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Brian Lehrer: Brian Lehrer on WNYC. As you've been hearing in the news, Russia, it appears, is taking on a new extreme tactic in its invasion of Ukraine. Maybe you heard about the attack on a train station this morning. Yesterday, The Washington Post reported on Russia's "scorched-earth military strategy." Reporter Dalton Bennett writes, "Ukrainian military officials said the wholesale destruction of towns and villages seems to be a deliberate strategy as Russia tries to take full control of the Eastern Ukrainian region known as the Donbas."

On the ground in Ukraine, New Yorker reporter Joshua Yaffa tweeted images of the devastation, writing, "One village after another outside Kyiv looks like this. Homes obliterated by shelling, burnt to the ground, cars run over by tanks and graffiti left by retreating Russian soldiers, that says, 'Thanks for the hospitality.'" Disgusting. In the wake of all the destruction, it's easy to wonder, "Aren't there rules about this kind of warfare of targeting theaters with the word children outside of them?" Maybe you heard about that one, a theater where somebody posted "children are here" and they bombed it anyway, or maternity wards. Isn't the West supposed to enforce rules of war?

In her latest piece for The Atlantic, my next guest argues that "There are no rules without someone to enforce them" and argues for what she thinks the West ought to do now to protect democracies around the world against autocratic forces, not just Ukraine against Russia. We're joined now by Anne Applebaum, staff writer for The Atlantic, senior fellow at the Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies and the Agora Institute, historian and author of many books, including Twilight of Democracy: The Seductive Lure of Authoritarianism. Her article is troublingly titled There Is No Liberal World Order. Anne, thanks for coming on. Welcome back to WNYC.

Anne Applebaum: Thanks for having me.

Brian Lehrer: Can you define that term first? If the title of your article is There Is No Liberal World Order, what's a liberal world order?

Anne Applebaum: The Liberal World Order was where the rules and institutions that were created after the Second World War, especially in Europe, although they were meant to be universal, that set out the way nations would deal with one another, that we would not violate one another's borders, we would respect rules about human rights. In reaction to the horrors of the Second World War and the Holocaust, there were statements made about genocide, preventing genocide. War crimes tribunals were set up to convict the Nazis, and then other similar tribunals were set up in the years after.

The idea was that there were some rules about state behavior that couldn't be crossed, and if you did cross them, there would be consequences. What the Russians are doing now, aside from trying to conquer Ukraine and take territory, they are deliberately defying those rules. They are targeting civilians. They are openly committing atrocities. They have crossed the border without any consultation or seeking to change the borders without any consultation of the people who live there. This is a war that is aimed not just at Ukraine but at that entire system.

Brian Lehrer: As a point of history, you get into, in your article, something that happened in 1994. Let's roll back and go through that almost 30-year lens, and then we'll bring it back up to the present. You write about a speech that the President of Estonia, a former Soviet Republic, gave in 1994 after the Soviet Union collapsed, just about three years later in Hamburg, Germany. What did he say?

Anne Applebaum: This was Lennart Meri, who is the first post-Soviet President of Estonia. This was a big speech in Hamburg, kind of black tie. His speech was mostly describing how happy and relieved the Estonians were to rejoin the Western world, to the Democratic world. He spoke about the values of democracy, the importance of human rights, the greater creativity and usefulness of human life in democracy, as opposed to the dictators that his country had just escaped.

Then he warned the room. He said, "This is fine for now. Things are going well, but just so that you know, just across the border from Estonia, a revival of Russian imperialism is already beginning. We are already hearing language about Russia being first among equals, that Russia can decide what happens in its neighbors. The revival of an autocratic sensibility and imperial sensibility is already beginning."

The room was-- People didn't expect to hear that. Everybody thought the Cold War was over, the Soviet Union has broken up. One person stood up and walked out of the room, and that was the person who was the deputy mayor of Saint Petersburg, Vladimir Putin. From the early '90s, there was a part of the Russian elite, and Putin was very much a part of that which wanted the empire back and was clear about it and was already speaking about it.

Of course, Lennart Meri's words were not taken seriously. He was from a very small country. Even larger countries in Central Europe, when they made the same complaint, were ignored or people thought they were exaggerating or they're anti-Russian because they had this bad experience. We let them into NATO because nobody thought it really mattered anyway. By the way, they came into NATO because they wanted it, because they were already in the early '90s afraid of Russian revanchism and Russian resurgence, but we didn't take this warning seriously.

