Interesting interview with Dror on Bloomberg. Food for thought.
Quote:
The US and its allies do not appear to be moved by Russian fears, real or imagined. They frame the war as a battle between good and evil, democracy versus authoritarian dictatorship, progress against reaction.
This is delusional. There is no such thing as an inevitable "right side of history." Not very long ago, rule by royal dynasties was regarded as the right side of history. And today, this idea is not universally held. For example, China, a highly relevant player in the world, does not share it. It has a very long political tradition and feelings of superiority that enable it to laugh off such prevailing Western notions.
If Israel has a senior global strategist, he is Yehezkel Dror. As a professor at the Hebrew University, he has educated generations of Israeli leaders. Six prime ministers have consulted him on issues of war and peace. "Crazy States: A Counterconventional Strategic Problem," written while he was working at the Rand Corp. and published in 1971, awakened the world to the imminent threat posed by fanatical third-world regimes.
Israelis sometimes refer to Dror as the Israeli Henry Kissinger. Both fled the Nazis as boys. They share German as a first language, doctorates from Harvard and a very developed and often highly controversial brand of foreign policy realism
For Dror, now in his mid-90s, realism has been largely missing from the West's game plan surrounding the war in Ukraine. In a recent interview conducted via email, he discussed what he views as Ukraine's missteps in its dealings with Russia and why he believes the US and its allies have been "delusional" in their approach to the war. The conversation has been edited for length and clarity.
This war, like most wars, will end with no absolute winner. Both sides will lose. The question is which side loses more. Ukraine is fighting bravely. President Volodymyr Zelenskiy has become a mass media hero. Western countries are condemning Russia and providing Kyiv with weapons and sanctions. But meanwhile, Ukraine is being partly devastated and depopulated. It is paying a very high price in blood and material, while Russia remains secure.
Yes, but it is hard for the West to grasp the depth of Russian strategic sensitivity to what happens in Ukraine. Russia has been invaded twice from the west, first by Napoleon and then by Germany in World War II. The German invasion was not a Clausewitzian "political war," but a war of total devastation, elimination and enslavement, with very high human and material costs for Russia. That is a major component of Russia's collective memory and military doctrine today. It does not want Western forces or Western allies on its border.
