Hi, I'm Bill Crystal. Welcome back to Conversations. I'm very pleased to be joined today by Phillips O'Brien, historian and professor of strategic studies at the University of St. Andrews.

It's written important books on World War II, Aaron C. Power in World War II, his most recent book. It's called, more broadly, War and Power.

Many of people have come to know him beyond his fellow specialists

and experts and professors for his work on social media. More recently, his excellent substack

in which he's particularly been commented on many, many things, but I'd say particularly on

Ukraine and you were contrary in

Phil and thinking Ukraine was not doomed at the beginning and then I think providing not just

interesting analysis, but not just perceptive, but actually accurate analysis of what was

happening there. So anyway, Phil, thanks for, thanks for joining me today.

We'll talk about,

mostly about Ukraine and it's broader implications. Yeah, but I'm delighted to be here, Phil. And we're, as I said, just a little minute ago when we were talking privately, this is going to be an interesting conversation because it'll be different than the conversation we might have had 12 months ago. Yeah, well, let's get to that. I do recommend your substack, which has been really excellent. And I was looking it up this morning to remind myself, what's it called? There must have some fancy title, like people like you always do these things, you know, grand strategy, you know, war and power. And it said it's called Phillips's a substack. Yep, that's it. It's very modest to be with that. Either it's modest or the opposite, you know. Either that, it's like you're so Phillips. It's just, you don't need, you don't need some fancy title like Grant Strategy, you know? I did it because I got tired of doing tweet threats. I started it because I was doing tweet threads. They took too long and someone said,

oh, just put them on subsnack. And so that's all I did. They were good, they were good tweet threats.

And you're still active on social media. Okay. So Ukraine, you were always less of a doom and gloom person

on Ukraine. I think much quicker to see right at the beginning, the possibility that Ukraine could

hold its own at the beginning. And then obviously, it's been lots of ups and downs over

three, four years or four years now. But as you said, we'd be having a different conversation a year

ago and looked sort of grim on the ground, I think it's fair to say. And the U.S. was cutting

off the support, which had been considerable.

So talk a little bit about where we are now and why you're more cheerful as a friend of

Ukraine than you would have been a year ago. Well, I think why we were down, and I don't think

anyone gave up hope, but just the reality for the Ukrainians was the U.S.

was changing sides.

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