine. It's not just about political resilience, it also needs shock moments for Russia's leadership.

LINDSAY:
Speaking about shock moments, Tom, as we're sitting here right now, there's a discussion going on in Washington about whether or not the United States should give the green light to Kyiv to use non-U.S. weapons to make deep strikes into Russian territory. To this point in our conversation, we've been operating on the assumption that the situation on the ground in January 2025 will look quite similar to what it looks like today. However, President Putin has said that if the United States goes ahead and authorizes deep strikes on Russian territory, that doing so will mean that NATO countries, the United States, and European countries are fighting Russia. What is the probability in your view that we could see a very different, perhaps broader war with Russia in the coming months?

GRAHAM:
Well, Jim, that's certainly something that we can't rule out at this moment. If the United States does get permission for the use of Western weapons for deep strikes into Russia, it's certain that the Russians will respond in some way. What's at top of the mind of many people in the West when we have this debate is the possible use of tactical nuclear weapons by Russia. I in fact think that that probability is quite low. It's hard to see any military advantage that Russia would gain from the use of weapons. It's hard to see where it would benefit diplomatically and politically from that, particularly given the positions that the Chinese leadership has articulated in that regard as well as the Indian. I think that that would undermine very much what Russia has been trying to do in enhancing its image in the Global South. So, I don't rule that out.

But what we tend to, I think, overlook when we focus on nuclear weapons is the other types of things that Russia can do to do harm to the West and to the United States in particular. It can use its cyber tools. We need to remember that Russia launched a number of serious cyber-attacks against the United States before this conflict in Ukraine began in 2022. Presumably, Russia still has the capability of doing some of that and perhaps even on a greater scale than it's done in the past. It could go after a part of our financial system, it could try to shut down aviation traffic around a major airport, or who knows what they might be able to do in terms of hacking into our electoral system and throwing the whole election result up in the air. So that could change.

They also have the ability to provide weapons to our enemies elsewhere in the world. The obvious place to look is the Middle East, providing weapons if not directly through Iran to the Houthis, Hezbollah, Hamas, and so forth. I think it'd turn what is already a very difficult situation for the United States and our ally, Israel, in that region to something that's much more. So, yes, you're absolutely right. By January 20th, this could look much, much different. And what that means is as these decisions are being made today, we really do need to think carefully about what the Russian response might be and to be as sure as we possibly can that we are capable of dealing with those responsibles in an effective fashion.

LINDSAY:
Liana, Tom has quite nicely laid out the various pain points Moscow could push against should it decide it's in its interest to do so. That leads me into the conversation in a broader sense of U.S.-Russian relations, obviously deeply strained at the current moment. Do we see any evidence that Putin is interested in warming up relations with the United States?

FIX:
Just to add one more point to the exhaustive list of Tom, which I think from a perspective of Europeans is quite important. Russian sabotage efforts in Europe have really been stepped up. The assassination attempt on the head of the German defense company, Rheinmetall has been in the news, and this is obviously something that Russia could expand too if they want to choose escalation not only against industry heads, but possibly also against politicians in a country.

LINDSAY:
I should note if the Russians succeed in assassination attempts like you just mentioned, Liana, or in any of the various scenarios that Tom laid out, the pressure on Western leaders and particularly on the U.S. president to respond are going to be quite intense, and you could get locked into a vicious circle. But I wanted you to talk to this broader issue of whether Putin has any interest in wanting to dial things down with Washington.

FIX:
I don't see this interest yet. What we have seen in the last two years is that from the U.S. side, there were continuous efforts to try to engage Russia despite what is happening in Ukraine on questions of arms control. And of course, the renewal of New START is big there. And the response for Moscow has always been, "Well, we can discuss this, but only if we also discuss Ukraine." This is what Russia seems to understand, and Tom can correct me here, as a warming up that the U.S. and Russia negotiate, but not only about separated or segmented issues like arms control, but that they negotiate about the fate of Ukraine. We have also seen with the prisoners' exchange that there are situations where just some tactical cooperation might be in Russia's interests, but this has also not resulted in a political opportunity in a warming up of relations. I'm quite skeptical of that.

