What Next - NATO, Back From the Brink
What Next | Daily News and Analysis
Slate Podcasts
4.3 • 2.4K Ratings
🗓️ 31 March 2022
⏱️ 29 minutes
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Summary
The North Atlantic Treaty Organization is having a moment. The alliance dates back to the early years of the Cold War, and ever since, it has seesawed in and out of favor with Western leaders. But now, as Russia continues to wage its attack on Ukraine, NATO has assumed some of its old relevance.
Guest: Mary Elise Sarotte, professor of Historical Studies at the Henry A. Kissinger Center for Global Affairs at Johns Hopkins University. She’s also a research associate at Harvard University's Center for European Studies. Her most recent book is Not One Inch: America, Russia, and the Making of Post-Cold War Stalemate.
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| 0:42.7 | The speech President Biden gave this past weekend in Warsaw, Poland. If you watch the whole |
| 0:47.7 | thing, it has the cadence and the language of a grim kind of pep rally. Hundreds of thousands |
| 0:55.1 | of refugees have flooded into Poland, since Russia invaded Ukraine a month back. Warsaw's |
| 1:01.1 | mayor has warned of being at a breaking point. And Biden seemed to be saying, all of this |
| 1:07.3 | is not going to end anytime soon. As much as this speech was about what's happening right |
| 1:23.0 | now though, it was also a history lesson. We stand with you. Period. At one point, Biden |
| 1:32.9 | ticked off one battle and then another, framing war in Ukraine as part of a much longer |
| 1:40.1 | struggle against Russian aggression. One that stretched back to the 1950s and 60s. Until |
| 1:46.8 | finally, in 1989, the Berlin Wall and all the walls of Soviet domination, they fell. They |
| 1:53.8 | fell. And the people prevailed. His message here was that Western leaders are not just |
| 2:01.8 | trying to tamp down the conflict in Kiev. They're trying to stamp out sparks of authoritarianism |
| 2:08.1 | before they spread and become full-blown wildfires. We cannot go back to that. We cannot. |
| 2:16.9 | I think he was realistic to convey that sense. I think we've really crossed a, you know, |
| 2:22.3 | Rubicon and international relations. And I believe that things will be different for a long |
| 2:27.3 | time. Mary Elise Serati has studied conflicts on Russia's borderlands. She says, when you |
| 2:35.3 | do that, it's a little easier to know what to pay attention to in this current conflict. |
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