| Colby: The fact that an invasion of Ukraine happened is a tremendous indictment of American policy. Clearly, it's been a consistent goal over several administrations to avoid this outcome. I have to say I find it somewhat untoward or off-putting that there's a sort of celebratory element to how things have gone, because this is a product of a tremendous failure. I do think the Biden administration since the invasion has handled some things well, some things less well. Certainly working with European allies is a strong suit of theirs. I also think, unlike some fellow Republicans, that the administration's caution about the potential for escalation is in order. In some ways, it's actually to Putin and the Kremlin's advantage if the United States is too aggressive, because that will allow Russia to frame the conflict as fundamentally about sort of a civilizational struggle between NATO and Russia. The Early: When you say the war is an indictment of American policy, which policies are you referring to? Colby: If we think about the alternate history — if the Ukrainians weren't fighting so bravely and capably, and the Russians were only materially facing sanctions and international opprobrium — I think the Russians would be at [Ukraine's] western border. So I think it's a wrong lesson to say the sanctions and the international condemnation are what's really material here. What's really material and central is the Ukrainians defeating a Russian invasion. So that tells me the critical flaw was not arming them sufficiently. I also think, at a more macro level, that Biden's now-infamous comment about a "minor incursion" gave a sense of calculability. I would have preferred a Nixon-, Kissinger-, Eisenhower-type thing, which is pretty scary — like, not sure what these people are up to — but also a willingness to potentially negotiate on some of the critical political issues. The Early: You tweeted that Biden's rhetoric in his speech in Warsaw last week framing the conflict as a battle "between democracy and autocracy, between liberty and repression" was "very ill advised." Why do you think that's the case? Colby: I don't think it's either the policy or the rhetoric that's going to advance American interests. President Reagan was castigated for calling the Soviets an "evil empire." I mean, I think it was an evil empire. But a lot of his critics weren't saying that Russia wasn't evil. They were saying, this is extremely dangerous rhetoric when we're dealing with a superpower potential confrontation. In the Cold War, there was an appreciation of the risks. If I'm thinking about what's in the interest of the American people in light of a very dangerous circumstance, I think what we really need is [a] stable balance of power. And that is not a battle between democracy and authoritarianism. It is funny, because there's a lot of positive talk about the Cold War these days — and I would have been a hawk on the Soviet Union, I think — but people are forgetting about Vietnam, and the hell of the Cold War, and how dangerous it was. This is exactly the same kind of rhetoric that helped lead to Vietnam. It turns every confrontation into a highly pressurized situation. The Early: You wrote in a Post op-ed last year that the "Biden team seems to be betting that democracies will align in a global struggle against" authoritarianism. Are you saying you think they're sort of misreading the room? Colby: They are reading the room in northern and western Europe. If you're thinking about the room as we should be — the most important room is Asia — it's not good. There's been a lot of castigating of India for taking a position that's consistent with [its] traditional interests. I personally would hope that India would condemn Russia's opprobrious invasion. But on the other hand, if our priority is China, and India is one of the two most important members of our coalition along with Japan, we've gotta be working with them. The Early: You served in the Trump administration. How do you think Trump would be handling the war in Ukraine if he was president? Colby: The facts are that this invasion did not happen under President Trump. And we can speculate as to why, but that is the most important piece of information. The Russians had recapitalized their military by the late 2010s. [Invading Ukraine] was not beyond their capacity. They just decided not to do it. If I go back to this kind of Eisenhower-Nixon model, I think President Trump in a lot of ways had a similar approach. I mean, the Trump administration was the one to provide Javelins to the Ukrainians. The Early: That's true, but Trump was also impeached for withholding military aid to Ukraine, and he often had warm words for Putin. Does that give you any pause about how Trump would handle this situation? Colby: High diplomacy is not a matter of always saying exactly what you feel. In the case of Ukraine, providing things like the Javelins made a lot of sense. A country that's willing to fight for itself should be supplied. But whether the Ukrainians are happy about something is not the critical issue. The fact that [former German chancellor] Angela Merkel didn't like Donald Trump is not the fundamental criterion. The fundamental criterion should be: Do we see more collective effort towards shared goals? | 
