The entire post-Cold War order has rested on the assumption that there was no major Russian conventional military threat to NATO.

That assumption has just been invalidated. That is a

an absolutely seismic shift in the geostrategic landscape of the world as it has been since 1991. Vladimir Putin may be unpredictable but his direction seems to be clear that's

the view at least of our guest today Fred K, who's a return guest we had him on

last summer during the crisis in Afghanistan. As of what we know now today

February 25th is there at least 1,100 Russian casualties in Ukraine and Russian

forces are entering Kiev. President Biden has announced new sanctions but oil and gas are still exempt from Western sanctions,

and Russia is still part of the swift banking system.

So it's not clear how tight the economic news is tightening around Moscow and of course

we're still living through the fog of war so many details are murky.

Fred Kagan is the director of the Critical Threats Project at the American Enterprise Institute.

He's also working closely with the Russia team at the Institute for the Study of War.

Both the Critical Threats Project and the Institute for the Study of War,

our organizations I highly recommend following for day-to-day updates on this crisis.

Fred's a former professor of military history at the U.S. Military Academy at West Point.

He completed his PhD in Soviet and Russian military history at Yale University.

Fred's also in close contact with military officials in the U.S. NATO

and a range of sources in Ukraine and Russia. We want to talk to Fred less about the

minute-to-minute developments and more about where this is going with a

longer sweep of history as our backdrop. This is call me back.

And I'm pleased to welcome my friend Fred Kagan to the podcast. As I mentioned the intro,

Fred runs the Critical Threats Project at the American Enterprise Institute. He's a PhD in

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