Stephen Bryen: Russians much stronger than they were 4 years ago

As the war in Ukraine continues unabated, and the Trump administration continues its efforts toward some sort of negotiated settlement, ‘peace plans’ of a wide variety have emerged from talks that US envoys have been holding with representatives from each side.

Apart from illustrating the wide gulf that still persists between the Russian and Ukrainian positions – leading many to question whether any agreement at all is possible at this point – the various plans have included certain proposals that in the eyes of some observers are serious cause for concern.

One such proposal that keeps re-emerging – and that some Western leaders think could entice the Ukrainians to accept a peace plan that includes it – is the offer of a “security guarantee” for Ukraine, to be provided by Western countries and their militaries – one that would kick in when and if the Russians ever decide to attack the country again.

From Russia’s point of view, every such proposal put forward so far by Ukraine or the West appears one-sided – focused on Ukraine’s security concerns but largely ignoring Russia’s.

Russian leaders like to remind us that for decades now, they have been actively pursuing binding cooperative agreements with Europe that would provide what they call “collective security,” in which no participating country may build up its own security in such a way that it threatens the security of another participating country.

Given that the Russians went to war to prevent Ukraine joining NATO – which they perceived as an existential threat – it hardly needs pointing out that they would perceive any security guarantee for Ukraine involving NATO forces as a threat to their security.

But it’s not only from Russia’s point of view that Western security guarantees for Ukraine are perceived as a problem. Western analysts and strategists see problems there as well, and from a purely Western perspective – where such guarantees are seen as a dangerous liability, with little or no countervailing benefit.

In the wake of recent meetings between American and Ukrainian representatives in Berlin, one such Western analyst – former high-level Pentagon official Stephen Bryen – published this scathing critique of the guarantees reportedly offered to Ukraine by US envoys Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner during the course of the meetings.

Stephen Bryen is an American weapons and security expert with over 50 years experience in government and industry. Among other senior positions, he has served on Capitol Hill as a senior staff director of the US Senate Foreign Relations Committee, at the Pentagon as deputy under secretary of defense for trade security policy and in the private sector as the president of a multinational defense and technology company. He’s currently a senior fellow at the Center for Security Policy, a non-profit think tank in Washington DC, and writes for Asia Times.

When I recently spoke with him – in addition to wanting to learn more about why the proposed guarantees are such a problem – I also wanted to hear what he had to say about the ongoing negotiations more generally, the current state of the war itself, Europe’s attempts to derail Trump’s peace efforts and what he thinks would be the likely outcome of a direct war between Russia and NATO – with or without the Americans.

What sort of security guarantees have the US negotiators offered to Ukraine in the recent talks in Berlin? And why do you think this represents such a dangerous situation?

Well, the details of these talks are not known. We only have press reports and judicious leaks as to what was discussed and what the US tabled. But there seems to be a general view that the US has offered security guarantees, including the positioning of troops in Ukraine to secure a deal. And that’s a very tricky business – first of all constitutionally, because any such guarantee would require a treaty that has to be ratified by the Senate.

But more importantly, the whole idea of the US committing itself to providing a security guarantee with troops, with weapons, with capabilities, is an extremely dangerous thing, because this is a very volatile situation and the Ukrainians are dying to get us into the war. They see us as saving them from defeat. So they very much want the United States in Ukraine.

But do you think Trump would ever go along with that?

Well, he’s been proposing it. If the stories from Berlin are true – and I have not seen any pushback from the administration denying these reports, so I suspect they’re true – we’re offering security guarantees with US troops.

With troops?

That’s part of it.

I thought it was just on-paper security guarantees.

No, you can have that any day of the week. He’s talking about stationing American soldiers and other forces there. The Ukrainians want the US Army in Ukraine. Because they want to get the US committed to the war – because their only hope of winning is having the US fight for them. And now they’re talking about British and French and other soldiers in Ukraine, too. If this happens, and if there’s a provocation of any kind by either side – and there will be – we’re going to be at war.