Instead, we traded with Russia, we dealt with Russia, we ignored Russian violations of human rights both inside Russia and their destruction of Chechnya. We ignored their violations of borders in Ukraine because it was more convenient for us to think that Russia had been somehow contained and that problem was over.

Brian Lehrer: Right. Of course, this invasion of Ukraine and even the 2014 invasion of Ukraine and the subsequent annexation of Crimea, which a lot of our listeners know about is not the first or are not the first and second, but as you point out, are the last of three Russian invasions in recent decades. You just mentioned Chechnya. I think to your previous answer, maybe this is the single most disappointing thing about the last 30 years that, as you write, the West believed capitalism would bring democracy and democracy would bring peace.

Even after the President of Estonia gave that speech in 1994, the West went about integrating its economy with Russia. We see it now, the dependence on Russian oil and gas that's making it hard to impose the most meaningful sanctions from Europe, but that idea that capitalism would bring democracy and democracy would bring peace, do you think that's naive in the 30-year lens of history now or still really somewhat true, but we really have to do it?

Anne Applebaum: There were several problems with the idea. One of the problems was that there never was capitalism in Russia, at least not as we would define it. There was an oligarchic system in which a few people set the rules and controlled how everything works. Very little anyway, spontaneity, very little entrepreneurship. Most people who made money in Russia were somehow dependent on the state, so there wasn't a recognizable form of capitalism there. Second of all, most of our dealings with Russia were dealings with those oligarchs, and we facilitated their rise.

We helped launder their money, we invested in their companies that were mostly stolen from the Russian state budget, or in one or two cases, stolen from other oligarchs. We somehow assumed that just integration, in other words, just because they could buy Chanel or McDonald's in Moscow, that just because of that, they would somehow assimilate into our political system. To be fair, we did some more things. We invited them into institutions.

There was extensive diplomacy in all the Clinton administration, the Bush administration, the Obama administration, extensive diplomacy with Russia, but all along, the Russians were very clear about not wanting to be part of our system, "We are not going to be an ordinary country." President Yeltsin said to the IMF, "We will not obey by your rules." Every institution they went in, they tried to change the rules. They didn't want to accept any of the norms of the liberal world order, were not of interest to them. Yes, it was a failure.

I mean, an integration, which just means we reinforced the wealth of a very small group of people, was not an integration at all. Yes, it was a mythology. I mean, it was fairly clear that in that sense, it was failing even a decade ago.

Brian Lehrer: If you're just joining us listeners, my guest is Anne Applebaum from Johns Hopkins and The Atlantic, her latest provocative article in The Atlantic is called There Is No Liberal World Order. Unless democracies defend themselves, the forces of autocracy will destroy them. This is about Ukraine but beyond Ukraine, and we can take some phone calls for Anne Applebaum at 212-433-WNYC. 433-9692. Let's take a phone call right now. Sharon in Manhattan, you're on WNYC. Hi, Sharon.

Sharon: Hi. I was wondering, in light of liberal democracy is a myth, then what do we do about enforceability? What happens when people just don't agree and abide by the rules? What alternatives are there to the enforceability of UN treaties and charters and everything? I mean, a lot of people agree and then a few don't and what happens when they invade other people's borders and so forth?

Brian Lehrer: Right, everybody agrees not to be bad guys except the bad guys. Anne, in your piece, you do outline some what you consider next steps.

Anne Applebaum: Yes. I mean, there isn't a silver bullet point answer, but what we need to begin to do is to think differently about international politics, and there are a few rules. Number one is realizing that there is no liberal world order, and simply stating this is bad or condemning things, or even bringing people before the UN Human Rights Council, none of that is going to matter unless people feel there are some consequences to it, and the spectacle of Western leaders mouthing these empty statements has become almost a parody, particularly in the run-up to this war.

Number two, we need to think differently about Kleptocracy and about our own financial systems and about how we treat autocratic money and kleptocratic money and stolen money. How do we deal with regimes like that? We're going to pretend it's business as usual or we're going to stop dealing with them and we're going to end the systems that allow them to, for example, create anonymous companies and use those companies to invest in the United States and elsewhere?

