The customer or the Consumer Experience. Can you tell what that might look like . Well, as i said, were focused on the Consumer Experience and one of the ways we gauge that is by engaging our product well leave this program here. Watch the rest on cspan. Org. Now, to a discussion on u. S. Foreign policy as the war in ukraine continues. This is live coverage on cspan2. Ukraine the west and the world. Breaking points transformational moments. Were delighted to have so many joining us here in the audience in washington on our faulk auditorium and around the world and looking forward to timely and important discussion. Since russia launched the war 18 months ago, the war has had disastrous for ukrainian people and ripple effects in europe and around the world. European security and n. A. T. O. , and transatlantic relationship. The impact on domestic Foreign Policy and the trajectory of great power competition. Were fortunate today to have a Remarkable Group to discuss these issues. Well start with lessons from the post berlin wall period, in history where Civil Society and leaders around the globe grasped the chance to reshape the world after the cold war. Were living through what appears to be another transformational moment in europe. Where it will lead remains unclear. Speaking for the issue will be Timothy Garton nash, homelands, history of europe and our own fiona hill for the United States here at brookings moderated by the new yorkers susan glasser. Following this discussion right now, brookings visiting fellow will moderate a panel focusing on europes past between russia, china and the United States, the global ramifications of the russiaukraine war and what the sharpening u. S. China rivalry means to the Atlantic Security order. Well conclude with a conversation on democratic governance and global disruptions and western hogemeny. And this discussion will trackle how governments can balance the foreign and domestic policies in the face of crises. Were streaming live and on the record and well be talking questions from viewers via email events at brookings. Edu or social media using the us europe and a microphone for those of you in the faulk auditorium. Ill hand it over to susan glasser. Looking forward. Thank you suzanne and all of for spending part of your day. Im personally looking forward to it how often do you get to start your conversation with a conversation between Timothy Garton nash and fiona hill and were lucky that theyve joined us this morning and i want to thank suzanne for starting with this idea about 1989 because i do think theres a big frame for the discussion that we are having and what we need to have and there are consequences. What does it mean, the war in europe. And youll often hear this is the largest land war in europe since world war ii. This is a profound challenge to the European Security order and things along that vein and yet, i think the way we should start this conversation is to talk about, do we even have a way, a framework for thinking about the longer term consequences of this moment . And you know, i remember a few years ago somebody said to me, well, 1989 just might have been the best year of any of our lives, we just didnt know it at the time. And in that spirit, timothy, i want to start with you because youve written this Remarkable Book and fiona hill and i both have copies here because we shouldnt leave it to the author to shamelessly promote his work when we can do it for him. I can tell you, it is actually a gripping read and it is the story in many ways of the spirit of 1989 and what we got right and what we also didnt get right. So, i think its worth stepping back from the immediate crisis of the war in ukraine for a minute to kind of begin with a question to you, timothy, about, you know, how we can apply those lessons to this moment. Yeah, listen, thank you very much. Its wonderful to be here with two people whose work i very much admire. And not having to boost ones own book, youve done it for me. Its on sale, by the way, at the brookings bookstore. Thank you very much. And there was a famous book, post war, defining a postwar period. This book covers i cover post war which gives the title to the session. By the way, im struck that here in washington you have to explain its the berlin wall. I mean, for us europeans, what other wall is there . That the one trump didnt build to mexico . Which wall are we talking about . And i think the postwall period goes from the 9th of november, 1989 the fall of the berlin wall to february of 2022. I think the full scale invasion of ukraine ends that period and that period, like a game of european football, is a game of two halves. So in the first half you have this quite extraordinary spread of freedom and democracy and enlargement of the geopolitical west. Think about it, the eu and n. A. T. O. Eu, 12 members and n. A. T. O. In 1989, and 2007, 27 members of eu and members of n. A. T. O. And step forward, the second half starting with putins annexation of georgia and the Global Financial crisis, its pretty much downhill all the way. Its a downward turn and crisis ending with the largest war in europe since 1945. And let me pick out throw lessons, if i may, and then well go into the conversation. And first of all, this touches on what you said about 1989. The mistake we made was to think that was normal, that was the way history was going to go. Actually, it was a one in a million example of historical luck. Of what machiavelli calls fortunea. The mistake we made, the fallacy of extrapolation, right . We took the way things had gone through to 2007, namely very well, and said thats the way its going to continue. We took history with a small age, which is always the product of the interaction between deep structure and process on the one hand and con juncture, contingency, chance, and leadership on the other and turned it into history with a capital h, the inevitable progress towards freedom. Freedom isnt a process, freedom is a struggle as