But I thought the whole point of these negotiations is to find a solution that the Russians can agree to as well.

The Russians are not going to agree to this. But that doesn’t mean the US won’t do it.

You think they might actually put soldiers there, even without a deal with the Russians?

Right.

And that’s what they’re offering to Ukraine now?

I don’t think they’ve got as far as a formal offer. But once you say, “We’ll do security guarantees, we’ll put 10,000 troops in Kiev or wherever,” you’ve created all the conditions for a war.

Wouldn’t a written security guarantee, even without the presence of troops, also create the same sort of danger?

Yeah, I think it would. Maybe not as immediate, because they’re not there. They would have to be mobilized, and there’d have to be some basis for it. But look, even the Biden administration struggled with the idea of offering security guarantees to Ukraine in the form of an agreement – not with troops, just an agreement. They never could formulate one that the Ukrainians thought was worth anything, or even that the US thought was worth anything.

You can have an agreement – a collective security agreement, defense treaty – if you want one. There’s nothing to prevent it. But it would have to be ratified by the Congress.

And do you think it would be?

No. I don’t think it would be, for just the same reason I’ve been explaining. Once they come to grips with the implications of this thing, they’re going to get cold feet and they’re going to try to water it down, or throw amendments at it that neutralize it or make it less effective, or offer alternatives. So it’s going to go down the toilet. That’s my opinion.

Look, it’s the same thing that happened when Woodrow Wilson came back from Versailles with the agreement signed, and said it’s the greatest thing since apple sauce. And the Senate turned it down. And they turned it down for exactly the same reason – they didn’t want to be committed to that agreement because they knew it would draw them into a future war. World War I was bad enough.

And I think that’s what we’re talking about here. Look, even with some important allies we don’t have any defense agreement. And in cases where we do, like with Japan, it gives us lots of outs. It’s very wormy: We can, maybe, but we don’t have to. We have to decide. It has to be consistent with the UN Charter, blah, blah, blah. So there’s lots of wiggle room. And now you’re going to give Ukraine an ironclad guarantee?

I assume the argument would be that there are overriding considerations in the case of Ukraine that require such a guarantee.

Look, there are a lot of things about this war which disturb me greatly. And a lot of it has to do with the hostility between Russia and Ukraine, which is deep – deep and long lasting. I’ve been there, I know exactly what it is. And it’s just hatred. Why do we want to get involved in that?

What’s the benefit to us, the United States? I would submit there isn’t any. Zero. If anything, the benefit is not being there. And of course, this goes right up against everything the Russians have said about having NATO troops of any kind in Ukraine.

I actually don’t understand why they would even be considering this and discussing it in Berlin, when it’s clear that the Russians will never agree to it.

I can’t imagine they would. Whatever the Russian end strategy is, the absolute minimum is they want a guarantee that there will be no NATO forces there. They also want a reduction in the size of Ukraine’s army by a large number. And they want a more friendly government in Ukraine. So, those are kind of minimal from the Russian point of view.

And we’re talking about security guarantees with US troops? And now British and French and German troops? Give me a break. I mean, it gets worse and worse.

Some say the reason they’re discussing this even though they know the Russians won’t agree to it, is precisely because they know they won’t agree to it. Then they can point the finger and say: “The Russians don’t want peace.“

Well, that’s inevitable in this sort of thing. If you want to trash negotiations, that’s the easiest, quickest way to success. I read the Russian press – which is, of course, a controlled press. But even so, you get a sense of what the thinking is. And my feeling is that they think the Americans just flip-flop.

Putin wants to continue negotiations, otherwise there wouldn’t be any. That’s not generally well-supported inside the Kremlin – I think there’s some serious opposition to it. But he feels it’s important for the credibility of Russia.

The point he’s trying to make – which is completely rejected by the Europeans, or most of them anyway – is that Russia is not a threat to Europe. Russia has no designs on any European territory or anything like that. But he doesn’t want NATO expansion.