What we should also look at when it comes to the whole picture of Russia's war is the role of China and how U.S.-China relations are developing. We have just received news recently that the United States is increasingly concerned that China's support for Russia's war, which some have said has said a crucial and enabler, has been escalated to not only dual-use goods, but to actually providing Russia with direct means to continue this war. So, if China has become a direct supporter of Russia's war and the most important source for Russia to reconstitute its military, then China by extension also becomes a threat to European security, and that is something that the United States and European allies have really not fully grappled with, and which is especially difficult for Europeans to grapple with because they have many other issues with China on the agenda, trade, electric vehicles. I think if we talk about warming up of a relationship, the China dimension plays a huge role there.

LINDSAY:
Tom, Liana has just put a tremendous amount on the table, and I think what I'd like us to do is to go at the big picture question, which is what Liana referred to as this coalescing or at least alignment between Moscow and Beijing. It's actually broader than that. We see Iran, we see North Korea having mutual interest in cooperating, particularly in terms of helping Russia in its war against Ukraine, that has led to talk about the formation of what's been nefariously called the axis of upheaval, the axis of the aggrieved, the axis of autocracies. How concerned should the next administration be that a number of major powers are banding together? Is it something that U.S. policy should consciously try to foil or is it just a condition we're going to have to adapt to?

GRAHAM:
I think that's one of the biggest questions that the next administration is going to face. Jim, you will know, that an axiom of American foreign policy for probably the past century, 120, 150 years has been to prevent a hostile power or coalition of hostile powers from dominating either Europe or East Asia. It's one of the reasons that we got engaged in the First World War and the Second World War. It's the reason that we've conducted the Cold War for many, many years. So, the linking up, the strategic alignment between Russia and China, the linking of China's technological capabilities, its economic capabilities with Russian resources does present that type of challenge and a real threat to dominate Eurasia writ large. So, we ought to be focused about that. The problem that the administration and previous administrations have had is that we've tended to think of Russia and China in silos and have thought very little bit about how what we do towards one or the other of those countries impacts on the broader relationship between the two countries.

The next administration is going to have to think about these two countries in tandem as well as some of the other countries, Iran and North Korea. And yes, it is in the U.S. strategic interest to attenuate that relationship. The question is how you go about it, with what chances of success and so forth. There are obvious reasons why these two countries, China and Russia, are moving together at this point. It grows out of, I think, resentment of the role that they believe the United States has played on the global stage in trying to constrain their rise to stifle their ability to play a larger role in global affairs, to deny them the spot on the global stage that they think they have a right to based on their histories and their own sense of identity. But it's also true that there are significant differences between those two countries, tensions that have built over the decades that could be exploited.

I think one of the things that I find interesting about the current situation is that in many ways, our policies tend to push these countries together and we tend to think in terms of punishment. The new administration, I think, will have to grapple with, is there a way to pull these countries apart? And that will require not simply thinking in terms of punishment, but in terms of incentives that lead one or the other or the third country to believe that improving relations with the United States is in fact more to its strategic advantage than continuing down the road of moving closer to the other country in opposition to the United States. I could have imagined ways of doing that with Russia ten years ago. I think it's much more difficult to do it now because of Russia's act of aggression against Ukraine. There may be ways of, I think, working on the China part of the problem that leads to some sort of détente in relations between the United States and China that would also have, from our standpoint, a positive impact on Russia's conduct in Europe.

LINDSAY:
Liana, how do you think about this trend toward greater division in global politics, or it looks like the United States and its traditional friends, partners, and allies are squaring off against this coalition of autocracies. Do you think the Russia-China alignment is actually something that can be sustained? I ask that question against the backdrop of calls I often hear for what has been termed a "reverse Kissinger moment" that brings to mind Henry Kissinger when he was national security advisor, then secretary of state, launching the opening to China, and it was designed to break the bonds between communist China, the communist Soviet Union, and that was a masterstroke that changed the course of history for the next half century. And now, the argument is we need to do it again, but this time to peel Russia off from China. How do you think about those issues?

