I'm Brian Lehrer. This is my daily politics podcast from WNYC Studios. It's Friday, April 8th.

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, quote, 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 Donbos.

On the ground in Ukraine, New Yorker reporter Joshua Yaffa tweeted images of the devastation,

writing, one village after another outside Kiev 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, unquote. 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 world, 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. And isn't the West supposed to

enforce rules of war? In her latest piece for the Atlantic, my next guest argues that, quote,

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.

So we're joined now by Anne Applebaum's 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 lore of authoritarianism.

Her article is troublingly titled, There is No Liberal World Order. And thanks for coming on.

...