And by the way, Ukraine is not the only candidate for NATO expansion. There’s Georgia, there’s Moldova, there are other places. And there may even be an attempt to do it in the ’Stans – Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan, Tajikistan and so on. So I think that’s the game. And Putin wants to put an end to that. He wants to stop any NATO expansion.

Hasn’t the Trump administration more or less agreed in principle to stopping NATO expansion?

Well, theoretically, in some of the leaks, Washington has said: No, there won’t be any more NATO expansion. But I think that’s not credible. It’s not credible because the US and its allies, especially the British, are working full time to try and make it happen in Moldova. They’ve been trying in Georgia, but I think that’s failing. And they’ve been working on the ’Stans. They’re even working on Armenia.

Really?

Yeah, big time. So NATO expansion is not over yet – unless there’s some huge binding agreement about that. And I don’t see that coming in the near future.

So, you’re in Washington, you’ve been in government, and you know a lot of people in the Defense Department and elsewhere. Do you know all this from your personal contacts there?

Yes, and also from reports from the field that we’re seeing. Let’s take Armenia, just as an example. Armenia has been sort of a Russian client – to say the least. Its military is armed with Russian equipment, they have a nuclear power plant from the Russians, the economy is very much tied to Russia.

Now, all of a sudden, the US is in there doing deals, offering a nuclear power plant, the whole nine yards. That’s just on the economics side. Politically, they’ve been backing up Pashinyan and all those people, trying to make them American allies. There’s no doubt about what’s going on.

And the British have been working through various intelligence operations, trying to stir up support for that sort of thing within the country and elsewhere. Even in Russia itself – Russia is not immune to these activities. The NGOs that are supported by – what shall we call it – secret intelligence sources, have been a pain in their butt. And they’re reacting to it now. So I mean, this is a big game.

So what’s the point of all this continued NATO expansion? I thought by now we would have learnt our lesson.

I think we’re not at a point where we’ve really come to grips with what we want, and why we want it. Why do we want these countries in NATO? What’s the benefit to Europe of having, potentially, all these volatile clients? Unstable, inherently repressive – because they’re all repressing people who object.

And by the way, this even occurs in EU countries, in Eastern Europe. Romania, for example, got rid of candidates for president that they didn’t like. And now there are all these undemocratic, high risk potential NATO acquisitions, which could get us into a war on any day of the week.

And I think the people who are doing this don’t realise the implications. They’re trying to stick it to Putin, but what they’ll end up doing is sticking it to themselves. Because they’re going to end up in a mess that will be hard to untangle and unscramble – very hard – and will cost a lot of lives.

So your view is that even if this NATO expansion were successful, this would really be a liability to NATO more than a benefit?

Absolutely. Just like security guarantees are a liability to NATO. Because if you end up going to war over Ukraine – well, if that’s what you mean to do, do it now. Why just put a fuse there and light it, and wait and see what happens?

No, it’s not good policy. It’s not sound geopolitics. It’s not sound strategy. It’s very high risk. And it’s an unnecessary risk, because there’s no benefit. What do you get out of running Armenia, for God’s sake? Another war in Nagorno-Karabakh?

This also, by the way, creates huge tension with Turkey, because Turkey is a big backer of Azerbaijan – a very big backer. They supply a lot of the armaments. And they’re going to have a fit – and they’re in NATO!

So you’re going to run a stick right up the middle of NATO. Why would you do that? What’s the sense of it? It makes no sense. It’s completely uncalled for. Armenia is a poor country. It doesn’t have much going for it. Why do we want to take on that kind of burden? We have enough burdens of our own.

Just to focus on Ukraine – haven’t Trump and his people said they’re ready to agree that there will be no NATO in Ukraine?

Yeah, but it’s a fake. Because if you’re going to put US troops in Ukraine, the US is a NATO country. It’s the leading NATO country. Of course NATO is there. The Russians understand that. They’re not stupid.

So let’s say there’s some sort of ceasefire, American troops are positioned in Ukraine, and then the fighting breaks out again. What happens next?