the ukrainians are reminding us. Thats lesson number one. Lesson number two, looking back and its very much here, i would say that the decline of the russian soviet empire has been one of the great drivers of european history for the last 40 years and is probably going to be pre occupying us for the next 40, right . And history teaches us something about declining empires, which is they dont like it. Ask the british. Ask the french. Ask the portugese. West european colonial spent 40 years after 1945 trying to defend their colonel possessions in often brutal wars. When the largest remaining empire in europe, the russia soviet empire vanishes away in three years, 19891991 we shouldnt have thought that was the end of the story and therefore, when that empire started doing what declining empires do, which is trying to strike back, i mean, you could already say chechnya, but big time, georgia, 2008 above all 2014. 2014 for me is the point where the west failed to turn. We should have learned that lesson of history and id argued if we had a much different and stronger response in 2014 we wouldnt be in the mess were in today. Third quick lesson, susan, we have to learn from our successes as well as from our failures. And the biggest single success of this period was the double eastward enlargement of the geopolitical west, eu and n. A. T. O. And the ukrainians have understood this perfectly. If you talk to the ukrainian commissioner on zoom, she has a back drop which shows the symbols of the eu and n. A. T. O. Interlinking through ua, ie, the symbol for ukraine. Its always both. It always and by the way that goes back. And its both n. A. T. O. And eu, its euroatlantic integration and therefore we now have this its that process stalled for 15 years after 2008 basically and suddenly, we have again. Thanks to the wall, a really big, exciting strategic agenda which is about a new big double eastward enlargement of the geopolitical west, ukraine, maldova, georgia, the west in balkans, so i think, you know, its important to learn from your successes as well as from your failures. Yeah, its interesting that you make that point. I just came back from tablesi, one of the only places in the world you see on the street graffiti in addition to lots of graffiti about, you know, doing bad things to russia, literally eu symbols, you know, as graffiti on the walls, expressing aspirations that may or may not happen anytime soon. Fiona, who also i should say has her own terrific book, im sure many of you here have read it. Theres nothing for you here, but theres something for her here. All right. She and i, weve had this conversation a number of times, but i think, i havent we havent talked about this recently so im curious in light of what timothy is saying in terms of being humble about what we didnt get right about 1989. Lets say we now recognize this is a moment, one of those Inflection Points as President Biden often refers to it since the full scale invasion of ukraine. Im curious, given the huge response that you have actually seen from europe in terms of support for ukraine, certainly the United States, were now at nearly 50 billion in u. S. Military assistance, more than close to 80 billion overall in committed assistance. Thats running ahead of in current dollars, even of the three year marshall plan. Its an extraordinary investment. We dont even really have a consensus terminology in what to call this. What is it that we are doing right now to support ukraine . As you know, theres a huge fight unfolding here in washington i think around this question. In the white house if you ask them, i did this recently, would you call this a proxy war . They reacted as if i had just like punched them in the stomach because thats not something that they want to call it. You and i have talked before, is it actually, according to Vladimir Putin, the early stages of world war iii . What do you think it is thats happening right now . And what is is it important for us to sort of name and understand the moment in that way . Well, thanks very much, susan. And i just want to commend timothy as well on the fabulous book thats now sitting next to me in a chair which deserves its own chair and its a point at the very beginning of the book i think helps encapsulate what were talking about here. You point out through your own personal experiences and interactions, everyone has a different year zero and everybody would have a different year nine in their minds and i think this is part of the issue that were dealing with. Werewe is when we unpack and talk about it because so many different people, depending on their perspectives, you bring out very well in the book, have different starting points. If i think about that 1989, thats when susan and i met. We were actually in a russian history class with Richard Pipes and i think russia under the old regime and the empire. And i just started my masters program, susan was wrapping up her undergraduate and we both had an interest in where it was headed. I got a degree in soviet studies and it was defunct a few months later and i was sitting in the audience waiting for my agree and my masters in soviet studies and sitting on the podium was one getting an Honorary Degree, the former soviet i think he was technically the soviet foreign minister, we pleat with new thinking how to get out of the cold war. In months he would be president of an independent georgia as confused as well as everybody else about where things were heading. This is a time nobody knew the trajectory. He was sitting there, obviously bee mused, why is he getting this award and everybody thinking that he ended the cold war, but he was just beginning on an odyssey of his own, its that whole kind of 1989, for some countries was an opening to something that they hoped would be new, but if you think about the metaphor of georgia where youve just come from, it was one civil war after another, one conflict after another. One aspiration basically never achieved and