That's two. A third point is that we need to wean ourselves off fossil fuels, not only because of climate change, but because many of the important and really aggressive autocracies in the world are dependent on fossil fuels. There are some exceptions, Norway and so on, but many countries that have large oil deposits become autocracies, because it means that a very few people control all of the nation's resources, and you can think of Russia, Saudi Arabia, Venezuela, Iran, these are all examples of that. We also need better ways of communicating to the outside world.

The idea that there's a sort of marketplace of ideas and the best ones win is really not true in a world where autocratic states control what their populations see and hear, so we need to begin thinking harder about how do we shape our messages? How do we reach different kinds of people? Russia is a big place.

There are a lot of-- There is a small number of liberals, about 20%, but then there are other people who might be reachable in different ways. How do we reach them? How do we build liberal institutions and liberal-- or for example, how do we help create the idea that there is another Russia? Should we build Russian television stations? Should there be a Russian language university in Vilnius or Warsaw? Beginning to think differently about how we communicate, how we defend our own ideals, how we operate at home, how we talk about and treat our own democracy?

That's part of the story, too. I mean, that's out of the scope of foreign policy, but understanding why democracy is an imperfect system but still a better system, defending it here, defending it abroad, making it clear that there's something we believe in that there is such a thing as freedom and there are such a thing as rights and everybody should have them. Putting all those ideas back at the center of our own politics is the way to go.

Brian Lehrer: How good our democracy is at home, and as Jerome in the Bronx is going to bring up I think how good it is in our foreign policy. Jerome, you're on WNYC with Anne Applebaum. Hi.

Jerome: Hi. Thanks for taking my call. I was wondering in terms of war crimes, how guilty are United States officials for incursions into other countries in a similar way to what's going on? Well, in a similar way to what's going on now, I think of Iraq and a number of other countries.

Brian Lehrer: Times in Latin America, you know that people could go down a list and say, "Well, when it comes to foreign policy, we're just another big power trying to exercise its power for the sake of our economy or whatever else."

Anne Applebaum: I don't think that we have in modern history, in the 20th century, tried to change borders of a neighbor, we haven't invaded Canada or Mexico and executed everybody in the border areas and tried to take control. I don't see an exact parallel to what Russia is doing, no, but is the United States imperfect? Have we made mistakes in the past? Yes, I do think we have, and I think part of the reckoning around these subjects is to understand why that's no longer acceptable.

We can see how it looks, we can see how dangerous it is, we can see what kind of precedent it sets. We should condemn mistakes we've made in the past, and we should condemn what people are doing in the present, and we should reset the way we think about foreign policy more broadly, to put these ideas at the center of what we do.

Brian Lehrer: Anna in Manhattan, you're on WNYC with Anne Applebaum. Hi, Anna.

Anna: Yes. Good morning. Ms. Applebaum, you are really my favorite writer, The Atlantic, the main reason that I subscribe to their magazine. I have two concerns about what is happening now. First of all, is Germany that as Paul Krugman mentions in today's Times, still is very dependent for the energy on Russia, and they are still giving a lot of money despite the sanctions.

The other concern, of course, has to do with what happened in Hungary. Orbán was just re-elected. We can discuss how free and fair the elections were, but not only he thumbed his nose to the situation that's happening right now with Ukraine, he insulted Zelenskyy and now the EU is poised again to give them subsidies.

I mean, what can be done for institutions like the NATO and the EU to take some really strong positions in what is happening, and to see only to have [unintelligible 00:17:44] countries like the Baltic states, really showing backbone and taking a very firm position towards Russia with the little they can do, but the big countries just going on business as usual. Thank you.

Brian Lehrer: Thank you.

Anne Applebaum: Thank you very much for that. Good question. I don't think it's business as usual even in Germany. The Germans have announced they will send some weapons to Ukraine, they have announced that they'll make their defense budget much bigger, they're recognizing the scale of what's happened, they did agree to not open a pipeline that had been built from Russia to Germany, but yes, one of the mistakes that Germany made over the past decade was to make itself almost totally dependent on Russian gas, something like 55% German gas comes from Russia, and for the German audience, yes, reorienting their thinking about fossil fuels and where they get them and how they use them has to be part of rethinking their place in the world.

Decoupling themselves from Russia is an important task and there is a big movement in Germany to do that. I don't know, I wouldn't say it's the vast majority, but right now, the majority of Germans do want that, and this is a real sea change in Germany, which was really refused for a decade to see that there was a problem in Russia. I spent a lot of time in Germany over the last few years and constantly talking about this subject, and there was resistance, there was this idea that this is an East European thing, this is Russophobia, Russia is a pragmatic country, they won't ever do this.