This is why this sort of security guarantee is actually worse than putting Ukraine in NATO. NATO can only act by consensus. If someone is attacked in NATO, then you invoke Article 5 – which means all the members have to agree unanimously in order to take action. If somebody objects, then you can’t.

But if you put this kind of rump force – which is effectively a NATO force – into Ukraine, with a guarantee, now you’re under a legal obligation to go to war, and at the same time you get around the need for any consensual agreement by the other NATO players. Like Turkey, like Hungary, just to name a couple of obvious ones that don’t like what’s going on.

So you are, I think, destroying NATO as an alliance. You have cheated on the meaning of Article 5 and you have committed to getting into a war, without consensus.

Okay, but in that case you’re not committing all of NATO to a war, only the Americans – correct? And maybe a couple of other NATO countries that commit to this.

Let’s be serious. If you have the British and the French and the United States and maybe the Germans, what do you need the rest of NATO for? It’s meaningless.

And there’s one further implication. The Russians aren’t going to be so nice to say: Well, Poland’s not included, so we won’t bother with that. Of course they’ll bother with that. They’re not going to stop, because if they’re attacked by this force that’s sitting in Ukraine and they get into a fight with them, they’re going to go after the bases that supply those forces. Most of those are in Poland.

And why do you think they haven’t already done this, when Polish bases are already supplying Ukrainian forces?

Because Putin doesn’t want an expanded war. He’s been restraining his forces, particularly on that issue. He’s very adamant on it. But of course, he’s been called a piker by the Europeans: He’s going to attack us anyway in 2030. We have to get ready. We have to be prepared.

I’m not against being prepared, by the way. That’s not the point. The point is that they’re trying to make him out as a predator who’s going to take over Europe. I don’t think that’s his intention. But, you know, intentions are intentions. You can change your intentions any day of the week. So if pushed against the wall – if there were actually NATO troops in Ukraine – who knows what the Russians will do? But if I were them, I think I would have to go after the supply bases.

Do you think there would be all this now fighting now if we hadn’t encouraged Ukraine with promises of military support and NATO membership?

No, I don’t think so. I think that the Ukrainians thought we would have their back.

It seems clear there were people in the US government who were telling them that – and that US troops would ultimately come and save them if needed.

Absolutely. And we were engineering the removal of pro-Russian politicians in Ukraine and replacing them with rabid Ukrainian nationalists. This was Victoria Nuland and her gang. And that was really dangerous stuff. No, we don’t belong there. It’s not our problem – that’s the point. I don’t think it’s Europe’s problem either. What the hell is Europe doing there? Can anybody explain that to me?

As I understand it, they didn’t want to get into this at first – it was the US that was pushing them. And now they don’t want us to back out.

Well, if you listen to some of these people, including the head of the EU, it’s almost enough to make you vomit. They’re so ignorant of the implications of what they’re talking about. It’s warmongering. And Europe is not prepared for war.

So let’s talk about what would happen if there actually was, God forbid, a European war between NATO and Russia – let’s say without the Americans. How would that go?

Let’s remember – everyone keeps trying to forget – that Russia is a nuclear power. Not a little nuclear power – a really big nuclear power. Any decision maker has to worry about that. The Europeans don’t have nuclear weapons, other than the French and the British. The British are mostly controlled by us. The French are mostly independent – you know, the Force de frappe. But France is not going to use a nuclear weapon against Russia because it would be destroyed. It would disappear from the world.

So I think it’s craziness. Europe does not have the assets to carry on a war today. It lacks manpower. It lacks armor. It lacks air defenses. It has a paltry naval capability – which doesn’t matter anyway in a land war.

And if the US were involved? People talk about it quickly escalating to the nuclear level. What do you think?

Nobody knows. I’m sure there are people who have done scenarios, but who knows?

And if it stayed conventional? How would it go, do you think? You’ve talked in the past about the difficulties involved in supporting an expeditionary force, a land army deployed abroad – which is what the Americans would be doing.

