Welcome to Beg to Beg to Differ, the Bulwerks Weekly Roundtable discussion featuring

civil conversation across the political spectrum.

We range from center left to center right.

I'm Mona Charon, syndicated columnist, and policy I've heard the bulwark, and I'm joined

by our regulars Bill Galston of the Brookings Institution

and the Wall Street Journal, Damon Linker of the Week, and Linda Chavez of the

Niskanin Center. Our special guest this week is Charles Lane, columnist for the Washington Post.

Welcome, one and all.

We are now one month into Vladimir Putin's war of aggression against his neighbor that pretty much everyone thought

would be a very short war that would be won by the Russians and it's not happened that way at all.

The latest news today is that the Ukrainians are actually retaking territory from the Russian army and

destroying a big Russian ship that the Russians were boasting about having docked

and that it was going to be able to provide the Russians all of their needed supplies.

And so reality sometimes confounds everyone's expectations.

So I want to start, though, with you, Chuck Lane,

because President Biden arguably has done some things very well in his handling of this crisis, keeping the

alliance together. In the run up to the war, he skillfully deployed U.S. intelligence assets to sort of thwart any attempt by the Russians

to do a false flag operation.

So those things were good.

He's kept the alliance together. but he's coming under criticism now from a lot of serious people and I would commend to everyone if they don't already listen.

Shield of the Republic is a fantastic

podcast. It's another bulwark podcast which features Eric Edelman who will be

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