Czech Your Privilege

Europe and post-war Ukraine.

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AEI Senior Fellow Dalibor Rohac makes his Remnant debut in today’s outrageously wonky discussion of Eastern Europe. In light of the ongoing war in Ukraine, the conversation covers America’s foreign policy debate, Germany’s continued weirdness, and the European Union’s role in modern geopolitics. Will peace require a resounding Russian defeat? Can more can be done to support Ukraine’s defense? And what will a postwar Europe look like?

Show Notes:

– AEI’s The Eastern Front podcast

– Dr. Rohac’s page at AEI

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  1. Nejcik

    You do not, under any circumstances, gotta hand it to the current Polish government for their rhetoric and actions toward Germany. Incredibly shortsighted and destructive.

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  2. April

    Excellent podcast. Fascinating to hear Dalibor Rohac thoughts on Ukraine, Germany and the Eastern European countries.

    He indicates he is worried about Slovakia going the way of Hungary. Perhaps you could have him back to talk more about Hungary and the risks for the future in its neighbors, such as Slovakia.

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    Ethan Cordray

    This was a great discussion, very informative.

    But gosh, does it make me think that the entire West has simply forgotten how to win wars.

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  4. Payette

    This was a great discussion!!

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  5. Joe1776

    I am always interested in how Europe is seeing the world.

    I think many former soviet countries are disenchanted with corruption that happened after the soviet union fell. And some think life was better under the soviet union. Of course the problem is once you implement full on socialism it is difficult to undo it.

    When the government owns everything no private citizens can afford to buy the capital. They don't want to sell to foreigners either. So government ends up giving the government assets to their friends and you end up with the corrupt oligarchies we see in China and Eastern Europe.

    This is a danger of socialism that often isn't talked about. Once you finally eat the last zoo animal and realize socialism doesn't work you can't just undo it and decide to create a capitalist society. It takes a long time to build what we have here in the US and other thriving capitalist societies.

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    George.Skinner

    Western politicians everywhere are struggling with the problem that they haven't had to deal with real existential issues for at least a generation. Despite the Manichean rhetoric, the political consensus in most Western countries is fairly narrow and the politics have focused on amplifying small differences. All of this has happened because they've been able to take for granted the prosperity of a rules-based international order built at the end of WW2. Now that revisionist powers like Russia and China are challenging that order and threatening the prosperity, politicians are flopping around like fish suddenly removed from the water that they'd always taken for granted. Germany seems to be particularly struggling with this change, as it had retired from the business of "hard power" with the world's happy acquiescence. However, even America seems to be struggling as politicians keep projecting their parochial political agendas onto a real existential threat.

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    Ben Connelly

    This was excellent! Really superb episode.

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    James Spiller

    It’s worth noting that part of the reason that the foreign fighters for Ukraine aren’t like the International Brigade is that they don’t have international support. The Mozart Group is about as close as we get to a properly organized group and they’re a bunch of kind of awful people who remain unarmed and train Ukrainians.

    I’m not suggesting that Biden should have sent American troops, but as with so many other choices he has made to maintain an even handed approach to the war (maintaining unprecedentedly high tariffs as the GSP program died, having his ambassador leading an unprecedented flight from Kyiv that thankfully didn’t develop into a broader affair, avoiding providing substantial aid before the escalation, even when he knew that the escalation was coming, delaying military aid to 2027, etc. etc.), it would be a decisive improvement if he could just be neutral.

    If support for Ukraine were decriminalized, if it did not lead to a loss of security clearance, if it was not a threat to immigration status, if the feds could just let people know that they wouldn’t help Americans in Ukraine, but they wouldn’t get mad about support either, we’d have had a bunch of American heroes for him to celebrate in his SOTU. Every American I’ve either gotten out to Ukraine or met while I was there was concerned about being punished for their actions.

    Imagine if we weren’t so hostile to Americans who want to do the right thing; we’d have F15 and Abrams crews fully trained and in theater by the end of the week and celebrating a Crimean beach holiday by the end of the month.

    In fairness to Biden, while a lot of his worthlessness has been specific to him, I’ve personally been disappointed by the Poles failing to resist pressure from the EU and US to be clear that if there was a mass resignation of a brigade or two from the Wojsko Polskie followed by a mass enlistment in the AFU, the retirees would be welcome home afterwards.

    Service in Ukraine would be so good for so many Americans; it’s not just the Ukrainians we betray by leaving Americans vulnerable to apathy and all too frequent suicide.

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    Rowrbasil

    Name sounds like a character in an old Mission Impossible episode, 'Dalibor Rohac, Minister of Security for Ruritania, has accessed technology for EMP warfare..Your mission, if you choose to accept it-'

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    CynthiaW

    Dr. Rohac has an interesting stammer of conjunctions, prepositions, and pronouns. I theorize that he's trying to think of the English words for the nouns and verbs.

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      Thomas Grimmer

      As pasty native born American, I'm always enthralled that anyone can speak more than one language.

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