Well, the British tried it twice in Europe. In World War I, they lost their expeditionary force. In World War II, the same thing. Both times, these forces were driven out by the Germans. A great loss. Dunkirk was a moral victory, in a sense, because they got some people out. But it was no longer a force that was of much military use. Now, the US does have bases in Italy, and in Germany, and in the UK. It has installations in Poland and in Romania. But all of those would come under attack.

In terms of weaponry, the Russians have been really amping up their production of arsenals since this all started, correct?

I think so. The reports say their industry is fully mobilized. Ours is not. Not even close.

Ours is also a lot more expensive – and we’re already so deep in debt. Doesn’t that impede our ability to amp up production?

There are some things we could do. The problem we have, is that things like missiles take a couple of years or more to build. Even proven designs. And some of the stuff that we’ve been using in Ukraine – for example the ATACMS and the HIMARS and all that stuff – the Russians have figured that out. They know how to deal with it now. So the effectiveness of some of these systems is less than what we would hope for.

And we’re working on newer missiles, but we don’t have them yet. So, no, we’re not ready. And even then, I think our defense industry is actually fairly small. Remember, in World War II we mobilized the civilian sector. Ford and GM and Willys, on and on – all those companies were taken over for military production. They stopped making automobiles, for example.

Could that happen today?

No, not really. You may have noticed that one of the big changes in auto production is that we’ve gone from laborers to robotics. And the robots are all programmed, and it’s very sophisticated, and it’s all geared up for the mass production of certain things. And even there, we’ve had trouble with supply chains. To try to convert a modern car factory for military production would, I think, be very tricky.

Tesla is a great example. I think the Gigafactory is really a neat thing. But to convert it for military use would be very difficult. It can be done – I mean, there’s nothing that can’t be done. But it takes time. How much time do you have?

The Russians are ready now, it seems.

I don’t think they’re 100% ready. I think they’re ready in terms of maybe building up their arsenal. But they would need to mobilize a lot of soldiers and train them. But yes, they’re more prepared than we are right now. And also, of course, they’re contiguous to the territory, whereas we are not.

Are there any areas in which the US is more prepared than Russia?

Well, our advantage, primarily, in a conflict in Europe would be our air power. We’re strong on that. And I think fairly decent. If we could take out Russian air defenses … But I think that’s a big “if.” The Israelis took out Iranian air defenses, but that’s apples and oranges compared to what the Russians have at home.

I understand it’s pretty formidable.

It’s layered. I don’t think it’s terribly well integrated yet, but it’s layered. And they seem to be getting better at it on a daily basis. They’ve been shooting down a couple hundred drones every night. It’s pretty amazing, actually.

How much success would you say the Ukrainians have had with their drone warfare?

I think they were very good at that. They’ve done some damage to the Russians. But now – it’s not that they’re doing less, but the Russians are getting better at interdicting them and knocking them out of the air. They target refineries and defense plants and airfields and stuff like that, and it still does damage, but not a whole lot gets through on a daily basis.

On the other side of the coin, the Russians have gotten much better at drones. And they’ve taken the Giran 2, which they got from Iran – originally the Shahed 136 – and they’ve really improved it significantly, and they’ve added capabilities to it. Now it can even drop mines onto roadways. And they have a version of it that can shoot down other drones. So they’re moving along pretty rapidly, and I think we’ve underestimated them – despite the fact that they’re missing some pieces.

The biggest deficit in Russia is the lack of a solid electronics industry, especially microelectronics. But they’re really good at software, and they’re able to get help from the Chinese for the hardware. So they’ve done a fairly good job. We’re far behind them in this category.

And what about Ukraine’s air defenses?

Spotty. Because the Russians pound them all the time. The Ukrainians primarily rely on three systems. The old S-300s, which is a Russian model. The Norwegians said they’re going to supply them with new missiles for their S-300s. Where they’re going to get them, I have no idea – but that’s what they’re saying. Then the IRIS-T, which is a European air defense. It’s a good system, but very, very expensive. And the Patriot. There are some others, but those are the three biggies.

Didn’t they have more of them in the past?