FIX:
It's incredibly difficult. Back then, China was sort of the junior partner, and right now, China is obviously the big brother in the relationship between Russia and China. It's not that the U.S.-China relationship can just be viewed through the lens of the Russia-China connection. The U.S.-China relationship in itself is, some would say, on a collision course. That adds to the difficulties of providing incentives to China. I could imagine one scenario in which there might be a chance to pull these actors apart, and that is a concerning observation that U.S. officials have also made recently that in exchange for military support, it's not just that Chinese gets paid for the military support they provide to Russia. In exchange for that, they get crucial capabilities from Russia, be it capabilities that they need for their own military, be it access to the Arctic. China is not the only country that is exploiting Russia and asking and extracting from Russia these crucial capabilities that will come to an end at some point.

At some point, Russia will have given everything that it was able to give to those powers, and then Russia's worth might become less important to China, and in this scenario, we can...Perhaps apart from the political relevance of Russia as an autocratic partner of China and so on, that's of course still there, but just in material terms, Russia will become less relevant to China once China has extracted everything that it wants. And that might be a situation where one could see some incentives working. But by then China would already have the capabilities that we don't want it to have from Russia, which will put, again, the U.S.-Chinese relationship on a very conflictual level. I imagine it to be incredibly difficult, and I have no answers to the question how the new administration can solve that problem, honestly.

LINDSAY:
Tom, I want to jump back and talk about an issue that came up briefly, and that's the future of arms control, the future of the Russian nuclear arsenal. I believe it was Liana mentioned that the New START Treaty is going to lapse in February of 2026. That's the last major bilateral arms control agreement. It cannot be extended. Is there a possibility to get arms control, whether formal or tacit back up and running, or have we moved into a different world? It's often referred to as a three-body problem because you have U.S. arsenal, Russian arsenal, Chinese arsenal. You could probably say a nine-body world given...Throw in India, Israel, North Korea, so forth. So, how do you think about the nuclear piece of this?

GRAHAM:
Jim, you've hit on the problem. We had a arms control architecture that was very much centered on Russia and the United States for the past fifty or sixty years, and for obvious reasons, they were the two major nuclear powers in the world. They had tremendous capabilities and far outdistanced any other countries in that realm. And then there are a few other elements that grew up around that, the Non-Proliferation Treaty, for example. But as you pointed out, the strategic landscape has changed dramatically over the past decade or more. China is growing, expanding and modernizing its nuclear arsenal and will probably reach parity with the United States and Russia sometime in the next decade. We have other nuclear powers, as you've indicated, but it goes beyond that. We have developed conventional capabilities that can do things that only nuclear weapons could have done before. We have space assets that operate in a different fashion from the way they did thirty or forty years ago and are accessible to more and more nations. You have cyber tools now that enable countries that are less industrially advanced actually, to engage in the strategic realm in a way that they couldn't before.

The concept of arms control strategic stability has become a much more complicated one, and we're only at the beginning stages of thinking through how you would actually establish strategic stability in this new strategic landscape, and that is going to occupy a considerable amount of effort on the part of the United States in the years ahead. The one additional point I would throw in here is that the Russians also have tremendous experience in conceptualizing strategic stability because of their interaction with us over the past half century or more. At some point, it would be useful for Russian experts and American experts to think together about what the demands and requirements of strategic stability would be for this new environment that we're entering.

That is obviously something that's very difficult to do at this point, given the politics between the two countries, but something that we need to keep in mind as we move forward. We need to be worried about the breakdown of arms control between the United States and Russia. We should try to figure out a way to begin those conversations in the future, but a bilateral agreement between Russia and the United States is going to be far from what we actually need to achieve the types of strategic stability we would be looking for in the much more complex world that we're entering.