georgia is still today is racked wracked by so many of the goses of the past and i remember one of his advisors say, the problem, nobody thinks of us as real countries, but just shadows, shadow cast by the Old Soviet Union and by you because you dont know what to think about us. Part of the reason were here today unpacking all of this, we continue to look at everything through the lens of russia. You know, we talked about when the soviet union fell apart and the russians, 25 million russians, but there were just russian speakers. Most of us here speak english, but were not all english. Timothy is, i was born in england, but weve got fluid identities and english is a language ubiquitous everywhere, everybody who speaks english doesnt express themselves as english, english is in india, second. And we didnt think of english People Living where zimbabwe in south africa. And part of this reason today, part of confusion where we are, we never really got a grip of that era of 1989 about where it might be heading. And now, you know, we keep trying to give ourselves satisfying explanations. But you know, if you think about countries like finland in this context and you know, the we talk about the United States for ukraine, but proportionally, the baltic states, finland, country are giving more support proportional to gdp. Why . In 1939 they got snatched by stalin having been independent. And timothy writes about this, europe going west again. Its not that the west went east. Most of the west, particularly countries that got independence, poland, the baltic states. And finland got invaded by sovietion. 1989 seemed like an abberation and although the finns were embracing the European Union and had in the back of their mind that history would come back again with another 9 like 1939. They were always raring to go. So we ought to ourselves take a pause. You know, when we look through our own lens at 1989 where weve been and how we feel about the war in ukraine. A lot of the countries are all in because as timothy said, they have a different year zero, a different year 9 to think about a lot of these dates in different historical patterns. Yeah, i think thats an important jumping off point then for where we are today here bus it does look different in washington than it looks in europe and so i do, i want to ask both of you this question about, there isnt the same level of consensus. There has been remarkable support on the one hand, if you look at polls, americans have been very supportive of ukraine although thats ebbed over time in terms of support for specific amounts of military assistance, but i dont think theres consensus in our society about what were doing and of course, it looks very different if you have a thousand mile border with russia than it does here in the u. S. And so, i do want to ask both of you this question, how you think about what it is that is our commitment to ukraine right now. Well, im sure many of you might just pick up the New York Times today. Maybe not everybody watching on cspan might have done so, but i would actually commend a long piece by Thomas Freedman and also by the Editorial Board which i think lays it out very clearly. We may not think that ukraine matters to us, sitting over here and feckless the way that we debated. The way we present ourselves, the United States, timothy made reference back again to, you know, kind of world war ii, but susan and i actually exchanged a glass when he was talking about, for putin its a 100 year war and hes going back to world war i, he may have laid us off the scent by talking about world war ii and 1917, people in the audience who would know about it as well. When mr. Prigozhin was marching on moscow, putin talked about 1917, the stab in the back for the revolution, the russian empire world war i, repeatedly ukraine is an abomination, a frankenstein country, a country that shouldnt exist and lenin and bolsheviks, creating the soviet union and say from the previous 100 year ward you never know until the get to the end it. Were at 100 years now. Not that were old enough to remember 1914 or 1917 even though we might have links to that. Thats the kind of shadow thats cast all over this and that what makes it, you know, extremely difficult to deal with, because putin is making a battle for history here, and we have to and this is why books like this are really so good about putting things into perspective. We have to stop him from weaponizing history. And if we look at our own history in the United States, it took a very long time for the United States to become independent. Putins always talking about crimea belongs to russia because they snatched it in 1783. Naples, 1783. It wasnt until september of 1783, sorry for the History Lesson here, ive been trying to perfect my elevator speech telling people why this matters and the elevator has been going up to different floors. And u. S. Was in independent state and alaska wasnt, but the one person that we do have a russia border, see it from our bedroom. And 1776 to 1783 to get itself in order and didnt have all of its borders in place. Ukraine is like the young United States. Like any other european country constantly refighting for its independence and borders. If we like ukraine down now were letting ourselves down. Many people came to the United States defense. If you think back to world war ii, the same debates about our homeland, our original homeland, the united kingdom. Imagine if we hadnt stood up and helping churchill. Thats why the u. K. Is all in because they recognize zelenskyy as another Winston Churchill trying to use his networks to keep support. This is, unfortunately, whether we like it or not, as timothy said before, a replay of all of those fights that weve had in the past and people may call us hawks or reactionary, but there are so many times we have to stand up and be counted and we might not like it and might like our comfortable life back, but unfortunately thats not the situation were in right now. This