Yes, and Russia would knock them off. For example we sent them NASAMS, which is a ground-based version of our AIM-120 air-to-air missile. And we don’t hear about it anymore. I don’t think any more survived, I think they’ve been destroyed – because otherwise we’d be hearing about it: We just shot down such-and-such with an NASAMS. Well, they’re not saying that anymore. So my assumption is they’re gone. It’s an assumption – I don’t have any proof.

I know there are a lot of hardliners in Russia that think Putin is too cautious and going too slow. They want him to quit playing around and get this war over with. Do you think that’s even a possible option for Putin, or is the Russian military already going as fast as it can go?

Well, at this point they’ve almost completely devastated the energy system in Ukraine. I understand that in Kyiv, right now, you get four hours of power a day – if you’re lucky – on a rotating basis. It’s cold there and it’s winter. So they’ve done a big job on that. I don’t know that they would add very much to it. I think they’re going to start concentrating on other targets. The biggest one is Odessa.

And do you think they’ll want to actually take Odessa?

No, I think what they’re trying to do is to isolate Odessa, to encircle it eventually. They’re not there yet. That’s what this fighting in Zaporizhzhia is all about. And they still have a ways to go there. But in the months ahead, I think the idea would be to force a capitulation of Odessa, simply because they will have no ports, no supplies, no food and no power, that kind of thing.

So if they don’t take Odessa but Odessa capitulates, what does that look like?

Well, I think what would happen is they would throw out the current mayor and get a new one who would say, more or less: We welcome our Russian comrades.

And would the Russians actually move in there physically, or would they just get a friendly government in Odessa?

I think it depends a lot on how things transpire in the rest of Ukraine. But the Ukrainian army would have no ability to rescue them.

Because they’ve already got their hands full.

Right. So I think that’s their goal.

So getting back to these negotiations – do you envision any kind of peace plan that Russia would agree to, that Ukraine and the West could also agree to? I mean, somebody like John Mearsheimer has been saying all along that there is no possible peace agreement to be had – and that until Ukraine gets to the point where they’re ready to capitulate, this won’t change. What do you think?

Well, he’s got a good argument. I guess what Putin is probably thinking is this: What can he get out of a peace plan that would be worth getting? And one thing he will get from Trump, of course, is the lifting of sanctions. He will get investments, significant investments in Russia. And he will get a broader strategic arrangement with the United States, which he wants. Because he doesn’t want to be just tied to China.

Because you don’t want all your eggs in one basket?

And because he knows the Chinese are playing a double game. For example, all the Ukrainian drones are filled with Chinese parts, that they buy from the Chinese.

Really?

Yeah, tons of them. You’d have thought the Russians would have complained to the Chinese, their ally. And they probably have. And the Chinese probably say, “Oh yeah, we won’t allow that.” “But they allow it anyway. They use cutouts and all that sort of thing. But the point is, what keeps the Ukrainian drones flying is China.

So I think from Putin’s point of view, strategically speaking, he has poor allies. Iran? It’s a liability. North Korea? Who would want it? China? They play a double game. So I think he would not be unhappy with a strategic relationship with the United States. And where we may end up in all this is something different than what’s going on with Ukraine.

For instance?

We may end up with a strategic agreement between the US and Russia on a number of subjects: just where nuclear weapons are allowed and not allowed, how many, and so on. In other words, SALT-like agreements; agreements on what NATO can and can’t do; trying to limit NATO, or even trying to get rid of it.

So I think that Putin will be looking for that stuff. Remember back in December 2021, just before the war started in February, Putin sent letters to NATO. There were two letters, one to NATO, one to the US. And a big part of those letters was the importance of working out strategic agreements for Europe between the US and Russia and NATO – which the US didn’t really want to do. I think now, given the circumstances and the Russian build-up, the game has changed.

How so?

Look, we went through an exercise of trying to bring down Putin and bring down the Russian government. It didn’t work. If anything, the Russians are much stronger than they were four years ago. So maybe it’s time now to reorient and rethink strategically. If we do that – and that’s what Putin wants, I think; I don’t know if Trump wants it or not, I think he might – then the question is: Can they get there?