LINDSAY:
Liana, if you want to add anything to the discussion of nuclear weapons, I welcome to have you do that. The question I wanted to ask you is, as you look forward, if you could grab time with either Vice President Kamala Harris or with former President Donald Trump and give them one piece of advice, about how they should think about policy toward Russia, what would it be?

FIX:
Just a quick add-on on the arms control question. One advantage, if one can speak about anything positive coming out from the U.S.-Russia relationship during the Ukraine war, is that both the United States and Russia are socialized, because of the Cold War into military contacts, milieu contacts, phone diplomacy, arms control agreements, and that is something which is substantially lacking on China's side. Chinese arms control experts are arguing that this is just a very basis that has to be established with China first, seeing the benefits of arms control as not something which is a zero-sum game. And this has evolved. China has on a very low level signaled willingness to engage in some arms control talks. At the same time, the United States has signaled that it could rethink the quantity of its nuclear warheads. It's a very difficult path ahead, but apart from just the policies, the socialization part, the communication part, signaling that arms control is the mutual benefit of all actors is incredibly important.

The piece of advice for Harris and for Donald Trump, it might be a little bit surprising because it has not directly to do with Ukraine and Russia, but it is not to forget the known unknowns. My perception of the current foreign policy debate is that it is very much focused on a continuation of current trends. So, if you discuss what is the greatest challenge of the next decade, it will be how do we address trade-offs between Ukraine and Taiwan? That's what policy makers and think tankers think about. But things can change, and surprising events can happen. We can, for example, see a return of global terrorism, which will change the priorities in a completely different way than they are now.

If we just focus on a continuation of the developments as they are now, and of course there are trends that will continue and ignore the known unknowns that can happen in between, for example, even if Kamala Harris wins the elections and continues Ukraine support, a return of global terrorism can throw the West off track because it becomes the most important priority. That's what I think is often missing in our foreign policy debate, discussing what else can happen that can change what seemed to be very clear priorities right now.

LINDSAY:
Tom, you've been in the Oval Office, you've been in the sit room. What advice would you want to give to the two candidates?

GRAHAM:
It's hard to disagree with Liana on this. The advice is that you always have to be prepared for surprises, the unexpected. If I were speaking specifically about Russia, it would be to advise them that this is not a problem that's going to disappear. No matter what happens in the conflict with Ukraine, Russia is going to be a major player on the global stage for decades to come. It is going to be a rival of the United States. And the real challenge facing the United States is not building partnership with Russia, it really is how do we manage a competitive relationship responsibly so that we avoid the type of direct military confrontation that could lead to the escalation to the nuclear level. It's being prepared for surprises and acting responsibly and thinking hard about how you're going to manage relations with what is going to be a difficult player on the global stage for years to come.

LINDSAY:
On that note, I'll close up this special election 2024 episode of the President's Inbox. My guests have been Liana Fix and Tom Graham, both our fellows here at the Council on Foreign Relations. Tom and Liana, as always, a delight to talk.

FIX:
Thank you.

LINDSAY:
This special election 2024 series is supported by the Carnegie Corporation of New York, working to reduce political polarization through philanthropic support for education, democracy, and peace. More information at carnegie.org. If you would like to learn more about what the candidates have said about foreign policy, please visit the Council's 2024 election central. You can find it at cfr.org/election2024, and election2024 is one word.

Please subscribe to The President's Inbox on Apple Podcasts, YouTube, Spotify, or wherever you listen, and leave us your review, we love the feedback. The publications mentioned in this episode and a transcript of our conversation are available on the podcast page for The President's Inbox on cfr.org. As always, opinions expressed on The President's Inbox are solely those of the host or our guests, not of CFR, which takes no institutional positions on matters of policy. 

Today's episode was produced by Ester Fang with Director of Podcasting Gabrielle Sierra. This is Jim Lindsay. Thanks for listening.