From the opinion pages of the Wall Street Journal, this is Free Expression with Jerry Baker.

Hello and welcome to another episode of Free Expression with me, Jerry Baker, of the Wall Street Journal editorial page.

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Page we believe passionately in free expression, and so each week on this podcast we explore

in-depth and candour with the help of a leading commentator, policymaker, expert, some

major issue of topical importance, historical significance, or just something that we find deeply fascinating.

This week, as war in Ukraine continues, I'm really pleased to be joined by Robert Gates, a man who has served in the United States National Security field for 50 years under eight different presidents. He was Secretary

of Defense most recently under both President Obama and President George W. Bush, director of the CIA

and Deputy National Security Advisor under President George H.W. Bush and Deputy Director of the CIA

under Ronald Reagan. Secretary Robert Gates, thanks for joining us. My pleasure.

Well, obviously, we're talking about Ukraine and Russia.

A lot of people have, while expressing obvious condemnation and horror at what Vladimir Putin is doing in Ukraine,

have said that we in the West bear some responsibility for this for essentially provoking him

by being maybe a little bit too expansionist with regard

to NATO. In your memoir that you wrote eight years ago, your memoir duty, you wrote it in 2014,

you said that the US effort to try and bring Georgia and Ukraine into NATO in 2008 at the

Bucharest summit was truly overreaching. And you said it was a case of

recklessly ignoring what the Russians considered their own vital national interests. So do you

think we bear some responsibility for what's unfolding right now in Ukraine?

Actually, I don't think so. The book was written before Russia invaded Crimea in 2014.

And I think what is clear looking back over the last number of years is that Vladimir Putin, for a long long time has been determined to ensure that Ukraine either stays

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