I think the invasion has been a real shock for them. Hungary is a completely different problem, and this is maybe for a longer conversation later, but Hungary is an example of a country that has, where a democratically elected leader, and he was originally democratically elected, eroded the institutions of his state completely, and he is now, in effect, a dictator. There is nobody who can challenge him. His party controls all the media. They control the courts, they control the civil service, they control the economy through friendships and relationships, and we see the effect.

He's sympathetic with Putin, he's anti-Ukrainian, he's himself of an autocratic mindset. He's not violent, at least not yet, and so that's one difference from Russia, but it is true that sooner or later, certainly the EU and maybe NATO will have to reckon with, ask themselves whether having Hungary inside those institutions is really worth doing.

Brian Lehrer: Also on Hungary, maybe this is a footnote, but I saw this week that they're starting to buy Russian gas and oil in rubles, which has propped up the ruble, which had sunk very low in the face of the sanctions. I don't know how consequential that is in terms of defeating the sanctions regime, but this is exactly what some supporters of Putin have been calling for and urging, and maybe now it's starting to happen that countries around the world that are not in the so-called liberal world order, to the extent that it exists, are going to support Russia by buying things in rubles.

Anne Applebaum: Yes, it's very possible that some of them will. Hungary is a very small country, so it doesn't make that much difference, but I know that in Italy there's a debate about this. There may be debates in other larger countries about whether they should do this or not. I think the EU as a whole is now going to have a policy of not doing that, but will India do it? Will other non-European countries do it? It's very possible.

This is one of the big shifts in foreign policy now, this is one of the things I wrote about, is that we now have a world which is definitely multipolar. The West is not the only player or not even the largest player, and our values, the values that we believe in are not shared by everybody, so thinking our way through a different kind of foreign policy for this new era is very important.

Brian Lehrer: Just two minutes left with Anne Applebaum, then we have Mayor, among other things, in the next hour. Anne's article in The Atlantic is There Is No Liberal World Order. Anne, my last question is about what kind of immediate intervention--? Zelenskyy wants more military involvement from the West, US military involvement often makes things worse, not better.

We say chemical weapons is a line in the sand, but chemical weapons, it's because they're weapons of mass destruction, but they're doing mass destruction with conventional weapons, these bombs in villages and seeing the mass killings in Bucha, and things like that. According to you, what's the proper next step of intervention or non-intervention?

Anne Applebaum: This will not please many people, but the only way to end this war is for Ukraine to win it. If you want to end these human rights violations, these attacks on innocent people standing at bus stations, then what we need to do is arm Ukraine so that Russia will stop invading. We need to deter Russia from going any further. That means transferring weapons to Ukraine as fast as possible.

We have been helping them. We've helped them with both weapons and with intelligence, but we need to help them further. They may now need, at this stage of the war, heavier weapons because they're now fighting a different kind of force in the east of Ukraine. Better armed and better prepared than the troops who were coming from the north when they were trying to conquer the capital city, but the more and the faster the Ukrainians can defeat the Russians and push them back over the border, the sooner this will end.

Brian Lehrer: No compromise over the Donbas, the eastern portion where there's popular sympathy toward Russia?

Anne Applebaum: There is no popular sympathy towards Russia anymore. The city that they've just destroyed, Mariupol, was one of the most pro-Russian cities. It was 95% Russian-speaking, and there is no sympathy for Russia anymore in any part of Ukraine. Regarding territorial exchanges, I can imagine that the Ukrainians might decide in the interest of ending the war to make some concessions over Crimea, over some land in the east, but just remember what that means. We've just seen what happens. When the Russians occupy a Ukrainian city, they shoot the mayor, they arrest local leaders, museum directors, school teachers, they do mass violence and terror against civilians.

They are deporting people, they will take people out of the area and send them to Russia. They're taking children out of the area and sending them to Russia to be adopted, so this will be a complete destruction of those areas, kind of Russification on an on a rapid scale of a kind we haven't seen since the 1930s or '40s, and so it really is death and destruction for the people whose territory is conceded. As I said, Ukrainians may decide that they can do it, but just be wary about calling for that or demanding it as outsiders because the cost of doing that is very high.

Brian Lehrer: Anne Applebaum, thank you very much.

Anne Applebaum: Thank you.

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