U.S. Institute of Peace experts discuss the latest foreign policy issues from around the world in On Peace, a brief weekly collaboration with SiriusXM's POTUS Channel 124.

Transcript

Steve Scully: Pleased to welcome Ambassador John Sullivan, former U.S. Deputy Secretary of State, former U.S. Ambassador to the Russian Federation. He is joining us here in Washington. Ambassador, thank you.

Ambassador Sullivan: Steve, it's great to be with you today. Thanks for having me.

Steve Scully: Let me begin with this proposed scheduled meeting between President-elect Trump and Russian President Vladimir Putin. How does something like that come together? We know it's important. And what do you think the end game would be for both Russia and for the U.S.?

Ambassador Sullivan: Well, it's easier for me to predict what the end game for Russia would be, because Putin has not varied from his war aim since this war started. He's not going to compromise. He's not going to negotiate. He is going to denazify and demilitarize Ukraine and maintain the territories that Russia has seized, no matter what he says. The Russians said before the war started that they weren't going to invade Ukraine, and they had no plans to do that. They said that the same week that the invasion started. So he can't be trusted, his war aims haven't changed. So my advice to the incoming administration, and of course, I served President Trump as his ambassador for one of my three years as ambassador in Moscow. My first year I was President Trump's ambassador, the last two President Biden's is that he can't trust a word that President Putin says to him about Ukraine. And that's the first premise, and Russia cannot be allowed to achieve its war aims in Ukraine. It's not in the national security interests of the United States.

Steve Scully: And of course, you telegraph this in your book “Midnight in Moscow: A Memoir from The Front Lines of Russia's War Against the West”. We'll be talking about this and other issues on Tuesday as we bring the program to the U.S. Institute of Peace. We want to thank you for your help in facilitating all of this. We certainly did one of these programs back in 2017, COVID prevented that in 2021. Give us a sense of what the POTUS audience listening to this program on Tuesday can expect.

Ambassador Sullivan: Well, thanks, Steve. I want to thank you and POTUS channel 124 for being a media partner in this in this event. It is called “Passing the Baton”, a bipartisan event commemorating the peaceful transition of power from one administration to the next. And the event will gather top foreign policy and national security leaders for a series of discussions, and most importantly, symbolically, but importantly as well, on substance, is that we'll have the outgoing National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan and the incoming National Security Advisor Michael Waltz for a conversation to be moderated by a former National Security Advisor, Steve Hadley. So, a substantive, important afternoon to commemorate a very important milestone in our democracy, another presidential transition. And this is something that the U.S. Institute of Peace has done for almost 25 years, since 2001.

Steve Scully: Do you have a sense from your vantage point, both having been in two different administrations, a Democratic and a Republican administration, and now, what is the transfer of authority from Joe Biden and his team to Donald Trump and his team? How has it gone from what you've been seeing and hearing?

Ambassador Sullivan: Well, I haven't been involved directly, Steve, this time around. I was more directly involved in 2017 because I became Deputy Secretary of State in the first Trump administration, in early 2017 you know. The dynamics are always for those people coming into office, for example, the incoming National Security Advisor, or Senator Rubio, the enormity of the tasks that they are confronting really compel them beyond just, you know, patriotism, which I know they all have, we all share, but to really get up to speed on issues quickly, because on day one, the world doesn't stop revolving. Crises around the world don't pause to let a new administration get up to speed and acclimate itself. So it's in everyone's interests and in our national interest, that this transition be done professionally and competently, and that the incoming team get all the information that it wants, and, more importantly, all the information that it needs, including things that might not anticipate hearing from the outgoing team.

Steve Scully: And Mr. Ambassador, I think one thing is pretty clear, that regardless of the politics with the new administration, Senator Marco Rubio, a key member of the Senate Foreign Affairs Committee, , getting bipartisan support. There seems to be little question that he will become the next Secretary of State with Democratic and Republican support. What's your advice to Senator Rubio, and how can you have what I would call a team of rivals in the Trump White House, that will give the president honest advice and give him advice that the president may disagree with, but is important for him to know and understand?

Ambassador Sullivan: Well, you know one thing that will distinguish Senator Rubio the secretary designate, and I agree with you, he'll be confirmed quite easily. He has an enormous amount of experience, not just on the substantive issues, but on the department itself, because he served for so many years on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. I dealt with him personally when I was Deputy Secretary of State on any number of issues involving the State Department. So, he's very experienced, knows the issues well. The most important thing for the secretary is establishing his relationship with, as you put it, his “team of rivals”. So the most important, from my perspective, his most important counterparts in the administration will be the Secretary of Defense and the National Security Advisor, two very important relationships for him to make sure are solid, and if those go sideways, if there's not good communication and coordination between and among those offices, it's very difficult to get policy goals achieved.