Well, Ukraine is in the way. Right at the moment. But things can change in Ukraine very rapidly. Zelensky could get chucked out. The regime could fragment. There could be elections. Who knows? There are many possibilities that would open the door to a strategic dialogue between Russia and the US – one that would put Ukraine to the side. And that, I think, is what the Russians want.

But they also want what you referred to a moment ago, some sort of strategic security agreement between Europe and Russia. They’ve been talking about it for years. Won’t there be problems now getting the Europeans to agree to anything like that?

Yes, the Europeans will have trouble with it. And I think it will force changes in Europe – and in NATO. Look, we have a NATO director general who’s a warmonger – Mark Rutte. And he has to be replaced. But I think all this is possible – if that’s what the US wants. Right now, we don’t know what the US wants, exactly.

But Trump and his people have been hinting for a long time that they would like to have a strategic relationship with Russia. It’s in the new 2025 National Security Strategy that they just put out. It’s openly in there. So it’s not just about whether the war in Ukraine will continue. There may in fact be an agreement, but it may be quite different from what’s on the table now.

For example?

I think it could very well be something much more strategic. And the only thing that worries me on that score, is that this takes a lot of planning and a lot of knowledge. And I don’t see any of our better thinkers – strategic thinkers, either in the government or outside of it – actually openly talking about that.

I remember in the ’80s, when we were involved in intense negotiations – the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty and so on – all these things took a tremendous amount of technical and strategic work to come up with the right formulations. I don’t know that any of that’s going on right now. I don’t see it on the Russian side either. But I think that’s the name of the real game for the future.

If we want to avoid war, and I think we do; if we want to stabilize Europe, which I think we do; if we want to have normality, then I think we need overarching security arrangements between the US and Russia, and probably between NATO and Russia. And that’s not going to be easy to achieve, but it has to be done.

I think it’s difficult in the current political environment in Europe for people even to speak openly about this.

Well, I think the political environment’s on the precipice of change. I mean the British government is, how shall we say – iffy? The French government? Iffy. The German government? The German economy is going to hell in a handbasket. The only strong leader in Europe at the moment is Meloni, in Italy. So I think there could be many very big changes in the next year. Because Europe can’t keep doing what it’s doing.

And there are rising politicians in France and the UK, the AfD in Germany, and so on, that have popular backing – significant popular backing. So I think the freedom of action of the anti-Russia crowd is going to go down the drain.

They’re trying to label a lot of these movements as really “far right.”

Oh yeah, sure. They’re awful. They’re terrible. They’re Nazis – all that stuff.

You mentioned that you’re not sure if the Americans know what they want. And Trump seems to be flip-flopping all the time – you never know where he’s going to end up. Do you see any chance of that improving in some way?

I can’t really answer that because I don’t know. He climbs up the mountain, then he climbs down. And that makes it tricky. But look, he really wants an agreement on Ukraine – he’s seized with that idea. His NSC [National Security Council], which is essentially now run by Marco Rubio, wants that, too.

But what they’re really aiming at is a new strategic relationship with Russia. That’s what they really want. Now, that hasn’t shown up too much in Trump’s rhetoric yet. So it’s hard to estimate what he really thinks about it. But it’s there in the Strategy – prominently. Also they’re struggling with a lot of other things now and they don’t need trouble from Russia.

But yes, it’s true, the negotiating environment seems like it’s up the hill and down the hill, up the hill and so on. And it’s frustrating, for those of us who are trying to figure out what’s going on.

But, like I said, I’m somewhat optimistic that if we could start some real strategic conversations with the Russians, we would be a lot better off. Because I think we have to. And I think Europe has to as well. And if we don’t, then we’re going to end up in a black hole, where I’m really afraid of what might happen.

Slovakia-based freelance journalist Jonathan McCormick‘s interview with Stephen Bryen originally appeared January 4 on The Marker (marker.sk), an independent Slovak online news and analysis platform. The English version from the newsleter Weapons and Strategy is republished here with permission.