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 editor at the Bulwark and I'm joined

by our regulars Bill Galston of the Brookings Institution

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

Center. Our special guest this week is Eric Edelman, who is a distinguished fellow at the Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments, has had many elevated titles in his career, including Ambassador and various other things. He also teaches at the School of Advanced

International Studies at Johns Hopkins and most important of all of his titles. He is the co-host of our Bulwark sister podcast,

Shield of the Republic, which I've praised before on this podcast

and is not to be missed.

So thank you one and all and I'm going to begin with Eric

Adelman because we are now in what is it is it week six or seven of this war and it is now clear that the Russians are

actually withdrawing and kind of signaling that they were defeated in their attempt to take Keave.

And of course we have the news that there are atrocities being committed in this war,

grotesque stories coming out of the areas

where the Russians are withdrawing from.

But the other things about this war are less clear. What seemed to be complete

NATO unity in the beginning days is now beginning to unravel a little bit. So I was amused seeing a story in the New York

Times about the NATO foreign ministers meeting and the the fishers that are

beginning to become visible.

There was this sentence, quote,

there is a general agreement that Russia is no longer

...