Steve Scully: Ambassador John Sullivan is joining us here in Washington, and he'll be joining us in person next Tuesday. We hope you tune in noon to two eastern time as we come to you from the U.S. Institute of Peace. The theme of this year's session is titled, “Securing America's Future in an Era of Strategic Competition.” I do want to ask you about President Zelenskyy, because he's been very adamant that he does not want to give up territory to Russia. There will be a lot of back and forth. The Biden Administration providing tens of millions of last-minute aid before Joe Biden leaves office on Monday, January 20, from the standpoint of the Ukrainian people and the Ukrainian government. What do you think will happen?

Ambassador Sullivan: Well, I can tell you, Steve, my experience with the Ukrainian people and President Zelenskyy is that they're not to be underestimated. I think the West, particularly we in the United States, did that at the very start of Russia's aggressive war against Ukraine. Many people, including myself, as U.S. Ambassador in Moscow, did not believe that Ukraine was going to be able to resist the Russian invasion that started on February 24, 2022. Their resilience is not to be underestimated. They're fighting a bitter, huge adversary in the Russian Federation. They need the world support, not just the support of the United States. They need the world support to defend themselves against this massive aggressor that launched an aggressive war, but they're going to fight no matter what outside support they get. That's one thing that they've demonstrated the Ukrainian people, if anything, Putin's war to the extent he wanted to bring Ukraine within the ambit of what the Russians call, Putin calls, the “Russkiy Mir”, the Russian world. He's driven all of millions of Ukrainians who speak the same language, the Russian language, Slavic history and culture, driven them away from Russia, from the brutal, aggressive war that he, Putin, launched in February of 2022.

Steve Scully: My view, and you can correct me if I'm wrong, the idea that the U.S. would annex Canada is basically laughable. It's not going to happen, but when Donald Trump talks about incorporating Greenland as part of the U.S., that is something that we should take seriously. Am I correct? Am I wrong?

Ambassador Sullivan: Well, you're correct. And remember, Steve, this came up in the first Trump administration. There were conversations about that, conversations with the Danes. I was Deputy Secretary of State at the time. The U.S. does have strategic interests, obviously, in the North Atlantic and in Greenland, but we have to remember, Greenland is ultimately controlled and affiliated with a close NATO ally, which is Denmark. So, any discussions about Greenland have to be done in the context of a discussion with a close NATO ally in Copenhagen.

Steve Scully: And it's a vast area of land about the size of western Europe. Small population, about 57,000 people who live there, and they claim their independence, but to your point, yes, they are part of the Kingdom of Denmark, which an alliance that dates back to the early 1700s. Hey, in our final minute or two, I'm just curious, what's it like to be the U.S. Ambassador to Russia, to be stationed in Moscow? What does the job entail?

Ambassador Sullivan: Well, when I was there, Steve, we had slightly better relations with the Russian government than we do now. I can imagine talking to my Russian counterparts in the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, and I've met several times with President Putin. That doesn't happen anymore. You know, I get, I'm asked that question a lot, Steve, and I've got a bit of a schizophrenic answer. On the one hand, it was a horrific experience being there when this war started, seeing it coming, anticipating it's start, knowing what was going to happen. On the other hand, I wanted to be ambassador to Russia. I wanted to live in Moscow because at heart, I'm a Russophile. I love Russian history, culture, the Russian people, so I enjoyed living there. I did not enjoy dealing with the Russian government, however, with Putin's government in the Kremlin.

Steve Scully: And you have alluded to this earlier in our conversation, again, we're talking to Ambassador John Sullivan. He's also a member of the board of the U.S. Institute of Peace. What is Vladimir Putin like as a person?

Ambassador Sullivan: Well, I, you know, I wrote a book, as you kindly mentioned, Steve, about my experiences. I devote a whole chapter to President Putin, which you have to understand about President Putin. There's a word that the Russians have to describe the type of person he is. He is a “chekist”. And what that means is, in layman's terms, is he is of the KGB. He sought to join the KGB as a young man. They told him to go away and come back. They said, we find you. You don't apply to us. They ultimately, he ultimately joined the KGB, and that's who he is. To his soul, trying to understand who Vladimir Putin is without understanding that he is a KGB man would be like trying to understand the late Pete Rose and not understand what a baseball guy he was. That's who Putin is. Putin is a KGB man. He is not a friend of the United States. In fact, he himself has said frequently he considers the United States an enemy of Russia. His word, not mine.

Steve Scully: We will continue this conversation Tuesday at the U.S. Institute of Peace titled “Passing the Baton”. Ambassador John Sullivan, joining us here in Washington. Thank you for joining us today. Look forward to being with you next week, and I hope a proto audience are listening Tuesday noon to two, 9am for those of you on the west coast. Ambassador Sullivan, thank you again.

Ambassador Sullivan: Thanks, Steve. Look forward to seeing you next week.